From ancient times to the present, infantry is the cheapest of all arms, which is more obvious in modern times, a peasant with good physique after about three months of training, and then give him a rifle, then a qualified infantry is produced.

If the time is urgent, and even the training time can be further compressed, there are many examples in history of soldiers who have only been trained in a hurry for a month before going to the battlefield.

In the process of expanding Zhao Dongyun's army, don't look at the most infantry, but the expansion of infantry is the simplest, and the other engineering troops and baggage troops are all technical arms. It is very difficult to train, and in addition to being a technical arm, artillery is a branch of troops that requires countless money to be piled up, not to mention that a battalion of eighteen artillery pieces plus the stock of shells prepared for these eighteen guns will cost hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

Although the cavalry does not spend as much money as artillery, it is also much more expensive than the infantry, and the cavalry has too high requirements for the region and the source of the soldiers, but fortunately, Zhao Dongyun is in the north, and if it is in the south, even if he has money, he will not be able to establish a cavalry unit.

And the words of the infantry are much simpler, as long as there is money, other problems are not too big!

"The Second Mixed Association needs to form three new battalions, and then the third town also needs to add a battalion, so that we will have to train four infantry battalions in a short period of time, this is a test for your recruitment work, you can't relax!" Zhao Dongyun said to Lin Yongquan.

As Lin Yongquan, who was in charge of the entire Fengtian local army and the recruitment and training of recruits in the Third Town, he naturally knew that he had to satisfy Zhao Dongyun at this time.

"I have already sent telegrams to several conscription points in Zhili and Shandong, asking them to send a batch of qualified soldiers to fill the vacancy in the third town, in addition, we have also set up conscription points in various parts of Fengtian, not only in western Liaoning, but also in eastern Liaodong We have also set up relevant recruitment agencies, and it should not be a problem to recruit 3,000 people to supplement the shortage of the second mixed association at that time!"

"In addition, this time I will let Lao Meng train another cavalry battalion, and you will also have to do a good job at that time and prepare qualified cavalry soldiers!" Zhao Dongyun explained.

However, Lin Yongquan frowned slightly, the infantry and artillery engineering baggage and other soldiers are easy to solve, but the soldiers of this cavalry are not so easy to solve, and immediately pondered for a while and said: "I will order to go down and send people to recruit troops near Mongolia to see if I can recruit the children of local herdsmen!" ”

Speaking of this, Lin Yongquan thought for a while and then said: "My lord, there are many people in the green forest who want to join our army recently, and many of them are good at riding, do you think you can choose some people from among them?" ”

"Bandits?" Zhao Dongyun frowned slightly when he heard this, there are a lot of bandits under his hands, the two cavalry battalions and one infantry battalion in Fengtian are all adapted from the original bandits, among them, although the cavalry battalion of Lu Shuanggun has been vigorously rectified many times in recent years, it still has a lot of gangsterism, which makes Zhao Dongyun always a little dissatisfied.

However, many things can't just consider their own preferences, although he doesn't have a good impression of bandits, but there are bandits to work, from the perspective of purging the Fengtian bandits and protecting the territory and the people, if it is indeed useful, it can be reluctantly accepted.

So after pondering for a while, he said: "Regarding the matter of accepting local bandits, we must be as cautious as possible, if Su zhì is good and really wants to eat military rations, you can also accept them, those ruffians and lazy people don't want it, and remember that it is okay to accept them, but they must not be given independent formation, and after they are accepted, they will first enter the new barracks, and then disperse their posts!" ”

Zhao Dongyun has never had any positive thoughts about accepting large-scale bandits, although he has also accepted Lu Shuanggun, Shi Yang, Zhang Zuoxiang, Feng Delin and others in the past few years, this is all subject to special conditions, as for other bandits of any size Zhao Dongyun basically does not care.

If those ordinary bandits are willing to give up their career as bandits to serve as soldiers and eat food, if their physical condition is good and their equestrian skills are good, they will reluctantly accept it, and if those bandit leaders try to rely on the hundred and ten bandits in their hands to get some chance to get into their bodies, it is a miscalculation.

For so many years, there has not been a single one who has really relied on this opportunity to get to the top!

Lu Shuanggun was beaten and surrendered, and in the end, Zhao Dongyun only mentioned it for the sake of his good ability, and Shi Yang took refuge in the early stage, which belonged to the initiative to take refuge, and his ability was okay, so he kept using it. And Feng Delin actually did not surrender to Zhao Dongyun, he was appeased by Zengqi before, and after Zhao Dongyun became the general of Shengjing, he naturally became Zhao Dongyun's subordinate, whether he wanted it or not!

And Zhang Zuoxiang and a few other subordinates who originally turned out to be Zhang Zuolin were even more straightforward, they took Zhang Zuolin's head to surrender in front of the formation, and even if they were acting, they had to give them an official and a half-job.

So for so many years, no one has been able to rely on the strength of the bandits in his hands to be appeased by Zhao Dongyun and then ascend to a high position.

If he doesn't appease him, it doesn't mean that Zhao Dongyun will let the bandits in Fengtian run rampant, he can't control it for the time being in Liaodong, but he is not polite in Liaoxi.

After a crackdown in early 1904, the bandits in western Liaoning were almost swept away, but after more than a year, the bandits in western Liaoning gradually increased, in the face of this situation, Zhao Dongyun on the one hand was in the maintenance of public order in western Liaoning, protection of trade and other factors, on the other hand, it was also in line with the idea of training troops and seizing the bandits' money by the way, so it was in June to launch a large-scale 'anti-bandit operation'

From Shanhaiguan in the west, Xinmin and Liaozhong in the east, Yingkou in the southeast, and Zhangwu in the north, Zhao Dongyun, with Jinzhou as the core, successively dispatched bandit suppression troops from many directions to eliminate any unofficial armed training, and even some local self-defense forces were required to disarm.

In short, what Zhao Dongyun wants is that in western Liaoning, except for him Zhao Dongyun, no one else wants to have a gun or a cannon, bandits can't do it, and the landlords' self-defense armaments can't either.

The anti-bandit operation is mainly based on the cavalry of the Third Town, the First Mixed Association of Fengtian, and the Second Mixed Association of Fengtian, supplemented by some infantry units.

In accordance with the local defense plan jointly drawn up by the General Bureau of Patrol Police and the Fengtian Supervision and Training Office, patrol police were dispatched to various prefectures and counties according to the standards of one county team and one battalion, while the original various chaotic county teams and robbery hunting camps in each prefecture and county were reorganized into the patrol police.

In just two months, and even before the Fengtian Second Mixed Association was formally formed, the patrol police in various parts of Mukden had already begun to take shape, and they had taken over from the local garrison to become the main force for maintaining local law and order and guarding against bandits.

Moreover, this patrol police is not limited to the western Liaoning region, but also penetrates into the Liaodong and even the Liaodong Peninsula region, which is still under the control of Japan and Russia, of course, in these places, these patrol police are under the banner of the police.

At this time, although Liaodong, Jilin and Heilongjiang were under foreign control, they were only under military control and did not take over local civil affairs, which means that Zhao Dongyun can still manage Liaodong and the Liaodong Peninsula in civil affairs, and can also set up police and other law enforcement agencies in these places.

Even if Zhao Dongyun was more bold, he could also send regular troops to the Liaodong region, but this was likely to cause the Japanese and Russian armies to be defensive and hostile, and then cause diplomatic disputes, so Zhao Dongyun never sent regular troops across the Liaohe River, and even Yingkou and Fengtian did not enter.

The third town of the main force has always been stationed in Jinzhou, and the vast area from Jinzhou to Liaohe was stationed the troops of the First Mixed Association and the Second Mixed Association of Fengtian.

Although the regular troops did not cross the Liaohe River, the patrol police in the name of the police can also be regarded as an auxiliary military force, and a large number of patrol officers in the Liaodong region can also serve as Zhao Dongyun's military presence in the Liaodong region to a certain extent, and it is naturally not qualified to use it to fight against Japan and Russia and other powers, but they can also barely maintain the local administrative organs, and they cannot have the same sense of existence as last year and the first half of this year.

In this way, if anyone dares to say that Zhao Dongyun is afraid that Japan and Russia did not send troops to Liaodong, Zhao Dongyun can also use the patrol as a shield to block one or two.

The training of the new army, the suppression of bandits, and the establishment of the General Bureau of Patrol Police were all part of a series of military reforms after Zhao Dongyun took charge of Fengtian, and there was another reform that was extremely important in the military reform.

That is, Zhao Dongyun officially established the 'Fengtian Lecture Martial Arts Hall' in June, which is based on the Third Town Suiying School, and offers two classes: ordinary and advanced. In addition to continuing to recruit outstanding soldiers on active duty, its ordinary class is also open to students from all walks of life for the first time, but the requirements are quite high, in addition to the necessary physical requirements, students are also required to have a secondary school or talent education or above.

Compared with the Beiyang Military Academy, the scale and quality of education of this ordinary class are much inferior, but the advanced training class of the Fengtian Lecture and Martial Arts Hall is as excellent as ever.

Even within Beiyang, when people talk about the Third Town Suiying School or the Fengtian Lecture Martial Arts Hall, they generally default to the advanced class, and the ordinary class is directly ignored.

In addition to the third town under the jurisdiction of Zhao Dongyun and the Fengtian Mixed Association, the enrollment scope also includes the other five towns in Beiyang and the Jingqi Standing Army, and those who can be admitted are excellent young officers.

The primary reason for this phenomenon is that China now lacks military academies to train high-ranking officers, and although the scale of this refresher course created by Zhao Dongyun is small, the curriculum is modeled on the Berlin Military Academy in Germany and the Japanese Mainland University, and the content taught is a veritable high-level course, and the core goal of the refresher course is not to train middle- and lower-level officers, but to focus on training high-ranking officers.

Many international students who have returned from the Japanese Honlushi want to be admitted to this training course, which shows how attractive this training course is to those young officers.

If it is said that the ordinary class in this lecture hall and the Beiyang Military Academy are extremely attractive to ordinary students, then this advanced training class is extremely attractive to those young officers on active duty.

When Zhao Dongyun first started this advanced training class, he did not expect that it would develop to such a point today, but if it develops, Zhao Dongyun will be able to use this platform to tell more young officers about his ideas, and further consolidate his position as the leader of the Young Zhuang faction in the hearts of young people.

In addition to the military academy of Fengtian Lecture Hall, Zhao Dongyun also set up Jinzhou Middle School Hall and Fengtian University Hall, and the preparation of these three schools is the focus of Zhao Dongyun's education reform in Fengtian!