The sky is vast and the wild is shining. The wind blows the grass and appears. This is Kaifeng!

The Kaifeng Prefecture Grassland is now in the clear and refreshing autumn season. The sky is blue and cloudless. On the golden grassland, there are large groups of horses everywhere, driving them by the shepherds, eating and walking, and flowing on the grassland.

No matter how you look at this scene, it seems to be in the prairie outside the mouth. If the Bianliangzi before the Xuanhe crisis and the officials from the Song Dynasty court knew that at this moment, their favorite Kaifeng Prefecture, outside the Song Dynasty Tokyo City, which had the highest housing prices in the world, had turned into this, I'm afraid it would be a pity.

In the original history, Kaifeng Prefecture, which was under the iron hoof of the Great Jin soldiers, was not as miserable as it is now. After all, when Wanyan Liang ruled the Great Jin Kingdom, Kaifeng Prefecture became the Nanjing Road of the Great Jin Kingdom. Later, due to the rise of Mongolia, the Jurchens had to move their ruling center to Henan, and Kaifeng Prefecture once again became the leader of a country.

But the Mongolians who came later were not so polite. They danced around with butchers of their swords and cut Kaifeng Mansion into a wilderness... It was probably similar to what they are now!

At that time, the entire Central Plains were full of wilderness, but now only Kaifeng Prefecture is unlucky, and Zhao Kai became a horse farm. Therefore, after the Yellow River water receded, it became a grassland. The once glorious and magnificent Kaifeng Prefecture City located in the center of this prairie has now become a super large spare stable. If the iron cavalry of the Jin soldiers suddenly attacked near the Kaifeng Prefecture Grassland, then the horses that were stocked on the prairie will concentrate on entering the Kaifeng Prefecture City.

However, Zhao Kai's arrangement back then was obviously too concerned. Because from the second year of Hongwu when the Kaifeng Prefecture Race Farm was officially established to the current autumn of the sixth year of Hongwu, the Jin Thief Cavalry never came to Kaifeng Prefecture for more than five years.

Although the Jin thief's cavalry did not come, the Western thief's horses still came to Kaifeng Prefecture... There were only horses and no cavalry.

After the battle to recover Lingzhou, Zhao Kai exchanged more than 100,000 horses from the Dangxiang people on the lands of the five states, including Ling, Wei, You, Yin, Xia, etc., and chose more than 30,000 strong mares and more than 10,000 tall and powerful stallions to send them to the six or seven million acres of grasslands around Kaifeng Prefecture for stocking.

Before and after their arrival, Zhao Kai tried every means to get a group of Qinghai inspections from the various Tubo departments of Qingtang. Among them, the high-quality ones were enclosed in Shangyang Palace Horse Farm, and the poorer quality ones were placed in Kaifeng Horse Farm as stallions.

After two or three years of breeding, by the fifth year of Hongwu, the Qinghai trial population of Shangyang Palace Horse Farm exceeded 1,000, and the size of the horse population of Kaifeng Horse Farm reached more than 80,000!

From the autumn of the fifth year of Hongwu, Kaifeng Prefecture Horse Farm began to supply underage horses to the cavalry households in the west, Hebei and Hedong, including the three camps. Horses usually mature at the age of four, but they could already hold their feet when they were two. Now the battle with the Jin thieves is about to begin, and the consumption of horses will be very huge, so Zhao Kai didn't care about protecting the "underage horses". He sold the stallion mares, who were born in the Kaifeng horse farm at half price to the cavalry households, so that they could be their parents early.

Of course, after those little mares successfully conceived their horse baby, most of those little stallions that had not yet fully grown would have to be cut off by a knife... If they could not work hard to reach the stallion during the period of holding hands with the mare and meet the standards of stallions, they would no longer need a mare in their lifetime.

After cutting, these little geldings will start to receive saddle training and training... because their future belongs to the battlefield!

After the autumn of the sixth year of Hongwu, these geldings who had been trained for several months would be taken by their owners to the Kaifeng prairie, where they were born, and then they would conduct ten months of tactical training here, mainly training to form a formation charge.

By the summer of the seventh year of Hongwu, these geldings had almost completely grown. If the war horses were castrated earlier (not too early, otherwise there would be no way to select high-quality species), they would have the opportunity to grow taller and stronger than those stallions that had not been killed. After completing training and growth, they would have to rush to the battlefield of the northern expedition to Yanyun!

In September of the sixth year of Hongwu, Zhao Kai also left the capital of Shenluoyang and visited Kaifeng Prefecture. At the same time, he also established a personal camp with Han Shizhong as the general manager, Yue Fei as the deputy general manager, and Zhang Xian as the army in Kaifeng Prefecture.

According to the edict issued by Zhao Kai before leaving Luoyang, he will sit in Kaifeng Prefecture and personally preside over the overall Northern Expedition. He will also assemble large troops on the Kaifeng grassland one year in advance for training.

Zhao Kai's edict was issued in the summer of the sixth year of Hongwu. After receiving the edict, the Privy Council and the Ministry of War immediately issued a mobilization order for the government troops.

According to the military list issued by the Privy Council and the Ministry of War to the four camps and fields, before the end of the sixth year of Hongwu, at least 240,000 government soldiers and utility soldiers would gather in Kaifeng Prefecture, and then 12 armies would be organized under the command of the Xingying Prefecture.

At the same time, a large number of civil servants were also summoned by the Department of the Fourth Road of Yingtian (with the need to spend copper coins, silk or cloth tickets), and drove carriages and donkey carts to transport trucks of military supplies from various places to Kaifeng Prefecture.

From this time on, the entire Northern Song Empire became a war machine with full horsepower, and the war potential of the entire country began to be gradually released.

......

Liu Wuge, whose ancestral home is Lantian County, Chang'an Prefecture, has now become part of this war machine. He has now obtained the title of Sergeant and has assigned a full 200 acres of land in Xingzhou. He also married a young lady from Lu Baiwan's family in Lantian as his wish... Although he did not become a sergeant, he slept with the young lady from Lu Baiwan's family in Lu Cuishan and asked the son of Lu Cuishan to catch him.

Lu Cuishan had no choice but to marry his daughter to Liu Wu, who had already changed his name to Liu Wu, and accompanied him to a large dowry. Liu Wu used this dowry to settle his home in Xingzhou, and bought a Qingtang Jia for himself (the two prefectures in Xingling also produced Qingtang Jia, but the output was not as good as Luoyang), and bought a buffalo horn bow and a bag of three arrows produced in Sichuan. He also asked someone to spend dozens of silk from Qingtang City, Xining Prefecture to exchange for a castrated mixed-bred Qinghai constellation at the age of twelve or thirteen.

Although the horse is getting older and still has mixed seeds, it is still a rare good horse when it comes to Liu Wu's hands.

Liu Wu, who was determined to make achievements, liked this good horse, and he treated it as a horse's ancestor, and raised it so fat and strong. He was not willing to ride it for a while on weekdays. This time he led it to Kaifeng Mansion to go on the run. On the way, he only wanted to ride this Qinghai Camp for an hour every day, and then transferred to a short-legged Khitan horse with outstanding endurance. And whenever he was camping and resting, he would first serve his Mazu first, and then be busy with other things.

His friends who were with him all digested that he treated his horse as his father to serve him! But Liu Wu still did his own thing. And under the service of his "filial son", the mixed-race Qinghai Camp was even more majestic than when he left Xingzhou after walking 2,000 miles long distance!

When he rode his "ancestor horse", put on the shiny green Tang armor, carried a buffalo horn bow with a string, carried a bag of three arrows, and carried a slender line gun with his head held high, followed the large group of troops from Xingzhou Prefecture soldiers into the Nanxun Gate of Kaifeng Prefecture City with his head held high, he felt so proud!

He is now like this, before the Xuanhe crisis, and he is a Western Army general from a noble family! The dowry brought by his wife is really in vain!

Just this horse, armor, bow and arrow... and the martial arts he has mastered over the past two years. How can he kill a few golden thieves when he goes to the battlefield?

The fame of a sergeant must be earned!

Just as he was proud, a cheering voice suddenly sounded in his ear: "Long live my emperor! Long live! Long live..."

Liu Wu quickly looked up and saw that on the Nanxun Gate Tower, six black flags and two white flags symbolizing the emperor appeared!

This shows that the Luoyang official family is now on the Nanxun Gate Tower, watching everyone enter the city!

Thinking of this, Liu Wu's chest immediately stood up, and he raised his arms and shouted, "Long live my emperor, long live..."

"Very good, very energetic!"

Zhao Kai on the city gate tower also saw Liu Wu and praised him specifically. But he didn't care too much... because during this period he could see a lot of very energetic soldiers every day.

These soldiers are a bit like military contractors (feudalism is actually contracting). As long as they can obtain enough profits through war, there is no problem of being reluctant to invest - this is a virtuous cycle!

Moreover, they spent their own money to buy horses and equipment. Even if the equipment and horses Zhao Kai gave them were all privately owned by them after the war, they were well maintained, and they all had high requirements for quality.

In addition, there are many civil tyrants who are jealous of the people who are promoted to the government, who will pay to equip themselves to serve Zhao Kai as a utility soldier in order to seek a chance to rise (although they are recruiting soldiers, they are also part of the government system).

So in this case, the cost of the government system is not high, but the efficiency is excellent and the combat effectiveness is guaranteed, which is the most powerful time.

The victory of every battle in the early Tang Dynasty and the destruction of the early Ming Dynasty were all caused by such government soldiers (military households). Although these two armies later declined for various reasons, they were the most powerful war machines in the world in the early days.
Chapter completed!