The dinner organized by the Li family father and son, with Zhao Dongyun as the protagonist, was held very smoothly, and there were no bloody revolutionaries to assassinate Zhao Dongyun, the third town of Beiyang who maintained the degenerate and decadent dynasty, and there were no patriotic female students who ran up and said I love you, I will marry you if you rebel, and even Li Wan, who likes to mumble nonsense on weekdays, was very peaceful and did not run into the front hall.

The banquet was held in a sound of compliments, most of the people were congratulating Zhao Dongyun on his appointment as the commander of the third town, and at the same time, Chen Guangyuan, Wang Zhanyuan and other officers who had been promoted to the third town were also congratulated by everyone, and the atmosphere could not be better.

But in this group of people, there is a person who has a smile on his face, but the smile is not natural.

He is Zhang Zuolin, in order to participate in this congratulatory dinner, but arrived in Jinzhou a day in advance, but when he came out of Jinzhou City in the evening to his daughter's hometown to attend the banquet, the carriage he took was broken, and finally he had to wear a bloated official robe to change horses.

What's even more tragic is that he was still lost, he and a few guards were in the daughter township for a while, and finally found the door of the Li manor, only to find that everyone had arrived, even Zhao Dongyun had already appeared, and he had to sneak into the living room from the side door under the leadership of the Li Mansion.

If these are only minor troubles, and at most let him complain a few words, then the trouble that his horse infantry guerrillas have faced for some time has been more than just whining.

First of all, it was because Zhao Dongyun was wantonly suppressing bandits near Jinzhou, Zhang Zuolin knew about this, and knew that Zhao Dongyun was going to use those little bandits to practice first, and then prepare to exterminate Du Lisan and Feng Delin with himself. However, Zhao Dongyun's movements in Jinzhou were much bigger than he imagined.

Yuan Shikai to the imperial court for Zhao Dongyun's request for merit in the excerpt said that the purging of Jinzhou Baili bandits is not nonsense, but it is true, Zhao Dongyun successively sent two detachments, which took more than a month, almost wiped out the bandits in the north and west of Jinzhou, and also cleaned up several small bandits in the east of Jinzhou, this crackdown on bandits allowed Zhao Dongyun to harvest as much as more than 100,000 taels of silver, and at the same time easily incorporated Lu Shuanggun and other bandits nearly 400 people, adding two horse teams to the Jinzhou patrol battalion.

Such a large-scale move naturally affected the living environment of bandits around Jinzhou, forcing a large number of bandits on the periphery of Jinzhou to start moving, most of them migrating to the east.

When they roared past the Xinmin Mansion, they burned, killed and looted, which not only put Zhang Zuolin under great political pressure, and asked him to exterminate the bandits and bomb the ground, but also made Zhang Zuolin, who had already made the Xinmin Mansion his own territory, suffered great losses.

He charges a high amount of protection fees in the local area, and in the end he is unable to protect the local wealthy people, which naturally causes dissatisfaction, which can be said to have greatly affected his reputation in the green forest.

Not only that, in the past month, the conflict between him and Du Lisan and Feng Delin has intensified, and in the past month, three caravans under his protection have been attacked by Du Lisan's armed forces, if this behavior is described in later gangster films: Gang A attacked the club that Gang B was photographed.

The fundamental reason is that Du Lisan and Zhang Zuolin's territory is too close, and they have become important obstacles and opponents to each other's continued expansion.

If Du Lisan wants to expand his power to the north, then he must first destroy Zhang Zuolin, and if Zhang Zuolin wants to expand the scope of protection money to the south, he must first move the mountain of Du Lisan.

Du Lisan's frequent provocations and the large number of bandits who came over from Jinzhou have made Zhang Zuolin very miserable in the past month!

He came to Jinzhou this time, and congratulating Zhao Dongyun was only secondary, he wanted to persuade Zhao Dongyun to make a move on Du Lisan in advance, otherwise if he continued like this, he Zhang Zuolin would not be able to hold it first.

However, the more Zhang Zuolin came to Jinzhou's daughter township, and the more he came into contact with the officers of Zhao Dongping's third town, the more he felt the strength of this Beiyang new army, and the more he knew Zhao Dongyun's status in Beiyang and even in the imperial court.

He knew very well that if he hadn't boasted that Du Lisan's lair had at least more than 200,000 silver in his lair, people would not have taken care of him at all, let alone cooperate in suppressing bandits, and even so, he had never been received by Zhao Dongyun in private, including today, he had only seen Zhao Dongyun twice from afar.

There were only a few words to say, the last time Zhao Dongyun saw him for the first time, he just glanced at him twice, and said: "You are Zhang Guandao, I have heard a lot of things about you, and you are still very young, do a good job and don't be responsible for the general's hard work!" ”

If a month ago he could still confidently come to Zhao Dongyun to talk about cooperation, then now it is difficult for him to even see Zhao Dongyun, what kind of cooperation is there to talk about!

When the dinner was about to end, he quietly walked to Zhao Dongping's side, and then talked in a low voice.

Although he attended a dinner party last night, he naturally didn't drink too much on this kind of political occasion, and there was no sign of hangover when he got up in the morning, and he just walked into the conference room after breakfast.

There are already many people waiting in it, most of them are familiar faces, only Wang Zhanyuan is the first time to participate in this kind of meeting, this can't be blamed on him, many new armies in Beiyang, the office style is naturally deeply influenced by the chief officers of various ministries, Wang Zhanyuan used to serve in the first town and the standing army of the Beijing banner, although he occasionally participated in military discussions, but he was not as strict as today, looking at Lin Yongquan, Chen Guangyuan's hands of the thick Wen Jiàn clips, Wang Zhanyuan regretted a little hurry, Without much detail about the mortars, they came.

The theme of today's meeting was decided a few days ago, that is, to determine the establishment of mortars and related issues such as equipment.

Since the mortar is still under the management of artillery, but the specific operation is assigned to the infantry, and this is a brand-new weapon like the original machine gun, the corresponding establishment and tactics must be formulated one by one, which is no longer something that can be solved by a mere supervision office, let alone an artillery standard or an individual infantry standard can be solved independently.

Therefore, in order to completely solve the problems of mortar establishment, equipment and tactical application, Zhao Dongyun summoned the Education Department, the Supervision and Exercise Office, the Artillery Standard, and several major infantry officers, and even Meng Enyuan, a cavalry officer, to participate, just to bring together all the relevant people to solve this problem at one time.

After many sat down one after another, more than ten officers were already sitting on both sides of this rectangular table, most of them were already familiar with Zhao Dongyun's office style, and they didn't like to waste any time talking nonsense, so as Zhao Dongyun nodded, Lin Yongquan next to him stood up and spoke first:

"Since our army tried to install mortars in September, the mortar team to which the artillery unit belongs has participated in 13 actual battles and fired more than 900 artillery shells in the operation to suppress bandits that lasted for more than a month.

Because the Fuzao 80 mm mortar is light and easy to carry, the march time is divided into three major parts by horses, and the soldiers can also carry parts and components to the front line to assemble the battle, immediately after the completion of the shooting, disassemble and transfer, and then assemble, the requirements for the firing position are low, and there is no need for a large area of open flat land, the rate of fire is fast and can reach more than 12 rounds per minute, and because of the use of large curve shooting, it does not need to shoot directly at the enemy, and can even attack the enemy behind the bunker.

In addition, the price of this gun is much cheaper than that of traditional artillery, although the black powder guide used to reduce the cost of artillery shells is not as powerful as howitzer shells of the same caliber, but from the perspective of comprehensive cost, performance and tactical application potential, Ren Jiu is a new weapon worthy of large-scale introduction and equipment of our army. ”

Lin Yongquan gave a general introduction to the mortar, and it was not surprising that the officers in the third town were already familiar with the weapon, but they were extremely surprised by Wang Zhanyuan, who had heard the mortar for the first time and had not even seen the real thing.

How can it be? Eighty millimeters of artillery can be carried on the backs of soldiers? This is not only a few dozen catties, even if it is combined, I am afraid that it is less than two hundred catties. If the weight has surprised Wang Zhanyuan greatly, but the rate of fire has surprised him even more, twelve rounds per minute?

You must know that the Beiyang Army is now equipped with a large number of equipped artillery with a rate of fire of only about three rounds per minute, even if it is the most advanced new artillery equipped by the German Krupp factory in the second town that has just returned to China, the rate of fire per minute will not exceed ten rounds per minute, and it is still an explosive rate of fire that cannot be sustained, and the combat rate of fire is actually even lower.

With the current artillery technology, it is possible to make a gun with a light rate of fire of 12 rounds per minute, but the price is expensive, but Lin Yongquan said that the price of the mortar is cheap and low.

These things sound completely contradictory, but on such an important occasion today, Wang Zhanyuan also knew that this Lin Yongquan would definitely not talk nonsense, so he immediately opened the text folder in his hand and looked at it in detail, and did not directly ridicule or oppose or even sarcasm like stunned Qing, those can only appear in the small talk book, and in real life, Wang Zhanyuan's first reaction is to understand this mortar.

"Our army should be equipped with mortars, and everyone has reached a consensus on this, but now the question is what kind of equipment should be used? How to match? How much is equipped? After Lin Yongquan's brief introduction, he threw out an opening question, which can be regarded as a starting point for this meeting.

Immediately, the commander of the infantry team took Kong Guanbei and said: "Mortars were originally designed to be used to cooperate with infantry teams, regardless of short range or high mobility, none of them are surface mortars should be assigned to infantry units, so I still said before, no matter how many mortars are equipped, but they should be directly assigned to each infantry battalion!" ”

Unexpectedly, as soon as this remark came out, it was opposed by Wei Anpo, who was the existing mortar team officer, the only mortar officer present, and his speech naturally attracted a lot of attention: "Just like the development of machine guns in our army in those years, mortars are a new business in our army, and there are not even a few qualified gunners, even if dozens or hundreds of mortars are purchased and distributed to each battalion, but there are absolutely not enough gunners." ”

When he said this, he looked at Zhao Dongyun: "My lord, mortars, like traditional artillery, have quite high requirements for gunners and commanders, it is impossible to be the same as the heavy machine gunners in the past, just pull the trigger, and it is impossible to throw it out like a grenade, the commander of the mortar team must be a senior artillery officer, and the gunner must also go through a long period of training to reach the corresponding level, otherwise the shooting accuracy, rate of fire and most importantly, mobility will not be guaranteed, Therefore, I built a mortar that could be concentrated into a battalion, under the control of the old artillery standard, and under the unified command of our artillery unit! ”

After he finished speaking, Liu Tinggui, the third standard commander of the artillery team on the side, had a satisfied gaze!

Today's discussion of mortar formations is so to determine the establishment, and it is more important to say that the infantry and artillery are fighting for the ownership and command of mortars.