This made it difficult for Wang Zhanyuan to refute, because everyone knew that although the Standing Army of the Beijing Banner was in the name of the flag man, but since the day the imperial court asked Yuan Shikai to help with the training, it had actually begun to have the surname Yuan.

However, Wang Zhanyuan also said: "Can Zengqi still let me wait to control the size of the Fengtian Patrol Battalion?" If so, I'd support it! But ......"

Any one followed by a but, Wang Zhanyuan stood up at this time and looked at Chen Guangyuan: "Brother Xiufeng, do you think this is possible?" ”

Chen Guangyuan glanced at Wang Zhanyuan, snorted coldly, and scolded in his heart: "Damn Wang Zichun, sooner or later one day will drive you out of the third town!" ”

Wang Zhanyuan was very low-key at the beginning of his arrival in the third town, but after half a year passed, he gradually made his voice heard after he stood firm, and he had already opposed Chen Guangyuan in many meetings.

At the beginning, he saw that Zhao Dongyun was not like Duan Qirui who killed people from other factions, and he had a great friendship with Cao Kun, so Cao Kun quietly expressed to Zhao Dongyun that I was here to mix qualifications, and I left in a year and a half, plus I have always been a member of the Shaozhuang faction, so I got along with Zhao Dongyun quite happily, and there were no big or small contradictions.

Of course, he was able to take root in the third town and was not driven away by Zhao Dongyun at the first time, the main reason is that although he is Wang Yingkai's person, he usually treats things from the perspective of the interests of the third town, and does not do some things outside the mouth.

This made Zhao Dongyun accept him and let him slowly integrate into the third town.

In addition, as one of the two major infantry commanders, any one of them and Chen Guangyuan is good, which means that the other person is bad, and the hostility between the two political factions naturally makes him and Chen Guangyuan a natural political opponent.

Wang Zhanyuan and Chen Guangyuan started up, and several other people naturally joined the debate, and at the same time, they also continued to propose other methods, such as Meng Enyuan's proposal to follow the previous method of misappropriating funds from the old army, and proposed to reorganize other old armies in Fengtian, so as to obtain funds, but this has to be agreed and supported by Zengqi, in fact, it is no different from letting Zengqi take the money directly, after all, the expenses of those old armies are the same as those given by Zengqi.

Hong Putao of the Quartermaster Department said that the salary, salary, and training intensity of the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion could be appropriately reduced, so that tens of thousands of dollars could be saved at once, but as soon as he said it, he was refuted by Meng Enyuan, and Chen Guangyuan and other commanders of the troops naturally did not like to start this, and now they are saying that the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion, if it is the turn of the third town in the future, they must not cry to death, so the reduction of salaries and the reduction of training intensity cannot be precedent.

The meeting was noisy for more than two hours, but I didn't come up with any good way, but fortunately, the third town now has a small treasury and has more profits from trade with Japan and Russia, so I don't have to worry too much about military spending for a while.

But Zhao Dongyun hasn't solved the funds needed for the expansion of the Jinzhou patrol battalion, but Zengqi has done a lot of things for him.

It is said that Zeng Qi has tried to run the Fengtian Standing Army in the past six months, but there are many difficulties, and when he sees Zhao Dongyun's Jinzhou patrol battalion, he can't help but have thoughts about this Jinzhou patrol battalion.

In mid-July, he told the imperial court that the Jinzhou patrol battalion was under the jurisdiction of Fengtian, and most of the expenses were also borne by Fengtian, and that the Jinzhou patrol battalion should be brought under the jurisdiction of the Shengjing General's Office.

At the same time, Zhao Dongyun, the general office, is also the commander of the third town, in order to reduce the burden and pressure on Zhao Dongyun's shoulders, he said that he can help manage the Jinzhou patrol battalion, and the old tune is repeated, once again to ask for the establishment of the Fengtian Standing Army, and this time it is to come up with a detailed plan, that is, with the Jinzhou patrol battalion and the Fengtian patrol battalion as the core, as long as they are integrated, they will be able to get tens of thousands of troops in a town.

At the same time, it also means that as long as the Fengtian Standing Army is established, the lack of military expenses of the original Jinzhou patrol battalion will also be solved by Fengtian independently.

Then he wrote a private letter to a few bigwigs in the court, saying that Fengtian already has a third town, and if Zhao Dongyun makes another Jinzhou mixed association, then Fengtian will probably become the Fengtian of Beiyang by then.

The imperial court was quite interested in Zengqi's proposal, they thought that anyway, the Jinzhou patrol battalion had been trained, and letting Zengqi take command would not affect the training of the troops, and after the integration of the two patrol battalions of Jinzhou and Fengtian, they would be able to get a new army in one town, and they would also be able to solve the thorny problem of military spending, which was a very attractive thing for the imperial court that was eager to organize and train the new army.

In addition to these apparent reasons, this move was also able to cut off one of Beiyang's outstretched hands to Mukden.

Although the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion is a private army made by Zhao Dongyun, it still has a great relationship with Yuan Shikai, and in the eyes of outsiders and even Beiyang insiders, this Jinzhou Patrol Battalion is a side army belonging to Beiyang.

Now Yuan Shikai's momentum has risen sharply, especially after the formation of the four towns of Beiyang, so that many Manchu nobles in the court feel quite complicated about this, on the one hand, they hope that Yuan Shikai will train more troops to defend the imperial court and control Gyeonggi, but on the other hand, they are also worried that Yuan Shikai will plot misdeeds after controlling more troops.

Although the argument of Yuan Shikai did not appear on the embankment, and many of the court's actions towards Yuan Shikai were still mainly supportive, but they also made a certain advance layout, such as the establishment of the training office, as Yuan Shikai promoted, but rather an attempt by the Qing court to concentrate the national army and weaken the military power of the Xinjiang ministers.

Of course, this kind of defense is impossible to be open and superficial, and the current Qing court is extremely dependent on Yuan Shikai, and it is impossible to make some public defense against Yuan Shikai.

Therefore, although the imperial court was very interested in Zengqi's proposal, it did not directly refuse or veto, but sent the document to the military training office, and the military training department came up with a handling charter.

And who is in charge of the current training office? Isn't it Yuan Shikai, so the imperial court asked the military training department to give an opinion on the surface, but in fact, it was to ask Yuan Shikai what he meant, can this Fengtian Standing Army do it or not? What if so? If you say that the Jinzhou patrol battalion is assigned to Fengtian's side, do you have any opinions?

Zeng Qi once again asked for the opening of the Fengtian Standing Army, if it was not a big deal at all in the past, and even Zeng Qi actually did not need the approval of the imperial court to open the Fengtian Standing Army, and afterwards told the court how many new troops I had trained, but the reason why he played openly was to take over the control of the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion, and use this as a shelf to set up the Fengtian Standing Army.

After hearing the news, Zhao Dongyun's face turned a little ugly, although the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion nominally belonged to the local troops of Fengtian, but everyone knew that this was his Zhao Dongyun's private troops, even Yuan Shikai admitted this, otherwise he would not approve the appointment of all the commanders of the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion First Mixed Association reported by Zhao Dongyun.

This is actually a manifestation of Yuan Shikai's admission that this army belongs to Zhao Dongyun's private army.

However, now Zengqi still dares to pay attention to his own private army!

"Does he think that all of us in the Third Town are easy to bully?" Zhao Dongyun hadn't gone crazy yet, and Chen Guangyuan on the side just shouted: "According to what I said, you don't need to give the old ghost any face, this time after Zhang Zuolin is served, we will also destroy Feng Delin when we turn around!" ”

Zhang Zuolin and Feng Delin he said are both officers and soldiers of the Fengtian Patrol Battalion, but since Zhao Dongyun publicly said that Zhang Zuolin robbed his own ordnance, Zhang Zuolin's department was expelled from the establishment of the Fengtian Patrol Battalion, but Feng Delin still wore the skin of the Fengtian Patrol Battalion.

Lin Yongquan on the side said: "This time Zengqi's abacus is loud, taking advantage of the shortage of food and salary in our Jinzhou patrol camp, and promising the court the benefits of expanding the new army to a town, it is normal for the court to be tempted!" ”

And Wang Zhanyuan said: "Hmph, what he thinks is beautiful, the Jinzhou patrol battalion is my Beiyang army no matter what, and he is not afraid of choking to death if he wants to swallow it!" ”

After these people spoke, they all looked at Zhao Dongyun: "My lord, what should we do now?" ”

Zhao Dongyun had already regained his previous anger at this time, and his face returned to calm, and he said indifferently: "What are you panicking about? ”

After Zhao Dongyun said this, he paused and said: "Put your mind at ease, as long as I am here, no one will want to take away our army, Zengqi can't do it, and the court can't do it!" ”

This kind of words may be similar to rebellion in other dynasties, but in the late Qing Dynasty, this kind of words were extremely normal in the mouths of feudal officials or army commanders, in the hearts of Chen Guangyuan, Wang Zhanyuan and others, Beiyang is Beiyang, the imperial court is the imperial court, and the two are not one.

Whether it is Zhao Dongyun or Chen Guangyuan or Lin Yongquan, their allegiance is not to Guangxu or Cixi in the Qing court, but to Yuan Shikai, and even Yuan Shikai is not, in fact, they are only loyal to the Beiyang system!

On the same day, Zhao Dongyun sent a telegram to the Beijing Military Training Office, and the telegram said a lot of nonsense about the training of the new army in Fengtian, and then inserted this sentence in the middle: In the year of Gengzi, there were more than 100,000 soldiers in the general's mansion, but they failed to stop the Russian soldiers from inquiring about the month......

This is almost a naked saying that Zengqi is mediocre and incompetent, and he can't train his troops with soldiers, and if he hands over more than 5,000 new troops from the Jinzhou patrol battalion to Zengqi, I'm afraid it will be a repeat of Gengzi's previous events!

Zhao Dongyun's telegram would not be a surprise, and his opposition was expected by everyone, so it did not cause much turmoil.

In fact, people are more concerned about Yuan Shikai's reaction!

On July 18, Yuan Shikai replied to the edict: Fengtian should be reluctant to train the army, but the Jin battalion has more direct soldiers, and the Fengying camp has more soldiers, and the two battalions are afraid that the habits are not compatible.

As soon as these words came out, many bigwigs in the imperial court couldn't smile bitterly, that Yuan Shikai was arrogant, he didn't talk about military spending, he didn't talk about politics, let alone any officers, training and other issues, he just said that he was worried that after the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion and the Fengtian Patrol Battalion were integrated, I am afraid that the soldiers on both sides have different living habits, they can't eat well, and they can't sleep well......

This is pure!