Chapter 111： Buy a horse

As a passer-by, if Marin doesn't fight for hegemony, it would be a shame for the passer-by. To fight for hegemony, a huge cavalry team is indispensable.

However, although European horses are good, they are too squeamish, and they need to be fed with concentrated feed every time. The cost of feeding is very high. For example, Marin's Warhorse Karl, this product needs to eat 10 fenny worth of feed per day, which is equivalent to 5 days' salary for ordinary people. In some poor families, the cost of the whole family is no more than 2 Finneys per day. Therefore, this product is equivalent to eating up to 5 days of expenses for the whole family of ordinary people every day.

If you want to feed 10,000 heavy cavalry, the amount of money spent on feed every day is as high as 100,000 fenny, worth 1,667 gold coins.

Of course, 10 Finneys per day is Marin's standard. After all, Marin is a local tyrant. But no matter how economical, the average knight can spend 5 Finneys per day on the warhorse. After all, European oats are expensive, and European horses are tall and have a large amount of food ...

Therefore, there are very few countries with tens of thousands of cavalry in Europe. To Marin's knowledge, there is only one in France. But the French knighthood was not supported by the salary provided by the court, but by the fiefs.

France has more than 10,000 knights, about 10,000 people have a closed area, and the average area of ​​a knight with a closed area is up to 1500 acres. Those French knights who fought with the king actually paid for themselves. However, the 1500-acre enclosure is enough for them to feed themselves and their war horses. The other thousands of plate armoured knights rely on the French central government to support them, which is mercenary and expensive. That is, a powerful country like France may not be able to afford to replace it with other countries.

Other European countries, it is basically difficult to afford such a large-scale heavy armor knight. Venice can afford it, but it is a maritime country, and the knights have no use at all, and they lack a strong knight.

And Marlin ’s boss Maximilian I, most of his standing army is also infantry, heavy armor knights, only 1500 ... Even if the country is mobilized, the knights in the Austrian and Burgundy mansions are summoned. No more than 5,000 people ... unless all the knights of the German nations are called in order to overwhelm France in the total number ...

……

So, although I always wanted to build a huge cavalry team, Marin had always worried that he could not raise so many war horses. After all, if you are equipped with 10,000 heavy cavalry, the horses ’feed consumption alone will have 500,000 or 600,000 gold coins every year, which is very scary.

Therefore, Marin currently has only a thousand war horses of a thousand wandering knights recruited by the Teutonic Kingdom and 800 horses of 800 black shirt knights. The other horses are horses that eat more grass than feed.

Moreover, because Marin opened up 5,000 Eugram's oat fields in East Friesland, he grows oats by himself, but the cost of raising horses has dropped by half. Otherwise, the 1800 horses alone would cost 100,000 gold coins each year.

Fortunately, Marin grows oats by himself, and the output is high, which can save most of the cost. But even so, raising the 1,800 war horses and thousands of horses cost Marin a huge amount of money.

Therefore, when he remembered that the Eastern European Mongolian horse was the Don Hippo of later generations, he was pleasantly surprised. Because, these Don horses are similar to Mongolian horses, as long as they eat grass. It is only necessary to add some feed because of the excessive energy consumption of the manned running body when going out.

Moreover, these Eastern European Mongolian horses are much taller than Mongolian horses, and their shoulder height can reach more than 1.5 meters. The Mongolian horse, with a shoulder height of only 120 to 135 centimeters, looks too short.

Is short and has short legs. Even if he has the advantage of good endurance, he can't keep up with other horses because of his short legs during the charge. Therefore, in later generations, horse racing, Mongolian horses can only participate in endurance races, no better than sprint, no one chooses Mongolian horses.

However, on the battlefield, the speed of the sprint is very important. Therefore, Mongolian horses with short legs are far less performant when charging.

Although the Eastern European Mongolian Horse (Don Hippo) is also a descendant of Mongolian horses, it retains many advantages of Mongolian horses. But because the shoulder height can reach an average of 1.5 meters, compared with Mongolian horses, all of them are "long-legged Oba", and the speed of running and sprinting is naturally faster. Although endurance is not as good as Mongolian horses, the advantage of sprint speed is enough to offset the disadvantage of endurance.

, Marin knew that the plate armor knight would be eliminated by the musket in the future, and the light cavalry would be the main force of the future cavalry. Later light cavalry preferred medium-sized horses like Arabian horses, which were about the same height as Don horses, rather than the tall horses that are currently popular in Europe. Because European heavy horses have the disadvantage of poor endurance. These heavy horses may be powerful and sprint fast. But after rushing for a while, it withered and needed a long rest. Moreover, they eat more and raise costs more. Therefore, the later modern European cavalry basically used local horse breeds and medium-sized horses to cross Arabian horses to train shorter medium-sized horses with excellent endurance and speed.

In fact, Eastern European Mongolian horses themselves are mixed with the excellent bloodlines of Arabian horses and even sweaty horses. Therefore, it is very suitable for mounting as a light cavalry. Later, the Cossacks, riding the Eastern European Mongolian horse (Don Hippo), helped the tsar and laid the world's largest land area.

Standing in the main hall of the Crimean Khan Palace, after quick thinking, Marin decided to buy Eastern European Mongolian horses from the Crimean Khan for a long time to use as a light cavalry horse. Even heavy cavalry can be equipped with two Eastern European Mongolian horses for transfer. As for the local horses who also want to eat feed, Marin decided to eliminate them and give them to neighboring countries ...

In this way, most of the horses in the Marin Army will save a lot of feeding costs after transferring to Eastern European Mongolian horses, which is also a big saving.

So, Marin bowed again and asked Mongoire Khan:

"Dahan, I heard that there are many war horses in your country? I don't know if Dahan has any idea to sell it?"

"Are you going to buy our horse?" Mongoire Khan arrived very surprised. However, I was also a little happy.

In fact, the Crimeans did not sell war horses to Europeans. It is a pity that the popular plate armoured knights in Europe need high-powered horses with great strength, rather than medium-sized horses such as the Eastern European Mongolian horse. Therefore, the Crimean sales failed and had to be honest as a trafficker ...

And if someone can buy Crimean war horses, then the Crimean Khanate equals an extra money ...

Know that the Crimean Khanate is basically a nomadic country, with large groups of horses on the grasslands. In it, pick out horses suitable for war horses, not too much. Marin wanted to buy, and Montgomery Khan could find tens of thousands of horses to sell in minutes.

"Yes, Khan, I admire your invincible bow cavalry and plan to form a similar force."

"Don't you Europa prefer the heavy armor knight riding a tall horse? Why, how do you like our Mongolian tactics?"

"Genghis Khan's army defeated the European knights at that time, so, I think the Mongolian cavalry's tactics are more advanced ..." Marin calmly put the horse fart.

"Then the price?" Mongoire Khan looked at Marin expectantly.

"What do you think of a 10 gold coin?" Marin killed the price directly.

Know that in Western Europe, the price of a warhorse is about 100 gold coins. Marin offered 10 gold coins to Eastern Mongolian horses, which is indeed very low. However, no one is buying the Crimean warhorse at the moment, and Marin is also aware of this, and he is killing the price.

"No, it's too low. As far as I know, those high-end Malaysians in Europe are worth dozens of gold coins!" Mongoire Khan also knows several countries like neighboring Lithuania. Lithuania has a well-developed animal husbandry industry. The price of horses here is also cheaper than that of Western Europe, with only a few dozen gold coins.

"But sweating, European horses are all high-profile Malaysian horses ~ www.novelhall.com ~ Can you ride a heavy plate armor?" Marin said that he naturally picked shortcomings in order to lower the price.

"If it's an ordinary packhorse, you can give 10 gold coins, but war horses, you have to get 20 gold coins ..." Mongoire Khan was clearly dissatisfied with the price of Marin, and felt too low.

"Sweat, your horses are all free-range on the grassland, and grow up eating wild grass, there is no cost at all. If you sell one, you earn nothing, why use high prices to deter buyers ..."

Mongoire Khan thought, really, the Eastern European Mongolian horses are all herdsmen living in the Eastern European prairie, growing up eating wild grass, there is really no cost ...... Well, labor costs, in this era, no Not to mention ...

However, Montgomery Khan is not happy to be held down by such a low price. So he said:

"But your price is too low ..."

Marin wanted to continue to lower prices, but he considered that the biggest purpose of this mission to the Crimean Khanate was to exchange troops for the Crimean Khanate, not to buy horses. Therefore, Marin made concessions to avoid making Mongoire Khan unhappy:

"Well, if Khan is willing, I would like to represent our North Sea Chamber of Commerce, first to buy Khan the price of 15 gold coins for horses and 8 gold coins for pack horses, and purchase 1,000 horses from Khan first ... If our country adapts to the local climate, we will buy a large number of war horses from your country every year in the future, the same price ... "

Mengo Jirehan thought about it and found that selling horses was more profitable than selling slaves. Moreover, Marin was the first high-ranking guest willing to buy horses in large quantities from the Crimean Khanate. As a result, he didn't raise the price anymore, to avoid scaring away the high-ranking Marin. Therefore, he waved a big hand:

"Okay, that's it!"