No one made trouble, and received material support from the imperial court, the epidemic in Tianjin Prefecture was finally brought under control by the efforts of all the soldiers and picket members, through the management of refugees by volunteers and the method of hierarchical sitting, while other states were still dying of plague infection one after another, the urban districts of Tianjin Prefecture have once again not died due to plague infection for half a month, and there has been no increase in new infections, and the aborigines in the Tianjin Acropolis have not had new infections for more than a month. Even the villages around the city were brought under control, and the people stopped talking about the plague and fled with their families or even the whole village.

When his recital arrived at the imperial court, Emperor Zhu Youjian was moved again and ordered all the soldiers in all towns to fully participate in the battle to prevent and control the epidemic. Zhu Youzhen and the civil and military officials in the capital finally accepted Yang Hongzhang's statement that the so-called epidemic was a battle. In Gyeonggi, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan, the strictest epidemic prevention regulations have been implemented one after another.

In March, as the epidemic passed, Yang Hongzhang finally began Tianjin's preparations to build the city and recruit new soldiers, as well as the construction of the water division of the Ugly Arsenal. The 2,000 pickets of the Tianjin Acropolis and the pickets of the six counties and one prefecture were allowed to directly join the new army, except for a few who were particularly old, and all squadron leaders, squad leaders, and members of the squadron who performed well in the anti-epidemic war had the position of officers in the new army.

Tianjin Sanwei, the previous full strength was 15,600 people, the Qing army entered the customs and almost all the entire Tianjin Wei was dispersed, and the emperor specially ordered the Tianjin General Military Office to recruit 20,000 new soldiers. The 3,000 people brought out by Yang Hongzhang from Hejian, plus the picket team members in various places are only 10,000, Yang Hongzhang plans to train these 10,000 people first, and then replicate them in the future when there are equipment, materials, and middle- and low-level officials.

Due to the large number of refugees who had been killed in the Tianjin Acropolis before this, the military camps in the city were basically not idle, and Yang Hongzhang had to complete the planning and infrastructure construction of Tianjin City before further expanding the ranks of the new army, otherwise it would be a troublesome thing for all the people to be crowded in the Tianjin Acropolis. In addition, the supply of weapons and food and grass is also a big problem, so Yang Hongzhang can only temporarily train according to the scale of 10,000 people.

As for the construction of the city, although Yang Hongzhang is ambitious, he did not study architecture after all, so he basically can't talk about the planning of the city, and only knows that he wants to build a big city, a big city comparable to Beijing. Fortunately, among the refugees from Baoding this time, there are many craftsmen who are familiar with the construction of the city, and some people have even participated in the construction of Baoding City.

The old man and several apprentices also fled together and came to Tianjin Wei, Yang Hongzhang naturally would not let go, and let them join the General Military Mansion to make suggestions for the construction of the city.

Tianjin Tongzhi Wang Lenian has been imprisoned, and according to his own confession, it is estimated that it will be difficult to get out in this life. And I wrote to ask Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi in Jiangnan, but they have not replied in the past two months because it is the Spring Festival and the impact of the plague. Yang Hongzhang guessed that these people were scholars, and everyone estimated that they were not interested in the newly built Tianjin Mansion, so he had to hit the idea on another person, Song Yingxing, the governor of Tingzhou Mansion in Fujian!

Yang Hongzhang recommended Song Yingxing to the imperial court, of course, not only so that he could help him build the city, but also for the greatest scientists and thinkers of this era, he was one of the few people worthy of Yang Hongzhang's respect.

Song Yingxing promoted Zhang Zai's Guanxue in the four major schools of the Song Dynasty, including Cheng Yi-Cheng Hao, Zhou Dunyi, Zhu Xi and Zhang Zai, and accepted the materialist view of nature. He had a great interest in astronomy, acoustics, agronomy and craft manufacturing.

The only regret is that he may not have more energy, so he can't make a difference in the officialdom, so that he can't promote his own knowledge and thoughts.

In fact, Song Yingxing's most suitable position is the president of Yenching University, but the problem is that Emperor Zhu Youzhen has not fully adopted Yang Hongzhang's suggestion to establish a university in the capital or economically prosperous provinces to engage in scientific research and teaching. Therefore, Yang Hongzhang could only retreat to the next best thing, let Song Yingxing be by his side, let him contact those Western scientists, and start with the manufacture of firearms and the development of gunpowder.

What made Yang Hongzhang happy was that this time the emperor Zhu Youzhen readily agreed to his request, and it is said that those guys in the cabinet did not come forward to oppose an official who was a good eight grade and was directly promoted to the position of Tongzhi.

In the days of waiting for Song Yingxing to take office, Yang Hongzhang finally began the real recruit training after he came to this era. This is his specialty, and it is also her agreement with Emperor Zhu Youzhen to train a new army that surpasses the combat effectiveness of the Tianxiong Army in two years!

Except for a very small number of older pickets who were reluctant to join the new army, more than 7,000 people from six counties and one prefecture joined the new army.

Yang Sheng, who returned from Hangzhou, gave priority to selecting 1,000 people to set up a personal guard battalion, and the rest were divided into four battalions, the four battalion officers were Xia Dongwei of the cavalry battalion, and the three infantry battalions were Zhang Hu, Luo Kedi, and Sun Fei. The other 1,000 people were used by Yang Hongzhang to set up an engineer battalion, and the battalion officer was Zhang Linfeng, who had led the people to complete the task of the Funiu Mountain Resistance Battle. Yang Hongzhang's plan included an artillery battalion, but in addition to the previous artillery sent back to the sea ship, the rest were left in Beijing by Fang Zhenghua, and Yang Hongzhang planned to build a naval division, so the infantry artillery was not landed for a while.

So far, except for the pro-soldier battalion, cavalry battalion and engineer battalion, the others basically have no weapons, but this is not what the soldiers are most concerned about, because they know that sooner or later they will get the most advanced weapons with Yang Dashuai.

The first order given by Yang Dashuai to the battalions was that their chief instructor was a Westerner Enrique, who seemed to be from Germany, about forty years old, with a beard on his face, and looked strangely scary, and Enrique also brought two Westerners as assistants. Although Xia Dongwei and others were slanderous in their hearts, they saw that Yang Hongzhang seemed to be very polite to those Western monks, so they had to endure to see if these foreign monks could recite the scriptures.

What made everyone even more surprised was that Yang Dashuai's instruction was to basically learn the Gustav phalanx in each battalion for three months, and all officers below the battalion officer who could not learn it would be held accountable, and ordinary soldiers would be eliminated directly.

Yang Dashuai's second order was to select about 500 elite men in the whole army after a month, and the selected ones were paid twice as much as ordinary sergeants. As for the selection criteria, it is said that Yang Dashuai is being formulated, and the final candidates will be interviewed one by one in the newly built elite camp.

Obviously, after a few months of epidemic control, most of the picket team members have gained self-confidence and are thinking about how to become elites, knowing that the current salary of the new army is already high, and it will be doubled......

However, the first of several large battalions to enter the state was the engineer battalion, because Yang Hongzhang personally came to the engineer battalion to guide the construction of the barracks and training grounds, in addition to this, their physical training plan is much less than that of other battalions, and most of them will dig trenches, lay mines, open roads in the mountains, and build bridges in the water, but the skills must be constantly learned. However, at present, their main task is to build camps, especially the elite camp camps that Yang Hongzhang personally inquired about.

When a month passed, all the officers were dumbfounded when they came to the selection base carefully built by Yang Hongzhang, it turned out that the things built here were something they had never seen before, and even Zhang Linfeng, the battalion officer of the engineer battalion, only did what he was asked to do, and he didn't know what these things were for.

"Dashuai, what is this?" Zhang Hu came to one of the obstacle tracks, and looked at the various obstacles in front of him, including puddles, erected grids, horizontal on the ground, and a single tree in many places, about 400 steps in a straight line. There are six identical roads on the same route next to it.

Seeing his subordinates like this, Yang Hongzhang did not answer, but asked Yang Sheng to take out his pocket watch, take off his coat by himself, and then stood at the starting line. The others were very curious and ran along in the open space next to them, only to be surprised to find that their commander was walking like fast under various obstacles, and the speed was about the same as the speed they were running in the clearing. In the end, some people couldn't even keep up with Yang Hongzhang's speed. When Yang Hongzhang crawled out of the last culvert, Yang Sheng pressed the pocket watch, 1 minute and 21 seconds.

After watching Yang Hongzhang's performance, Xia Dongwei and Luo Kedi and others seemed to understand that this was used to train soldiers' reactions and the ability to overcome obstacles, Xia Dongwei was even more eager to try, walked directly to the starting point, and then signaled to Yang Sheng.

Yang Sheng waved his right hand, Xia Dongwei jumped out like a cannonball, quickly jumped over the mud pit with stagnant water, and then climbed over the half-human-high cement pier, and quickly walked on the balance beam with more than ten steps, because the speed was too fast, the left foot slipped, and the whole person sat on the balance beam, but it was not at least as chic as usual, screaming in the mouth, with a painful expression, obviously touching the egg.

Watching everyone laugh back and forth, Xia Dongwei stood up with pain and walked carefully across the balance beam, followed by a net wall more than three people high, a large net hung on the iron frame, Xiao Xia Dongwei took a few steps in front of the speed was not bad, to the middle, the net began to shake in the air, Xia Dongwei's whole person was like a fly hanging on a spider web, spinning in place, and finally stabilized his body, and the shaking amplitude of the grid was also reduced Xia Dongwei continued to climb up, It's just that the struggle just now consumed a lot of physical strength, slowed down a lot, and when he climbed over the highest point and came down from the other side, his feet were still bent, and when he was crawling forward, he couldn't help but raise his head several times and hit the plank above his head fiercely.

However, Xia Dongwei is also a young man with a strong sense of competitiveness, and in the end he still limped, covered the back of his head and walked to guess the last obstacle, which took 4 minutes and 33 seconds.