In the past few years, Duan Qirui's prestige was not bad, but later due to the failure of the struggle for right-wing control, the subsequent battle for the control of the second town was suppressed by Wang Yingkai, Feng Guozhang and others, in addition to the greater blow to him was Zhao Dongyun's self-proclaimed system, Duan Zhao Alliance split unexpectedly, he Duan Qirui was no longer strong in the ugly years, and it was not until the eve of the Russo-Japanese War that he mixed into a fourth town system.

In such a situation, no matter in terms of prestige and qualifications, he is naturally no longer comparable to Wang Yingkai!

Now he is not as high or low, his prestige is not as good as Wang Yingkai, his strength is not as good as Zhao Dongyun, and his attraction to talents is also not up or down, which is very embarrassing.

Maybe Zhao Dongyun saw his weakness, so he opened his mouth to ask for so many weapons! But can you not give it yourself? No!

Now is not the time to turn his face with Zhao Dongyun, now Duan Qirui still needs to unite with Zhao Dongyun, first destroy Wang Shizhen, Feng Guozhang and the Qing court, who are the biggest threat to everyone, and then it is the time for Wang Duan and Zhao to fight infighting, even if it is at that time, he Duan Qirui is not sure that he will turn his face with Zhao Dongyun, because if Wang Yingkai sits in the position of the lord of Beiyang, he will have to join forces with Zhao Dongyun to fight against Wang Yingkai.

For the sake of future planning, although he was dissatisfied with Duan Qirui, he still said: "Don't say it, I have my own decision on this matter, notify the Fuchang side, let them complete our first two batches of orders, and then rush to Fengsheng!" ”

Lu Yongxiang on the side was puzzled: "How can the number of the two batches of orders in front of this line not be much, and the amount required by Feng Province is so large, I'm afraid we won't be able to play in half a month, so won't we be able to get a single bullet at these times?" ”

Duan Qirui said: "Don't worry, Ziyang is also a person who cares about the overall situation, he must know it in his heart!" ”

As Duan Qirui guessed, Zhao Dongyun, who had just arrived at Shanhaiguan, got off the train, and saw Duan Qirui's callback, and he was smiling at this time: "Brother Zhiquan is still a sensible person, well, call back to Tangshan is that I am a little nervous about the finances of Fengzhou, and ask the fourth town if they can jointly invest in the purchase of this batch of ordnance and divide it equally, and then communicate with Baoding to allocate the output of Fuchang as soon as possible!" ”

There must be a distribution ratio, which not only takes into account the distribution of interests, but also takes into account the fact that any one of the joint operations must have ammunition.

After all, no one is stupid, Duan Qirui or Zhao Dongyun will not dare to monopolize the ordnance output of the Fu Factory at this juncture, everyone has to share it, otherwise the other two will not fight Feng Guozhang and Wang Shizhen, and they will join forces to kill you first!

The distribution of the ordnance output of the Fuchang is relatively simple, because Wang Yingkai's first town is to use the Japanese's 30-year-style rifle, so the 6.5 mm bullet production in the Fu Factory is naturally given to Wang Yingkai's family, and the remaining 7.92 mm bullets are Duan Qirui occupies forty percent, and Zhao Dongyun occupies sixty percent. After all, Duan Qirui only has a fourth town on hand, and Zhao Dongyun has three towns on his hand, so it's not good to have fewer bullets.

As for other rifles, artillery and even heavy machine guns and all kinds of shells, they are divided according to Wang Yingkai 30%, Duan Qirui 30%, and Zhao Dongyun 40%.

As for other troops, such as Zhang Huaizhi's Fifth Town, Wu Fengling's Second Town, don't want to get a bullet! If you want to get ammunition and weapons, you have to find another way, you can buy them from the above three people, or you can directly find foreign imports.

In fact, Zhao Dongyun, Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai, and even Feng Guozhang and Wang Shizhen of the Qing court all found foreign arms dealers and offered to buy a large number of ordnance, especially artillery.

In Shanhaiguan, where the third town had already gathered heavy troops, he had already seen Andre again in Zhao Dongyun's temporary headquarters.

"We still support the general's idea of buying heavy machine guns and artillery, as you know, general, in the past two years of war, our army has hoarded a large number of weapons and ammunition in the Far East, so it is not difficult for the general to buy ordnance, but the price is up!" Andrei said, then handed over a list.

Looking at this list, Zhao Dongyun frowned, this Russian is more ruthless than himself, and this price is not much lower than what he gave them back then!

The same MG01 heavy machine gun was at least twice as much planned from the Russians as it was from Fukuchang, and the Russians gave it second-hand goods that had been used during the Russo-Japanese War. The only advantage is to be able to give it directly to the spot, as long as there is enough money, the Russians will be able to pull out hundreds of active heavy machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition to him immediately.

Zhao Dongyun did not immediately agree to Andre, but found Zhao Dongping, and then said, "How did you talk to Ri' himself?" Is it possible to buy their artillery? ”

Zhao Dongping said: "I have already talked about it, the effect is not very small, and there are not many German-style tube retreat cannons in their hands, and their domestic imitation production is also relatively first, and they are not enough for their own use, and the only ones that can be sold to us are their 30-year-old guns, and the price is relatively expensive!" ”

The 75-mm field guns and mountain guns of the 30-year-old Japanese guns, that is, the guns purchased by Beiyang from the Japanese in those years, are old-fashioned rack-mounted guns, with a rate of fire of only three rounds per minute, and the only advantage is that they are cheap. However, now that I saw that the war in China had started, I immediately sat on the ground and raised the price, and the previous four or five thousand taels of silver for a cannon was now more than six thousand taels of silver!

"If this is placed in peacetime, a few thousand taels of silver can buy an advanced pipe retreat field artillery!" Zhao Dongping was also full of injustice: "All of them are like hungry wolves, they all want to bite us!" ”

Zhao Dongping complained, and then said: "What about the Russians, although their artillery is of a different caliber from ours, it should be able to be used!" ”

Zhao Dongyun also had a low face: "The price is not cheap!" ”

After that, he gave Zhao Dongping the price list on Andrei's newspaper, and Zhao Dongping frowned after reading it: "These old hairmen are too dark, and they cost five thousand taels to retire an old cannon!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said at the moment: "In this situation, it is normal for them to ask for a high price, but the artillery production on the Fuchang side is too low, and it is still three families, and we can't get a few guns a month from the Fuchang side. ”

"In this way, you go to Japan first to talk in person, and push the price down as much as possible, and if the price really can't be suppressed, buy the Russians!" Although Zhao Dongyun knew that it was not very useful to buy these old guns, but the advanced tube guns were not so easy to sell, in the past, the artillery purchased by Beiyang was imported from Germany, but now the 1903 75mm field gun on the German side has long been sold out of inventory, during the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese could have ordered hundreds of this artillery from the Germans in one go, plus orders from other countries, if you want to buy this artillery in the future, you will have to go next year at the earliest.

However, if it doesn't arrive until next year, the devil knows what the situation will be at that time.

When time waits for no one, Zhao Dongyun is naturally inclined to buy ready-made second-hand goods, the performance is worse, and it is more expensive than in the past, but it is better than nothing!

What's more, he is not the only one selling Japan's own ordnance, several other companies are rushing to buy Japan's old ordnance, Wang Yingkai is in one breath to Japan's himself ordered 10,000 30-year-old rifles and more than 30 30-year-old artillery, looking at his posture seems to be about to equip Japanese weapons to the end.

Also using Japanese weapons is the seventh town under Feng Guozhang's hands, the original Beijing Banner Standing Army is equipped with the same Japanese equipment as the first town, this time the battle situation is tense, Feng Guozhang also spent a lot of money from the Japanese himself to purchase arms.

It can be said that this is the real spring for the Japanese army, and the second-hand old 30-year-old rifles and 30-year-old guns can still be sold at these expensive prices, and they are still in short supply, which is a great thing for the Japanese army after the war, which is short of funds, and they can thus obtain valuable funds for replacing the new Type 38 rifles and Type 38 guns.

Relatively speaking, Russian ordnance is easier to buy, but this is mainly because the Russians and Zhao Dongyun have always had a good relationship, for the Russians, they still hope that Zhao Dongyun can live in the Guannai, and then control the Chinese situation, Zhao Dongyun has proved with reality in the past few years that he does not hesitate to sell national interests for his own power.

If Zhao Dongyun had taken control of China, maybe the Yellow Russia plan that Nicholas II muttered every day would have succeeded!

Otherwise, Russia is not on Japan's side, Russia has no plans for large-scale rearmament, their machine guns and artillery can continue to be used in World War I, but there is no surplus weapons to sell to those warlords in China.

Therefore, if Zhao Dongyun wants to buy ordnance from Russia, then he can only buy the Russian army's active weapons, especially heavy machine guns, which must be directly transferred from the Russian Far East troops.

Because of the outbreak of the Beiyang Civil War, the arms market in the Far East has just subsided for less than half a year, and it has once again become prosperous, and arms dealers from all over China are selling arms, and at this time, the Beiyang Civil War, which has been brewing for more than half a month, finally took place for the first exchange of fire.

On October 16, after Zhao Dongyun led the main force of the third town to arrive in the area of Jixian County, Duan Qirui's fourth town had also arrived in the area of Xianghe, and advanced in parallel with Zhao Dongyun's third town, one north and one south, and the next day the forward cavalry of the fourth town had a historical battle in Tongzhou and the sentinel of the seventh town on the periphery of the Beijing division.

Hundreds of cavalry on both sides made a tentative contact and then retreated, and that night Feng Guozhang was in Beijing to announce that the cavalry troops under his command had won a great victory, defeating more than 1,000 'rebels', Duan Qirui was also not to be outdone, claiming to have killed and wounded more than 1,000 'Feng Wang rebels', and achieved a great victory in Tongzhou!

In fact, in that tentative battle, the cavalry of both sides combined was only more than 300, the nearly 100 cavalry of the fourth town and the second cavalry battalion of the seventh town had a contact battle, the cavalry of the fourth town was hit by more than ten people, they took the initiative to retreat, and the cavalry of the seventh town did not dare to continue the pursuit after killing and wounding seven or eight people.

The reason why they exaggerated the battle situation and results was naturally to encourage the demand for morale, and no one dared to ask them to confirm the real situation of the battle results anyway.

If this tentative contact between the cavalry of the Fourth Town and the Seventh Town opened the prelude to this war, then the battle that broke out on October 19 between the First Cavalry Concord of Fengtian and the First Division of the Sixth Town led by Meng Enyuan means that this war has been officially staged!