On weekdays, there is nothing wrong at all, so why is there a shortage of food when it comes to fighting? Are these soldiers full of money or are there other cats behind them?
I don't know if you found it, in ancient times, it was nothing, but once it was time to march and fight, you would hear all kinds of sounds of lack of food.
If there is really a shortage of food, you should report to the imperial court before the war, instead of waiting until the war is halfway through the war and then telling the court that there is a shortage of food?
What's behind this? Why is it said that the lack of food in the process of ancient marching and combat is the biggest fault of the troops' inability to mobilize urgently?
Let's take a look.
Point 1: The simplest grain transportation problem
One of my students once discussed that if every crusade against Cao Wei carried a large amount of instant noodles when Zhuge Liang was six out of Qishan, could the war be successful?
I was attracted by such talk, and I have to say that this child's brain is more clever, if this is really the case, with Zhuge Liang's ingenuity, defeating Cao Wei is not at all.
Because this invisibly solves the biggest problem of ancient soldiers, that is, the problem of eating.
Some people will surely say that these soldiers have food to eat on weekdays, why do these soldiers have no food to eat in a war, is it because the strenuous exercise leads to increased consumption and leads to a lack of food?
It can only be said, but it is definitely not all.
Because there was a special point in ancient wars, this point we can call a defect in the absolute sense, called the problem of grain and grass transportation.
Note that in ancient times, there were no trains and planes, and there were no large trucks and trucks. If you want to transport grain to the front line, you must rely on the strength of people to carry it on your shoulders, and you can bring as much as you can.
So we may wish to imagine that, taking Emperor Wudi of Han as an example, Emperor Wudi of Han ordered his soldiers to wage war with the Xiongnu in the north, and finally hit the southern region or the northern region, anyway, if they went out, then should these soldiers eat?
Of course, you have to eat, the soldiers are not steel, add some oil and you're done.
People are iron rice and steel, and they are hungry and panicked when they don't eat a meal, so how can these grains be transported?
Some of the grain was carried by the soldiers at any time during the march, but the food carried was limited after all, and the remaining part of the grain needed to be continuously transported from the rear to the front.
There is a problem when transporting grain, does the person who transports the grain need to eat?
To give a simple example, a person carrying two small carts of grain, a total of 200 pounds or 300 pounds, he wants to transport from the last party to the front line of the war, it may take 10 days, please ask in these 10 days this person needs to eat food?
The answer, of course, is yes, you have to eat, and you have to eat and drink. If you don't eat, this part of the grain you bring with you will not be transported to the front line at all.
So we find a strange problem, these people transport grain to the front, must flow out nearly half of the grain to fill their stomachs, the rest is for the soldiers to eat.
This is especially true in difficult and dangerous wars, and the more you march in the border areas, the more so it becomes.
For example, the Qing Dynasty once launched several large-scale marching operations, and these marching operations often cost tens of millions of silver.
Of these tens of millions of silver, in addition to the silver rewards issued to soldiers, nearly 1/2 or even more of the silver was spent on the purchase of grain.
Of course, it is not excluded that some generals have moved their hands and feet in the middle, for example, some of the grain is actually buying big fish and meat for themselves.
For example, in the Qing Dynasty's Nian Tang Yao, the soldiers on the front line could not eat enough, and they also roasted lamb, and that day was a moist.
But there was no way, after all, at that time, the Qing Dynasty could only come up with limited talents, except for Nian Qianyao, no one else seemed to be able to take on such a heavy responsibility, and the emperor could only turn a blind eye.
Therefore, it is not difficult for us to find that in ancient times, as long as the army marched and fought, there was a shortage of grain, and the most important link in which the lack of grain could be roughly divided into two, the first was that some imperial court officials embezzled and accepted bribes in the middle, and the second was the cost problem in the process of grain transportation.
The most important cost of this is long-distance transportation.
At the same time as transporting over long distances, it is necessary to ensure that the soldiers on the front line have food to eat, and the necessary condition for ensuring that the soldier who transports the food can deliver the food alive to the front line.
So how could this soldier get the food to the front alive?
It is necessary to continuously feed this soldier, so the loss of grain in the middle process is very large.
If the enemy encounters another opportunity on the road to cut off the road of food, the loss will be even greater.
Point 2: Ancient warfare was more like food warfare
For example, when Cao Cao was dealing with a fierce enemy, he obviously felt that he could not defeat the other party, but suddenly he learned the location of the enemy's grain, and immediately led his soldiers to burn the people's grain on horseback overnight.
It should be noted that the ancient war of food consumption was actually very terrible.
We will find countless wars, and the enemy will come at you not to fight with you, but to sneak around your rear without you noticing, and then burn all the grain with a torch.
They did not come to rob the grain, but to destroy it all.
As long as this grain is destroyed, then your soldiers will go hungry, and for the next period of time, even if you have the heart to march and fight, you will not have the strength to do so.
So it is easy for us to conclude that in ancient times, the transportation of grain was already a problem, and if we did not pay attention to a granary being cut off by the other side or burned by a fire, then the food crisis would become more and more serious.
Point 3: During ancient wars, soldiers could not grow their own food
We take the Ming Dynasty as an example, during zhu Yuanzhang's reign, in order to ensure the vigilance of the imperial court, he had no choice but to issue a new military commander-in-chief's order, requiring soldiers to also go to the fields to harvest grain during the non-military war.
Such an order, in fact, there is no problem.
But imagine that if there was a sudden war, the soldiers would never be able to continue farming, and it would be really unpleasant to take up a hoe and fight the enemy.
It is most likely to carry your own weapons to fight with the enemy on the battlefield, and in this case, it is easy to have problems.
Before the grain was not grown, the soldiers' original self-sufficiency model was completely broken, and at this time, it was necessary to collect more grain from the people for the soldiers.
In the process of marching and fighting, it is very likely that because of the war situation, enemy soldiers will invade our country to grab more food.
Or because of the damage to some fertile land due to the war, ordinary people did not dare to grow food in these places, and the soldiers had to push forward or retreat out of strategic considerations, and this place where food could be produced became a wasteland.
Because war will make food scarcer.
In addition, because of the war, the soldiers will eat more food, the food consumption rate will be faster, but the production capacity of food is not supplied, and there is almost no other way but to use reserve grain.
If there is another natural disaster, and the imperial court must provide relief, then the amount of grain for the soldiers will be reduced, and the amount of grain that the people can eat will also be reduced.
Therefore, in ancient times, as long as the army marched to fight, there was inevitably a shortage of food, either the front line lacked food or the rear line lacked grain, or it was because of some reason that there was a shortage of grain somewhere, which was almost the norm.
This is also why the Yongle Emperor had to have a buffer period before each expedition, to ensure that there was enough time to collect enough grain, which was stored first and used when the army was marching.
Such a storage mechanism can at least ensure that soldiers on the front line have enough to eat, and only when they are full can they have the strength to serve the country.
So we might as well go back to the previous topic, if the ancient march and combat, suddenly invented some kind of weaponry, this equipment can continue to make enough food to fill the stomach, then will the country be invincible?
As long as there are no major problems, at least when fighting the whole army of other countries, we can take the initiative.
In fact, to say that a thousand and ten thousand is still a problem of productivity, at this stage in some countries in the war, more is the lack of gunpowder weapons, rarely hear about the lack of food, and in ancient times the lack of food was often the most deadly.