In the middle of October, when the cold dew has passed and the frost has not yet arrived, the sun is still blazing in the sky in Nanjing, Shanghai and other southern cities, and the earth is baked as hot as the middle of summer.

But in Liaocheng, the temperature here is gradually decreasing, and there may be some early autumn heat during the day, but after the sun goes down, the autumn wind blowing in the evening makes people have to put on autumn and winter coats.

Changed into the autumn and winter combat uniforms of the Chinese army, Shi Qingxuan, who was wearing a woolen coat, looked at Liaocheng not far away, Liaocheng in this sight is not a big city, although it is located in the canal basin, but its development is far inferior to Huai'an, which also relies on the development of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

This Liaocheng doesn't even look as prosperous as an ordinary county town in the south of the Yangtze River!

But in this small Liaocheng, there are more than 30,000 Qing troops stationed!

According to the information obtained from the long-term reconnaissance of the First Army of the Chinese Army, the Qing army stationed more than 30,000 Qing troops in this small Liaocheng, and it is very certain that there are at least 8,000 or more of these 30,000 people, and it may even be more than 10,000 New Army troops.

In addition to the new army of nearly 10,000 people, the remaining 20,000 Qing troops also had more than 5,000 Manchu and Mongolian cavalry, and the rest were the old-style green battalions and Eight Banners troops used in the group.

"In order to defend Shandong, this pseudo-Qing Dynasty has also made great efforts, not only stationed heavy troops in Liaocheng and Jinan, but also stationed many troops in the entire northern part of Shandong, Wuding Mansion, Jinan Mansion, Dongchang Mansion The Qing soldiers in the three prefectures combined, I am afraid that the number will exceed 150,000!" Standing beside Shi Qingxuan was Bian Chengxun, the commander of the Eighth Division.

This person, like many senior generals of the Chinese Army, was a student who graduated from the first phase of the camp academy in the early days, and rose step by step from the second lieutenant and deputy company commander. Last year, he was appointed commander of the 23rd Regiment of the newly formed Eighth Division, and at the beginning of the year he made meritorious contributions to the formation and training of troops. At the same time, he was appreciated by Shi Qingxuan and was recommended, so he served as the commander of the newly formed Eighth Division. Not long ago in the Battle of Shanghai, he led the Eighth Division to fight with the British and French coalition forces, under the leadership of Shi Qingxuan, the Sixth Army defeated the British and French coalition forces in one fell swoop, and he, the commander of the Eighth Division of the Sixth Army, naturally won the envy of others.

This time, the Sixth Army was transferred to the north to fight, and he naturally took the Eighth Division all the way north, which took nearly a month on the road before arriving in Shandong.

After arriving in Shandong, he finally knew why the First Army had not been able to make major strategic progress in Shandong for most of the past six months.

On the one hand, it is because the high command has put all its energy on the defense of southern Jiangsu. As a result, all kinds of support for the First Army were stopped, and the First Army could not let go.

On the other hand, the reason is that the Qing army continued to reinforce Shandong!

Here, it has to be said that the Manchus spared no effort to resist the northward advance of the Chinese army and to keep their own country, although the entire political system was still backward, but they did not give up, and this was very obvious in the formation and training of the new army.

In fact, it is not only the contemporary Manchu Qing who is keen on the formation and training of the new army, in fact, the historical Manchu Qing in the later period of their reign, the most concerned about the formation and training of the new army. From the Hunan Army and the Huai Army during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, then to the training army and the defense army, and then to the Dingwu Army and the newly built army, it can be said that the Manchu Qing Dynasty never stopped the pace of military reform in the last half century of its life. And every time there is a failure, there is always a climax of reform.

It's just that they always wait until they fail to reform, and before they fail, they turn a blind eye to all problems.

The same is true of the Manchu Qing in this time and space, after successive military defeats in the south. Throughout the time, the Manchus maintained extremely efficient reforms in an attempt to perpetuate their political life.

Imperial examination education. Not long ago, they held the first 'special economic examination' to emulate the reform of the imperial examination of the Chinese Empire. More than 100 special economic science scholars have been admitted, and at the same time, the Beijing Normal School and the Jiangben School have been opened.

Economically, they continued to promote the centigold system, and also tried to imitate the Chinese Empire to run foreign affairs, of course, now their foreign affairs are limited to the national defense industry, the most obvious representatives of which are the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, the Hunan Machinery Bureau, the two major arsenals, of which the Tianjin Machinery Bureau has been established for three years, has become an important source of ordnance for the Manchu northern army, supplying almost more than 60 percent of the guns and related ammunition.

Although its early technical ability was still in the traditional handicraft workshop, only a few simple applications of machinery, but in the second half of last year, after the outbreak of a full-scale military conflict between the British and French forces and the Chinese army, the British and French forces have released all kinds of blockade of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and in order to be able to obtain the vital foreign guns and various mechanical equipment from the foreigners.

The Manchus even took the initiative to open Tianjin as a treaty port.

After the Manchu Qing Dynasty and Britain and France re-established trade, the Tianjin Machinery Bureau purchased a large number of machinery and equipment, and also hired foreign technicians.

As a result, the production capacity and technical level of Tianjin Machinery Bureau have been rapidly improved, and the flintlock pistols produced by it have stable performance and are quite high.

At the same time, they are still trying to imitate the Mini rifle, and interestingly, the object of its imitation is not the foreign Mini rifle, but the 1856 Linde rifle in service with the Chinese army, and even some sample guns have been produced in small batches, but unfortunately the production capacity is still too small.

In order to train more new troops and obtain more advanced and more weapons, the Manchu Qing Dynasty also began to purchase foreign guns and cannons from foreigners again last year.

Among them, the most purchased is naturally the brown bass smoothbore rifle that was dumped by the British as an inventory, although this foreign gun is a smoothbore rifle like the flintlock pistol made by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, but people still use the fire cap firing rifle, and the ignition success is much higher.

In addition, they also purchased a batch of 1853 Enfield rifles through those powerful arms dealers, but the number was not large, only a few thousand, not that the Manchus had no money to buy, but that the British could not get more stock for a while.

Britain itself was at war with the Chinese army, and was also busy suppressing the uprising in India, and the number of new ordnance requirements was quite large. Therefore, it was basically impossible to export the Enfield 1853 rifle produced by the British military arsenal, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty purchased the version produced by the arms dealers themselves.

Historically, the vast majority of the more than 700,000 or even 1 million Model 1853 Enfield rifles used in the American Civil War were not produced in Britain's regular military arsenals. Most of it is produced privately by arms dealers, and some of it is also produced in the United States.

The same is true of these foreign guns purchased by the Manchus now. These guns were not purchased directly from the official institutions of Britain and France, such as the military or diplomatic channels, but directly from the arms dealers, and God knows where they got the arms.

In addition, the reason why it was difficult for the Manchus to purchase a large number of Minnie rifles in a short period of time was not because of money or political connections, but because the transportation was too slow in those years, and the time required to cross the ocean was calculated in months, which means that even if the Manchus placed an order now, it would take at least half a year to get the goods. And this is not counting the production time, if you still need to arrange raw tea according to the order, it is estimated that it will be a year later.

Through self-manufacture and mass importation, the Manchu Qing Dynasty produced tens of thousands of rifles of various forms in just over a year, which were then used to train the new army.

And this new army is the so-called 'Qing Army', last year there were only four towns, and they were all dissatisfied, but a year later, today. The 'Qing Army' has been expanded to seven towns, mainly using flintlock muskets and fire caps to fire muskets, and a very small number of units use Mini rifles.

In addition to organizing and training the new army, they did not say that they had cut all the Eight Banners and the Green Battalion. Instead, they will continue to retrench and train the existing Green Battalion units with modern training and equip them with new muskets. Trying to get the last bit of value out there, but with little success.

The Manchus trained so many new armies. Naturally, it is not for watching, but to block the Chinese army from going north. For this reason, they deployed six of the Qing Army, which had only seven towns, to the front line of Henan and Shandong, and Shandong was even more important, with four towns deployed.

The Manchus took great pains to train so many new armies, and they also placed them in Henan and Shandong, plus some green battalions, eight banners, and local regimental training, and the Manchu Qing had a total of more than 250,000 troops on the entire Henan and Shandong fronts.

And how many people have been in charge of the First Army in charge of military affairs in Shandong, Henan, and Anhui provinces since last year? No more than 70,000 people are counted as full.

Moreover, the main forces of it were only the 1st Division, the 3rd Division, and the 1st Cavalry Regiment, with a total strength of about 18,000 people.

The rest are all prisoners converted into the Auxiliary Defense Army, and how poor the combat effectiveness of the Auxiliary Defense Force has been very fully exposed in recent years, they can occasionally fight the Green Battalion and the Twist Army, bandits and the like, but even then you have to be very careful, most of the time you have to arrange a Royal Army behind them to suppress the formation, otherwise they may be defeated by the bandits and flee in embarrassment.

Although the auxiliary defense force under the command of the Chinese army is sometimes a very good cannon fodder, the premise is that the Royal Army fights with them, in short, there must be a warlord team behind, and they must be provided with sufficient fire cover, so that they can barely play their only value: rush up and fight the enemy hand-to-hand, consume the enemy's bullets and shells and vitality.

For example, when the 19th Auxiliary Defense Division was stationed in northern Anhui to carry out the task of strangling the local Twist Army, more than 2,000 people attacked the stockade defended by only a few hundred Twist Army, but the result was that it could not be attacked for several days, not to mention, and was killed by others for a counterattack, losing three or four hundred people, and the captain of the Royal Army who led the battle of this Auxiliary Defense Force almost vomited blood.

In the end, it was the 3rd Division of the Royal Army that sent an infantry company to press the formation, and then under the cover of the fire of this Royal Army infantry company, well, or the pressure of the platoon guns at the back, the 19th Auxiliary Defense Division could be regarded as re-killing and conquering this Zhuangzi.

About 50,000 auxiliary defense troops, plus 18,000 royal army, this is all the strength of the Chinese army in Henan, Shandong, and even northern Anhui, and they need to face more than 250,000 Qing troops, and these 250,000 Qing troops have more than 50,000 new troops. (To be continued......)