At this time, the night was deep, and the oncoming wind seemed to be colder, and the biting cold wind blew on his face so that Zhao Dongyun's alcohol was mostly gone, and when he looked back, he saw that Wang Yingkai had already gotten into the carriage and left first.

"My lord, the car is coming!" The guard beside him whispered to Zhao Dongyun.

After being helped by the guards to get into the Toyo car, Zhao Dongyun staggered back to his residence in the Toyo car, and there were no bright street lamps on the street along the way, and occasionally there was a trace of kerosene lamp light revealed in the house on the side of the road, fortunately, the partial moon in the night sky still exuded a lot of light, although the light was dim, but it was not always dark ahead.

It's just that the dim moonlight and the dim light emitted by the kerosene lamp on the Toyo car make the whole street look even more eerie!

The coachman's foot strength is very good, it didn't take long to pull Zhao Dongyun back to the door of the small building where he lived, and he was about to enter the door after getting out of the car, but the corner of his eye fell on the leading Oriental coachman, although the light was still dim at this time, but he still clearly saw that the coachman was wearing a torn cotton jacket with many patches, and on his feet was a pair of old cloth shoes, the cloth shoes were torn, and half of his feet were exposed, I don't know if it was because of the sky or they were originally so dirty: the feet were black.

The coachman was nodding to Steward Xu, saying that he would like to thank Steward Xu for taking care of business and the like, and if they want to use the car in the future, they can be on call as long as they are instructed.

Zhao Dongyun took a deep breath and shook his head to make his drunken head more sober, at this time the guards had already helped him into the door, and what caught his eye after entering the door was the dazzling candlelight in the hall, and dozens of candles inserted in several chandeliers were emitting a soft white light, illuminating the hall as bright as day.

At this time, the outside of the house and inside the house seem to be two worlds!

In the next few days, Zhao Dongyun began to be busy again, he kept running for the establishment of a machine gun battalion, first of all, the problem of personnel, although he originally had a machine gun team, but there was still too many people to fill a machine gun battalion.

If Zhao Dongyun could still transfer personnel from other units of the Wuwei Right Army when he was training the machine gun team before, then not now, because the newly built machine gun battalion he supervised did not belong to the Wuwei Right Army or the Beiyang Standing Army, which means that there was no superior unit to supplement him with soldiers.

At present, this newly built machine gun battalion is directly under the jurisdiction of Yuan Shikai and is supervised by Zhao Dongyun, and there is no direct contact with the Wuwei Right Army or the Beiyang Standing Army, so if you want to replenish the troops, you can only recruit Zhao Dongyun himself.

So Zhao Dongyun could only send Lin Yongquan, Zhao Dongping and others to various regions of Zhili to recruit Liangjiazi as recruits, and the problem of recruits was relatively easy to solve, and the process was relatively smooth.

Because the treatment of the soldiers of the Beiyang New Army is very superior to the lower-class people, not only do they have a settling-in allowance, even the lowest ordinary soldiers have four taels of silver a month, and the labor force in this city only has an income of two or three taels of silver a month, and the peasants can't even save a few taels of silver a year, and the salary of four taels and two dollars a month is definitely a high income for the children of the low-level peasants.

Of course, the most important thing is that when you go to the new army as a soldier, you will have food and clothing.

For China and Japan in this era, the treatment of soldiers is much better than that of ordinary people, at least in this regard, ordinary landlords are not as good as ordinary soldiers.

Of course, the conditions given are superior, and the requirements for recruits are also correspondingly increased, the requirements must be native, applicants need to be recommended by the head of the village, etc., the age limit is between 20 and 25 years old, the height should be more than 4 feet 8 inches, the strength is more than 100 catties, and the walking speed is more than 10 kilometers per hour. Incomplete facial features means that you don't want to be too ugly.

The crux of the problem is that Zhao Dongyun can't find too many qualified grass-roots officers in a short period of time, and only Lin Yongquan, the leader of the original machine gun team, and a few sentry officers are a little usable.

"It's not full of personnel yet, but the purchase of machine guns must also be hurried, and when Lin Yongquan and the others come back with new recruits, I will see machine guns!" Zhao Dongyun said to Zhao Dongping.

After Zhao Dongping stayed in the army for a period of time, he looked much stronger, and he was not as weak as he was when he first came from his hometown.

Zhao Dongping said: "Third brother, don't worry, although the number is relatively large this time, it is a little difficult to do, but I have contacted several foreign arms dealers, and now the contract for twelve has been finalized, and there are another eight are now being discussed, and it is estimated that it will be determined in the next two days!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded when he heard this: "Well, that's fine!" But when will the machine guns arrive? ”

Zhao Dongping said: "This time, due to the relatively large number, I found several talents separately to raise, and there were three at the beginning that were the Russian arms dealer last time, and this machine gun was taken directly from the Russian army in Liaodong, and it is estimated that it will be delivered in three or four days." The remaining batches are Russians and Germans, but it will take a little longer, and it is estimated that they will be able to get their hands on it in a month! ”

Zhao Dongping asked to buy machine guns according to Zhao Dongyun's instructions, but not the official way, because of the arms embargo in the Xinchou Treaty, Zhao Dongyun is still unable to obtain a large number of machine guns through official channels, and can only buy them from arms dealers through smuggling.

Among the machine guns purchased by Zhao Dongping, the Makqin machine guns mainly came from the Russian troops in the Far East and the German troops in the Far East, and most of them were their active machine guns, and the models were mainly MG99, but some of the machine guns purchased from the Russians were equipped with the unique machine gun shield of the Russians.

Zhao Dongyun said: "You have to follow the next things closely, keep an eye on it in person, and don't let your subordinates mess around!" ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't want to make any scandal when he bought a machine gun, if he failed to buy a gun because his subordinates were corrupt too much, the consequences would be deadly!

Zhao Dongping nodded: "Got it!" ”

Saying that, Zhao Dongping looked at Zhao Dongyun's face, and then said: "Third brother, yesterday my father sent a telegram, saying that he also wants to set up a yarn factory, let me ask what you mean!" ”

"Oh, and your father wants to start a yarn mill too?" Zhao Dongyun pondered for a moment and said, "Does he have a specific path and ideas?" ”

"Father, he said that every qiē charter is to imitate Fuyuan Yarn Factory!" Zhao Dongping replied.

Although Zhao Dongyun's family is not a wealthy family, the family is also considered to have little wealth, and the original family mainly ran a grange and sold foreign cloth.

However, after Zhao Dongyun came to this era last year, although his focus has been on the military and political career, he has also slightly intervened in the family industry, of course, this family industry does not mean the entire Zhao family, but refers to the second room where Zhao Dongyun is located, as for the long room, the third room and the fourth room, although they all have the name of the Zhao family, they have actually been separated.

And because Zhao's father died at an early age, Zhao Dongyun became the head of the second room, so last year began to sell the grange and foreign cloth firms one after another, and then pooled money to buy a small spinning mill renamed Fuyuan Yarn Factory, and purchased equipment to expand production in a short period of time, so that this small spinning mill expanded rapidly, and in less than a year, it has become the main industry of the second house, and it is quite profitable.

In this case, it is understandable that they also want to follow up on the spinning mill in Sanfang, but they have never done such a thing as a yarn factory, and they are afraid that they will lose money after entering rashly, so they came to ask Zhao Dongyun what he meant.

said that it was asking, but in fact, he wanted Zhao Dongyun to help them!

Since Yuan Shikai took charge of Beiyang last year, with the support of Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong and others, the Qing court has officially launched reforms, which not only include the formation and training of the new army, but also actively promote a series of new policy reforms such as private industry and commerce, the establishment of new schools, and railways.

Under such a trend, the national capital in China, especially in the eastern coastal areas, has expanded rapidly, and there are all investors in the textile industry, chemical industry, iron and steel, and coal, and the Zhao family is only one of them.

Zhao Dongyun thought for a while and said: "If your father really wants to do it, let him prepare financially first, and also send someone to Fuyuan to learn management, and I will say hello to Fuyuan!" ”

Zhao Dongping was overjoyed when he heard this: "Thank you, third brother, I will send a report to my father later, and ask him to send someone north!" ”

Zhao Dongyun's Fuyuan Yarn Factory is not in Xuzhou's hometown, but is set up in Tianjin.

In the afternoon, Zhao Dongyun went to Baoding City again to ask to see Yuan Shikai, although the ostensible reason was to report to Yuan Shikai on the progress of the new machine gun battalion and other issues, but in fact Zhao Dongyun came to save his senses.

Now he finally let Yuan Shikai remember and reuse himself, while Yuan Shikai's favorability towards him is still there, Zhao Dongyun naturally has to seize the opportunity to deepen Yuan Shikai's impression of himself, so if he has nothing to do, he will go to the Governor's Mansion to meet Yuan Shikai, even if he can't see Yuan Shikai, he will go to several other Beiyang bigwigs, such as Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen and the like.

Zhao Dongyun returned to the barracks after going to the Governor's Mansion to save a sense of zài, and continued to bury his head in the great cause of training the machine gun team, as time passed day by day, his new machine gun battalion was gradually formed, Lin Yongquan and others recruited more than 400 soldiers from all over Zhili, and after adding the original more than 100 people, they made up a fully formed new machine gun battalion.

In terms of ordnance, 20 Makqin heavy machine guns were smuggled and purchased through guò, and together with the original four Makqin, 24 new Makqin machine guns were raised, in addition to four old Makqin machine guns used for training.

Just having soldiers and machine guns does not mean that this machine gun battalion will become an army, it will take time to train, the training of soldiers is good, basically it does not take too much effort, but it is much more troublesome for the training of grassroots officers.

In addition to letting a few experienced officers such as Lin Yongquan teach everyone, even Zhao Dongyun personally taught machine gun tactics.

From the perspective of later generations, the machine gun tactics explained by Zhao Dongyun and Lin Yongquan are simple and unbearable, and even full of mistakes in some places, but in this era when machine guns are just emerging, in this era when there are no formal machine gun tactics, the small number of machine gun tactics instilled by Zhao Dongyun in the officers is enough to make them proud of other peers in the world.

As the saying goes, there are no fish and shrimp in the river, and fighting a war is like running away, don't ask you to do your best, just do it better than others!

With the passage of time, the machine gun battalion under Zhao Dongyun has been trained for nearly two months, not to mention that it has become the elite of the army, but it can also swing the machine gun to the position, and then pull the trigger and shoot suddenly.

During this period, Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai and others came to see it a few times, and on the surface, they greatly appreciated Zhao Dongyun's machine gun battalion, but no one knew what they were thinking in their hearts.

However, this peaceful day did not last long, and at the beginning of March, Zhao Dongyun suddenly received a military order, ordering him to lead the second battalion and the newly built machine gun battalion under his jurisdiction to open on the same day, and go to the Shunde Mansion in Zhili to listen to the call.