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"The trees want to be quiet and the wind doesn't stop!"

Mei Dongxing received information from Liu Wu and Zhang Zhenxun in one day, and said in a relaxed tone: "The escort fleet has not left yet, and some cows, ghosts, snakes, and gods have jumped out and are ready to attack the fleet, General Wang, the burden on the Nanyang Legion is not light!" ”

"The regular army of the Nanyang Legion has only 5,000 people, and they are stationed in Annam, Songkhla, and Natuna Islands, and their military forces are scattered, and it is inevitable that they will be discovered by those who are interested in finding flaws."

Wang Dashan shook his head and said.

"If you fight with those foreigners, what is the chance of General Wang winning?"

"It is not difficult to defeat the forces of many Chinese in Nanyang, but it is easy to defeat them, and it is very difficult to destroy them all."

"There are seven or eight thousand Chinese militia in Annam, Natuna Islands, and Songkhla, and if we gather the Taiping congregations scattered throughout the South Seas before the start of the war, our armed strength should be more than four times that of those Chinese Kapitan, and we can't solve them with such strength?"

"War wins and losses are not calculated in this way." Wang Dashan smiled bitterly and explained, "The Chinese Kapitan who planned to attack the transport fleet had the support of the Dutch behind them, and maybe the British also intervened in it, if we can't severely damage them or wipe them out in the sea battle, the escaped Chinese Kapitan will inevitably rely more on the Dutch, and it will be difficult for us to attack them again." ”

The Taiping Society was the largest underground force in the Nanyang region, but the power of the Taiping Society could only extend to areas where the Dutch had a vacuum of influence or weak control, and the Taiping Society had been secretly infiltrating the areas controlled by the Dutch and the Chinese Kapitan who obeyed the orders of the Dutch, and tried to maintain a superficial peace with the Chinese Kapitan forces in the Dutch-controlled areas.

The Taiping Society was under the command of Wang Dashan during the war, but Wang Dashan did not have great confidence in the combat effectiveness of the subordinate congregations of the Taiping Society.

"Your Excellency the Governor has spent some time on the mainland, so you must have seen the training of the Wehrmacht's native troops?"

Wang Dashan paused for a moment, and then asked about the situation of the Wehrmacht's native troops.

"Yes, I have accompanied His Highness to inspect the army twice."

"What does Lord Mei think of the strength of the Nanyang Legion compared to the native troops?"

"The Nanyang Army can be regarded as an elite division compared with the French and Dutch colonial armies, but compared with the local troops, there is still a little gap."

Mei Dongxing said truthfully.

"The colonial army is a second-rate army, not as good as the regular armies of France and the Netherlands, and the Nanyang Army is of little significance compared to them."

Wang Dashan waved his hand disapprovingly, and continued, "The weapons and equipment of the Nanyang Legion are distributed according to the standards of the regular troops of the National Defense Force, but because Nanyang is too far away from the mainland and the transportation cost is expensive, the live-fire training intensity of the Nanyang Legion soldiers only reaches 60% of that of the domestic troops, and the Nanyang Legion troops lack combat experience with the white countries, and there is also a big gap between them and the local troops in terms of actual combat ability. ”

"Although the Nanyang Army is a regular army, ordinary soldiers and grassroots officers are mainly selected from Annam, the East Indies and other places, and the proportion of veterans is much worse than that of domestic troops, and it is understandable that the comprehensive combat capability is slightly weaker."

"Before Lord Mei served His Royal Highness King Han, he managed eight or nine hundred men of all sizes in Australia, and Lord Mei should know how difficult it is to maintain an armed force.

Take the 5,000 regular army of the Nanyang Legion, for example. His Royal Highness allocates two million Han Yuan for military expenditure every year, which is equivalent to one hundred and seventy thousand taels of silver.

In addition to the basic expenses such as military salaries, weapons maintenance expenses, and soldiers' clothing, food, housing, and food, the troops will conduct another medium-scale live-fire exercise, and the military salaries will be almost used.

The Wehrmacht is a firearms force, and the lack of frequency of live-fire training and tactical exercises greatly affects the combat effectiveness of the troops; in regular combat, the Nanyang Corps should be able to deal with foreign colonial armies of the same size to three times the size, but it is difficult to bring those militia units and Taiping congregations equipped with old-fashioned obsolete muskets into battle, and it is difficult to display satisfactory combat effectiveness.

Therefore, Lord Mei, it is okay for the Taiping congregation to deal with the indigenous armed forces and civilian Chinese armed forces equipped with cold weapons, but it is very unwise to send them to the front line to fight against the Chinese Kapitan and the Dutch colonial army supported by the Dutch. ”

"The civil war is imminent, in order to reserve war materials and prepare for emergencies, His Royal Highness is raising funds in various ways, but at this time, it is impossible to increase military spending for the Nanyang Legion."

The ability of modern armies to swallow gold is not the same as that of troops equipped with cold weapons.

Since the occupation of southern Argentina, the population of the Han mainland has soared to more than 5 million, and the number of men of working age has reached 1.5 million, but compared with the relatively large number of men of working age, the number of the Han National Defense Force has been maintained at the scale of four divisions and three brigades for seven or eight years, until the beginning of 1878, in order to meet the needs of the Argentine war, the establishment of seven main forces of four divisions, three brigades and seven was replenished.

What is the annual military expenditure of nearly 100,000 regular troops of the National Defense Forces, including the four divisions and three brigades?

According to the cost price of a rifle produced by the Han State at 15 taels of silver, a Gatling machine gun at 200 taels of silver, and a 75-mm field gun at 300 taels of silver, not counting the shell consumption, the cost of weapons procurement alone would require at least 2.5 million taels of silver for the procurement of weapons, and more than 18 million taels of silver for 90,000 Wehrmacht army troops.

Compared with the army, the navy will only spend more, not less.

Li Mingyuan was reborn for ten years, and he made great efforts to lay out the rubber industry and improve the development of the basic industries of the Han Kingdom. However, every time a sum of white flowers, green silver, and pounds was bought not long after, it was immediately spent like flowing water, and the final result was that for the development of the country, the Han government, including Li Mingyuan, not only did not save much balance, but also owed a lot of national debts.

For the sake of the overall situation, the Han government could only limit the military expenditure of the Nanyang Army, but the effect of Li Mingyuan's borrowing to develop the country was also very significant, the most obvious being the state-owned companies under the name of the government, such as the Han Ocean Shipping Company, the Xinjing Machinery Manufacturing Plant, the Hanguo Iron and Steel Company, and the Xinjing Military Shipyard......

Including the newly established Hanguo Mining Company, which has been established for less than two years, any one can be sold at a high price of millions or even tens of millions of taels of silver.

Mei Dongxing agreed with the development strategy implemented by the Han State from the perspective of a civilian official, and Wang Dashan had been by Li Mingyuan's side since he was a child, and he was loyal to Li Mingyuan, and he would not disobey the orders of the Han government.

"After the Chinese Kapitan fled back to land, our army could not effectively strike at them, so if we want to destroy them all, we have to find a way from the sea."

Wang Dashan said, spread out the map, took out a ruler and finished the measurement, and said, "It is about 6,000 kilometers from Kismayo, Somalia to the sea off Malacca in the South Seas, and it will take about three days based on the sailing speed of the navy under Lord Hu and General Li, and those Chinese Kapitan are ready to attack the fleet of transport shipwrights in half a month, so we can notify Lord Hu and General Li in advance, and ask them to postpone their departure, and wait until more than ten days later, gather the main force of the navy and sneak to the sea off Malacca. Cooperate with our army to exterminate the pirate fleet supported by many Chinese Kapitan and Dutch. ”

"It is indeed feasible to ask General Li's fleet to cooperate in the operation, but we still don't know what the background of the foreign devil Kirby mentioned by Zhang Zhenxun is, and will the hasty attack offend the British?"

Mei Dongxing was a little worried, considering Kirby's Britishness.

"Don't worry about this question, Lord Mei, Liang Xing, director of the Military Intelligence Department, has provided a piece of information about Kirby, and Lord Mei can read it first."

After Wang Dashan finished speaking, he gave a few words to his adjutant, and more than ten minutes later, the adjutant walked into the conference room with a notepad of dozens of pages.

"Kirby, a British national, owns more than 20 large and small enterprises such as Kobe Iron Works, Kobe Iron Works, and shipyards, and owes 800,000 pounds to HSBC and 200,000 pound......s to Jardine Matheson due to excessive business expansion."

After carefully reading the intelligence introduction of the foreign devil Kirby, Mei Dongxing breathed a sigh of relief and said with a smile, "I thought Kirby was a great figure in the UK, but now I know that he is just a pretending paper tiger, but a low-status British worker can mix in to the current point, but it is also admirable." ”

"Master Mei may not have confessed to Kirby, a foreign devil, but seventeen years ago, when I was in Changzhou, Zhejiang, I met Kirby a few times."

Wang Dashan recalled, "At that time, Kirby was a guard in the concession, after His Royal Highness the King occupied Changzhou, Kirby took a rifle with more than ten bullets and claimed to help the brothers of Heaven to resist the Qing army, His Royal Highness the King heard the report of the brothers below, and put Kirby with more than 100 taels of silver, and arranged him in the foreign army, and later Kirby left the foreign army under the pretext of physical injury, and then started a silk business in Changzhou City with the name of Heaven and the silver tael rewarded by the king, and earned 10,000 taels of silver in less than a year. Later, when the king evacuated Changzhou, I didn't hear from him, and it wasn't until Director Liang mentioned that a foreigner was spying on the shipwrights of the Jiangnan Shipyard, and I didn't recognize him again. ”

"Haha, look at General Wang and Kirby are still old friends."

Mei Dongxing said with a smile.

"Master Mei is joking, the foreign devil Kirby only has money in his eyes, in order to obtain huge profits, he dares to risk his life and cooperate with the Dutch and Chinese pirates to seek more than 200 shipwrights in the Jiangnan shipyard, such a person is an immature wolf, and he will not have friends."

"That's not necessarily, since Kirby was able to profit between the kingdom of heaven, Japan, and the Manchu government, it shows that he does have something extraordinary.

The country is in a period of development and needs all kinds of talents, and if Kirby can serve the Han Kingdom, the government will not be stingy with giving him the remuneration he deserves. ”

Mei Dongxing is a government official, and he thinks more about practical interests when dealing with problems, and as long as Kirby can bring benefits to the Han Kingdom, Mei Dongxing does not care how bad Kirby's personal character is.

"Since Lord Mei plans to keep Kirby, then in half a month, if this person is captured, he will definitely be handed over to Lord Mei alive."

"In this way, General Lao Wang has bothered."