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Did the Ancient Heavenly Horses Really Sweat Blood? - Logistics and Legend in the Dayuan Campaigns | Sleepy Facts About History
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The Han Dynasty under Emperor Wu commanded one of the ancient world's largest agrarian economies and could field armies of hundreds of thousands. Yet, for years, it struggled to produce the one thing its survival demanded: a horse large and durable enough to carry an armored soldier against the mounted archers of the Xiongnu confederation. This strategic bottleneck led the Han court to look far beyond its northern frontier, eventually dispatching massive military expeditions across the…
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