Long before Zhao Dongyun led the troops south, Zhao E, the magistrate of Guangzong County, Shunde Prefecture, He Yongsheng, the chief soldier of Daming Town, and Dong Lugao, the chief soldier of Zhengding Town, had already sent training troops to forcibly attack Dongzhao Village in Guangzong County, that is, Jing Tingbin's base camp.

On March 3, a large number of training troops in the Qing army attacked Dongzhao Village, which officially opened the military confrontation of Guangzong's rebellion! Jing Tingbin did not resist stubbornly, but immediately fled with his backbone after seeing that the situation was not good. On the surface of this battle, the Qing army won a great victory, but in fact did not succeed in encircling and suppressing Jing Tingbin, but was escaped by him, from the perspective of suppressing the rebellion, this battle was a complete failure, thousands of training troops surrounded only a few hundred bandits to fight, and even able to let most of the bandits escape, which shows how poor the combat effectiveness of the training army at the end of the Qing Dynasty.

After escaping, Jing Tingbin was naturally unwilling to fail, and soon played various banners to call on people from all walks of life, not only the ruffians and hooligans of the Lianzhuang Society, but also the so-called Jianghu dart masters and martial artists, not to mention the group of senior brothers of the Boxers who pretended to be gods and ghosts!

Jing Tingbin, who gathered thousands of men, led his rebel army and the Qing court training army to fight each other for several rounds, although it was only a small-scale battle, but the local training army actually had many defeats, and there were as many as 100 casualties before and after.

At this time, it finally attracted Yuan Shikai's attention!

Yuan Shikai naturally knew that those military training were useless, and it was okay to let them bully and bully the unarmed people, but it was really difficult for them to quell the riots of the bandits.

Therefore, Yuan Shikai immediately dispatched the new army to the south, preparing to use the new army to completely defeat Jing Tingbin, so that Zhao Dongyun had the opportunity to lead his troops south.

On the evening of 12 March, a group of people appeared in Shijiazhuang, a small mountain village under Zhili Houlu County, which was usually not seen, that is, a group of soldiers wearing blue-gray military uniforms and carrying new-style fast robbers.

If you walk in, you will find that these soldiers are completely different from the ordinary Qing army, you can't see the usual style of the Qing soldiers, and they wear clothes and even march in columns like the soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance, who are directly subordinate to the Gengzi year, and people who don't know the Qing Dynasty may think that they are the Japanese army or the French Vietnamese colonial troops, of course, they are more likely to mistake them for the Hua Yong Battalion of the British Army or the Hong Kong Army.

The Qing army that can be mistaken for a foreign army is only the Beiyang New Army under Yuan Shikai.

The one in front of them is one of the Beiyang New Army, the second battalion of the Wuwei Right Army and the new machine gun battalion, they first took the train south from Baoding under the leadership of Zhao Dongyun, but now the Jinghan Railway has not been completely completed and opened to traffic, so they can only sit for a while, and they were forced to get off when they were more than ten miles north of Shijiazhuang, but Tongguò continued to walk south.

In the army, Zhao Dongyun was still riding his white high-headed horse, wearing a striking military uniform, with a Western-style command knife hanging from his waist, looking up at the sky, Zhao Dongyun said to Li Zejun beside him: "Pass the order, camp here tonight!" ”

"The ministry commands!" After Li Zejun received the order, he directly arranged the camp affairs.

Zhao Dongyun nodded, he was still dissatisfied with Li Zejun before, thinking that he had only gotten the position of assistant through the back door, and Zhao Dongyun was not very at ease with him in the past few months, and many things were not handed over to him. But since he led the army south, he needed to manage more than 2,000 people under his command, and it was impossible to grasp all the things of the second battalion as usual, so he had to let Li Zejun handle the relevant camp affairs.

However, what surprised him was that although this Li Zejun was young and had no previous experience, he was very handy in handling camp affairs, especially in logistics affairs, so that Zhao Dongyun couldn't find any mistakes. This also made Zhao Dongyun change his initial opinion, feeling that although this person is younger, he still has ability.

In doing so, he also entrusted him with more of the camp work, so that he could free himself from the clutter of the camp and focus on the upcoming counterinsurgency.

Shijiazhuang in 1902, just a small village, thanks to the blessing of the Jinghan Railway, this Shijiazhuang ushered in the opportunity to develop into a city, now Shijiazhuang is building a large number of civil works, not only is building a large-scale railway, but also building a railway station, but this railway station is not called Shijiazhuang Station, but is called Zhentou Station. Because Shijiazhuang at this time was just a small village with no name, people used the more famous Zhentou Town not far away as the station name.

Now Shijiazhuang is still a small village mainly based on construction sites, and now nearly 2,000 soldiers have poured in at once, which has made this place lively, and there are soldiers in military uniforms everywhere.

In the courtyard of a farmhouse in Shijiazhuang, Zhao Dongyun stood with Lin Yongquan, Li Zejun and others, Li Zejun said: "This place is a bit biased, and I can't find any yard for a while, so I can only grieve my lord to live here tonight!" ”

Zhao Dongyun waved his hand disappreciatively: "I'm waiting for the march to be outside, if we have to live well and eat well, then we don't have to march to fight!" ”

But after saying this, Zhao Dongyun said again: "But the place where the brothers sleep at night must be arranged, I don't want to get up tomorrow and see a brother sleeping on the street!" ”

Zhao Dongyun is not a selfless person, and he doesn't think that letting his soldiers sleep on the street can help him gain any popular hearts or anything like that, to be honest, he doesn't care about any popular will, what he cares about is the military heart.

Li Zejun said: "Adults are too worried, we have already arranged for people to live in people's homes, but this small place can't arrange too many people, so most of them still have to live in tents!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded and said: "Well, but I also want to warn the brothers not to disturb the people, if there is any act of disturbing the people, it will definitely be done by military law!" ”

This time, Li Zejun hadn't opened his mouth yet, and Lin Yongquan next to him said: "Brothers, we all know the seriousness of the matter, and besides, we are a new army, and we are not the group of guys who train the army, so we won't be stupid!" ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't answer his words, but continued: "Just now, Shunde Mansion sent someone here, saying that since the Guangzong Rebellion in Shunde Mansion, there have been traces of Lianzhuang Association and boxers in Nanhe, Pingxiang, Julu, Weixian and other prefectures and counties, and the momentum is not small. Among them, the momentum of Nanhe County is not much smaller than that of Guangzong County, and Hu Jingfang of the Nanhe County Lianzhuang Association teamed up with the demon monk Cijing and a group of boxer remnants to follow Guangzong's plot. This time we go south, I am afraid that we will not only face hundreds of bewitched villagers in the end, but also tens of thousands of rebels! ”

Hearing Zhao Dongyun say this, several people next to him were all gloomy, and Li Zejun said: "I didn't expect that these bandits have developed so fast, it has not been half a month before and after, they are estimated to have several thousand, if they are allowed to make trouble again, it is estimated that they will be able to develop to more than 50,000 people in a few months!" ”

Lin Yongquan also said: "If it was just an ordinary bandit, the boss wouldn't have sent us!" ”

Li Zejun said: "What means did those boxers rely on to be able to bewitch thousands of villagers in such a short period of time? ”

Lin Yongquan said: "It's nothing more than fairies and ghosts, invulnerable, don't you know, in the first two years, those boxers used fairies and ghosts to pull up countless people in a few months, when we were in Shandong, but we killed countless boxers, and now it's just a few thousand people." ”

Zhao Dongyun did not listen to their conversation, but was already pondering in his heart what he should do next, this time his main task of going south was to quell the Guangzong rebellion. However, he was not the only one who went south to deal with this matter, but also He Yongsheng, the chief soldier of Daming Town, and Dong Lugao, the chief soldier of Zhengding Town, in addition, the Ziqiang Army and the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army in Shandong also began to mobilize, preparing to send people to participate in the counterinsurgency.

In the face of a small rebellion, why are so many troops in the Beiyang Army system dispatched? And all of them are still very active, and the biggest reason for this is probably that they are all like Zhao Dongyun, who want to take advantage of this rebellion to gain a higher level.

After all, Zhao Dongyun is not the only one who knows that quelling this rebellion is an action with little risk and big gains, and a group of people want to make meritorious contributions to it!

So whether or not this rebellion can be quelled is not the key to the problem, the key is how to get enough credit for yourself from this rebellion!

"By the way, where is the head office now?" The general office in Zhao Dongyun's mouth refers to Duan Qirui, because Duan Qirui is now also the general office of each school of the Wuwei Right Army.

Li Zejun said: "Now that the general office has arrived at Zhengdingguan, it is expected that it will go south to Shunde Mansion in the near future!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "In this way, when the time comes, there will not only be thousands of training troops from Zhengding and Daimyo in Shunde Mansion, but also a new army led by the head of the general office!" ”

"According to these troops, it is estimated that the rebels will not be able to advance westward, since we don't need to rush south to Shunde Mansion, we will change the route to the south!"

Suddenly hearing Zhao Dongyun say that he would also change the route of the march, Li Zejun was puzzled: "Don't go to Shunde Mansion?" So which way do we go south? ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "We bypassed Shunde Mansion, directly turned to the southeast, passed through Zhaozhou and Ningjin, and went straight to Julu, suppressing the mob in the area south of Julu, and at the same time sending another section to bypass Nangong County, Yizhou, to prevent the bandits from fleeing eastward!" After the army arrives at Julu, continue to move south and clear out the Guangzong bandits in one fell swoop! ”

Zhao Dongyun's combat intentions actually have nothing to do with military affairs, because this counterinsurgency will win no matter how it is fought, and the key to the problem is how to win in order to bring him the greatest benefits.

And Zhao Dongyun's plan is obviously to throw aside a group of people in Shunde Mansion, and then lead the army to quell the rebellion!

Lin Yongquan and Li Zejun are not stupid people, and they heard the deep meaning of Zhao Dongyun's words as soon as they heard it, that is, they wanted to take over the credit.

As Zhao Dongyun's subordinates, Zhao Dongyun's meritorious service is equivalent to their meritorious service, so they naturally hope to take the credit for counterinsurgency, but they are also a little worried.

"If we do this, will Shunde Mansion blame it?" Lin Yongquan said with a worried face.

Zhao Dongyun didn't care: "Now there is only the training army in Shunde Mansion, do you want us to cooperate with the training army to fight, and when he came, Shangfeng didn't say that he must let us go south by Shunde, I received the order to go south, as for where to go south, they didn't say!" ”

In the face of Zhao Dongyun's words, Lin Yongquan and Li Zejun already knew that Zhao Dongyun had already made up his mind to monopolize the military merit regardless of the face of many colleagues. However, they said anything against it, because for them, even if they blame it, they will blame Zhao Dongyun first, as the so-called sky falls and there are tall people staring, as long as Zhao Dongyun is okay, then they will be fine.

Besides, they are Zhao Dongyun's subordinates. Zhao Dongyun's meritorious service is actually equivalent to their meritorious service, they want to get credit like Zhao Dongyun, and now is the opportunity to grab the credit, and if they are slow, they will not have it.

Immediately, Lin Yongquan said: "Since the superintendent has made a decision, then I will go down and make arrangements!" ”

Li Zejun also looked at Lin Yongquan, and then at Zhao Dongyun, he didn't know what he was thinking in his heart, and after Lin Yongquan's words were finished, he also said: "I'll go and arrange the foot camp!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "Let's go, early tomorrow morning, we will set off!" ”