Chapter 113 37. It’s Not Easy to Get Cavalry

Although Japan is surrounded by the sea, it is not a maritime nation. It is still an agricultural nation at its core.

It is very different from the British. Although the British are located in the British Isles, in addition to the world-class navy of the British Empire that later became powerful. Britain or the England region is actually a region rich in cavalry.

In the late Roman Empire, England was already an imperial border province rich in heavy cavalry. Although this cavalry tradition had a period of decline, after the Norman Conquest, the Grand Duke of Normandy William I distributed the entire Norman feudal aristocracy group that followed to various parts of England. As a result, feudal lords of all sizes spread the military tradition of feudal heavy cavalry charging with guns in England.

This also enabled England to have a cavalry team that was good at fighting for the next 800 years, and the British cavalry shone on various battlefields (except for a time in Crimea when they charged the Russian position like a fool, and finally thousands of cavalry were finished together).

As an agricultural nation, it is quite difficult for the Japanese to recruit a cavalry. First, although there are some good horses (the Nanbu horses are tall and strong, and the tallest ones are more than 1.6 meters tall, which fully meets the requirements of military horses), the number is not enough to form a large-scale armed army. Secondly, due to long-term agricultural labor, ordinary people are hunched over, and there are many people who are 1.34 meters tall. There is no possibility of training these people to become cavalry.

Although modern horse racers are all required to be short and small, ancient cavalry still requires strong soldiers with strong waists and backs and stable and developed upper limbs.

Although the cavalry tradition is not absent in Japan, in the era of the Hogen and Heiji Rebellion, tens of thousands of large-scale archer cavalry were also seen in the history books (personal doubts), and a large number of archer-riding warriors appeared in the Mongolian attack paintings. But this tradition is not universal, and it only exists in the samurai group or the samurai class.

So at present, there are only a few tens of thousands of samurai in Japan (after all, it was not until the Edo period that even foot soldiers were counted as samurai), plus a slightly larger number of rich farmers, landlords and servants who are considered to have good physical conditions and cavalry traditions.

Before this, Kobayata had learned about the number of feudal military classes in the Yamauchi family. As the top samurai of feudal military obligations, there are about 200 samurai (referring to 200 adult male samurai who can be armed at any time, not including their relatives, maybe there are three adult men in their family, but only one is serving the government, the same below), and there are 600 to 700 wealthy servants whose equipment and combat power are only slightly inferior to those of samurai (that is, the village chiefs and landlords of each village, wealthy farmers who occupy more land and river beaches, wealthy mine owners and mine engineers, and powerful craftsmen).

In other words, among the most powerful and powerful daimyo in the East, the Yamauchi family has less than a thousand cavalry combat troops at most. Of course, compared with the old and famous Shimazu family in the west, it is already very good, because according to the circulated Shimazu documents, the Shimazu family can only mobilize 292 cavalrymen for the same 10,000 people. This is because he occupied the horse-producing area of ​​Hyuga Osumi. If it didn't produce horses, I don't know what it would be like.

The scarcity of samurai is still a superficial problem. In fact, most of the 1,000 people in the Yamanouchi family often need to command soldiers, manage local areas, and collect taxes. They already have corresponding duties. It's impossible to withdraw the village heads of each village in the Yamanouchi. Who will organize the mobilization of the lowest-level military service? Who will collect annual tribute? Who will count the population? Who will launch a general labor service?

This is the biggest shortcoming of organizing the whirling cavalry. The soldiers are extremely insufficient. After the Battle of Kamirugawa, dozens of samurai who governed the Uesugi family died, and the rule collapsed and declined directly. In the Battle of Eight Face Mountain, the thirty-six families of the Kira clan under the command of Mikawa were cut in half, and the Kira clan was directly destroyed. In some ways, there are really too few samurai.

On the contrary, an expensive horse-drawn cannon with twelve kanwen and a set of three or five pieces of the current equipment are dead things, which can be purchased as long as you have money. For the wealthy Yamauchi Yoshikatsu, it is not a big deal at all, and he is too lazy to care about such trivial details.

In order to solve the problem of soldiers, Kobayata and Yamauchi Yoshikatsu have only one way, which is to find those who are from samurai or public servants, but not the eldest son, and at the same time, they are strong and simple-minded.

These people were actually sorted out when Kobayata recruited his comrades last time. Kobayata basically knew the capable ones among them. Now that he is recruiting people with Yamauchi Yoshikatsu's card, the grand occasion is even more unprecedented.

Why? It's very simple. Yamauchi Yoshikatsu is the young master of the Yamauchi family. Yamauchi Yoshiharu has let him lead the army independently and started to train him to take over. Arranging people to work for him at this time will make them his team members who will serve him in the future.

And because Kobayata had sorted out hundreds of samurai families in Yamauchi-ryo before, he knew all the sons of families that didn't want extra sons (ordinary samurai families really didn't want extra sons, so they gave them away everywhere).

So when Yamauchi Yoshikatsu personally inspected the personnel, rumors spread throughout Yamauchi that anyone Kobayata visited would be chosen by Yamauchi Yoshikatsu to be his imperial guard.

Although Kobayata explained it several times, it didn't work at all. Because basically, the son of any family Kobayata took Yamauchi Yoshikatsu to would be chosen. There was no consideration of appearance or talent, only Yamauchi Yoshikatsu and their sons would fight on horseback. The more comfortable Yamauchi Yoshikatsu was, the more Yamauchi Yoshikatsu liked him, and he would be chosen immediately.

And people didn't want their second or youngest sons to have such an opportunity. Many people even pushed their eldest sons over just to get the credit of a hidden residence.

In this way, one family after another, Yamauchi Yoshikatsu selected more than 40 samurai children in more than a month.

All of these people came from relatively wealthy families. The poorest had a wooden horse, a complete set of armor, and a complete set of swords, horses, and spears. And they also had military servants and followers equipped by their fathers. The richer ones even had two horses, people wearing iron armor and horses with face curtains.

Some of them had not yet entered the first year of service, so their parents naturally asked Yamauchi Yoshikatsu and Kobayata for help. So before the army was formed, Yamauchi Yoshikatsu was the black hat father and Kobayata was the barber. Kobayata shaved more than a dozen heads a day to help them all enter the first year of service, and his shaving skills were very advanced.

As the autumn harvest ended, the weather gradually became colder. Yamauchi Yoshikatsu's more than 40 Japanese-style whirling cavalry finally arrived with complete equipment. Training began.

Amid the roar of the iron cannon, a knight came galloping from Kanto with frost hanging on his body.

(A new chapter is about to begin)