Three Kingdoms

  War horses, or naive horses.

this is a problem.

  Fei Qian listened to the dispute between Cui Cheng and Wang Yun, and gradually understood the key point.

  In the breeding farm, there is only one stallion. No matter whether it is resource inclination or personnel deployment, it is impossible to say that both war horses and rough horses are raised in the same stallion group.

   War horses are delicate.

In order to maintain the activity and physical strength of the horses, the cavalry actually has to serve the horses every day as if they were serving the masters. They are afraid of freezing when they are cold, afraid of heatstroke when they are hot, they need to cool down after running for a long time, and they need extra meals when they lose weight. Woolen cloth?

   I am afraid that the whip is the one who serves the poorest horses the most.

   This is a completely different concept.

  War horses are required to be more fierce, more aggressive, braver, run faster, jump higher, better cooperate with cavalry, have higher sensitivity, and better controllability...

   And what are the requirements for the poor horse?

  Durability.

   Therefore, whether it is a retired war horse or a horse that has been screened out and cannot become a war horse, it is actually not suitable for use as a poor horse.

Cui Cheng said that he checked a lot and counted many of these retired or eliminated horses. After becoming a poor horse, they were not very good at the job of a poor horse, or they died of depression soon, or It is because of the sharp drop in living standards and the burden of heavy labor that they rapidly weaken and eventually die.

  Some people have doubts, what is suitable for farming and can undertake more heavy labor in the fields, isn’t it cattle? It is true that the poor horse can be used for farming, but it is not completely suitable for farming. If we only talk about the cultivation of fields, cattle are indeed better, but to transport materials, we cannot do without horses.

  Under the circumstances that the war horses themselves are not very rich, it is difficult for ordinary people to understand that it is necessary to specialize in the breeding of nasty horses.

  However, what Cui Cheng said is really reasonable. Especially now that hussars straddle east, west, north and south, and there are a lot of things that need to be transported, so it is necessary to specialize in nurturing horses...

  In ancient times, there were no highways, let alone trains, so when traveling far away, large items were inseparable from livestock, which were mainly rough horses. Until World War II, a lot of battlefield transportation relied on livestock, let alone the Han Dynasty?

  Why not use an ox cart?

  Because the bullock cart is too slow.

   Mules and horses?

  There is only one generation of mules and horses.

   It may happen that some mules and horses are quite suitable, but they cannot be passed on or continued. Another factor is that the fertility rate of cross-races is actually not high. Some donkeys and horses have not conceived even after being together for six years, so there is no continuity and long-term. , indicating that the animals in the transport brigade have not been bred and ready, so they cannot start fighting...

   Even if local transportation is not considered, only cavalry operations are considered, and a large number of poor horses are needed. For example, a thousand cavalrymen usually have 1,200 to 1,500 horses, and a large part of the extra horses are poor horses. These horses are taken care of by the cavalry when the cavalry is fighting alone, and if they are stationed, they are taken care of by a groom who can ride a horse, and are used to pull carts or loads.

   There is also the transportation of grain and grass during combat. This requires a lot of poor horses. Using an ox cart is too slow. If the distance is longer, the battle may not know how many rounds have been fought by the time the ox cart arrives, and it may even be over. Army Replenishment Rewards…

   There are only two ways to transport rations by land over long distances.

people.

   or a naive horse.

   As the saying goes, if you transport grain for thousands of miles, there will be no one in ten.

  The grain and grass supply process of the general army is that the country collects grain from scattered grain producing areas, aggregates it to the transshipment point, and then transports it to the army in a centralized manner. In peacetime, the destination of food transportation is fixed, and the military station will also be selected in a place that is convenient for transportation. In this way, food loss is greatly reduced.

  But wartime is different. The frontline troops are constantly moving, and the transportation of grain and grass has become a dynamic transportation. The transportation conditions and locations are constantly changing, and the transportation loss will naturally increase all at once.

  During combat, where the troops are far away from the granary, the consumption of food will increase exponentially until it can no longer be supplied. Similar problems existed during World War II. For example, trucks transport oil to front-line tanks, but the trucks themselves also burn oil. The further the front advances, the lower the efficiency of oil transport.

  So in order to reduce the loss of grain transportation, the dynasties used all kinds of methods. The Han Dynasty began to farm the fields, but in the Tang Dynasty, in order to reduce the cost of maintaining the army, the local financial power was also delegated to the Jiedu Envoy, so that the Jiedu Envoy could solve the problem of food and grass on the spot.

However, it is obvious that farming can’t completely solve the problem, and Jiedushi also treats the symptoms but not the root cause. These methods are not perfect. Therefore, the current problem is actually in Fei Qian’s hands. What method will he choose to break through this shackles? The bottleneck of the feudal dynasty?

  If it is just loss, it may be possible to increase the amount of transportation to resist it, but other problems associated with transportation cannot be compensated by increasing the transportation manpower.

  Because in the process of transporting grain and grass, there will be three serious problems.

  First, the issue of grain handling. Take grain directly from the granary and eat it directly. But to be transported to the front line, it must be processed and made into a finished product that is easy to store and transport. Even if Feiqian has more advanced storage methods and dry food technology, he can't guarantee the state of the food after more than three months. There were no targeted drugs for Aspergillus flavus and nitrate in ancient times...

  Second, if there are not enough rough horses, a lot of manpower is required for transportation. In this way, not only is the original stored grain consumed, but it will also affect the production of the next year. Assuming that an army of 10,000 people is fighting on the front line, tens of thousands of civilians need to be mobilized in the rear to transport food for them. These tens of thousands of people are just walking, not participating in direct combat, nor carrying out any production.

  This means that these civilians not only need to consume additionally, but also lose their original output. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, those protracted wars proved that even if they were victorious in the end, famine often occurred in the country.

  Third, the farther the grain is transported, the higher the probability of being stolen or robbed, especially when encountering someone like Cao Cao who likes to engage in grain road...well, sneak attack on grain road. Can't you just expect farmers to fight with sticks when they encounter enemy troops who are short of food?

  The longer the road, the more food protection teams are needed, and the more additional consumption will be incurred...

In addition, there are some problems related to logistics. For example, there is a lot of food in a certain place, but because there are not enough mules and horses in the transshipment convoy, the transportation cannot be transported to the transshipment warehouse. The warehouse also has such problems. Obviously there is food in the warehouse, but there is not enough capacity to transport it out. It's like a game that introduces some logistics concepts. If you don't plan the logistics well, there will be a situation where the rear warehouse is full and the front line has nothing.

   There may even be supply chain problems in the entire region, or even the country. Primary raw materials are piled up, but the processing site cannot supply raw materials, and the wheat near the farmland is bursting, but there is not enough food in the city...

  The issue of food can be improved by agricultural development, but what about transportation?

  There are ships on the water route, but only livestock, that is, horses, on the land route.

  This kind of directional problem requires Fiqian to make the final decision.

  With the expansion of the control territory, Fei Qian has already been considering traffic-related issues. In fact, these issues should have been studied in the early days of the Han Dynasty.

With the expansion of China's territory, whether it is information transmission or military control, problems with speed and timeliness will naturally cause more problems. The collapse of the old six kingdoms in the Qin Dynasty has already illustrated this point, and Liu Bang in the Han Dynasty The county system is just a product of compromise, and it cannot be regarded as the best result.

  If you want a larger territory, you must have better traffic.

   This is not to say that after the laying down, there are serious problems that can only be expected, or that even if there are problems, you still don’t want to change them.

  Difficulties in transportation conditions were solved in ancient times by extensive use of various livestock and tools.

  But this kind of solution is not good, and everyone knows it is not good, but they just don’t think about how to solve the problem, only think about how to solve the problematic people...

  For example, during the Western Qiang Rebellion, Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty dispatched 100,000 troops and deployed more than 10,000 vehicles for transporting grain and grass.

  For another example, in the Guanzhong area during the Western Han Dynasty, the population grew rapidly, making Chang’an Sanfu’s grain production unable to keep up, so that tens of thousands of ships were needed to transport millions of stones of grain from the Kanto area every year to supply Guanzhong. In the Tang Dynasty, the ecology of Guanzhong deteriorated further, and even the emperor often went to Luoyang to eat, so Shandong people complained that Guanzhong was asking for food and grass all day long, and Guanzhong people scolded Shandong for not knowing what is good or bad...

  Although the current population of Sanfu in Chang’an has not expanded to the peak level, Fei Qian has to consider these issues. On the one hand, it is necessary to increase the total yield per mu of fields, and on the other hand, it is necessary to solve the bottleneck of transportation.

   Of course, on this planet, there is no worst, only worse.

  If the transportation of the big Han players is described as difficult, then the Roman players of the same period as the Han Dynasty are almost crawling.

  In Rome during the same period of the Han Dynasty, agricultural production had not yet entered the era of crop rotation, and was still in the leisure system. That is to say, after one year of farming a piece of land in Rome, it takes longer to recover its soil strength, which means that Rome needs several times the land to achieve the efficiency of land cultivation in the Han Dynasty.

   This does not include the backwardness of Roman agricultural tools and breeding techniques, as well as the backwardness in the understanding of land fertility, climate and environment, and the backwardness in agricultural infrastructure and agricultural systems.

   And outside of Rome, it is even more exaggerated, many civilizations are still abandoned!

   It is not to say that there was no more efficient mode of transportation in the Han Dynasty, and there was, and that was water transportation.

  During the Warring States period, the carrying capacity of an ordinary ship was twenty times the efficiency of vehicle transportation, and it used less manpower. If it went downstream, the speed of the ship was faster. Therefore, many wars in China focused on advancing both land and water.

  For example, in the Battle of Changping, both Qin and Zhao countries relied on water transportation as the main transportation line. Only in places without water, vehicles were used for short-distance transportation. In addition, the battle of Changping was only a few hundred miles away from the capitals of the two countries, so it was able to support the battle of hundreds of thousands of troops.

It's just that if you encounter an area like the Western Regions, where the river is an inland river or a seasonal river, then the ships are basically useless and can only be transported by carts and horses. Therefore, the requirements for baggage carts and poor horses must naturally be raised. To a higher, more urgent need.

  The war horse is obviously very important, but the same cannot be put down because of this.

   Chaos may arise in the Western Regions at any time. Whether it is early pacification or post-war recovery, food is essential. The improvement of transportation capacity will lead to stronger combat capabilities. Only with strong combat capabilities can the stability of the frontier be guaranteed, and a stable frontier can enable the healthy development of the people in the Central Plains of China.

   It's all interrelated.

  The upper limit of agriculture…

  The upper limit of traffic...

   Connected together, it is the upper limit of the entire empire.

  Perhaps in another direction, it is the upper limit of the big foodie empire.

  Everything starts with eating, and everything is limited by eating.

  If there is no food left, who would listen to Fei Qian?

  After fully listening to the main points of the dispute between the two parties, Fei Qian also made a decision...

  …(▽)/…

   When the hustle and bustle dissipated, what fell was the real stuff.

  In the Engineering Society not far from the Agriculture Society, the great craftsman Huang Li was dangling in front of a newly made delivery vehicle, knocking or dragging various parts of the vehicle from time to time.

  In the war of chariots during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, leather carts, luggage carts, heavy carts, and luggage were divided into "clothes carts" for the carts, and utensils for the heavy load. Obviously, the ancients had already made it clear about the purpose of the luggage cart, which was for transshipment of goods.

  Before the Han Dynasty, there was no special design and production of baggage vehicles for the army. Many vehicles were actually the vehicles of the gentry and scholar-bureaucrats. Military supplies mainly relied on the collection of civilian vehicles for transfer.

  From the Han Dynasty onwards, military supply vehicles began to be produced by government-run workshops, which ensured the military's combat needs.

  Huang Li's current supply vehicle is a product that requires versatility, that is to say, any part of the vehicle is a fixed module, and once damaged, it can be replaced. This requires that these modules adopt a standard production mode, and also requires that the processes for producing these modules are also standard.

  Because of the road factor, the baggage truck cannot be large,

  Fei Qian’s memory may not be all correct. For example, after a trial run for a period of time, the four-wheeled truck was changed to two-wheeled again.

  The reason is simple. The load capacity of a four-wheeled carriage does not double because of the addition of two wheels. Even on some rough roads, the mobility is not as good as that of a two-wheeled vehicle.

  It’s like in Sichuan and Sichuan, four-wheeled vehicles are not as good as two-wheeled ones, and two-wheeled ones are not as good as one-wheeled ones...

The only advantage of a four-wheeled vehicle is that it does not need to increase the load capacity of the horse, and can increase the load of the vehicle. However, if the load of the vehicle is high, the wheel mechanism is required, that is, there must be greater strength between the wheels and the axle. toughness. Although Feiqian added thick and shallow bearings to make up for this shortcoming, the load-bearing capacity of the four-wheeled carriage was still not as high as imagined due to the instability and wear of the material.

  At the same time, even if the structural problems of the vehicle itself are really solved, ordinary dirt roads and wild wasteland will also become nightmares for heavy-duty baggage vehicles.

   Therefore, it is unrealistic to blindly increase the load-carrying capacity of the baggage trucks in the Han Dynasty when the road system was not perfect, or even in the subsequent feudal dynasties.

What?

Tricycle?

   Yes, tricycles have also been proposed and tried for a while between Binh Duong and Chang'an.

  Tricycles, like four-wheeled vehicles, can reduce the load on horses and can also be placed on flat ground, but there is a fatal problem with tricycles, that is, once the speed is increased, it is very easy to overturn, especially when turning. If you want to lower the center of gravity for the sake of site stability, it will lead to very poor passability in some places, and the gain outweighs the gain.

That's right, so now I came back in a circle and found that at this stage, under the existing technical level, there is a better versatility and passability of the baggage car model, which is still two-wheeled, but because of the structure The adjustments and the design of the common parts have made almost all aspects of the baggage vehicle to the limit of the two-wheeled vehicle itself, and if it wants to develop further, it must rely on other forces.

  For example...

  『Master Huang! have a look! What did I bring you! 』

  While Huang Li was beating on a part of the baggage car that seemed a little loose, he heard someone calling him in the distance. When he looked up, he laughed, "Are you going to use my place as a stable?" 』

  The person who came was Cui Cheng, the party to the dispute in the farm of the Agricultural Society.

  Cui Cheng laughed loudly, pointed to the horse behind him and said, "The hussars agreed! Look, these are good horses! The hussars said that the war horses and the poor horses should be raised separately! From today, the two of us will be together, I raise horses, you build cars! At that time, your chariots and horses will travel all over the east, west, north and south! 』

  The horse Cui Cheng mentioned was of course a nasty horse, not a war horse.

"good! OK! ’Huang Li laughed, and then stepped forward to look at the first batch of horses brought by Cui Cheng to be bred in the direction of rough horses, ‘Hahaha, this horse is good, look at these legs! sturdy! 』

  『Yes, the thicker can be more powerful...』

  『What do you think is the best height for a horse, or should I make an adjustable drawbar? 』

  『I think it is better to use one that can move. 』

  『However, what if the horses that pull the cart cannot find ones of the same height? 』

  『This is a problem...but it can be solved...』

  The two of them were together, discussing enthusiastically around the horse and the cart, and seemed to be full of energy and never tired...