Arms dealers from various countries have come up with their own company's killer weapons, and there are dozens of them, which really dazzled Wang Chenhao.

Wang Chenhao transferred more than a dozen weapons testers from the Tianjin Machinery Bureau to conduct high-intensity firepower tests on weapons from various countries, and then generated technical reports as bidding data.

In terms of rifles, the German Mauser Type 88 was defeated by the British Enfield rifle and the Dutch Manlisa rifle, and was even inferior to the Norwegian small-caliber Mauser Kragg-Jorgensen rifle.

Faced with the results of the failed test, the representative of the Mauser company was afraid that the order would be snatched by another company, and was ready to take out the new Mauser gun for testing, but he needed to consult the headquarters.

The Mauser company did not want to come up with a new Mauser rifle, because first, it was afraid that other countries would imitate it, and second, the Mauser 88 rifle had just been promoted for less than six years, and the launch of a new product would impact the old market, and even the Mauser 88 production line was in danger of stopping.

However, the Mauser company thought that China had begun to train the new army and would have a huge market share in the weapons market, and was driven by huge profits and finally agreed to come up with a new Mauser gun to test.

But then the representative of the Mather company in China took the new rifle finalized in 1894 to test, and Wang Chenhao saw at a glance that this Mauser was the famous Mauser 98 rifle in history, the standard equipment of the German Army in World War I, and it was also the most advanced rifle at present. Soon, the new rifle improved all the problems of the Mauser Type 88 in the tests, and beat the test rifles of other countries in the tests, and finally passed.

In order to unify ammunition and facilitate supply and maintenance, Wang Chenhao also chose the short-barreled model of Mauser Type 98 as a cavalry gun on the cavalry gun.

As the Mauser Type 98 was introduced to the market three years ahead of schedule, the historic Type 98 disappeared and was replaced by the Mauser Type 95.

On the issue of price, due to the fierce competition in various countries, the Mauser company did not know the market acceptance of this Mauser Type 95 rifle, so it did not dare to ask too high a price, and finally finalized an order for 16,500 rifles and 3,500 cavalry rifles at a price of 9 taels of silver each. All guns were equipped with an additional 20 base bullets, which cost a total of 300,000 taels of silver.

In addition to rifles, the second most important weapon is artillery. In terms of artillery, Wang Chenhao knew that France had an advanced tube-retreat 75 field gun at this time, but the French side did not provide this artillery, but only took out a retreat 80 infantry gun.

The tube-retreat infantry gun is the mainstream of the future, because it does not need to modify the elements after correcting the target, and increases the speed of firing shells, which has a very obvious advantage over the frame retreat on the battlefield.

Therefore, in this case, Wang Chenhao can only choose the German Krupp 80 infantry gun and 150 heavy howitzer with good quality and long life, because the best quality of the steelmaking technology in the world is Krupp steel.

Wang Chenhao had to reorganize the new army with at least one artillery regiment, and 36 light artillery pieces were selected from the 80 infantry guns and 18 150 heavy howitzers of the German Krupp factory. 54 cannons with 54,000 rounds of shells, with a total price of 700,000 taels of silver.

Such a high price is painful for Wang Chenhao, but Wang Chenhao knows that this is still a discounted price for the Germans, otherwise he will not be able to get this discount with another 200,000 taels of silver.

In the words of the German minister Shen Ke, this is for the sake of Wang Chenhao's preparation for the formation and training of the German-style army, and for the sake of China's huge arms market in the future, otherwise it would not be possible to buy equipment from 10 years ago at this price.

Wang Chenhao originally planned to equip each infantry squad with a Makqin heavy machine gun, but in consideration of the shortage of funds and the inability to lack machine gun firepower, he finally bought 50 Makqin heavy machine guns and equipped each infantry company with two.

The purchased weapons are mainly three major pieces of this step, cannon, and horseman, and other war horses, war knives, military uniforms, uniforms, and portable military items are available in Beiyang itself, and no additional money is required.

Li Hongzhang's purchase of weapons for Wang Chenhao was only 1 million taels, and all the guns and guns were used up, but Wang Chenhao still embezzled other funds to make up for the 50,000 taels of silver spent on 50 heavy machine guns.

The bidding was over, Germany won 1 million taels of orders, while France won 50,000 taels of orders, and the British worked in vain.

On the day the bidding ended, the British Times published a slightly jealous article, saying that the British could not compete with Germany in terms of army weapons and equipment, and it was reasonable that the bid would fail. However, on the issue of naval equipment, the British's shipbuilding skills are unmatched at present, and a warship is worth several million taels of silver, far more profitable than the Germans, and they are looking forward to the meeting between the Marquis of Treegan and Li Hongzhang.

The arms purchase order for the new Beiyang Army has come to an end, and Germany and France will deliver all the weapons to Wang Chenhao in the next three months.

During the arms bidding period, the Qing court was also in turmoil. The imperial party headed by Weng Tongyi seized the opportunity to attack Wang Chenhao, saying that Wang Chenhao admired foreign countries, left the domestic arsenal production equipment unused, and purchased all weapons, which was a typical style of giving silver to foreigners.

Emperor Guangxu naturally stood on the side of Weng Tongxiao, and issued an order to blame Wang Chenhao without asking, and even Li Hongzhang was also counted.

Wang Chenhao is now in this position, even if he doesn't want to participate in the mutual tilting between the court officials, and he doesn't want to breathe the smoke and miasma in the court, but he has to defend himself.

Then Wang Chenhao put on a "Self-blame Fold", which is called self-blame, but in fact, it is full of grievances. Wang Chenhao said that self-blame was to give Guangxu face, and he couldn't directly say that he was wronged in front of the world, and it would be no good for anyone to slap Guangxu's face like that.

He knew that the Hanyang Arsenal had completed the introduction and laying of a Mauser gun production line in April last year, and that it could produce the Mauser 88 imitation rifle, that is, made in Hanyang.

However, what Weng Tongyi didn't know was that the Hanyang Arsenal had just been put into operation when a fire broke out, and all the equipment was destroyed in one fell swoop, and if it wanted to be fully repaired and put into operation, it would have to wait until next year, and the output was also insufficient.

Then, Wang Chenhao listed a series of shortcomings of the government-run arsenal. For example, the funds were allocated by the Qing Dynasty and the Ministry of Households, but the production of the arsenal did not take into account the cost, did not consider the economic benefits, and lacked the impetus for development. It adopted the feudal yamen-style management, restrained the workers with the method of managing the army, the workers lacked the active surname of production, and the quality of the products could not be guaranteed, and so on.

Later, there were some criticisms of the bureaucratic style and corruption of the government-run arsenal, but when Zhang Peilun helped him write the excerpts, he directly deleted those words and told Wang Chenhao that he was now fledgling and did not dare to offend those people.

Although the latter words were deleted, Wang Chenhao's meaning was clearly expressed, and after the fold went up, Guangxu felt very faceless, so he issued an order to affirm Wang Chenhao's approach, and then scolded Weng Tongxiao.

In this way, the turmoil of purchasing weapons has subsided for the time being, but Wang Chenhao knows that there are still many winds and waves waiting for him behind, and he needs to be extremely careful.