"So Luthor came here to encourage us to go to war in Canton? What benefits will Britain get in this way? Shan Youpeng pondered for a moment and said this, which showed that he was already moved, in fact, everyone in the room was already moved.

"The British had huge interests in the Manchus, and the reparations stipulated in the Xincho Treaty also needed to be repaid by the stable Manchu government, and the revolutionary government did not publicly promise to repay those reparations and continue to fulfill the treaty after taking power, which was the greatest dissatisfaction of the Western powers."

"A regime that remains hostile to the West cannot last long, the Cantonese side is too stupid, and Lu Liang is not a qualified politician, at best he is a hot-blooded landlord. If I don't take such wealth, heaven will punish it! ”

"Yes, if we win Canton, we will have to agree with England on the division of the spoils, and there is no hurry to discuss this. The crux of the matter is whether the Imperial Japanese Empire will be able to gain Western support in the attack on Canton, and whether Russia will take the opportunity to attack. ”

"In terms of the international situation, with the support of the UK, we don't have to worry about other countries. Xiyuan Temple, can the country bear the military expenses for sending troops to Guangdong? ”

"Britain would provide a war loan of 10 million pounds, which would be repaid with the spoils of war after the victory over Canton. I think this money is enough to send troops, and the navy only needs to send a number of transport ships and escort warships, and the key to this battle is the number of troops to be sent and logistical support. Xiyuan Temple Gongwang said.

Katsura Taro raised his hand and knelt beside Kodama Gentaro, who had not spoken from the beginning, saluted respectfully before saying: "On the army side, the local garrison plus the Taiwan garrison have a total of 350,000 standing troops and more than 1,000 artillery pieces, of which 250,000 can be used for overseas operations. In wartime, more than two million reservists can be mobilized, but such a scale is prepared for war with Tsarist Russia, which is very costly, and it takes the strength of the whole country to complete the mobilization and armament. Of course, to deal with such an emerging force as the Guangdong Revolutionary Party, the standing army should be sufficient. It should be noted that in order to deal with the Russian threat, at least 100,000 soldiers cannot be used, that is, we can take out 100,000 soldiers to deal with Guangdong, and any more will affect the country's development and preparations for war against Russia, after all, most of the country's materials are used in the navy. Gentaro Kodama was the Minister of War at this time, and he did not mean to complain about these words, because since the Meiji Restoration, the country's investment in the navy has been huge, and the army's share of resources is less than a fraction of that of the navy. As can be seen from the Sino-Japanese War with the Manchus and the war the year before, the army's equipment has hardly improved, and it has always been inferior to the Manchu army.

The decision to prioritize the navy cannot be changed, and there is an internal consensus that Japan must have a strong navy if it wants to achieve glory. Everyone didn't care about Kodama Gentaro's complaints, and looked at the Minister of the Navy, Gonbei Yamamoto, who immediately straightened his posture, saluted and said: "The navy also has to face the warships of the Russian Far East Fleet in Vladivostok, but the task of providing escort will definitely be completed, and it is guaranteed that there will be no mistakes." The problem faced by the navy is that there are not enough transport ships to transport 100,000 people and logistics transport ships, and it needs to requisition the ships of private shipping companies. ”

"It's not a problem, I'll coordinate it." Shan Shan Youpeng waved his hand and said domineeringly: "Everyone, this battle is no less important to the empire than the First Sino-Japanese War, if the empire wins, the country's strength will usher in explosive growth, and the war in the face of Russia will be more certain, so please start preparations for the war immediately after you go back." "The rising Japan is by no means as dull as the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and its huge interests and crazy national character make the country full of aggression, and once it encounters a suitable target for attack, it will show its sharp teeth and tear off a piece of meat fiercely, becoming the nutrition for the country's rise. Now Guangdong has also become a target for Japan, fortunately the news was quickly transmitted back to Huizhou, the eavesdropping equipment under the tea table ahead of the times made Yama County Youpeng and others unexpected, the content of their conversation was lurking in Shan County Youpeng's genetic intelligence agent learned, and sent out through telegram. And this intelligence agent is the girl who showed the tea ceremony just now.

The same was true in England, where one of the Seymour family returned to Huizhou by relay and handed over the information to Lü Liang, who immediately changed his plans and began preparations for war. From the beginning to the end, he did not underestimate the ambitions of the great powers, and in the process of rising, he must face many obstacles, and the original plan was to take advantage of the fact that Japan had no time to take care of anything else during the Russo-Japanese War, and stab him in the back.

The number of troops will continue to expand, and the population of tens of millions in Guangdong, plus the steady stream of people from the surrounding provinces who come to work and earn a living, will easily expand to 200,000. All kinds of factories and high-yield rice seeds have minimized the cost of expanding the army, and Luliang is not short of money, and the salvage of gold and silver minerals and shipwrecks on the seabed alone is enough to spend, and it can also promote the economic development of Guangdong with large-scale investment.

According to the estimates of various intelligence, Britain and other countries will not substantially discharge their troops, Russia's preparations for war have not been completed, and it will not start a war with Japan at this time - Lushun and other fortresses have not yet been completed, and the most important Trans-Siberian Railway has not been built. In this way, Japan has no worries and can go all out to prepare for war with Guangdong, and even so, preparations for war will be completed in a few months. Preparations for war for hundreds of thousands of people are simply not something that can be completed in a short period of time, and there are many things to do, such as troop assembly, weapons preparation, ammunition production and storage, establishment adjustment, intelligence gathering, battle planning, preparation of food and medicine, and other materials, and logistical arrangements. The General Staff of the Revolutionary Army estimated that Japan's preparations for war would be completed roughly in April 1902, and when war broke out at the end of April, Guangdong had not yet entered the rainy season, and if it continued to delay, it would be impossible to waste the rainy season that lasted for more than six months.

Before the strength of the navy reaches a certain level, Lu Liang will not let them take the liberty of making a move, the battleship can be built again, and it will take a lot of time to train qualified sailors if they are lost, which Lu Liang does not want to see. His navy had decades of technological superiority and could well fight the enemy after forming a numerical superiority. By April, Lu Liang had only two cruisers and three destroyers in his hands, and such a surface strength could not fight head-on, nor was it suitable for showing his head.

In this way, the fighting will definitely be concentrated on land, but fortunately, the army does not have so many worries. By January 1902, 100,000 soldiers of the three armies had completed their training, and the first army was even equipped with 3,000 taels of trucks and more than 1,000 jeeps. Except for the gap in motor vehicles, the three armies did not differ in other equipment, mortars were equipped to the company, Type 92 infantry guns were equipped to the battalion, and 122-mm howitzers were equipped to the brigade. Although the cement highway in Guangdong has been popularized to various towns and villages under the efforts of Lu Liang, and many lines from Chaozhou to Leizhou and Guangzhou to Shaoguan have also been built, and the traffic conditions are very convenient, the roads in other provinces are completely dirt roads and are not suitable for the traction of heavy artillery, and it will become a disaster when heavy artillery of more than 122 mm follows the wrong march, so the army is not equipped with larger caliber artillery. However, the existing artillery can completely defeat the armies including the French army and the German army in terms of quantity and quality, and it can be said that it is ahead of the world!

In addition, the formation of the Fourth and Fifth Armies was also on the agenda, and no one was sure how long the battle with Japan would last, and it was necessary to prepare for a rainy day. According to speculation, the Japanese army could only land from the coastal area, so the deployment of troops focused on the coastal areas that were easy to land. The General Staff Department deployed 40,000 troops in the coastal areas, and the First Army took advantage of the favorable conditions of convenient road and railway transportation and the large number of trucks and other vehicles in the coastal areas to deploy troops in the Guangzhou area as a general reserve.

When he was trying his best to deal with the threat of the Japanese army, a piece of news made Lu Liang stunned, it was really an eventful time, was he fat? Everyone wants to take a bite!

The bad news came from Fuzhou, Fujian, where the Fujian New Army, the 10th Provisional Army, was assembled on the front line of Tanzhou and Xiamen, aiming directly at the revolutionary government of Guangdong, and Xu Yingqi, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, was preparing to become a pawn of the Manchu Qing in the siege of Guangdong. Xu Yingqi has been supervising Fujian for a long time, and he has been deeply rooted in Fujian and Zhejiang, because of his opposition to the Wuxu Reform, he won the favor of Cixi. After the revolution in Guangdong, Xu Yingqi was shocked, his hometown was in Panyu, Guangdong, and he was afraid that his hometown would be affected, so he immediately sent people to Guangdong to secretly contact the revolutionary party, but he did not expect his family to do all kinds of evil in Panyu, and no one dared to provoke Xu Yingqi's power before, and after the revolution, he refused to implement the provisional government's rent reduction and interest reduction, abolished the policy of binding feet and cutting braids, and also sent people to rob the government's convoy of transporting high-yield rice seeds, which was ordered by the provisional government to be exterminated, and most of the family members went to prison.

Xu Yingqi was furious when he learned of this, which coincided with the beginning of the formation of the new army in Fujian, he was not concerned at first, and immediately devoted himself to the formation of the new army after the great change of the family, and trumpeted in Fujian and Zhejiang that the revolutionary army would eliminate the landlords and divide the money, grain and land. Under the influence of great prestige, the big landowners in Fujian and Zhejiang donated a lot of money and materials, and Fujian and Zhejiang, especially Zhejiang, have always been the land of wealth and wealth, and the money and grain for the formation of the new army were quickly collected.