Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 68 Special War Horse
  The so-called special war horses are an effort made by the conservative military aristocrats of the empire to improve the strength of knights at the end of the age of knights.

After all, anyone with a discerning eye can see that with the advent of the steam age, the combat power of traditional knights is no longer capable of meeting the needs of battlefield combat, so the conservative military nobles began to try to improve the combat power of knights in other ways, so as to keep them status.

For an extraordinary knight, there are three main aspects that can affect his combat effectiveness: one is his own quality, the other is weapons and equipment, and the third is mounts.

Needless to mention weapons and equipment, this has always been the focus of the knights, even more concerned than they are about improving their own quality.

Since the establishment of the feudal system, the powerful nobles who own fiefs have been recruiting excellent alchemists and craftsmen in order to create the best equipment for their knights.

When the concept of the modern nation was formed and the original feudal system began to disintegrate, it became the nation and the royal family that researched high-tech equipment.

Therefore, most of the knights in the empire have now begun to use unified equipment. Because of the development of productivity, craftsmen have been able to mass-produce weapons or armors that only top craftsmen could make with a lot of effort in the past.

This is the significance of technological advancement, turning equipment manufacturing that may have been no different from lottery draws in the past into a guarantee now.

As for the improvement in the quality of armor brought about by scientific and technological progress, it was not that obvious in the steam era. Although the quality has improved significantly, there has been no qualitative change. At most, it has been upgraded from chain armor to plate armor.

After all, many scientific theories in this era are still in their infancy. It is more of a summary of experience, sorting out the original scattered knowledge and experience into a systematic knowledge.

It's just that armor can be produced in large quantities and the quality has been significantly improved, but mounts cannot.

To train a horse, you still have to follow the laws of nature. You have to wait for two horses to mate, get pregnant, and give birth. Then it will take two or three years for the pony to mature before it can be ridden as a qualified adult horse.

Among these, the cultivation of war horses is particularly troublesome.

In addition to the selection of horse breeds, training also needs to start soon after the pony is born. Whether it is desensitization and adaptation to people, adaptability training to the battlefield environment, and more importantly, the training of combat skills, all of which cost money. A lot of time and effort.

Therefore, it is not a joke that a good horse is more valuable than ten soldiers.

In fact, the cost of maintaining the combat capability of an excellent war horse is almost the same as the cost of maintaining ten soldiers.

Because his family is a knight family and they also keep war horses, Perficott also knows something about this.

Take a 500-kilogram war horse as an example. It needs to eat four meals a day, and each meal is probably at least five kilograms of grain or fodder. That is, a horse eats almost 20 kilograms of food a day.

Even if part of it is fodder, the grain portion is enough for one person to eat for almost half a month.

With just a little conversion, you can know that if the land used to raise one horse is used for food, it can probably feed twenty-five people.

This is why knights need fiefs, because without fiefs they really can't even raise horses.

But the military nobles of the empire were not satisfied with this and formulated a special war horse breeding plan.

They selected all available horse breeds, and then used alchemy to extract the outstanding characteristics of different horse breeds, and brought them together, and completed the breeding by artificial means, thus obtaining a combination of speed, endurance, intelligence and many other aspects. A new breed of horse with excellent qualities. It wouldn't matter if it was just like this, but after they obtained the new horse breed, they really started to cultivate special war horses.

First, they interfere with the development of the pony by means of alchemy and magic. They feed special feed mixed with alchemical potions to promote the development of the pony, and apply some special strengthening magic to the pony.

Although the power of mages in this world is not particularly strong, in terms of quantity, there are still more alchemists who can create various magical creations and potions, but there are only few mages, not none.

And they also have some special methods to suppress the bottom of the box, and it's not just fireball.

In short, with the cooperation of at least one alchemist and one mage, it takes three years to cultivate a special war horse that can almost be said to be made of gold.

But the empire at that time reaped the dividends of the development of the times, and those military nobles really had money to burn.

So they burned it for a full seven years and spent millions of gold pounds before they finally bred the special war horse they had in mind.

This kind of horse has a shoulder height of nearly two meters and is tall and strong. Just by looking at them, you can feel their power.

Coupled with the enhancement of alchemy and magic means, the special war horse can not only sprint at least 50% faster than the best purebred horses.

And the endurance is excellent, running at the highest speed can last for half an hour, and then you only need to take a short rest and replenish enough forage to recover.

In addition, they are also very heavy-bearing. According to the official data of the empire, they can carry a maximum weight of one ton. In fact, according to what Purficott heard from Foster, this kind of horse can pull a thousand taels. Hundred kilograms of weight.

As for the accuracy of this statement...Perfect's grandfather had a special war horse, and Brandlis Manor also had some second-generation special war horses.

However, Purficott was not interested in this, so he instructed the old butler to keep only a limited number of horses for riding, and sold the rest.

After all, the maintenance cost of this kind of war horse is too high. Just in terms of food intake, a special war horse can eat five times the food of an ordinary war horse.

According to the explanation of the old butler Foster, a special war horse needs to eat seven meals a day, including three meals of grain and four meals of forage. The grains are mainly corn, oats, carrots, apples, honey and eggs, and at least one meal a day. It is also necessary to add powder ground from shells to supplement calcium.

One can only imagine how expensive such a horse is, and it is undoubtedly a top-notch luxury item that only nobles can afford.

So much so that with the current size of the Victoria Empire, only the Royal Guards Knights are fully equipped with this top-notch war horse. Both the Princess's Sword and the Rose Knights can only be equipped with second-generation hybrids.

The second-generation hybrid special war horses are much inferior to the special war horses. Not only the shoulder height has reduced to 20 meters, but also the endurance, load-bearing and speed have declined by 50%-%. Relatively speaking, that is Just a better war horse.

　Regarding the food intake of horses, I am not exaggerating at all, so the kind of horse that often carries a hundred thousand heavy cavalry... I really want to ask you, does your horse not eat?

　　
  　
  (End of this chapter)