During the uprisings in Hangzhou and Anqing, the Guangfuhui seized some of the Manchu treasury silver, which made their current ability to pay quite a small increase. However, whether it is buying weapons or hiring people, it is a very expensive thing. In any era, fighting a war is always a very expensive thing. When these treasury silver were just seized, Tao Chengzhang and Qiu Jin were still very naïve to think that they could support this money for a long time without collecting taxes from the people, but as a result, when Tao Chengzhang got the quotation from the Americans, they found that if according to this quotation, according to the requirements put forward by Xu Xilin and Qiu Jin, who had already arrived in Anqing, all the treasury silver would not be enough. When the Liberation Society was propagating the revolution, a very important point in their propaganda was to declare that there would be no taxes after the revolution.

Propaganda that no taxes are collected after the revolution is not actually the first trick of the Liberation Society, generally speaking, as long as a dynasty arrives at the rebels everywhere, it will often fall into a strange vicious circle, that is:

If you want to suppress the rebellion, you have to fight a war, you need money to fight a war, you have to increase taxes if you want money, and if you want to increase taxes, you will further increase the burden on those who have not yet rebelled. And the reason why there are rebellions everywhere is largely because everyone's life is getting harder and harder? Even those who did not rebel are often in dire straits, but barely supported. An increase in taxes, even a little, would make their lives completely unsustainable, and they would naturally join the rebels. Then the area controlled by the imperial court that could collect taxes was further reduced, and the mob to be suppressed was more, which required more money, so that the heavier taxes fell into fewer places. And then...... At this time, if someone on the rebel side shouted a slogan such as "free grain for all fields" and no taxes, it would naturally be "the hearts of all the people."

For example, in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, not only did Li Chuang come up with the ballad of "King Chuang doesn't pay for food when he comes", but even my Qing Dynasty came up with the so-called "never add endowment". Of course, I have always been a man of the word, saying that if I don't raise taxes, I won't raise taxes. It's just that in addition to taxes, I invented something called "donation".

Since 1840, with the defeat of foreign wars again and again, foreign reparations are more and more, on the other hand, the loss of control of customs, the import of various foreign commodities has also made China's economic situation have been greatly impacted, under the blow of foreign goods, all kinds of domestic handicrafts have gone bankrupt, plus in order to repel foreign crows. Piece, large-scale cultivation of crows in the country. piece, plus ...... Anyway, the financial situation of my Qing Dynasty is getting more and more embarrassing, but the expenses are increasing. So although I talked about credit in the Qing Dynasty, saying "never add to it", then "never add it", but "donating" or something is not considered tax, and adding this is not considered talking, so I ...... The signs of a vicious circle are emerging.

On the other hand, there was also vicious competition on the side of the revolutionaries. First of all, Sun Wen came up with the idea that the government does not collect taxes, saying that as long as the land is state-owned, and then the state does not collect taxes and only collects land rent, it is enough to bear all government expenses and provide all government services. He promised not to charge anything but ground rent. Of course, not to mention Mr. Sun's level of economics, anyway, this set was shouted very loudly in the original history, but after he took control of Guangdong, it was never implemented, just like his 100,000-mile railway plan. And his successor Chang Kaishen, even if he transferred to Taiwan, completed the "land reform" with the funding of the United States, and made the land state-owned, he still failed to realize Mr. Sun's ambition of only collecting land rent and not taxes. The turtle, who claimed to be Mr. Sun's successor, made the famous "land finance", but still did not collect taxes. It is estimated that Mr. Sun said this back then, that is, for publicity reasons.

With Mr. Sun's example, it is natural that the Restoration Society will have to express itself. Especially after they and the Alliance have parted ways, they naturally have to have their own arguments to attract support. Mr. Sun's government's plan to not collect taxes was based on the state ownership of land, and the Liberation Society has always opposed the state ownership of land. People. Host. righteousness", and the Restoration Society only demanded the expulsion of the Tartars, and was not interested in the Republic of China, and even felt that dictatorship might be better, as for the equal land rights, they were even more clearly opposed, so that they were jokingly called "One People's Activists") Naturally, they will not engage in land rent instead of tax, but when they were not separated from the League, they also promised not to collect taxes, and as soon as this propaganda method is raised, it will be difficult to reduce it, and the result is that although land cannot be state-owned, taxes cannot be collected. Of course, this is absolutely not feasible, and everyone at the top of the Restoration Society knows this, but this period of time is busy preparing for the uprising, and no one cares about this issue. Speaking of publicity, the Liberation Society is really not very good in this regard.

Now, if you suddenly want to collect taxes, not to mention the problem of losing trust in the world, and the Liberation Council will not have the ability to collect taxes at all. The Guangfu Society did not have so many manpower, and it was able to control the localities and raise taxes, and the original Manchu system, if they were allowed to collect taxes, not to mention whether they would be able to enrich their own pockets, and finally whether they could guarantee one-tenth of the total amount, for the time being, this system was paralyzed in the revolution, and it was not a matter of one or two days, a month or two to re-establish it.

So after discussing with Xu Xilin Qiujin, in the end, Tao Chengzhang decided to hire a small unit from the Americans first and book a batch of artillery and ammunition. They also attached a condition, if the situation changed by the time the arms arrived, and they no longer needed the arms, then the Pacific Trip could help them replace the arms. Sell out. Of course, the freight and depreciation costs still have to be paid by the Restoration Association.

……

With Qiu Jin arriving in Anqing with the elites of the Restoration Society, Anqing's situation has improved somewhat. To be honest, those elite members of the Liberation Society have received some military training, and these trainings, which are less than three months long, can only be regarded as playing in Western countries, and there is no reason for any major power country to use a person who has only been trained for less than three months as a junior officer. You know, three months is not enough to learn military drawing.

In China, however, the situation is different. There are not many people in China who are proficient in modern military affairs, and occasionally one or two people who have received a systematic education in military academies abroad are immediately used as middle and high-ranking officers, and these people hold their own identities and will not seriously teach lower-level officers military theories, and in addition, lower-level officers are quite illiterate, and even if they teach, they will not necessarily be, so the quality of middle- and low-level officers in the Manchurian New Army is generally very low. It is manifested on the battlefield that the bottom of the army lacks the ability to adapt to changes, and once the army is frustrated, it is easy to collapse. It is precisely because of this that in the original history, after Mr. Sun hugged the thigh of the Soviet Union, he took the gold ruble to set up the famous Whampoa Military Academy. To be honest, compared with West Point or Frunze, the Whampoa Military Academy, which has a duration of only three months to one year, is at most considered a crash course, and most of the graduates who come out are unqualified when they are placed in the countries of the great powers. However, under the command of Soviet advisers, relying on this student army, KMT beat the Beiyang warlords to the ground, and the higher quality of the grassroots officers is a reason that cannot be ignored.

In terms of quality, the members of the Liberation Society who have been trained in Heishui are probably still a little worse than those of the Huangpu crash course, but they are much stronger than most of the low-level officers of the Hubei New Army. Therefore, as soon as the team with this group of people arrived in Anqing, the Hubei New Army that came to attack Anqing immediately found that the situation was not quite right.

Prior to this, what level of Anhui's new army was, Hubei's new army actually knew in its heart. Not long after the formation of the Anhui New Army, although they bought some foreign guns, domestic guns, and a few guns, they had not been trained for long, and in the eyes of the Hubei New Army, they had not had time to form combat effectiveness at all, and they were just old-style troops with foreign guns, and they did not deserve the word "new army" at all. The artillery battle between them and the gunboats of the Hubei New Army in front also best proved this point. Generally speaking, land artillery has a natural advantage over battleship artillery. Because on land, the ground is stable and immobile, which makes the fire of the land artillery more accurate, while the ship gun is on the water, the platform will shake, which will reduce the accuracy of the shelling a lot. Although the warship will move, which increases the difficulty of the opponent's shooting, as long as you have played shooting games, you know that the difficulty of shooting static versus dynamic has always been much higher than that of dynamic versus static. In addition, as long as you prepare a little on land, dig a pit in the ground, and push the cannon in, it is a good fortification. In a confrontation with a naval gun, the naval gun must hit directly to effectively kill it, but the land artillery only needs to hit the warship, and this target is much larger than the gun position. If the ground artillery is well-trained and the terrain is favorable, the army artillery can hide behind the anti-slope and then rely on the target parameters given by the observation post to shoot, while the warship cannot even see where the shooter is hiding when it is being beaten.

However, these things are too tall for the Anhui New Army, they simply do not have the ability to shoot according to the parameters given by the observation post, and they cannot build bunker fortifications for artillery, so they can only push the cannon to the river and fire directly at the gunboats of the Hubei New Army. Those cannons were wasted in vain.

However, when the army of the Hubei New Army arrived near Anqing, they immediately felt that the Anhui New Army did not seem to be so unbearable, because they actually dared to leave the city wall and set up a position outside the city. And that position seems to be quite regular.