The backwardness of the Song cavalry determined that the composition of its arms could only be dominated by infantry, and the infantry's slow movement, coupled with various shortcomings in the passive defensive strategy and military command system, made the tactics monotonous and rigid, and it was difficult to carry out long-range raids and mobile operations in order to gain the initiative in the war. Judging from the comparison of military strategy and tactics between the Song and Xia, Liao, and Jin, the Song army's blind passive defense was bound to lead to defeat.

The ancients said that the south boat and the north horse, the south plough and the north graze. Southerners are good at using boats to farm, and northerners are good at riding horses and grazing. And saying that southerners are not good at horseback riding, Zhao Hao thinks that it does not mean that southerners cannot master horseback riding skills, the fact is that there are no horses to ride! People always blame the lack of horses in the Song army to the loss of the sixteen states of Yanyun, thus losing the land for raising horses, resulting in the Song Dynasty can only obtain war horses through buying, and after living in the south of the Yangtze River, there is nowhere to graze horses, and the way to obtain horses is more narrow, so that the lack of horses has become the norm, and the cavalry in the later period is in name only, resulting in repeated defeats in wars with foreign peoples.

In his previous life, Zhao Yu also accepted the view that there was a shortage of horses due to the lack of horse breeding land. After coming to this world, he found that this was not the case, in fact, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, the Chu State had already raised horses in the Lianghuai region for the use of chariots. And Mengyuan has big horse farms in all provinces and counties across the country. It should be noted that there are not only many official offices, but also many private horse farms of Mongolian nobles. Among them, it is not enough to establish a horse farm in the Jiangnan area, and there are many horse farms in the Lianghuai area, especially the Huaixi horse farm.

The reason for this is that Zhao Hao thinks that it is actually a problem of contradictions and concepts between population and land, and the root cause is still interests. The economic form of the Central Plains and Jiangnan region is based on agriculture, land is very precious and scarce, but a large amount of land is needed to raise horses, so there will be sharp contradictions between the two. Therefore, the Central Plains Dynasty was limited by national strength and production and lifestyle, so many times our cavalry construction is always difficult, which is the bitterness of agricultural civilization, but it is also the inevitable trend of social development.

In contrast, the nomadic civilization is different, firstly, for them, horses are a rigid need in production and life, and grazing is inseparable from horses, and secondly, they have a lot of pastures and grass everywhere, so they don't have to worry too much about forage. After Meng Yuan, who was born as a nomad, entered the Central Plains, some people suggested that all the land in the Central Plains should be turned into pastures, but this suggestion was vetoed by Yelu Chucai. However, although it was vetoed, this evil government was carried out on a small scale! The Mongols could destroy the farmland without any scruples and then build horse farms, and even the Mongol army grabbed the people's land, turned it into pasture, and "did not return for a long time".

Secondly, horses have a low feed conversion rate among all domesticated animals. The reason is very simple, because the three animals of cattle, sheep and camels are all artiodactyls, and artiodactyls have three or four stomachs, and they can ruminate, and the digestibility of crude fiber is very high; As an odd hoof, horses cannot ruminate, and their digestibility of crude fiber is less than 40%. In order to ensure that the horse has enough growth rate, it is necessary to eat non-stop, and it is necessary to supply feed at night, and the demand for concentrate is even greater.

This is also the origin of the saying "horses have no night grass and no fat", so in ancient times, the horses of some elite cavalry units were fed corn, not to mention that this food standard is not to mention the comparison with ordinary animals, and the comparison of living people in the famine years are a grade higher. As for black beans, it has almost become a special word for horse feed, as well as high-grade pastures such as alfalfa, which are almost exclusively for war horses in ancient times, which shows that it is really time-consuming and labor-intensive for farming people to raise horses.

In addition, in ancient times, there was another problem with horses that made it difficult for agricultural civilizations to accept, that is, the use of horses was too simple, and they could only be used as service animals. Horse meat has never been welcomed, horse skin and horse hair do not have much use value, the yield of horse milk is not enough to make agricultural civilization favor, even in terms of manure, horses are also the most unpopular, most of the manure of other animals can be used as fertilizer to fertilize the field, horse manure is not good, horse manure is acidic, and it is harmful to the soil and useless if it is thrown directly into the field, so horses as service animals are thrown away by cattle for three streets, and even donkeys are not as good.

Then there are horses that are another kind of herbivores, and their personalities are very poor, we all say that people are stubborn like donkeys, but in fact, horses are more stubborn than donkeys. A mad horse is more terrible than a mad cow, killing a few people as if it were a joke, and when a conflict breaks out between horses, in addition to stumbling, they are also very fond of gnawing to solve problems, and they are good at biting. Therefore, male war horses must be castrated, otherwise it will be difficult for people to control. However, the inheritance of castrated horses has become a luxury for it, so it is difficult for you to ask the cavalry troops to breed horses on their own, which is more immoral than letting the eunuchs visit the Qinglou.

In addition, the peak of the physical strength of the war horse is only seven or eight years, so in a sense, it is a military consumable that is shorter than the peak period of an ordinary soldier. After all, a human soldier from the age of twenty to thirty can be called the peak of physical strength for ten years, and in extreme cases, old soldiers at the age of forty or fifty will also be pulled to the border, but horses really can't go to the battlefield after the age of years. It can be seen that if you want to maintain an elite cavalry, you need to invest for a long time, and there is no such thing as solving the cavalry problem once and for all.

It can be seen that horses are really a very cost-effective manure machine for agricultural civilization, except for military use, and the manure produced cannot fertilize the field. Therefore, even if there are many preferential policies for private horse breeding, like the Song and Ming dynasties, it is difficult to provide horses to the cavalry troops with quality and quantity. In Zhao Hao's view, it is the court's behavior of throwing the pot in order to reduce the financial burden, which is 'lazy government' according to modern terms, which increases the burden on the people and makes it difficult for the policy to last.

There is also a disadvantage of private horses, that is, they cannot provide qualified war horses, after all, a horse needs a large area as an activity venue, and private horses obviously do not have this condition, and can only be kept in captivity. And unlike the nomads, they only passively raise horses in order to complete the mandatory tasks issued by the imperial court, only need to pay the required number, and do not carry out the necessary training of horses.

For example, after the founding of the Song Dynasty, the Jurchens faced several strong enemies in the north, they were not nomads, they supported their families through a variety of economic activities such as farming and hunting, and raising horses was an important tool for them to protect their family property and expand the scope of robbery, rather than a necessity for economic activities. Although it was a civilian breeder, it was for war purposes, and its cavalry was generally equipped with two horses, and its ability to charge continuously was far better than that of the Western Xia cavalry, which generally had only one horse.

However, after the Jurchens counterattacked the Liao State and the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jurchen soldiers handed over the tiring work of raising horses to the Khitans, and handed over the labor of farming and handicrafts to the Han slaves, and became masters wholeheartedly. As a result, in the last years of the Jin Dynasty, the Khitans who raised horses took the initiative to lead the way for the Mongol army, causing them to lose hundreds of thousands of war horses, and the war horses of the Jin Dynasty army became overstretched.

The reason why Mongolian horses can make a deep impression on people is that horses are trained in the grass for one or two years after birth, and they can be used for three years. The horses thus trained are very disciplined, and the herd of thousands of horses will not bite and bark, and even if the owner dismounts, he can still drive and will not run away.

The Mongols do not feed forage during the day and do not start grazing until night. Follow the grass to wither, graze in the wild, and saddle up at dawn. Each person had several horses and took turns riding them every day, so the horses would not get tired during the battle. In addition, the Mongols are different from their above counterparts in that they use ox carts as pack animals, and when pulling the carts, they use two groups of eleven oxen in each side to pull them side by side. Horses were also bred according to the conditions of war.

And these are difficult to do for the Great Song Dynasty's 'people's support', so according to Zhao Yu's intentions, it is better to run a government-run horse farm, in the past, there were no conditions in Qiongzhou and Jiangnan, where the land was very tight, and it was difficult to resettle the landless displaced people. And now the population density of the recovered Lianghuai region is very low, and he found that it is rare to see villages for hundreds of miles along the way, even if there are 20,000 or 30,000 people in the state city, it can be regarded as the land of Shangzhou, which can be described as vast and sparsely populated, so there is no problem of people fighting for land.

In addition, in the war to recover the two Huai, the Song army received many horse farms, and captured more than 100,000 horses, Zhao Yu planned to integrate on this basis and set up several large military horse farms to cultivate war horses for military use, so as to alleviate the Song army's lack of horses to a certain extent, and lay the foundation for the expansion of cavalry. At the same time, having a horse farm can also allow the Song army to have a stable channel for the supply of military horses, and it is no longer controlled by others because of changes in the surrounding environment.

As for the cost, of course, it is expensive, but Zhao Yu thinks it is still worth it, strategically a strong cavalry can change the passive defensive posture, from the immediate point of view, after all, the future battlefield will be more in the northern plains, and there are higher requirements for the mobility of the army, so more horses are urgently needed to improve the mobile combat ability and rapid supply ability.

In terms of cost performance, Zhao Hao thought it would not be a loss. In the past, the cost of agrarian civilizations to resist their raids was frighteningly high. Therefore, we have beacons, we have the Great Wall, we have the blocking forests and the blocking canals, the purpose is to make the attack of the other side lose its suddenness and mobility. In short, it is just to tear down the east wall and make up the west wall, and it will not cost more money because of the horse farm.

In Zhao Hao's view, as long as people with a little political common sense will think that the current government-run racecourse is a good thing that is harmless, but he did not expect to trigger a 'big discussion' between the government and the opposition, and divided into two factions on the people's support and the government's maintenance, and wrote a separate letter to defend it. At first, he thought that 'it is healthier to be noisy', but then the more he listened, the more unpleasant it became, and their dispute over horse breeding was only a superficial problem, and there were deeper problems in the future......