On the other hand, Wang Yingkai, what do you think he had before October last year? If you blow the sky, there is only one first town in your hand, and if you simply talk about military strength, Zhao Dongyun at the beginning could overthrow him with one hand, but since Wang Yingkai stepped into Beijing one step ahead of Zhao Dongyun, and then destroyed the Manchu Qing Dynasty and regarded himself as the founder of the republic, coupled with his original prestige as the boss of the first echelon of Beiyang, it made him the nominal boss of contemporary Beiyang, which allowed him to attract many staff talents in the Yuan Shikai era, and even united Duan Qirui and Wang Shizhen, Zhang Huaizhi and Wang Ruxian. Make a coalition to fight Zhao Dongyun in the ring.

Zhao Dongyun was extremely passive at the beginning, and was even forced to fight against other warlords in Beiyang alone and seize Gyeonggi by force, but it coincided with the establishment of the Southern Federation, which eased the contradictions between the warlords in Beiyang.

But at that time, Wang Yingkai's status was already difficult to shake, no matter whether Zhao Dongyun admitted it or not, anyway, others thought that Wang Yingkai was already the contemporary boss of Beiyang and the heir of Yuan Shikai.

Judging from the development trajectory of Wang Yingkai and Zhao Dongyun mentioned above, it can be clearly seen that in addition to holding strong military strength in these years, the warlords actually have a very important prestige, and it can even be said that their importance is not weaker than that of the army.

Obviously, in the hearts of the Chinese people in 1907, it was not he Zhao Dongyun who could lead China to unify and rise, but one of Zhang Zhidong and Wang Yingkai.

In this case, it is no wonder that those international students choose to join others.

After Yang Deming received Li Xiang and them, he did not stay too much in Hong Kong, but took a passenger ferry north the next day, and arrived at Lushun, the second public and free port in contemporary China in addition to Shanghai.

On April 24, when Shenyang toured the embassy, Zhao Dongyun personally met with these military talents who had returned to China and had not even had time to return home.

"You have worked hard all the way, I welcome you to Shenyang on behalf of more than 100,000 soldiers from the three eastern provinces, I believe that as long as you work together, the country will prosper and the rise of the nation will be just around the corner!"

At the reception banquet, Zhao Dongyun did not hide his attention to these talents, especially to Li Xiang and Yi Liangxu, the two juniors.

The reason why Zhao Dongyun attaches importance to them is very simple: they are the only few modern military talents in contemporary China, and they are also high-end military talents. There are many military academies and international students in contemporary China, such as the Beiyang Military Academy, the former Fengtian Military Academy, and the Army Military Academy of the three eastern provinces. There are also many well-known Japanese and foreign students from several military academies in Germany, but all of the above military academies are military academies with the goal of training grassroots officers, and the officers who have been trained are all officers at the platoon and company levels.

As for the fact that some of the officers trained by these low-level military academies will grow into famous generals, military strategists and the like in the future, the chances are too small and unreliable, Zhao Dongyun can't expect to use the way of big waves and sand and then pick out generals and handsome talents from tens of thousands of basic officers, otherwise it will take time to precipitate, maybe these basic officers today can also emerge dozens of famous people in the future, but Zhao Dongyun can wait for decades.

An army needs high-end talents at the strategic level, and relying on time to precipitate is unrealistic for the current Zhao Dongyun, as for the existing talent pool, especially in the group of senior generals, it is really not good to be honest.

Although Chen Guangyuan, Meng Enyuan, and Cao Kun were all famous warlords and generals in later generations, to be honest, their modern military qualities are quite ordinary, and it is not a big problem for you to let them lead a division to fight, but it is really difficult for them to undertake the construction of the entire army, shoulder the strategic command of the whole army, and most importantly, specialize in the study and development of various new tactics.

These jobs have always been carried by Zhao Dongyun before, and others really can't do this, and later after Yang Deming returned to China, plus Fang Biyong was also diligent and studious, which shared part of Zhao Dongyun's work in this area.

There is no existing talent pool, and it is not feasible to rely on time precipitation, so the only feasible way is to directly obtain talents who have experienced the training of high-level military academies, such as graduates of high-end colleges and universities such as Japan and Berlin Military Academy in Germany, not to mention whether the talents who graduated from these military academies will become famous generals, Zhao Dongyun did not expect a few of them to be famous generals, but what people have learned in school for a few years is not something that those Lu Shisheng can compare.

What did you Lu Shisheng study? Platoon-level tactics that teach you how to line up and how to charge to conquer enemy machine gun fortresses. And what did Lu Dasheng learn? The national defense economy, strategic command, and cutting-edge military theories are not at the same level at all, and they are not comparable.

Zhao Dongyun assured that except for Yang Deming and Li Xiang, who were under him, no one said what the national defense economy was, except for those who had attended their own advanced courses over the years, more than 90% of the domestic officers could not even say a reason for the theory of elastic defense, at least more than 50% of the officers did not even know how to arrange machine gun cross defense, and it just emerged after the Russo-Japanese War. The infiltration tactics developed in order to deal with trench tactics are probably not many people have heard of this term.

The contemporary Chinese army is composed of a group of illiterate people and a group of low-level officers who only know how to tactics at the company and platoon levels!

Well, the Chinese army mentioned also includes the Feng army under Zhao Dongyun, although the Feng army has more cannons and machine guns than other warlords in China, but there is no essential difference between them, and there is still 108,000 miles away from the modern army in Zhao Dongyun's mind, and to improve this situation, it is unreliable to rely on the so-called historical famous generals and the like, and it is even more unreliable to rely on beliefs, parties, etc., and it is necessary to have real modern high-end military personnel to do it, which is possible.

How many people in contemporary China have a high-end military education and understand these things? Well, to put it mildly, including Zhao Dongyun himself, there are only four of us here today.

Zhao Dongyun himself is actually half a bucket of water, with empty memories of the original body, but his understanding of military affairs is not as good as that of many professional officers, he only has the memory of the original body and later generations, and when he was studying at the Berlin Military Academy, he did not have the opportunity to enter the German Army Staff to serve, but to practice in the field army.

However, the next four batches of students under Yuan Shikai's arrangement could not only go to the field troops for internships, but also to the German General Staff.

With these experiences, Zhao Dongyun is looking forward to them even more!

Zhao Dongyun didn't expect Yang Deming, Li Xiang, and Yi Liangxu to become some peerless generals, and it was estimated that there was no possibility, and even he was not ready to let them lead troops to the battlefield in a short period of time, what he expected was that after they were enriched to the headquarters, they would use the knowledge they had learned in Germany to help Zhao Dongyun build a modern army.

The next day, Zhao Dongyun announced that Li Xiang and Yi Liangxu would be appointed lieutenant colonels, and that Li Xiang would be appointed director of the Strategic Division of the General Staff Department and concurrently an instructor of the Army Military Academy of the three eastern provinces, and that Yi Liangxu would be appointed director of the ammunition supply department of the Quartermaster Department, and that he would also serve as an instructor at the Army Military Academy of the three eastern provinces.

For their appointment, Zhao Dongyun has detailed considerations, among which Li Xiang is mainly attacking the national defense economy and playing the national strategy, so it is most suitable to arrange him to be the director of the strategic department, and Yi Liangxu is mainly engaged in logistics, and he is also slightly involved in artillery, so Zhao Dongyun first asked him to serve in the quartermaster department, ready to let him help get a modern logistics supply system, don't appear last year's Tongzhou Campaign, the front line was waiting for mortar shells, but the grenades were sent, The artillery battalion asked for grenades and sent grenades, but it was an embarrassing situation of grenades!

As for serving in the military academies of the three eastern provinces, this is a common phenomenon in the Soviet Union, due to the shortage of teachers in the army military academies of the three eastern provinces, and the increasing scale of enrollment, most of the lecturers are active middle and senior officers in the army, mainly returning international students, and even Zhao Dongyun himself is now also serving as the principal, and he will regularly give lectures to the advanced training class every month, and others can not stay out of the matter.

And several other students who returned to China to study in Germany did not fall behind, and they were as cold and warm as they were at the reception banquet, and the follow-up appointments were also relatively generous, and the two people were arranged by him to serve as second-class staff officers in the combat department, while the other one who studied cavalry was arranged to serve in the cavalry department, and was uniformly awarded the rank of major.

In fact, Zhao Dongyun's arrangements for these students studying in Germany are quite low-key, and Chen Fenglan, who returned to China with Li Xiang and them, and went to Wuhan to defect to Zhang Zhidong, before he arrived in Wuhan, Zhang Zhidong appointed him to the Military Orders Department of the Federal Imperial War Department, with the rank of colonel, and within two months after going to Wuhan, he was transferred to the General Office of the Military Orders Department, with the rank of major general, which was promoted faster than riding a rocket.

With the addition of a few more talents under their subordinates, many staff officers in the General Staff finally launched the so-called modern army building plan, and compiled and popularized the second version of the infantry drill code, requiring the whole army to train in accordance with the improved infantry drill code.

The infantry drill code is the first version of the improvement in 1903, mainly with reference to the latest version of the infantry drill code of the contemporary Japanese and German armies, the infantry drill code of the Japanese side has changed greatly after the Russo-Japanese War, and at the end of last year a new infantry drill code was launched, and the German side according to Li Xiang's description is also, the German army is also learning from some examples of the Russo-Japanese War period to improve the existing infantry tactics.

Zhao Dongyun, who has always taken keeping up with the trend of the times as his own responsibility, naturally will not slow down the pace, and after seeing that the Japanese and the Germans changed the infantry drill code, he also ordered the staff to re-improve the existing infantry drill code, and finally combined with the Fengtian Army's own situation and the improvement of the Japanese army and the German army, he made this second version, and prepared to promote it to the whole army.

In addition to continuing to emphasize the defensive role of heavy machine guns and trenches as in the previous edition, this infantry code also adds many tactical applications of mortars and light machine guns, and also emphasizes the concept of roundabout attacks.

If you don't consider anything else, if you just look at this infantry drill code, then you will find that in fact, many of the tactics used in this infantry drill code that Zhao Dongyun and a large group of staff officers have actually been widely used by various countries in the twenties and thirties.

If the first edition of the infantry drill was inclined to defense, then now the second version of the infantry drill is more inclined to attack, well, this attack is not a frontal attack, but a roundabout attack, which was actually reflected in last year's Tongzhou Campaign.

Gu Lanyu, who led the Sixth Brigade at the beginning, led his troops to boldly adopt roundabout offensive tactics and use mortars and light machine guns to attack the enemy's flank, and finally caused the enemy's entire Tongzhou defense line to collapse, thus enabling the Feng army to conquer Tongzhou in one fell swoop.

Now, what Zhao Dongyun and they have to do is to continue to strengthen this concept and adjust the construction of the army according to this tactical concept; for this reason, in order to solve the problem of insufficient firepower when the troops attack in a roundabout way, Zhao Dongyun once again increased the number of light machine guns and 60-millimeter mortars.