However, when he saw the official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs next to him, the sales manager of the Royal Arms Company could only sigh secretly in his heart: Alas, there is no way, who made his company a royal property, and he could only make some sacrifices in order to cooperate with diplomatic work.

In the end, he came up with a big price cut, and the 1858 rifle cost fourteen pounds a piece, which was cheaper than the one sold to the Americans.

But these Vietnamese still said with a bitter face that they couldn't afford it, and asked if there was anything cheaper.

Cheaper?

Cheaper are only those second-hand goods in the warehouses of the military!

The 1856 Mini rifle, if you want it cheaper, will sell it for four and a half pounds!

Those Vietnamese people still frowned after hearing this!

Looking at their frowning appearances, it is estimated that it is still too expensive, and at this time, the sales manager of the Royal Arms Company suddenly thought of something, and then spoke: "Do you want a mini rifle with a light rifling, this one is cheaper!" ”

"How cheap?" The Vietnamese asked.

The sales manager thought in his heart, those 1856 Mini rifles with light rifling are said to be Mini rifles, but without rifling, there is no difference between them and smoothbore guns, and no one even wants to be used as second-hand goods after retirement, anyway, the Americans and Lin Chengting They are unwilling to ask for these rifling, and if no one wants it, it can only be put in the warehouse to be moldy.

Since these Vietnamese wanted it, it would be cheaper to deal with it, so he raised two fingers!

Two pounds, if you can find a cheaper Minnie rifle on the earth than this, I dare to jump directly into the Huangpu River to feed Wang Ba!

Although those Vietnamese people kept asking if there were any bargains, the people who could be sent by the Nguyen Dynasty to purchase ordnance would not be real fools or ignorant of ordnance. On the contrary, they are aware of breech-loading rifles. I also know the Mini rifle, and I know even more about the Mini rifle that has run out of rifling.

If you can. They also wanted to buy the 1858 Linde rifle in large quantities, but it didn't allow it!

In the end, several of them thought about it, and finally determined the final purchase order!

The 1858 Linde rifle was so expensive that only a hundred were bought to arm one of the Nguyen Emperor's most loyal guards.

Although the second-hand 1856 Linde rifle is also expensive, it is not impossible to buy, come with a thousand, so that you can arm a thousand forbidden troops.

Then there were a thousand second-hand 1856 Linde rifles that had been rifled and in very old condition. It doesn't matter if it's broken, the key is that it can be used, and it's a big deal to use it as a fire cap to fire a smoothbore gun! How bad could it be worse than the arquebus they were using now?

Besides, the Vietnamese army doesn't even have many arquebuses, and the history books written by the Vietnamese themselves, well, that is, Chen Chongjin's 'General History of Vietnam', it is recorded that in the southern army, only five of the 50 people in each team carry shotguns, and they can shoot up to six rounds of ammunition a year. When a soldier accidentally shoots an extra shot during live-fire training, I'm sorry, you have to pay for ammunition!

The weaponry, equipment, and personnel training are much worse than the old army of the green battalion in the former Qing Dynasty.

Finally, the Vietnamese also purchased twelve second-hand front-loading smoothbore guns that had been decommissioned by the Chinese army. The standard twelve-pounder Napoleonic gun, the favorite of all armies of this era, although a little older. The barrel life is running out, but it's still usable.

A batch of matching bullets and shells.

The final price was 11,150,000 pounds.

But when the Vietnamese saw the total price, they began to cry poverty again. Say that there is no money, and say that you can do it less. Can you pay in 12 months with a credit card?

Naturally, the Royal Arms Company does not have these policies, except for the early years when they owed some ordnance to the military on credit, now whether they do business with the Imperial Military or the Americans, they all pay money with one hand and seize it with the other, and they do not owe it on credit!

The Royal Arms Company refused to pay on credit and refused to lower the price, but the Vietnamese really don't have money!

Later, the military really couldn't look at it, and they couldn't make a lot of money anyway, and this arms sale originally had great political implications, and to put it mildly, even if the Vietnamese really didn't give money, the military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs still wanted to send these ordnance to the Vietnamese.

Not to mention that supporting the Vietnamese can delay the pace of French colonization in Southeast Asia, it is worth it to wait for the Vietnamese to use this batch of ordnance to cause some French casualties, disgusting and disgusting the French!

Therefore, the military generously directly exempted the Vietnamese from part of the payment!

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stepped forward to borrow 5,000 pounds from the Royal Bank as collateral from several official mines in northern Vietnam, and the Vietnamese barely raised a few thousand pounds on their own.

After going through all these things, the two sides finally reached this deal!

It wasn't long before the Vietnamese began to return to Vietnam with three ships of ordnance loaded with excitement, accompanied by a diplomat from the Imperial Foreign Ministry and three military attachés sent by the military.

Although these three observer military attachés have diplomatic status such as observer military attachés, they are actually instructors sent by the military to Vietnam to help them train the new army.

If you don't send instructors to follow you, it is estimated that these Vietnamese will even use these firearms that they can buy!

At the same time as the sale of arms to the Vietnamese, the Imperial side carried out a small military movement in the Liangguang area in protest against the French and Chinese subjects.

And at the invitation of the Vietnamese, an infantry regiment was sent into the territory of Vietnam.

Of course, the name used is not to designate the French, but to exterminate the 'guest bandits' in northern Vietnam, what are the guest bandits, that is, the remnants of the Taiping army that fled to Vietnam in the early years.

At the beginning, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was also very active in Guangxi and Yunnan, but after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shifted its strategic core to the Yangtze River Valley, the Taiping army branches in these areas were successively defeated by the Qing army, most of them were annihilated, and a small part of them continued to operate in northern Vietnam.

The famous Black Flag Army in history is the remnants of the Taiping Army, which was entrenched in northern Vietnam in the early years, and later chose to surrender in the face of the Qing Army and the Vietnamese official army, and fought with the Yellow Flag Army, which was also the remnants of the Taiping Army, and helped the Vietnamese annihilate other remnants of the Taiping Army.

In this way, there was the later Black Flag Army's War of Resistance against France!

For these remnants of the Taiping Army, the Vietnamese side sent troops to attack several times but failed, and the French entered the Saigon area of southern Vietnam on a large scale at this time, which made it even more difficult for the Vietnamese to continue.

Feeling that the situation in Vietnam has developed in a direction that is extremely unfavorable to the empire, Lin Zhe naturally cannot be indifferent, he does not care how history develops, but China in this era is completely different from history, perhaps the historical Manchu Qing can tolerate the complete annexation of Vietnam by the French, and then Chen Bing on the southern border of China.

But Lin Zhe couldn't bear this kind of thing happening!

In this way, there was a matter of providing ordnance assistance to the Vietnamese and sending instructors.

At the same time, Lin Zhe was also worried that even if the Vietnamese received some of the imperial ordnance assistance and the training of instructors, it was estimated that it would be difficult to resist the invasion of the French, so he also made the necessary preparations, that is, to send some troops to Vietnam.

First, on the pretext of clearing the remnants of the Taiping Army, an infantry regiment was sent into the Beiqi area of Vietnam, and at the same time, a small number of troops were stationed directly in Tokyo (Hanoi), the capital of Beiqi, Vietnam.

When necessary, continue to send reinforcements to Hanoi to deter the French!

Unless the French really intended to fight a major war with the Empire in Vietnam, they could not afford to ignore the Empire's military presence in northern Vietnam.

Of course, sending troops to North Vietnam was only a precautionary measure, to prevent the Vietnamese from losing all of Vietnam under the defeat of the Vietnamese, for the empire, the loss of southern Vietnam would not have much impact, but if northern Vietnam was occupied by the French, it would be intolerable.

This is the same as the Burma side, the empire doesn't care whether the British occupy the Lower Burma region or not, but if the British want to march into the Upper Burma region, then the empire can't tolerate it, so the empire will support Lin Chengting against the British.

The Empire's dispatch of troops into the North Ki region of Vietnam was only a precautionary measure, not that the Empire was already preparing for a war with the French, let alone sending troops south to fight the French in the area of Saigon in Vietnam.

To resist the French invasion, it is up to the Vietnamese themselves!

In May, after the Vietnamese received the batch of ordnance that the empire had sold and half sent, the Nguyen dynasty began to form a new army following the model of the imperial army, based on the suggestion of Wang Xuan Chuan, the imperial military attache in Vietnam.

Major Wang Xuan Chuan was appointed by the Nguyen Dynasty as a military adviser to assist them in the formation and training of this new army.

This new army was named the forbidden army by the Nguyen Dynasty, and it was expected to recruit a total of 2,000 people to train and fight according to the standard line troops, and its training affairs were basically in charge of three Chinese military advisers led by Wang Xuanchuan!

In order to train this new army of 2,000 people, the Ruan Dynasty can be said to have taken out all the family resources, not only all the cash that could be taken out, but even in order to obtain loans from the Chinese Empire, it did not hesitate to take out a large number of mineral mining rights in the northern region.

One of the most noteworthy is the coal mine located in Quang Ninh province of North Ki, Vietnam!

Vietnam's Quang Ninh coal is one of the best coal mines in Southeast Asia, most of them are open-pit mines, easy to mine, and the key point is that the quality of the coal is quite good, and some mining areas have high-quality anthracite!

In recent years, in addition to increasing the import of high-quality coal from Australia and the United Kingdom, especially anthracite, the empire has also launched wars in many places in China, and has also discovered many large coal mines, such as Pingxiang Coal Mine in Jiangxi, Luanzhou Coal Mine in Tangshan and coal mines in Liaoning.

However, most of these coal mines are ordinary coal mines, which are not a problem to meet industrial needs, but they are still slightly insufficient for ships, especially warships.

So far, at least, none of the many coal mines that China has mined, or is preparing to mine, can provide large quantities of high-quality anthracite.

In this case, they are setting their sights on the Quang Ninh coal mine of the Vietnamese! (To be continued.) )