In order to curb Russia's global expansion, Britain has forced China from beginning to end to maintain a tough diplomatic attitude toward Russia, and absolutely cannot accept any Russian demands on the three northeastern provinces, otherwise Russia will not attack China, and the Anglo-Japanese coalition forces will have to land in Tianjin.

In addition, it also forced China to maintain neutrality with a tough attitude, which was because they considered that once China joined the war, it would lead to the expansion of the war and trigger a large-scale southward movement of Russia, and if the Russians invaded China from Mongolia, Northwest China and other places, Britain, Japan, the United States and other countries agreed that China would not be able to resist the Russian offensive, and that it would lead Russia to annex a large number of China's northern territories and expand the war.

Almost from beginning to end, in the situation in the Northeast, neither China nor Japan actually had no right to choose, Japan was pushed to the battlefield by Britain, and China was forced by Britain to take out the Northeast as a prize for the victory of the war.

So while the people of Northeast China fled the war zone with their families to escape the war, the gentlemen of London smoked cigars and drank afternoon tea, and occasionally discussed the war in the Far East in the newspapers.

Today, in 1904, there are not many people who can see these things through, even Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong, at most, they only see the edge of the essence of some things, and they are still far away from the core, as for those who shout every day to enter the Northeast, most of them are people who have not even heard the term 'global strategy'.

It is an extravagant thing for the citizens of a semi-colonial country to consider what a global strategy is!

However, there is nothing that does not understand the essence of the matter, most people still know that other countries are fighting wars in their own land, and it is a humiliating thing that they are forced to declare neutrality!

Therefore, after 1904, under the impetus of the military training department, the provinces of China began to rise the trend of extensive training of the new army, although most of them were not very concerned, and many simply replaced the old army with the signboard of the new army, after all, not every province governor wanted Yuan Shikai to be like this, with a natural backbone, thinking about expanding armaments and rebellion every day, and many governors were thinking about embezzling tens of millions of taels of silver and were unwilling to train a town of new army.

In terms of the finances of the provinces at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it may be difficult to train more new troops, but if you think of Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, which are rich provinces, to be honest, there is no big problem in training three or five towns, but now, only Hubei, which is under the administration of Zhang Zhidong, has trained a large-scale new army in the southern provinces, and the new army in other places can be directly ignored.

However, in the Northeast, especially in Fengtian, it is different, Zengqi was stimulated by the relatively successful training of the Jinzhou patrol battalion last year and the Fengtian patrol battalion at the beginning of the year, and the success of the formation of these two patrol battalions also saved a lot of Zengqi's political prestige, and many ministers of the imperial court did not accuse Zengqi of losing Fengtian in the year of Gengzi, but occasionally praised him for his success in training.

Under this background, and the situation in the northeast is really tense, Japan and Russia are fighting on the side, and on the one hand, Zengqi is negotiating with the two sides to detect war refugees, and at the same time, he is trying to further reorganize the old army of Mukden and train the new army, so as to strengthen his own control over the prefectures and counties, so as to ensure the smooth implementation of armed neutrality.

"Now Fengtian is saying every day that they want to train a standing army, according to me, if nothing else, they should be able to train it, but if they want to train a standing army, they naturally can't do without us, but I don't know how many opportunities our third town can get from it?" Chen Guangyuan and Meng Enyuan talked in a low voice as they went to the south courtyard of the Li Family Manor, that is, the headquarters of the third town.

Meng Enyuan said: "According to the meaning of Fengtian, it is to reorganize the Fengtian patrol battalion and the Jinzhou patrol battalion together, and then go over a standing army, but this is too difficult, the Jinzhou patrol battalion on our side is better, but the Fengtian patrol battalion on Zengqi's side is not a good thing, there are bandits mixed in it, and most of them are old troops, and they are not reorganized after this formation, this is still the old army and bandits in the bones, it would be strange if it could be trained into a new army!" ”

Chen Guangyuan also said: "Speaking of this patrol battalion, it is better than the Jinzhou patrol battalion on our side, although the two cavalry battalions are looser, but in the past half a year, we have also transferred a lot of people to training and training, which can be regarded as suppressing the previous kind of banditry, and that Lu Chengtong is also a character, and he is very good at boosting morale!" ”

The Lu Chengtong in Chen Guangyuan's mouth is Lu Shuanggun, this Lu Chengtong is his official name, and Lu Shuanggun is the nickname of the green forest!

"Hmph, it's not easy for us to train the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion with a thousand people, if we hand it over so lightly to train the Fengtian Standing Army, then wouldn't our efforts for most of the past six months be in vain!"

Meng Enyuan said: "I don't dare to say anything else, but our lord will never be able to tolerate this kind of thing!" ”

What he said is not wrong, at this moment Zhao Dongyun is writing a letter to Yuan Shikai, the content of the letter is to refute the so-called Fengtian standing army plan proposed by Zeng Qi, saying that the Jinzhou patrol battalion and the Fengtian patrol battalion are different, the Fengtian patrol battalion is a mixture of officials and bandits, and the combat power is no different from the old army, and the Jinzhou patrol battalion is a new training of the post department for half a year, even if the combat power is not as good as the third town, but it can barely stand, and it will take time for the two to be reorganized to get the standing army, but our Jinzhou has lost more than 2,000 combat strength.

There are two battalions of infantry troops, one battalion of artillery and two cavalry teams in the Jinzhou patrol battalion, and the total strength has reached more than 2,000 people.

Although the overall training is not as good as that of the Third Town, the establishment, equipment and even training are all real Beiyang New Army, but it lacks the name of the Beiyang Standing Army.

This army is actually equivalent to the supernumerary troops of the Beiyang Standing Army, which is very similar to the self-improvement army and the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army in the Beiyang system.

Therefore, Zengqi wants to combine the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion and the Fengtian Patrol Battalion into the Fengtian Standing Army, unless Zengqi is willing to hand over this future Fengtian Standing Army to Zhao Dongyun for supervision, otherwise don't want to take the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion, don't say that Zhao Dongyun does not agree, and Yuan Shikai does not agree.

Chen Guangyuan and Meng Enyuan also knew this, so they didn't have much worry between words!

Even after meeting Zhao Dongyun, Chen Guangyuan even said: "Now there are only two infantry battalions in the Jinzhou patrol battalion, according to my opinion, it is still a little less, do you think you will make another infantry battalion?" ”

Zhao Dongyun frowned slightly when he heard this: "It would naturally be good if this could be done, but in recent months, we have spent a lot of money on mortars and heavy machine guns, and Baoding and the imperial court have not given us the money to equip mortars, so we have to raise everything ourselves." Now it is not easy to come up with money to expand the Jinzhou patrol battalion! ”

Chen Guangyuan said: "What about Fengtian, can you get some from there?" ”

There is no need for Zhao Dongyun to say, Meng Enyuan said: "Now that Zengqi wants to train the Fengtian Standing Army, and there will be money for us, he can't even think of giving these current defense fees!" ”

Chen Guangyuan looked at Zhao Dongyun, and then said tentatively: "My lord, why don't we go and take Zhang Zuolin and Feng Delin again?" ”

Zhao Dongyun was quite speechless when he heard this, several of his subordinates were addicted to the bandits, this had just killed Du Lisan, and by the way, he had blackmailed Feng Delin for 100,000 taels of silver for less than a month, so he wanted to repeat his old tricks to make money from the bandits, and he didn't want to think that the money of those bandits did not fall from the sky, especially Zhang Zuolin and Feng Delin, who were armed with bandits who were on a large scale and relied on operating base areas to obtain income, it was not easy for people to make money, and the 100,000 taels of silver sent by Feng Delin in front of him were estimated to have hollowed out his family funds over the years. Zhang Zuolin's side is better, and it is estimated that there are still tens of thousands of taels of silver left.

Now, even if they are destroyed in the past, it is estimated that they will not be able to turn over 350,000 taels of silver!

Besides, people have already accepted the appeasement, okay, with the name of the Fengtian Patrol Battalion on their heads, they can be regarded as officers and soldiers, and then they will fight directly as before, and they probably don't know what to do!

He Zhao Dongyun is not without money in his hands, in fact, he earned a lot from suppressing bandits in the early stage, and because of the expansion of the third town, he got hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from Baoding and the household department of the imperial court, but the expansion of the third town is too expensive, especially in order to improve the combat effectiveness of the troops, Zhao Dongyun let the troops carry out intensive live-fire training, and the bullets and shells fired out by those training will cost money.

And this part of the money Yuan Shikai and the imperial court will not give you, they only give a fixed share of military expenses, which is only enough for daily needs, but if you want to strengthen the food of the troops, you have to make additional money for the live-fire training of the troops.

In particular, the third town is privately equipped with a large number of mortars, although this mortar is said to be cheap artillery, but it can't stand hundreds of equipment, Zhao Dongyun has spent most of the money from the bandits on mortars recently.

Even if there are two or three hundred thousand taels of silver in the small treasury of the third town, but it is not money that can be spent indiscriminately, but the last family fund of the third town, and it must be kept as a precautionary measure, if there are no two or three hundred thousand taels of silver in the small treasury, if Yuan Shikai and the imperial court do not give him Yuan Shikai funds one day or delay it for a few months, he Zhao Dongyun's third town will not cause any trouble because of arrears.

And if necessary, you can also come up with your own extraction fee to maintain the battle!

In short, these 300,000 taels of silver are the family funds that the third town must hold at ordinary times, and it is impossible to spend the life-saving money at critical moments.

So if you want to expand the army, you have to find additional money!