The tense situation in the northeast, coupled with Yuan Shikai's fanning the flames there, intimidated the Manchu and Han princes in the imperial court every day that the Russian army was about to go south to Beijing.

The Manchu magnates who originally only planned to "who wants to occupy the Northeast" mentality were also panicked, if the Northeast was occupied by Russia, it was nothing, as for the so-called Longxing Land, these four words can be worth a few cents, it is good to shout slogans at ordinary times, and it must be how far to hide when the army is pressing.

Who wants to be unconvinced, you guys carry the banner of defending the land of Longxing and go to Liaodong to play with the Russians, anyway, they, the nobles of the Manchu Dynasty, are not interested, don't bother me, you are busy walking birds to the smoke house.

But don't say it, the Manchu magnates are not interested, but countless Han ministers are like dead ancestors who say that the land of Longxing must not be lost, and it must be kept, and if I don't send troops to snatch it back, I will hit the pillar.

Let countless Manchu magnates secretly curse in their hearts: Damn, that's the land of our Manchu people's dragon xing, it's about your Han people's!

It's just that the Manchu magnates don't care who is in the hands of the Northeast, but they are afraid that the Russian army will continue to win the Jingshi Division, if the Russians enter the Jingshi, how embarrassing will you make a group of big men feel embarrassed.

Anyway, it is also the capital of the dynasty of more than 200 years, it has been broken twice before and after, the royal gardens have been burned several times, and when the two palaces returned to Luan in the year of Xin Chou, the Bauhinia City was overgrown with weeds, a desolate scene.

This is enough to make Cixi and the others depressed, if they let the foreigners capture the Jingshi for the third time within two years of coming back, then this is not just a matter of shame.

When the time comes, Cixi and the others will simply consider moving the capital to Xi'an!

Therefore, the Manchu magnates were stunned by Yuan Shikai, and begged Yuan Shikai to send troops to Liaodong, and no matter how bad it was, they would first defend Shanhaiguan, so that they would have time to escape when the Russian army attacked.

It's just that Yuan Shikai promised to agree, but there was no movement for a long time!

In late April, Yuan Shikai faced the imperial court's order urging him to send troops to Liaodong in case of emergency.

On 1 May, Yuan Shikai replied to the Beijing Division's recital, saying: The minister was ordered to set up two towns of the standing army, although he tried his best to raise them, but there was a lot of lack of money, so far only one town and one association, even if the number of the Wuwei Right Army of 7,000 and the Ziqiang Army of 3,000 was added, it was less than 30,000, and if the Russian soldiers went south, there were 100,000 unstoppable soldiers, and the ministers gave 15 million silver to train 70,000 new soldiers, so as to gather 100,000 troops to resist the southward movement of Russian soldiers.

This is still the same old thing, intimidating the court and crying for money!

Yuan Shikai wants to train the new army, but the money is flowing out, and it is not tens of thousands of small money, but millions or even tens of millions of big money, these money cannot be taken out by the Beiyang family, most of it has to rely on the appropriation of the imperial court, and some of it is supported by the southern provinces, and only less than 30% of the military expenditure is the Zhili Province, that is, Beiyang itself escaped.

Of course, before this intimidation and asking for money, you must also let the imperial court see a certain hope, otherwise you don't expect them to come up with money, so on May 3, Yuan Shikai faced the Qing court's edict asking him to transfer troops to the east: "The minister's army is this list, and the old defense army of Zhili Province is not enough to hold, and there are 30,000 new troops in each department before the order to train, and 10,000 soldiers are needed on the ground in Zhili, 10,000 soldiers are needed to guard Gyeonggi, and 3,000 soldiers are needed in other places, and 7,000 troops can be gathered under the reluctance to mobilize, with six battalions of infantry, four battalions of cavalry, and one battalion of artillery. The first machine gun battalion was brought to Liaodong by Zhao Dongyun, the commander of the Third Association of the Beiyang Standing Army.

However, the Third Association was short of armaments, and there was a shortage of food and wages, so it was afraid that it would not be able to cope with its efforts to advance eastward......

After saying a bunch of words, Yuan Shikai's meaning is very simple, although I have a small number of troops, but I have also put together enough troops for you to form a mixed association, but now if this association wants to make it move, you have to give money, not to mention anything else, you have to send it down!

Speaking of this opening fee, it is the fine tradition of the Beiyang New Army, and whenever you don't want to go to the front line, or you need to delay the fighter plane, or you want to blackmail your boss, this transfer fee is an excellent excuse.

In fact, the salaries of the soldiers in the Beiyang New Army are divided into three parts, one part is directly mailed to the families of the soldiers by the army's logistics department, one part is distributed to the soldiers themselves, and the other part is deducted as the living expenses of the soldiers.

In addition, there is also a rule that in the event of a change of guard, combat, exercise, etc., there is no need to deduct the cost of the soldier's rations, and the army is directly responsible.

In other words, if you want your soldiers to march and fight, you have to provide them with free food first, which may not cost much for one person to eat, but it is more than for tens of thousands of people to eat.

And that's where the opening fee comes in!

If you don't take out the opening fee first, let alone fight, people won't even move if you change the guard normally!

Yuan Shikai said that he would give the Third Association a promotion fee, and the imperial court was struggling, and then on May 6, he waved his pen and allocated 300,000 taels of silver to the Third Association.

After Zhao Dongyun got the money in his hand, he set off according to Yuan Shikai's order, but before he left for two days, his troops stopped again, and played to the court according to Yuan Shikai's instructions: The minister's department is in short supply of armaments, not only guns, but also bullets and shells......

said a lot of words, and the central meaning was one: you have to give me money to buy guns and cannons, go to the bitter cold places in Liaodong, and face such dangerous Russians, I can't do this without guns, and I won't do it without enough bullets and shells.

When the princes of the Qing court saw it, they knew that Yuan Shikai was stumbling behind it, but they couldn't help it, so they hurriedly gave the money, and they waved a large sum of 200,000 taels of silver to the Third Association to buy guns and artillery and other ordnance.

"The money of this court is like toothpaste, if you don't squeeze it, it won't come out!" Zhao Dongyun began to be able to understand Yuan Shikai's feelings about dealing with the Qing court.

"Now that we've got the money, we should go!" Lin Yongquan said.

Zhao Dongyun said: "Well, it's time to go north, anyway, although the rest of the things are lively, it doesn't have much to do with us!" ”

According to Yuan Shikai's plan, this third association is going north, but it is just to drag it out, first get the money of the imperial court and then go north, after all, the mobilization of 7,000 troops to go north to Liaodong, this money is not a small amount, no matter how big Yuan Shikai's small treasury is, it can't withstand such a spending, so the imperial court has to appear.

Next, it is estimated that Yuan Shikai will ask the imperial court for money under various excuses, but in general, it has little to do with Zhao Dongyun, in order to avoid wasting too much time on the road, the Third Association uses most of the way to travel north by train, otherwise it will take too much time to go north on foot.

And the Third Association has not been in the army for a long time, and I still want to train after arriving in Jinzhou!

By the time Zhao Dongyun took the train all the way north, history had quietly changed again, and Yuan Shikai, who had made money from the imperial court and the southern provinces by various means, could not wait for the money to arrive, and he could not wait to announce the establishment of the Fourth Association and several artillery battalions, cavalry battalions, engineering teams, baggage teams and other troops in Baoding.

If it was according to the previous plan, after the establishment of the Fourth Association, it should be the establishment of the Right Town with the Third Association, but now that the Third Association went to Jinzhou with a large number of troops, Yuan Shikai could not force these two troops to soften up and establish the Right Town.

However, if you want to establish a right town independently, the number and status of Zhao Dongyun's Third Association will not be easy to deal with.

Because this is not just a right town or the third association, but also involves the internal factional struggle of Beiyang, and Yuan Shikai obviously does not want to have some unnecessary troubles at this critical juncture of army expansion, so he simply idle, anyway, in his heart, the two towns on the left and right are obviously unable to meet the requirements of Beiyang army expansion, and soon he will expand the Beiyang Standing Army into the first town, the second town, and the third town.

had these thoughts in his heart, but Yuan Shikai didn't decide exactly what to do for a while, so he simply dragged it out first.

After all, these nominally internal problems are only minor problems, and the expansion of the army is a major problem.

It doesn't matter what name it uses and what name it uses, expanding the army is the king.

These things were not known to Zhao Dongyun who was sitting on the train for a while, and he didn't know it or not, because the matter had little to do with him.

When his troops passed through Tangshan, according to Yuan Shikai's orders, they left an infantry battalion to garrison, which was used to defend the Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

Regardless of whether the Fuyuan Machinery Factory is commercial or government-run, it is a fact that it has become the largest arsenal in North China, and this arsenal has become the main supplier of rifles, bullets and shells in the Beiyang New Army, and its importance to the Beiyang New Army is self-evident, so it has been protected by the garrison since its inception.

The defense army stationed in Tangshan before had about 800 infantry and more than 200 horses.

Now Yuan Shikai personally asked Zhao Dongyun to send an infantry battalion in Tangshan, and asked him to reorganize the old army in Tangshan by the way.

Yuan Shikai is now playing the trick of cutting out the old army and training the new army in all parts of Zhili, so it is strange to let Zhao Dongyun dismiss the Tangshan training army.

And Zhao Dongyun estimated that after reorganizing the more than 1,000 training troops, he would be able to train another infantry battalion, and he could also reorganize more than 200 cavalry to supplement the right mark of the horse team, which was a good thing no matter what.

And when this newly formed infantry battalion is formed, then it can also be transferred back to the regular infantry battalion under his command.

On 1 June, Zhao Dongyun, who had been struggling for a long time, finally led the vanguard of the Third Association to Jinzhou, but he did not know that with his entry into Jinzhou, Liaodong, the situation in the northeast had undergone changes that had not been seen in history.

Before this and in history, the Qing army did not send troops into Liaodong, at most it was deployed in Shanhaiguan, but after Zhao Dongyun's Third Association entered Jinzhou, it broke the original trend of history, and it is difficult to distinguish whether this trend is good or bad for Zhao Dongyun!

Zhao Dongyun always thought that he was just coming to see the play, but he didn't expect that he, a spectator, stood too close, which already affected the performance of the actors on stage!