Chapter 1032: It’s a Big Song

On the first day of the third month of the third year of Yuanfeng, Wang Gui reported: "I led Xiang to discuss the official system and established three provinces for the great ones: Zhongshu made orders and did things that were lawless; subordinates reviewed and acted according to laws; Shangshu followed them.

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"They are also divided into groups to perform work, and each has his own position. Therefore, the administration is divided into groups and they inspect each other. This is the great unification of the system and the rectification of the name."

"Hereinafter reforming the selection system, appointing officials and appointing officials, all based on the merit of the official;"

"Further down, the official system set out in the "Liu Dian of the Tang Dynasty" will be implemented, with the three provinces, the Privy Council, and the six-cao system, gradually reaching all roads and implementing them according to the new system."

"It has been a hundred years since the Tang Dynasty. The inheritance and abandonment of the two dynasties needs to be proved by examination. Although the country and dynasty have unified the system and the affairs are complicated, if it is done from top to bottom and based on the plan of ministers, it can be accomplished within two years."

Zhao Xu was quite satisfied with the timetable and operation steps, nodded and said: "Thank you for your hard work, Mr. Wang."

Wang Gui continued: "The major event of restructuring affects the government and the people and shocks China and foreign countries. I believe that trust should be the first priority and traces should be the demonstration. Therefore, we should first choose the easy ones, the big ones, and then the difficult ones, the fine ones."

"Shang Yang stood up a tree, Yan Zhao city bones."

"The old ministers and others took the old system of the Tang and early Song Dynasty, and used the original official opening ceremony of the three divisions and below, and designated it as the twenty-fourth level. I specially submitted the "Yuanfeng sent Luge" for your Majesty's imperial judgment. Please go ahead,

With official status."

Zhao Xu opened it and read it, nodded and said: "Xiangong Wang is of high moral character and upright. This "Ji Lu Ge" has high regard for Yuan Bi's ministers and I have deep respect for it, so I will handle it accordingly."

He really deserves the word "high integrity". Wang Gui himself is not a high-ranking official. After changing his rank, he will actually suffer a small loss.

But for those old ministers, such as Wen Yanbo, Fu Bi, and Lu Gongzhu, the number of official transfers had already accumulated to an extremely high level. Therefore, Zhao Xu said that "Ji Luge" praised the ministers of Yuan Bi, which is indeed true.

Wang Gui was secretly happy, bowed and said: "Accept the imperial edict."

…

Although Su You's position has not been reduced yet, he is still very busy.

After Zhang Dun's third express of thanks was rejected, he obeyed the fourth imperial edict and took the post of counselor in political affairs, becoming the glorious last member of the Standing Committee of the Song Dynasty.

But something strange happened here in Suyou. After the third thank you letter was sent up, the fourth edict, which was the official edict, was delayed.

Su You didn't care and went to the official horse racing farms around Bianjing to inspect.

The outskirts of Bianjing in Jichun are full of scenery.

There are pastoral supervisors in the suburbs of Bianjing, which are under the jurisdiction of the Qunmu Department.

The Group Animal Husbandry Department was established in the Song, Liao, and Xixia governments, and was responsible for the husbandry, breeding, training, use, purchase, and exchange of horses in the country.

Officials have the system of Qunmu envoys, Qunmu deputy envoys, Qunmu governors, etc.

Those two countries were originally nomadic countries, and their herding divisions were, as the saying goes, "the foundation of armor and military strength, and the great benefit of the country."

In the Song Dynasty, there were no fewer than three institutions to manage Ma Zheng, but they did not achieve any good results.

Taipu Temple is in charge of the horses used by the royal family. "Concubines, princes, princesses, and consuls should give tribute to the riders of the carriage. They will be paid according to their rank." Qijiyuan is a department dedicated to raising horses for the royal family.

The Department of Animal Husbandry is in charge of the raising and deployment of the country's horses. This is the "Government Order of Stable Animal Husbandry and Carriage of the State". Horses used by eunuchs, the military, and mine supervisors are mostly allocated from here.

The Tea and Horse Division manages the city's horses. In addition, it also handles the treatment of sick and old horses, as well as institutions that supervise horse herding and the private horse breeding system, mainly in charge of civilian use and private recruitment.

There are many political sects, which is very characteristic of the Song Dynasty.

But even though there were many mothers-in-law, the horses could never be raised well.

Taipu Temple has the best horses in the world, and they often spend a lot of money to acquire them. However, after arriving at Qijiyuan, the first step to serve the royal family is to tame them.

Removing the balls and turning the horse into a slow-moving pet is the primary goal of Qijiyuan.

And they did.

The Group Animal Husbandry Division also had a hard time raising horses inland and using traditional horse-raising methods, which naturally aroused resistance from local pro-people officials and ordinary people.

The most important thing is that the officials of the Group Animal Husbandry Department have such vast and abundant land resources. The horses they raise belong to the country and the grain they grow belongs to them. So isn’t it more fragrant to farm the land?

Therefore, in their memorial, official land was divided privately, and people were superfluous. The land for official horse farms was on the account books, but in fact most of it was occupied by civilian fields. Local officials and ordinary people did not cooperate. As a result, pastoral land and agricultural land could not be divided at all.

I understand that there is no way to raise the horse well, I will try my best...

Against this background, although there are horse prisons in Kansai, Hebei, and Hedong, the number of horses slaughtered is pitifully small.

Take Shayuanjian in Tongzhou as an example. They have more than 9,000 hectares of pasture and an annual consumption of 400,000 guan. However, they only raise more than 6,000 horses. At the lowest number of horses per year, there are only more than 40 horses!

If the horse administration had not been so miserable, Wang Anshi would not have made up his mind to enact the Horse Protection Law - selling off the horse farms and letting the private sector raise horses. The government would provide horse breeding subsidies, and the Chengdu Horse Government would buy them back uniformly.

As a result, there were many complaints in the farming areas - one horse, "50 acres of waste water and lush grass", such a high land occupation rate, if it dies, it has to be compensated, and it is still maintained like this. Isn't this crazy?

The government uses the land for horse herding to grow grain, why can't we? After contracting the land originally owned by the official horse farm, of course the main purpose is to grow grain. As for raising horses... Haha, don't make trouble! Wait until we are full before we die!

Therefore, after selection, only one-sixth of the horses released from the stables and civilians of the Song Dynasty could become rideable mounts. Although the remaining horses were still considered military horses, they could only be used as postal horses.

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Just as Cai Queshang said in his memorial to Zhao Xu, "Henan, the twelve prisons in the north, from the second to the fifth year of Xining, the annual horse production is 1,640, and the cavalry can be given 264

, the rest is just enough to send by post.”

The situation in the south is even worse.

There are eleven pastures along the coast of Fujian, Quanzhou, Fuzhou, and the outer islands of Xinghua Army. However, these horses are called Island horses and cannot be equipped with equipment, so they can only be used as post horses;

In South China, the horses produced by Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as the horses traded by the Song Dynasty with the southwestern barbarians and the Dali Kingdom, were mostly low-riding horses. Only one or two out of a hundred could reach the minimum standard of the Song Dynasty war horse, which was four feet and two inches in height at the shoulder.

This kind of horse is called the Jisi horse - the Song Dynasty court purchased these horses, in large part to win the hearts of the people and Jisi the southwestern barbarians.

As for the plateau horses bought from the Qing and Tang vassals, they were prone to getting sick after coming down from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and were not suitable for plain warfare.

Therefore, it is pure nonsense to expect that the private contract responsibility system can continuously feed a large number of war horses without fundamentally solving the problem.

Therefore, there is almost a consensus in the Song Dynasty that the horse breeding in the Song Dynasty has inherent disadvantages - "Northern Hebei, Yan, Dai, horses are born, and Hu Rong relies on them."

The only truly good horse breeding areas that can supply large quantities of war horses are the northeast and northwest.

From north to south, from west to east, the quality of horse breeds decreases in sequence.

That is to say, the so-called "wilderness of Jibei" and "Ganliang Hetao" must be "a high and cold land with long mountains and large valleys, beautiful grass and sweet springs, thousands of miles of open land, and many livestock breeds."

In both the Han and Tang dynasties, it was only by owning these two pieces of land that they could form large-scale cavalry troops.

However, after the founding of the Song Dynasty, one of these two areas had long been captured by the Khitans, while the other was in the hands of the Dangxiang people. Although each generation of emperors encouraged horse breeding throughout the country, little was achieved.

The climate in the south of the Yangtze River is not suitable for raising horses. For example, in Raozhou Breeding Prison, during the Xining period, "there were 562 female and male horses, of which 5 out of 300 died and 27 out of 20 became foals."

In a few years, 562 horses were raised to less than 300 horses, which is really ridiculous.

Therefore, some people use this as a basis to believe that "it is not suitable by nature, and it causes various diseases and causes contagion."

If one horse gets sick, it will infect a group of people within a month, causing a large number of deaths.

However, these are still technical issues in the final analysis. The Group Animal Husbandry Department still has a serious shortcoming - it has not managed horse affairs at all in the past ten years, and it now functions as the National Development and Reform Commission!

When Wang Anshi entered Beijing for the first time, he received the title of Director of Qunhu and Animal Husbandry, and has been playing a pioneering role in reform there ever since.

Later, Lu Huiqing arrived at Sinong Temple, so the Qunmu Department and Sinong Temple became the places where the new law was formulated.

The people inside are all great people who care about the world. They know everything from astronomy, geography, and moral articles, except raising horses and farming.
Chapter completed!