The soldiers who were eating immediately stood up when they saw the commander coming. Pei Qin and the others smiled and motioned for everyone to continue eating, and then walked along a small road and chatted.

"When I set out from Yantai, I counted a total of 2,503 brothers, including 3,718 people from their families." Wang Jiazhong was the first to break the silence, "After the quarantine period ended a few days ago, I looked at the statistics, only 1,888 brothers were still there, and there were only 2,720 people with their families, many of whom died on the road, and of course some people stayed in Australia, New China Island and South Africa. In two days I will go to Kyori to take up the post of adviser to Narauszi, and there are less than 2,000 brothers left...... You have to help me take care of it, everyone is fighting life and death together in Shandong, and now it is really not easy to come here across the ocean. It's all familiar faces, and I can't stand any of them. ”

Pei Qin was also a little silent when he heard this. This Gansu man from the Shun army patted Wang Jiazhong, a former Shandong horse bandit, on the shoulder, and then said: "Isn't it just to go to the place where the tower is pulled to do a battle, I heard that the strength of the Spaniards there is no more than 4,000, but our army has more than 2,500 defenders, and the supplies are sufficient and the morale is high." Originally, the military headquarters was going to wait for the wheat harvest to be harvested before mobilizing 2,000 soldiers to support the general offensive after the past, but now that our army arrives, it will be able to launch a counterattack almost immediately. This battle is very good, and there will be no casualties, don't worry. ”

Of the 4,500 soldiers who set out from the Far East, only about 3,500 remained after they crossed the ocean to the mainland. Although these people did not practice firearms and did not understand the way of modern warfare, they also had many confrontations with the Qing army in Shandong, and their combat experience was not bad. After coming to the mainland this time. Originally, according to the meaning of the War Department. It is necessary to train for two or three months first. and weaponized some of the more elite squadrons before being pulled to Santa Fe to participate in the counteroffensive against the Spaniards.

However, after studying the matter, the Joint Staff Headquarters rejected the War Department's opinion, and they decided to immediately throw these 3,500 men into the Santa Fe battlefield under the command of Jiang Zhiqing, and launch a large-scale counterattack against the Spaniards in front of them, completely crushing the Spaniards and ending the fighting in front of them.

On the orders of his superiors, Pei Chin was appointed commander of this newly formed unit. He will personally lead his troops to Buenos Aires by 20 January, where the whole army will arrive in Santa Fe by boat after changing their outfits, and then obey the command of Captain Jiang Zhiqing. Today is January 14th, which means that Pei Chin will almost settle the families of the officers and soldiers in the past two days, and then lead his troops to board the ship and go to the port of Buenos Aires.

At the end of the trail is a large barren meadow dotted with small groves of woods, and occasionally puddles and streams where animals such as otters and foxes inhabit the streams and trees.

Two tall Andalusian horses were tied to the side of the road, and with the permission of the guards of the horses, they turned over and rode on their horses. Slowly rode up the prairie. To the north of Qingdao Harbour is a completely untouched inland wasteland, but a few kilometres to the west lies a small planned town. The two soon arrived on horseback.

"This is the land that the upper peak has assigned to us." Wang Jiazhong pointed to a tall flagpole erected on the horizon in front of him and said, "Minister Liao of the War Department mentioned it when he met me before, saying that it is a good place, let's go over and have a look." ”

Pei Qin nodded, and then rode to the front with Wang Jiazhong. The flagpole was attached to a small dirt bag, and the surrounding grass seemed to have been roughly cleared, and there were geometric patterns of lime powder everywhere. The two of them thought for a moment, and suddenly understood that the ground marked with lime powder should be the location of the local castle, government offices, warehouses, shops, etc. in the future.

There is a faint sound of waves not far ahead, so this place should not be far from the sea. There are also several rivers crisscrossing the north of the castle, one of which is even wide (Santa Lucia), with white waves flowing into the bay. The woods on both sides of the river are quite dense, and from time to time there are some animals that look alive during the shuttle.

"This is it." Wang Jiazhong did not dismount, but slowly paced in place with the war horse under his crotch, and said: "A castle is going to be built here, which is said to be called Guiyi Fort, to commemorate the return of thousands of our people from thousands of miles to help the homeland." ”

"Haha, what a Guiyi Fort." Pei Qin laughed twice, then rode his horse to the bank of the river, observed it carefully, and then turned back. Then he rolled over and dismounted, climbed up a small earthen bag with a flagpole attached, and looked at the bay in the distance and the quietly flowing St. Lucia River, during which he even leaned over to the ground and grabbed a handful of dirt and spread it out in the palm of his hand to look at it carefully.

"Nice land!" After a long time, Pei Qincai said succinctly: "There are a lot of puddles and streams here, and everyone will work together to build a reservoir or something, and dig seventeen or eighteen ditches, which can almost irrigate tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 acres of fertile land." This land is really better than the crops I saw in my hometown in Gansu, if I pick up and plant wheat, I am afraid that there will be a lot more surplus of grain. This is indeed a good place! ”

In fact, Pei Qin was right, this land was later the small town of Santiago Vázquez in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The Government Council set up Guiyi Fort here because of its unique agricultural resources. This plain, formed by the impact of the Santa Lucia River, has a fertile soil, with an annual precipitation of more than 800 mm, and the nearby rivers are criss-crossed, and a little transformation is a good irrigation canal, and there is great potential for agricultural development.

In the planning of the Executive Committee, Qingdao Port will be the trade center, financial center and shipping center of the East Coast Republic of China in the future. Such a large regional core city, its people from all walks of life and even foreign merchants and other floating population will be huge, so it will inevitably need some pure agricultural towns to provide it with grain, vegetables, meat, poultry eggs and other food, and Guiyi Fort is one of them.

Another town that performed the same function as Guiyi Fort was the town of Toledo, a few kilometers north of the port of Qingdao, which of course was now named Xinxiangbao - meaning new hometown. The agricultural conditions of Xinxiang Fort are also quite good, and the vicinity is full of flat wastelands, surrounded by the Xinxiang River (Toledo River), and on the north bank of the downstream estuary of this river is the newly built Second Fort of the Corps, which has been built for less than a year, and there are already thousands of cadet soldiers studying and training. In the future, when there are enough manpower, we can also organize people to dredge and widen this river, so that the two towns of the Corps Erbao and Xinxiangbao can be connected through the Guò waterway.

More than 1,500 people from the orphans of the Shun army and the families of the officers and soldiers of Wang Jiazhong's army will be resettled in Xinxiangbao, where they will open up wasteland and cultivate land, and build castles and residences at the same time. And when the war on the La Plata side is over, the more than 1,000 soldiers of the royal army will also end their military careers and temporarily retire and return to Xinxiang Fort to settle down.

As for the 1,600 officers and soldiers of the Second Brigade of the original Advance Team, they were basically singles, and they were designated to settle in Guiyi Fort. Facing the open sea and the mouth of the St. Lucia River, it is geographically important. After inspecting the area, the Admiralty decided to build a large lighthouse and a small battery on Isla del Tigre near the mouth of the river, and deploy about a dozen guns to prepare for possible enemy situations.

After the lighthouse and fort were built, the infantry and artillerymen stationed there were of course to be selected from among the officers and men of these former advance teams in Guiyi Fort. Moreover, it is located in the key area, which is the flank of Qingdao Port, and these former soldiers settled down after retiring en masse, just like the production and construction corps of later generations, which is also very good in terms of safety.

They have lived and fought together for a long time, and they have also lived together after they have been discharged, and their structure and organization have not been broken, and in addition to the strict militia training system implemented throughout the country on the east coast, the combat effectiveness of these people may not deteriorate much after they retire. Therefore, with them, the left flank of the port of Qingdao will be safe, and if the enemy tries to find a way from here, he is doomed to run into a bloody head.

According to the plan of the Government Council, about 1,000 Serbian and Romanian female slaves will be sent here as a priority in the middle of this year, so that the officers and men of these planned "production and construction corps" can take root and reproduce. In the first year, they can quickly get a daughter-in-law, and this kind of generous treatment shows that the Executive Committee and the Government Council attach great importance to them. Of course, on the other hand, we can also see from this that the Executive Committee attaches great importance to Qingdao Port.

Pei Qin and Wang Jiazhong wandered around for a while, and then they both galloped back to Qingdao Port. When they returned to the construction site of the exposition hall after handing over the horses, the officers and men had already finished their lunch, and from a distance, they could see that these guys were sitting together in groups of three or five and laughing boredly. Wang Jiazhong looked at them with a smile, and at this time he had almost completely let them go. Pei Qin sighed when he saw this, and then quickly summoned several middle- and lower-ranking officers over and ordered them to go down to the whole team immediately. Sitting on the ground and laughing in broad daylight, what kind of system has it become, is this special army!

There are about two or three days left before boarding the ship to Buenos Aires, and these two or three days can't let everyone be idle, and they have to find something to do for the group of Qiuba under their command, otherwise the military discipline will be sloppy. After thinking about it, Pei Qin decided to let the more than 3,000 sturdy young men immediately divide into groups to load the construction waste (broken bricks, broken stones, stones, earthwork, etc.) all over the ground into a horse-drawn cart, and then pull them to the beach to reclaim the sea to build a wharf trestle, which can be regarded as contributing to the construction of Qingdao Port. (To be continued......)