When Zhou Haijing embarked on the road north to Huzhou, trying to find a way out of the imperial examination for himself, the Yongying camp in Yuyao County, at the gate of Shangyu City, Shaoxing, continued to recruit soldiers.

Xu Yanqing personally sat in charge of the recruitment of the Yu battalion in Shangyu County, and when he left Huzhou, although Lin Zhe had not said it clearly, Xu Yanqing knew that he was already the commander of the Third Infantry Regiment, and the soldiers recruited now were the soldiers of his Third Infantry Regiment, how could he not care.

Since rushing back to Yuyao, Xu Yanqing first integrated the more than 300 soldiers that had been scattered for the rest of the month before, and then sent them to Huzhou, these soldiers were mainly used to supplement the shortage of the existing troops in the Yongying Battalion in Yuyao County, and then he also needed to recruit at least 800 recruits.

However, as Lin Zhe said, after several rounds of recruitment in Yuyao County's Yongying camp, there are currently very few qualified soldiers in Yuyao County, which does not mean that there are fewer people in Yuyao County who can be soldiers, in fact, the population of Yuyao County is still relatively large.

The key is that the Yuyao County Yongying has relatively high requirements for recruits, in addition to having high requirements for physical conditions, it also requires that they must be from good families, and recruits must be guaranteed by the local village head Baojia and the like before they can be recruited.

Such high requirements also cause the proportion of qualified soldiers to be relatively small relative to the number of local population, and it is not that every qualified soldier will choose to be a soldier, after all, to Yuyao County Yongying is not to be an ordinary township warrior to protect the armor, but really to go into battle to fight, and fighting will inevitably lead to death and injury.

Since the Yongying of Yuyao County went north to fight with the Taiping Army, the cumulative casualties have exceeded 500, and the vast majority of these 500 people are from Yuyao County.

Due to the lack of qualified soldiers, after Xu Yanqing returned to Yuyao, he immediately followed Lin Zhe's instructions and began to expand the scope of conscription to the entire Shaoxing Prefecture, and the first choice was Shangyu County, which is next door to Yuyao.

In order to recruit enough soldiers, Xu Yanqing not only personally sat at the recruitment point in Shangyu County, but also sent a large number of personnel to the villages to publicize, and in addition to publicizing the preferential treatment of the Yuyao County Yongying, he also continued to publicize the great achievements of the Yuyao County Yongying, saying that the Yuyao County Yongying has always won battles and has never been defeated.

After all, an army that wins a battle will definitely have a smaller proportion of casualties, which can effectively dispel the fear of those potential soldiers.

Under the extensive publicity, at the same time, the Yongying of Yuyao County gave generous treatment, and many children of poor families, especially some children who did not have much land in their families, came to serve as soldiers.

In this case, Xu Yanqing finally breathed a sigh of relief!

"Now more than 300 people have been recruited, and if we recruit a few more days, we will be able to erect the shelves of our third regiment!" Xu Yanqing looked at the soldiers in front of him who came to recruit, and sighed, this recruitment is not much easier than leading soldiers to fight: "We are almost recruited now, but we don't know when the ordnance in Shanghai will arrive!" ”

Xu Yanqing was not only worried about himself, a soldier of the third regiment, but also worried about whether the guns would be in place in time by then.

At present, among the ordnance of the Yongying camp in Yuyao County, the cold weapons such as sabers are not to be mentioned, and the artillery has nothing to do with Xu Yanqing, he cares about the rifle.

The rifles currently equipped by the Yongying Battalion in Yuyao County are rifled rifled rifle rifle guns modified from the brown bass rifle guns, which are commonly known as the Minnie Infantry guns.

The supply of this kind of rifle gun mainly relied on the purchase of brown bass rifles by Lin's firm and Xinde Foreign Bank, but they drew rifling by themselves, added a meter ruler and modified it into a Mini rifle gun, and then sold it to Yongying in Yuyao County.

At this time, Pan Lixuan, the chief treasurer of the Shanghai branch of the Lin Commercial Bank, who was in charge of the import and modification of ordnance, was accompanying Han Xiangfang, the general office of the Yongying Ordnance Bureau of Yuyao County, who had just arrived in Shanghai, to inspect a batch of artillery.

"This batch of artillery was pulled from Hong Kong by Shun Tak Foreign Company, there are five in total, all of them are six-pounder guns, I also let them try it before you came, and they can all be used, but you also know that we are all laymen, I don't know if this is good or not!" Pan Lixuan said as he walked.

And Han Xiangfang listened and at the same time focused on the artillery in front of him, it was obvious that this batch of artillery was second-hand!

There is no way, now in the Far East, those foreign companies sell basically second-hand goods obtained by various ** teams in various Asian colonies, such as brown bass step guns, and the same is true of artillery, it is rare to say that there are the latest new guns and new guns, because the price of brand-new guns to be shipped from Europe will be very expensive, even if people have foreign companies, Lin Zhe is reluctant to buy as much as he wants.

Han Xiangfang didn't know much about ordnance before, but after a few months, although he was not too proficient in dealing with guns and artillery every day, he still knew the basics.

Judging from the inscriptions on the cannons, these cannons were made by the British, ranging from 1840 to 1846, which were all old goods more than ten years ago.

However, artillery is generally used for a very long time, and it is normal to still use it for more than ten years, and those Hongyi cannons cast more than 100 years ago or even 200 years ago in China are still in use.

Then Han Xiangfang asked the soldiers who tested the artillery to shoot a few shots door to door, and finally nodded slightly, although these eight cannons were not as good as the twelve-pounder guns of his own Second Artillery Company, but they were not bad, at least much stronger than the captured mountain splitting guns.

This is true, the mountain splitting cannon is generally only a few hundred pounds in weight, but it is a light artillery, and limited by the technical level of domestic artillery, often the range and power of the artillery are much weaker than the same weight artillery in the West.

If these five artillery pieces are pulled back to Huzhou, then the 3rd Artillery Company will also have artillery available!

Immediately, Han Xiangfang said to Pan Li: "These five cannons can still be used, and they will be sent to Huzhou when they turn around, and now Lord Daoxian is waiting for the cannons to be used!" ”

After watching the artillery, Han Xiangfang and Pan Lixuan went to the same Minnibu 'gun modification workshop in the British Concession, a few months ago this handicraft workshop without even a signboard has been officially registered with the British Concession authorities, and has a very foreign name, called linDavid, lin is the surname of the Lin family, David is the surname of the owner of Xinde Foreign Bank, in short, the surnames of the two families are combined.

The Chinese name is 'Linde Machinery qì Factory'.

This name has elements of both Lin's firm and Shun Tak & Co., which naturally indicates that this Linde machine qì is a joint venture between Lin's & Co. and Shun Tak & Co.

Previously, Lin's firm provided all the funds, factory land, and product sales, and occupied 80 percent of the shares, while Xinde & Co. was responsible for seeking technical personnel, equipment, raw materials, etc., and at the same time ensuring that the machine factory was approved in the British Concession, so it occupied 20 percent of the shares.

The reason why Xinde Foreign Company helped the Lin family to set up this workshop was not that they took a fancy to China's huge arms trade profits, they did not do arms business, their main business was raw silk, tea, porcelain, and the Lin family's huge shipments in the raw silk industry.

Helping the Lin family to build this Linde machine factory can be regarded as a friendly help, mainly to continue to expand the scale of cooperation with the Lin family in raw silk, tea, and porcelain, otherwise people would not have pulled down their cheeks and went to the British Concession authorities to apply for the construction of an arsenal.

Now after the application is down, the two sides have also reached an agreement, and the Lin family will invest 2,000 taels of silver to buy 20% of the shares in the hands of Xinde Foreign Bank.

But although this machine is wholly owned by the Lin family, the name is not easy to change, so it continues to be used

The English name LinDavidd is a modified Mini Bu' gun with the abbreviation 'LD' engraved on it.

If someone wants, they can also call the Mini Bu' gun that the Yongying in Yuyao County is now equipped with as the LD Bu' gun or the Linde Bu' gun.

Walking into the machine factory, Han Xiangfang heard the rumbling noise inside, next door to the machine factory is the Lin family is building the silk reeling machine factory, the machine factory itself is not too big, not as big as the silk reeling factory under construction next door, there are not many workers, only more than 100 people, the small factory is full of all kinds of machines.

Don't look at the small place, there are not many people, but this place is definitely the most technologically advanced place in contemporary China, well, it's kind of nonsense, in fact, there are a few steam engines and some lathes.

Compared with the big British factories of the time, it was the level of a small family workshop.

Pan Lixuan said: "Now we are already very easy to modify, you see, as soon as the barrel is pulled like this, this rifling will come out, and then assemble it back and add a ruler, you can use it directly!" ”

"Because it is not difficult, so at present we are modifying relatively fast, now a month of non-stop refitting, can be modified about 900, if Huzhou needs more, we can also increase this number a little more." Pan Lixuan continued:

"Now most of the manpower and machine of our machine factory is still used to make ammunition, at present we can produce bullets and ammunition in small batches, but the output is still relatively small, and now I plan to purchase some more machines, ready to expand the production of ammunition!"

For the current Linde Machinery Factory, it is naturally impossible for you to let him mass-produce the Mini Bu gun from scratch, but if you just let them pull a rifling on the existing Ba Bess Bu gun and add a gauge, it is still not a big problem.

At present, the biggest problem for Linde Machinery is the production of ammunition, the current consumption of ammunition in Yongying, Yuyao County is relatively large, whether it is artillery or rifles, the requirements for propellant are relatively high, before Lin Zhe obtained some gunpowder from Zhejiang, the quality of bullets is unsatisfactory, can only rely on a large number of imports to meet the demand.

But it's not the same thing to import all the time, so I asked the Linde Machinery Factory to produce its own ammunition, and it is much more difficult to mass-produce ammunition than to modify a Minnie Bu' gun.

Han Xiangfang looked at the many machines in the field, to be honest, he didn't understand these things, let alone why the thing called the steam engine could move without wind, but it didn't matter if he didn't understand this, he just needed to know that he could get a large number of Mini Step guns.

As for the ammunition, how much can be made by the Linde Machinery Factory now, and the insufficient part has to continue to be purchased.

After taking a turn in Shanghai, Han Xiangfang personally rushed back to Huzhou with five six-pounder guns, 600 Mini rifles and some ammunition.

When this batch of ordnance arrives in Huzhou, it will inevitably set off a storm of Yongying expansion in Yuyao County!

What he didn't know was that just as he rushed back to Huzhou, Huzhou City ushered in a group of special guests, led by a senior official wearing a three-grade hat, and he also carried a holy decree for Lin Zhe!