At the same time, the autumn harvest is also a robber, When the bandits were most active, because this time was the time when the materials in each village were the most abundant, even if they paid the taxes of the government and the rent of the landlords, most of the peasant households would have some surplus money and grain materials in their hands, and if they were yeoman farmers, then the surplus would be more, and each village would have several rich households or landlords, so after the autumn harvest, it was also the time when their treasury was the most sufficient.

Shandong has been an area where robbers are frequent since ancient times, so every year around the autumn harvest, the robbers of each mountain and village, The bandits will go out to the nearby villages to loot and loot, and the local government basically does nothing about this, first, according to the rules of the imperial court, but the county seat is not lost, the responsibility of the local officials will be greatly reduced, and the loss of villages outside the city is irrelevant; second, there are a small number of local officials who want to manage but can't manage it, after all, there are only a few troops in a county town, and after deducting the empty salary, there are not many people left, and self-protection is still insufficient, and there can still be defense against robbers and bandits outside the city.

Of course, robbers and bandits do not break a village when they see it. Generally speaking, for the surrounding area of their cottage or the village they are more familiar with, they will often find a middleman to send a message to the village, asking the village to pay some amount of materials and property, so that they can not enter the village, and the villagers will agree most of the time in order to break the wealth and eliminate the disaster, and then the whole village will share it equally.

Acting as an intermediary between the village and the strongman, there is no fixed type, or a relative of the robber and bandit, or their original villagers, as well as a businessman who helps the robber and bandit pick up the dirty, and even the person who has been kidnapped by the robber and bandit and released back, anyway, as long as he can speak and play a liaison role. Therefore, this has also given birth to a special profession of middleman, not only for the two sides to speak, but even to bargain in it, and some people directly become the agent of robbers and bandits, of course, it is indispensable to earn a middle fee. Some middlemen can even get along with several bandits and bandits, and it has almost become an open secret among the people, and after the autumn harvest, they will operate in the villages, or offer prices to the villages, or directly collect goods on their behalf.

However, this is a reasonable robber and bandit, but there are also unreasonable robbers and bandits who are not reasonable at all, robbing every village, and breaking the village when they meet, in this case, the middleman is useless, and the government is even more unreliable, so it can only rely on the people's own organization to protect itself. Generally speaking, if there are several big landlords and squires in the village, they are often the ones who come forward to fund the construction of village walls and organize the township * to defend themselves, and even hire several martial arts instructors to be responsible for commanding and training the villagers in case of accidents, of course, these landlords and squires are not doing this for the safety of the whole village, mainly for themselves, after all, they are the main targets of robbers and bandits. However, these preventive measures are only to prevent reasonable robbers and bandits, and if they encounter reasonable ones, they are still willing to break the bank and eliminate disasters.

However, as far as the East China government is concerned, it is absolutely not permissible to compromise with bandits and bandits, so the only way to do this is to strengthen defense, and in addition to allocating land to each village that the land reform working group visits, one of the key tasks is to establish militia organizations in various villages; on the one hand, it is to increase the reserve strength of the people's army, and on the other hand, it is also to increase the ability of each village to protect itself.

Because after the land reform, the East China government's control over the grassroots level is unprecedentedly strong, coupled with the support of the people's army, but also the ability of the villages to protect themselves has been greatly improved, during the land reform, there have also been several robbers, bandit forces raided and plundered, but were all repelled by the people's army, the militia, and destroyed two villages, so the general bandits do not dare to easily provoke the people's army. Although the People's Army does not yet have the energy to comprehensively eliminate the bandit and bandit forces in Shandong, it has indeed greatly reduced the living space of the bandits and bandits.

However, now that the autumn harvest has begun, it is still necessary to guard against the activities of bandits and bandits in various localities; after all, robbers and bandits are also going to celebrate the New Year, and they can't grab anything, so should they let the robbers and bandits drink the northwest wind during the New Year? And after the New Year, they are ready to comprehensively wipe out the bandit and bandit forces in Shandong.

At present, the KPA has established three divisions, each of which has its own defense area, and the other units that have not yet been reorganized will be temporarily under the unified command of each division according to the place where they are stationed. At this time, you can also practice with robbers and bandits.

In this case, of course, we can only put aside the promotion of currency for the first time. The preparations for receiving the ship really had to start immediately, so after the Executive Yuan contacted and negotiated with the German side, it also approved the plan of the Military Commission, which was tentatively scheduled to depart from Qingdao on December 10.

In addition, according to the news from Beijing, at this time Yuan Shikai, who quelled the rebellion of the remnants of the Boxers, had withdrawn his troops and stationed the Beiyang New Army in Baoding, although Yuan Shikai was the governor of Zhili, but because Tianjin had been occupied by the traversers, so only Baoding had become the new garrison of the Beiyang New Army. The East China government's plan to open up new base areas can also be implemented.

Now the total number of volunteers is 562, divided into four companies and one platoon, the officers at the company level are all veterans of the People's Army, and all the soldiers are members of the battalion headquarters, and the original personnel of the Volunteer Army can only serve as platoon commanders at most, including Jing Tingbin, Zhao Sanduo, Li Zhuangyong, the original leaders of the uprising. This is also intended to establish more mountains among the original personnel, and it is also conducive to the control of the East China government over them. As soon as the Volunteers were formed, each soldier was equipped with rifles and bayonets, and formal combat training began.

The Volunteers were equipped with Russian-made Mosin Nagant 1891 rifles, while the company officers were equipped with a Type 96 pistol. At the same time, there are 4 grenadiers in each class, each of whom is allocated 4 shots*.

At present, there are about 18,000 Mosin Nagant Type 1891 rifles in the KPA, and they are also the first type of guns to be replaced by Type 01 rifles. Because the Type 01 rifle made by the East China government is an imitation of the German-made * rifle, the two types of rifles have many parts that can be interchanged, and the other type of Hanyang-made Type 88 rifle that is heavily equipped by the People's Army is the main equipment weapon of the Qing court army, so it can only be used by the Mosin Nagant Type 1891 rifle for the volunteers. Moreover, this rifle has the same mouth shape as the Type 01 rifle, which is 7.62 mm, so that it can use bullets specially produced for the Type 01 rifle.

The clothing of the volunteers was also determined, mainly in blue and blue tones, covered with a piece of green cloth, wore a set of navy blue short placket, tied a belt, and had a bayonet slot, and wore a gray-blue shoulder, two pockets on the left and right sides of the front, used to hold bullets, * and other items, feet with hard leather soles cloth shoes, calves and leggings. On the whole, it is completely different from the costume of the People's Army, and it is somewhat similar to the original Boxer costume, but the costume of the Boxer is mainly red, while the Volunteers are mainly blue and blue, which is the most common among the people in this era.

Because these soldiers have actual combat experience on the battlefield, after a few days of training, Li Wenfei is very satisfied with the situation, thinking that it is much stronger than the new army of the People's Army, but Li Wenfei believes that the volunteers still lack heavy weapons, and if it is a mobile war or guerrilla warfare, it is not a big problem, but in the battle of fortified positions, the lack of heavy weapons will cause huge casualties to the troops. Although the principle of opening up new base areas this time is to abandon large and medium-sized cities and take root in the rural areas, even in the rural areas, there are some earthen walls built by the private armed forces of landlords, and they will encounter a certain amount of tough battles. So Su Wenfei also applied to the Military Commission, hoping to equip the volunteers with a few mortars.

After deliberations, the Central Military Commission decided to equip the Volunteers with three 60 mortars and three grenadiers, each mortar with four artillery and each grenadier with two people, on the one hand, to strengthen the firepower of the Volunteers, and on the other hand, to test the performance of these weapons on the battlefield.

In addition, the location for opening up new base areas has also been confirmed, and in the eastern part of Henan, Guide Prefecture, Chenzhou Prefecture, Kaifeng Prefecture, Xuzhou Prefecture and other areas, first, this area borders Caozhou Prefecture in the southwest of Shandong Province, which is conducive to the transportation and support of materials; and second, these areas are far away from Zhili, so they will not be too irritating to the Qing court. Moreover, the southeast of this area is also connected with Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, and the southwest can enter Hubei Province through Nanyang Mansion and Runing Mansion, extending in all directions, providing a very broad space for the development of the future.

And in the Volunteer Army, there are a few local soldiers, who originally made trouble in Henan, although during the Gengzi National Disaster, the influence of the Boxers in Henan was not great, but it also caused a certain momentum, and these people still have some names in the local area. Now that they heard that they were going back to their hometowns, these soldiers were very happy, and promised to be guides and do the work of the common people.

Of course, the decision of the East China government was not because of the presence of these local soldiers, but after a detailed investigation, Henan Province was not economically developed at this time, with a slightly larger area than Shandong Province, about 170,000 square kilometers, and a slightly smaller population, about 26 million. However, the situation of land annexation was much more serious than in Shandong, and large landlords, gentry, and local powerful forces occupied a large amount of land, and according to the composition of the East China government, at least 7 or 8 percent of the land could be classified as middle peasants and poor peasants, or even more. However, such conditions are also more conducive to the work of opening up new base areas for the traversers. So it's the right place.

After more than three months of training, the preparations of the working group and the volunteers were almost complete, and the Beiyang Army had retreated to Baoding, so the Executive Yuan and the Military Commission of the East China Government jointly issued an order to officially start the implementation of the mine distribution plan.