Jiang Zuobin went to Europe as the head of the military delegation of the Republic of China, and he witnessed the defeat of France with his own eyes. At the German Legation in Berlin, Minister Yan Huiqing held a special dinner to welcome him.

As the backbone of the Beiyang Department of Foreign Affairs, Yan Huiqing does not belong to Li Yuanhong's faction, but the Department of Transportation and the Department of Foreign Affairs, which were very influential in the political arena of the Republic of China during Yuan Shikai's administration, are relatively more inclined to Li Yuanhong. In the eyes of these people, the group of martial artists in the Beiyang Department, who play a dominant role in the government of the Republic of China, can only dance guns and sticks all day long, shouting and shouting and killing, which is not in line with their interests, so between Duan Qirui and Li Yuanhong, they like to choose Li Yuanhong, who is really weak, as the object of cooperation, so that they will have a greater say in the formulation of national policies by the government.

Although Yan Huiqing is far away in Germany, he is also very clear about the situation in China: the center is divided into two factions, one is headed by President Li Yuanhong, and advocates reconciling the contradictions between the north and the south. The other faction, led by Premier Duan Qirui, one of the leading figures of the Beiyang faction, advocated the use of force to quell the "rebellion" in the south. The southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Hunan declared their independence in the name of protecting the country, but after the death of the old Yuan, the warlords in various places still did not obey the orders of the central government and seized the localities under various pretexts.

Among them, Tang Jiyao in Yunnan was the most powerful, and the Dian army had been controlling Guizhou as early as the Xinhai period, and now it has controlled most of Sichuan, and has constantly interfered in Sichuan affairs. And Lu Tingrong, the overseer of Guangxi, took the opportunity to drive out Long Jiguang during the Protectorate War, took control of Guangdong, and extended his hand to Hunan.

At present, there is a lot of quarrel between the presidential office and the State Department over how to solve the problems of the South. In this time and space, because Xu Shuzheng had great hopes for the labor force participating in the war in Europe, Duan Qirui's side seemed to be much more forbearant than the contemporaries of another history. Although the struggle between the government and the court was sharp, it was not enough for Xu Shuzheng to make a thankless incident of forcing the palace by the Overseer Army. That "pigtail handsome", naturally, had no chance to make a farce of restoration.

However, now both sides of the government and the court have put their minds on the Chinese Workers' Legion, which has now expanded rapidly in size and numbers.

With the fall of France, about 350,000 Chinese laborers recruited by Britain and France to the French front fell into the hands of Li Haidon, plus nearly 200,000 front-line Chinese laborers who were successively "captured" from the Russian battlefield, the number of Chinese laborers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire has reached nearly 600,000. The Chinese Engineer Corps in Austria-Hungary was organized into three corps, but Lee Hayton gave the Chinese Engineer Division a super-large establishment of three brigades and nine regiments according to the establishment method of the American Expeditionary Force, plus artillery, engineers, baggage and other auxiliary arms, each Chinese Engineer Division had about 45,000 men. The entire Chinese Workers Corps currently has a total of 14 divisions, which does not sound like a lot of troops, but in fact, the total strength of the Chinese Workers Corps even exceeds the Ukrainian Legion in the Austro-Hungarian army.

Although Li Yuanhong is at a disadvantage, he is not powerless to fight back. After all, the president has more power than the prime minister from a legal point of view, and if Li Yuanhong really wants to remove Duan Qirui from office, it is not impossible to do so. It's really hard to say who will win and who will lose in the end. Yan Huiqing's diplomatic department does not belong to the Lebanese side or the Duan side, and although he feels detached, he also feels a little confused about who to support.

At the banquet at the legation, Jiang Zuobin also saw Jiang Fangzhen, the former director of the Education Department of the Ministry of the Army and the former principal of the Baoding Army Military Academy, who had been lost for many years and studied in Germany.

In the early years of the Republic of China, he served as the principal of the Baoding Military Academy and the acting president of the Army University. However, when Jiang was the principal of the military academy, Duan Qirui, who was in charge of the War Department, saw that these new soldiers were not pleasing to the eye and opposed them everywhere. Due to Duan's constraints, he, the principal, was very unhappy, and even caused a self-destructive incident, and finally Jiang Han resigned angrily.

Jiang Zeng was appointed as the chief of staff of the Protector Army at the request of his old friend Cai Yi, but due to Cai Yi's aggravated illness, he accompanied Cai Yi to Japan for medical treatment, and immediately took care of the funeral. At this time, the Sichuan affair had been controlled by Tang Jiyao of the Yunnan army, and Jiang Fangzhen naturally could not return to Sichuan, so at the request of Li Yuanhong, he served as a military adviser to the presidential palace, and then went to Germany to study in the name of military inspection.

In terms of factions, Jiang Fangzhen, Cai Yi, Dai Huan and others are all students of Liang Qichao, and they are figures belonging to the Liang faction, but Jiang Fangzhen has a deep grudge against Duan Qirui, and he is also a figure that Li Yuanhong strives for.

Jiang Zuobin entered the small living room of the legation, and was surprised that Lan Tianwei, the cadre of the Alliance, was also present.

"What? Yuyan, is it unexpected? Lan Tianwei looked at Jiang Zuobin, who was a little divine, and smiled.

"Where, where, but I am really surprised to see Brother Ji Hao here." Jiang Zuobin said with a smile. Lan Tianwei belongs to the kind of heroic character, Lan Tianwei, Wu Luzhen, Zhang Shaozeng and Jiang Zuobin were all the military backbones of the League who had infiltrated the Qing army, and they all had a lot of military power.

Jiang Zuobin was the director of the War Department in the former Qing Dynasty, Wu Luzhen and Zhang Shaozeng were both in charge of a town, while Lan Tianwei was the assistant commander of the new army in Shenyang and was the main figure in the Fengtian Uprising. Now, Wu Luzhen has long turned into dry bones, Jiang Zuobin and Zhang Shaozeng are becoming more and more like bureaucrats, only Lan Tianwei, with Yuan Shikai's allowance of "founding father", travels around, and from time to time helps Sun someone's "great revolutionary cause" quite righteously.

A few people whispered a few words and sat down in the living room.

"Yuyan, your momentum this time is not small, and you have almost moved half of the staff headquarters." Jiang Fangzhen is a standard soldier, even if he sits on a soft sofa, he maintains a very formal standard of military posture and is meticulous.

"Brother Baili, let you laugh, my brother is just on order this time." Jiang Zuobin smiled and said, Li Yuanhong's purpose of wanting to control the Chinese Workers Legion could not be revealed lightly.

"Pull it down, I'm afraid you're not a drunkard this time, but the idea of playing a small fan." Lan Tianwei has always been straightforward, "Brother Baili has set up a 'European Affairs Research Society' among the officers in Europe, and most of the officers sent by your General Staff Headquarters and the War Department have been his students, so this thing can't be hidden from him." ”

Jiang Zuobin had long heard of the "European Affairs Research Society" that Jiang Fangzhen had organized among the officers who went to Europe, which was an activity in which everyone discussed and studied the military, political, and economic policies of the European powers, but Jiang Fangzhen was somehow favored by the Austro-Hungarian emperor, and not only met with him many times, but also handed over to him to coordinate the organization and establishment of the Chinese Workers' Corps, and it can be said that Jiang Fangzhen had a great say in the organization and training of the Chinese Workers' Corps.

Now he has become the primary figure of Li Yuanhong's group, which is one of the main reasons why Jiang Zuobin asked Yan Huiqing to arrange this meeting. He needed to pass Guò Jiang Fangzhen to insert the Li officers he brought into the Chinese Workers' Army.

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