In this war, especially in the early stage of this war, Zhao Dongyun's attitude was quite clear, that is, to break the original historical trajectory, including selling nearly 100 heavy machine guns to the Russians, and providing the Russians with shells and bullets and other war materials.

There is only one purpose, that is, to prevent the Russian army from losing too quickly in the early battle, and not to let the Japanese themselves conquer Lushun or Mukden in a short period of time, even if the Japanese themselves win, at least they will have to make the Japanese themselves pay a heavier price than history.

And the pit day' I need a reason?

No, you don't!

Not to mention the series of arms transactions with Russia, Zhao Dongyun obtained a lot, among the many war materials sold to the Russians, in terms of the largest ordnance, although the manufacturer Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory did not have much, but Zhao Dongyun, who was a second-tier dealer, made a lot of profits.

Some people may have questions, this Zhao Dongyun is not a businessman, what is he going to do to make money? More money is just a series of numbers, what is more important than the interests of the country and the nation?

You must know that he still has more than 15,000 new troops to raise, and although most of the other funds come from the imperial court and Baoding, if you want the troops to conduct more actual combat training, equip more new weapons, and at the same time want to expand more troops, then you have to rely on Zhao Dongyun to find additional ways.

To expand the army, to train the army is not just a matter of saying two words, it takes time, it takes money to accumulate, the time is good, but the source of money is relatively lacking, and now Zhao Dongyun's money to raise the army mainly depends on the appropriation from above, to put it bluntly, the imperial court and Beiyang raise his third town together.

As for relying on private money to support the army, to be honest, Zhao Dongyun can't afford to raise it, do you know how much military spending is spent on the fifteen thousand people under Zhao Dongyun every year?

At least three million taels of silver, and this figure is only the most basic for the most basic maintenance expenses such as personnel salaries, food, drink, and sleep, and if you want to conduct training, drills, and occasionally change defenses and marches, etc., at least four million taels of silver.

If it is a war, it will be more than a million. For example, if the artillery below him was marked as an infantry attack and it took thirty minutes to prepare for the artillery fire, it would cost about 2,000 to 3,000 rounds of shells, or about 60,000 to 100,000 taels of silver at the price of 30 taels of silver per 75-millimeter shell.

In other words, an ordinary artillery preparation before an attack would have to be thrown out at least sixty or seventy thousand taels of silver!

This year, the new army is a veritable gold-swallowing monster, otherwise the Qing court would not have thrown tens of millions of taels of silver every year, and could only train one Beiyang Six Towns.

Maybe other predecessors who have crossed the sky will drop countless guns and artillery as soon as they pinch their fingers, and they are the kind with infinite magazines and non-grinding attributes, but the third town and the Jinzhou patrol battalion under Zhao Dongyun need countless money to support, and the artillery unit is not even willing to fight live ammunition during training, most of the time it is empty-handed training, and every once in a while it is to hit training bullets, as for live ammunition training, usually it will not fight much at all, only play more during live ammunition exercises.

However, even so, the training intensity of the Third Town is stronger than that of several other Beiyang Army, and what does the increased training intensity represent? It means that Zhao Dongyun needs to spend tens of thousands of more military expenses every month.

If there is no other additional income, Zhao Dongyun has no way to raise it, as for his family industries, such as Fuyuan Yarn Factory and the Fuyuan Machine Qì Factory under the yarn factory, Fuyuan Weaving Factory, Fuyuan Ash Factory, these enterprises must be rich, but Zhao Dongyun can't directly embezzle it to raise the army, not to mention that the Fuyuan Yarn Factory and many subordinate enterprises are the property of a big family of the Zhao family and not Zhao Dongyun's private.

If Zhao Dongyun embezzled the money to raise the army, it is estimated that it will not take long to write the words "I want to rebel" directly on his forehead.

You are a fool when you are Yuan Shikai and Cixi, everyone who is an official is corrupt and makes money, if you don't corrupt and make money, forget it, and use the family's assets to raise the army, who will believe it if you are not preparing to rebel!

So if you loot from the locality, regardless of whether it is to suppress bandits or use other means to get money, the money you get belongs to the small treasury of the third town, then you will definitely have no opinion on the expansion of the army Yuan Shikai, but will think that you are capable, but if you take hundreds of thousands of taels of silver directly from the Fuyuan Yarn Factory to raise the army, they will directly regard it as a thief.

On the one hand, it can not be taken, on the other hand, Fuyuan Yarn Factory is also expanding rapidly, the thirst for funds is even worse, Fuyuan Yarn Factory is borrowing money every day and then used to expand production and invest in new industries, the total assets of Fuyuan Yarn Factory have increased several times in recent years, and the debt has also increased several times.

So even if Zhao Dongyun wants to get money to raise the army, he can't get it.

In this case, the income from local looting, such as the suppression of bandits in three days and two ends, and the use of the Jinzhou patrol battalion to secretly collect various protection fees in the prefectures and counties near Jinzhou and military trade with Russia, became an important source of Zhao Dongyun's additional military spending.

However, some time ago, he sabotaged the Russian army in the Liaohe area, and not killing a few Russian troops greatly affected the trade income between Zhao Dongyun and Russia, which made him quite unhappy.

In the afternoon, Zhao Dongyun met Jiro Sato again, this Jiro Sato was not wearing his military uniform, but dressed as a Western-style gentleman, wearing a dress, wearing a high round hat and holding a staff of civilization, he did not see that he was a spy at all.

In fact, Sato Jiro is not a too regular spy, he came to Liaoxi secretly, mainly in a semi-public capacity, mainly to win over the local forces in Liaoxi to the Japanese side, he himself will not play any 007 kind of thing like a lone army going deep into the enemy line to assassinate enemy generals.

From this point of view, he is more of a diplomat again!

Sato Jiro's Chinese is quite good, and the first sentence he said was fluent, and it was an official with a Beijing-Tianjin accent: "I have long heard that your country has Beiyang Sanjie and Beiyang Xiong, and today I see that it is really worthy of its name, General Zhao, you are much younger than I imagined!" ”

The so-called Beiyang Sanjie in Sato Jiro's mouth refers to Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen, and Feng Guozhang, but Beiyang Zhixiong is talking about Zhao Dongyun, this title comes from the word 'Male of the Three Armies' given to him by Yuan Shikai before Zhao Dongyun came to Jinzhou last year, this pair of words is not actually Zhao Dongyun, but refers to the Third Mixed Association under Zhao Dongyun, which means that I hope that the Third Mixed Association will become a heroic unit in the Beiyang Three Armies, and the third mixed association and the current third town also have a special military flag, which is ' The four words 'the hero of the three armies' can be regarded as an honorary title of the third town.

This originally had nothing to do with Zhao Dongyun personally, but later after the word of mouth from outsiders came out, people put these words on Zhao Dongyun, and regarded them as Yuan Shikai's affirmation and praise for him, but these words can only be regarded as rumors in the end, although Zhao Dongyun knows that some people call themselves this in the outside world, but to be honest, it is rare to hear someone say this to his face.

This Sato Jiro opened his mouth, although Zhao Dongyun was dissatisfied with him in his heart, but as a qualified military and political high-level, concealing his true thoughts is a necessary skill, so he talked to Sato Jiro with a smile on his face at this time, and occasionally showed a good impression of Japan's book or something.

"It is very admirable that your sergeants can fight for the dignity of the yellow race regardless of the interests of Asia!" As a qualified military and political dignitary, and also trying to develop into a political family, Zhao Dongyun, full of lies and shamelessness are also essential skills.

In this world, who has the ugliest face?

There is no doubt that it is the political zhì family!

They are often able to depict the perfect imaginary world to tempt people to work for it, and like the devil, they speak of hell as heaven, and then seduce people to smile and imagine that they are going to heaven, without realizing that they are walking into hell step by step.

Zhao Dongyun is trying to become a qualified politician, and his conversation with Jiro Sato today is a rehearsal for his future speech to the people.

It's all a lie, and it's not much different from saying it to the Japanese people and saying it to the Chinese people!

After the two of them exchanged polite words, Jiro Sato didn't wait too long and went straight to the point: "This time I will lead the team to Jilin, Heilongjiang, Mongolia and other places, and return the general to be able to provide logistical support!" ”

The reason why Sato Jiro was able to say it directly was because he had reached a deal with Yuan Shikai before that Zhao Dongyun didn't know, and you must know that most of the spy team led by Sato Jiro this time were active Beiyang officers!

For this reason, Yuan Shikai had already sent a telegram to Zhao Dongyun in advance, asking Zhao Dongyun to cooperate with the actions of the spy team and provide logistical support.

Zhao Dongyun said: "This is naturally no problem, the relevant guns and horses have been prepared, according to our previous agreement, the ordnance is the standard weapon of your army!" ”

Sato Jiro nodded, showing a satisfied look, this to spy on the military intelligence and sabotage, although most of the spies are Chinese, but in order to reduce the suspicion of the Russians, so try to pretend that it is better to be Japanese, this ordnance is Japanese' this weapon can also reduce suspicion.

And Zhao Dongyun didn't have much feeling about it, although his third town was not equipped with a large number of Japanese rifles, but several anti-bandit operations captured a lot of Japanese rifles, adding up to nearly 200 rifles, as for the bullets, it is not a problem, the Fuyuan machine has a production line of Japanese-style 6.5mm rifle cartridges, so it is not a big problem to provide Japanese-style ordnance to the Japanese's own spy troops.

Zhao Dongyun did not give Sato Jiro too much embarrassment in his official attitude and obeyed the overall situation of Beiyang, but took out all the things happily, and Sato Jiro naturally did not take things in vain, and soon took out a HSBC check of 3,000 pounds, which was the cost of purchasing this batch of horses and guns.

Zhao Dongyun also took it with a smile, but then Jiro Sato took out an HSBC check with a larger denomination, and Zhao Dongyun could clearly see that the denomination on it was as high as 30,000 pounds.

30,000 pounds, converted into silver, is more than 200,000 taels of silver, what does this Sato Jiro want to do with this huge check?