Jinzhou Xiaoling Henan Daughter Township, this land that was originally just a suburb of the city has been crowded with people in the past two months, and a large number of people wearing gray military uniforms have come and gone, as if it is more lively than Jinzhou City.

The reason why so many soldiers of the Beiyang New Army can appear here is because Zhao Dongyun set up the headquarters of the Third Mixed Association here, and it is also the main force of the Third Mixed Association is stationed.

Jinzhou is a place where everyone knows that its strategic location is very important, and it is a must-defend place in a certain way, but historically this Jinzhou has not been defended, why? Because it is easy to be completely surrounded by the enemy if you defend Jinzhou, once surrounded, the four words easy to defend and difficult to attack will become difficult to fly, throughout the history of the Qing army and the Ming army of the previous battles and the later civil wars between the two people, the troops defending Jinzhou are very hard, basically all of them are annihilated.

Although Zhao Dongyun is not familiar with these battle examples in ancient historians, and in this era, there are not any super generals who can decide victory or defeat casually, but although he is not a famous general, he still inherited a lot of military knowledge from the original, and at the same time, he has not relaxed in the past two years, and has studied a large number of contemporary military theory books, in addition to a large number of military books in German and English, and even in order to study Napoleon's war theory, he also taught himself French.

When others only saw Zhao Dongyun becoming the commander of the First Association when he was in his twenties, few people could see Zhao Dongyun reading almost every day, and Zhao Dongyun even translated several German military works when he was studying the modern German staff system. Zhao Dongyun's rapid rise in the Beiyang system did not rely on those memories from later generations, but more on his own ability.

After Zhao Dongyun came to this world, he accepted the memories of his original body, and these memories were deeply in Zhao Dongyun's mind, coupled with some of Zhao Dongyun's later concepts and a large number of military theories studied in the past two years, to be honest, in China in this era, it is really impossible to find a few who can surpass Zhao Dongyun in military theory alone.

What do you say about Zhao Dongyun now, he is a master of talking on paper, speaking of theories, but there is not much specific experience, as for the talent of being a famous general, Zhao Dongyun himself doesn't know if he has it, anyway, now Zhao Dongyun can't see that he has the talent to become a famous general.

For this kind of person, you can't expect him to break 100,000 Russian soldiers with 7,000 troops in the universe, but you can trust him to make reasonable arrangements in some theories and tactics.

For example, in the deployment of Jinzhou, although Zhao Dongyun is not a famous general, he can also see at a glance that if Jinzhou is not a ghost place, it will be difficult for him to fly, so from the beginning, his focus in Jinzhou was not defense, but retreat!

When he first arrived in Jinzhou, he sent more than 2,000 troops to Songshan, why, just to keep the way out!

In addition to arranging heavy troops in Songshan to cover the right flank and ensure the retreat, Zhao Dongyun also sent cavalry to patrol and reconnoiter east of the Xiaoling River to prevent a possible sneak attack.

As for the defense of Jinzhou City itself, to be honest, Zhao Dongyun didn't pay much attention, he even gave up the idea of arranging heavy troops at the strategic point of the Big and Small Bauhinia Mountains, and at the same time gave up the practice of defending the city outside Jinzhou City, but shrank his forces to the west bank of the Xiaoling River, that is, the area of Daughter Township, and only deployed a small number of troops in Jinzhou City.

The reason for this is actually very simple, because if all the troops are deployed to Jinzhou City in the east of the Big and Small Bauhinia Mountains and Xiaoling River, then it will be easy to defend, but if the Russian army comes to encircle and cross, then Zhao Dongyun will probably have to commit suicide and martyrdom in Jinzhou City.

Anyway, no matter how 7,000 troops defended, they couldn't hold it, so they simply gave up the peripheral positions, and even Jinzhou City didn't want it, and directly used the Xiaoling River to defend, fought a river beach defensive battle, deployed artillery to the high ground in the southern suburbs of Jinzhou, and deployed infantry and machine guns along the west bank of the Xiaoling River.

If the Russian army was more cautious than he imagined and did not hesitate to delay for ten days and half a month to detour, then Zhao Dongyun would consider himself unlucky, and without saying a word, he would directly retreat to Ningyuan Prefecture with his troops to establish a second line of defense.

When the time comes, depending on the situation, if the Russian army has few troops, then Zhao Dongyun will shout that he will fight a battle with the Russian army for the country and the nation, and if the Russian army of 50,000 or 60,000 people will come over, Zhao Dongyun will hold it for a few days at most, and then go all the way west to Shanhaiguan.

Zhao Dongyun estimated that by the time he ran to Shanhaiguan, ten days and half a month had passed, and even if the mobilization speed of the Beiyang New Army was slow, it was estimated that reinforcements would come at that time.

If the imperial court was still arguing about the war at that time, and the reinforcements were delayed, don't blame him for turning around and running away again and throwing Shanhaiguan to the Russians.

In short, when he came to Liaodong, he didn't come to fight with the Russians, so if he couldn't fight, he wouldn't fight, even if the real war broke out, it would be within his ability, and if he could fight, he would do his vote, and he couldn't fight the direct strategic transfer, as for things like the loss of the country, it was not within his consideration.

This may sound very cowardly, but the reality is so cruel, if he is given a new army in ten towns, he Zhao Dongyun will directly wave the army to Fengtian without saying a word, the key is that he has it?

He didn't!

He had only one Third Mixed Association, with only 7,000 soldiers, no more than 16 cannons, and 30 machine guns!

Therefore, from the first day he came to Jinzhou, he never thought about defending Jinzhou, so he appeared to mix the third into Xieda

The battalion was stationed on the west bank of the Xiaoling River, and abandoned the defense of important urban areas such as the Big and Small Bauhinia Mountains and the east bank of the Xiaoling River.

Because the base camp of the Third Mixed Association is stationed in Daughter Township, it has led to a lot of popularity in the suburbs of Jinzhou, where thousands of soldiers stayed, making the surrounding area a huge military camp, and at the same time attracting many farmers to sell vegetables, fruits and vegetables.

Although the staple food eaten by so many people in the Third Mixed Association was transferred from the customs by the military headquarters of the Beiyang Standing Army, the chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep were purchased from the local area, and the spontaneous purchase of the soldiers even made a small market near the barracks.

When the Beiyang Army arrived in Jinzhou City, people were afraid that this army had the same bad military discipline as those old troops, but after a few days of viewing, the villagers found that these fake foreign devils did not commit any crimes, not to mention burning, killing and looting, even if they bought military food, fruits and vegetables, they were given silver according to the market price, and it took a little time for the nearby people to relax.

"Your Excellency, it's almost time!" Near evening, Li San knocked on the door and came in, and whispered to Zhao Dongyun, who was immersed in writing a book: "It's time to go to Li's house for a banquet!" ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't look up, and said directly: "Well, get ready, I'll change my clothes and go over!" ”

It was the Li family in Jinzhou who invited Zhao Dongyun to the banquet, although from the officialdom level, Zhao Dongyun, a mere businessman, usually does not have time to deal with it, but Zhao Dongyun now lives in someone's manor, and it is naturally difficult to refuse the banquet of the main family.

The headquarters of the Third Mixed Association was originally located in the temporary barracks, but the tent was really uncomfortable to live in, and it happened to be invited by the Li family in Jinzhou at that time, so Zhao Dongyun simply moved the headquarters to the Li manor.

Of course, the early Beiyang Army was still very disciplined, and the purchase of military rations was given to silver according to the market price, and the rented courtyard of a wealthy merchant was naturally also given money, anyway, the Third Mixed Association was not short of that bit of silver.

But then again, the Li family didn't care about the rent, and they invited Zhao Dongyun to live in their manor for another purpose.

Jinzhou Li family, it is rumored that the Ming Dynasty was already a local scholar, after the Qing court opened up the northeast, the Li family recruited a large number of displaced people to Liaodong Tuntian, so that the Li family's assets rose sharply, once in the northeast all over the land of tens of thousands of acres, and many traditional landlords are different, the Li family is not only satisfied with the traditional industry, but more than ten years ago began to get involved in the foreign industry, opened a warehouse shop to buy soybean oil, sell foreign goods, etc., and also invested in Shanghai to set up a silk reeling factory, and made a lot of profits.

This Li family is actually quite similar to the Zhao family where Zhao Dongyun is located, both are traditional gentry landlord families, and they also belong to the family that has broadened their horizons and entered the industrial world, and in a certain way, they have transformed from a traditional landlord family to a chaebol family.

Last year, Hong Xuwei of Li Jiatong Guò Dingsheng Silver introduced that he invested tens of thousands of taels of silver in Fuyuanji Qì Factory and became one of the shareholders of Fuyuanji Qì Factory.

As for Zhao Dongyun, he is not only a high-level officer in Beiyang, the commander of the Third Mixed Association, but also the major shareholder of Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

After having such a relationship, they took the initiative to invite Zhao Dongyun to live in their house, not because Zhao Dongyun was a high-level official in Beiyang, but because he was the major shareholder of Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

"Lord Zhao, you are much younger than I imagined!" The contemporary head of the Li family, Li Yijian, is a tall, thin middle-aged man, estimated to be in his forties, wearing a traditional horse coat.

Next to him was his eldest son, Li Ziquan, about twenty-five or sixteen years old, who was different from his father, but a little fat, and his not too tall body, cocked like a wooden barrel.

However, although this person is not good-looking, but his words are very decent, as soon as his father Li Yijian's words fell, he continued: "But isn't it, when you came in at the beginning, Lord Zhao, I thought I had seen the wrong person, like Lord Zhao, such a young Sanpin master, there are not a few in the country!" ”

But what they didn't know was that they thought it was complimenting Zhao Dongyun, but it was not very comfortable to listen to Zhao Dongyun's ears, why? Because Zhao Dongyun doesn't like to hear others say that he is young and promising, he prefers to hear others say that he is mature and stable.

Zhao Dongyun's young age was originally an important obstacle for him to continue to climb up, and this younger generation also led him to be a junior in front of Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai, Feng Guozhang and others.

Fortunately, he got married last year, and if he hadn't gotten married, it would have been even more criticized.

Zhao Dongyun usually wears mature and stable clothes, has a mustache, and deliberately pauses slowly when he speaks, in order to hide his youth.

Therefore, Li Yijian's father and son said that he was young and promising, which made Zhao Dongyun feel uncomfortable, but Zhao Dongyun would not change his impression of Li Erjian's father and son. After all, in the secular concept, it is a good thing to be young and promising, but there are few people like him who are worried because they are too young.

So Zhao Dongyun said twice, and did not directly make any verbal response to the topic of his age, but directly changed the topic: "This time, I have to thank Mr. Li for his benevolence and righteousness, otherwise Zhao will have to continue to eat and drink!" ”

As a high-level officer in Beiyang, Zhao Dongyun, who has an army of 7,000, is not interested in playing any conversation with the Li family's father and son, so he is unhappy with the topic of age, so he just changed the topic.