Looking at the paper order in his hand, Zhao Dongyun fell into deep thought, if he guessed correctly, it should be that the civil rebellion in Guangzong County, Shunde Prefecture has reached the point where it can no longer be cleaned up by administrative means.

The Guangzong rebellion had already begun last year, because the former magistrate Wang Yujun and the previous magistrate Wei Zude were extorted and extorted, and were confronted by the local powerful and martial artist Jing Tingbin, who gathered many villagers to try to resist the government's taxation, and caused the two local magistrates to be removed from their posts one after another.

Subsequently, the Qing court sent Zhao E as the magistrate and tried to solve the Guangzong rebellion by means of appeasement, but it was unsuccessful. After Zhao E saw that Huairou's methods could not be recruited, he decisively asked Yuan Shikai to send reinforcements and prepare to suppress it by force.

In this way, Yuan Shikai ordered Zhao Dongyun to go to Shunde Mansion.

Guangzong's rebellion, according to the mainstream view of later generations, was a people's uprising against the feudal bureaucracy and the Western powers, but in fact, this incident was actually just a classic case of local armed resistance to taxes, and if it was just a strong resistance to taxes, no one cared, there were too many similar things in the late Qing Dynasty, too many to count, and the reason why this matter attracted the attention of the authorities was that there was still the shadow of the Boxers in this tax resistance action.

No matter how the later generations beautify the Boxers, but before and after Gengzi they were just a group of thugs dressed in the skin of Fuqing and exterminating the foreign, and they were not even terrorists. But these Boxers were just a group of thugs who burned, killed and looted.

The reason why China suffered the Gengzi disaster in 1900 was that 30% of the domestic responsibility should be attributed to the Qing court headed by Cixi, who were too stupid to believe that the Boxers could help the Qing Dynasty to destroy the foreigners.

The fate of these two goods was very tragic in the end, a large number of princes were killed, and the wolves of the two palaces fled westward, and the responsibility of the Qing court was not how bad they were, but because they were so stupid!

In addition to the Qing court, which occupied 30% of the domestic responsibility because it was too stupid, the remaining seven achievements had to be counted on the head of the Boxers.

Without them harming Shandong Zhili, if it weren't for their wanton reckless attack on Tianjin and the embassy area, where would the Eight-Nation Alliance come from!

And after these so-called patriotic boxers burned, killed and looted, when the Eight-Nation Coalition Army came, they found that the invulnerability of the so-called sect leaders and saints was false, so they fled for their lives, leaving the bitter Nie Shicheng and a vote of Wuwei officers and soldiers and the coalition army to fight hard, as a result, tens of thousands of Qing casualties, Beijing fell, and China was forced to sign the Xinchou Treaty.

And the Boxers who caused this qiē were definitely a great evil and a cancer that brought disaster to the country and the people, so the Beiyang people led by Yuan Shikai killed the Boxers more ruthlessly than the Eight-Nation Alliance.

Two years ago, Yuan Shikai killed countless Boxers in Shandong, and after he became the governor of Zhili, he killed even more.

It is not difficult to understand that after the Guangzong Rebellion, Yuan Shikai would hurriedly transfer the elite new army under his command to Shunde Mansion to suppress it.

However, in Zhao Dongyun's view, those Boxers are just a group of villagers who have been blinded, and they belong to the poor people, but the poor people must have something to hate, so they are not worthy of pity.

Zhao Dongyun, who had these thoughts in his heart, did not wait long, and soon he ordered to convene a meeting of the officers.

Half a day later, in the conference room of the second battalion headquarters, Zhao Dongyun and all the officers under his command sat together, and the meeting was attended by officers above the rank of leader, including four leaders of the second battalion, four leaders of the machine gun battalion, and two battalion assistants.

Looking at the people below, Zhao Dongyun spoke first: "The order from above has come down, let's start today, so we can't wait longer, in the afternoon, our army must be pulled out first, and the rest of the troops must also be pulled out tomorrow!" ”

Speaking of this, he glanced at the leaders of several machine gun battalions, and then said: "The machine gun battalion has a short army formation, you should pay more attention to this battle, don't let people pick out the wrong one!" ”

This time, Zhao Dongyun knew that it was not only himself, the military order was to let him obey Duan Qirui's dispatch after he arrived in Shunde Mansion, and since Yuan Shikai appointed Duan Qirui as the commander of the reinforcement of the new army, there would definitely be other brother troops involved, and the number of people scheduled to participate was estimated to be very large.

As for the reason, Zhao Dongyun can even guess that in addition to preventing the Guangzong rebellion from expanding its scale and harming the localities, the more important reason is that it is still necessary to train the troops, and in peacetime, fighting bandits and suppressing the popular rebellion is also an important means to increase the actual combat experience of the troops.

With a large army, he didn't want his troops to go wrong and lose face in front of his colleagues and superiors.

Lin Yongquan, who was the leader, said: "Don't worry, my lord, although my machine gun battalion has been in army for a short time, the sergeant drill never dares to relax, and he will never lose the face of the adult!" ”

Lin Yongquan looks very different from last year, last year he was just a small sentry, but since he met Zhao Dongyun, he has been promoted several levels in less than half a year, from a sentry officer to a team leader, and then to a battalion assistant, he only took a few months.

The reason why he was promoted so quickly was mainly because he was one of the few officers in the Beiyang system who knew how to fight machine guns. In addition, he was under Zhao Dongyun's command early, so he was able to take advantage of Zhao Dongyun's opportunity to set up a machine gun battalion. has thus become Zhao Dongyun's real confidant.

Zhao Dongyun nodded slightly, he was still more at ease with Lin Yongquan, in the past few months, Lin Yongquan had made great efforts in the formation and training of the new machine gun battalion, when the machine gun battalion was formed, Zhao Dongyun concurrently served as the commander of the new machine gun battalion with the title of superintendent, but Zhao Dongyun also served as the commander of the second battalion of the right wing of the Wuwei Right Army, and there were a lot of things on weekdays, so in the affairs of the machine gun battalion, in addition to directly managing some important affairs such as training, other miscellaneous affairs were handed over to Lin Yongquan to deal with.

Lin Yongquan faced those chaotic camp affairs, but he was able to handle them in an orderly manner, so that Zhao Dongyun could concentrate on the training of the troops, and did not have to worry about those messy things, which also allowed him to gain more trust and reuse from Zhao Dongyun, and finally promoted him to the position of assistant of the newly built machine gun battalion.

In the afternoon of the same day, the front team of the second battalion under the command of Zhao Dongyun had already completed the emergency assembly, and the leader of the front team, Lin Pingxiong, led the first south.

The next morning, Zhao Dongyun was dressed in a neat military uniform and rode on a horse, followed by a group of officers who were also riding war horses, and in front of him was an orderly army of nearly 2,000 troops.

At this time, Lin Yongquan, who was behind him, immediately took two steps forward: "My lord, the whole battalion of the machine gun battalion has been prepared, please give the order!" ”

After Lin Yongquan finished speaking, a young man next to him also stepped forward and said, "My lord, the second battalion has been completed, and you can go south at any time!" ”

The person who spoke was a little young, and he was also a young man in his twenties, with the same shaved head as Zhao Dongyun, this person's name was Li Zejun, one year younger than Zhao Dongyun, and he was the youngest of the many middle-level officers present today.

Last year, after Zhao Dongyun kicked Chen Kuilong, the original assistant of the second battalion, to the Suiying Academy, he didn't know whose path Li Zejun had taken, but he actually climbed to the position of assistant of the second battalion in one fell swoop.

You must know that he had only returned to China for more than a month at that time, and he became the assistant of a battalion of the Wuwei Right Army in one fell swoop without any transition.

Zhao Dongyun was honestly dissatisfied with this, but vaguely heard that this person had a lot to do with Duan Qirui, and he had just kicked out Chen Kuilong at that time, if he opposed Li Zejun again at this time, he would leave a negative impression on Yuan Shikai and others such as being unsociable and powerless, so he sat idly by.

Zhao Dongyun looked at the two thousand troops in front of him, without saying too much, only to see him slowly pull out his command knife and wave it diagonally to the south, and said softly: "Let's go!" ”

Immediately, many officers behind him galloped out on their horses and arrived in front of their respective troops, and one by one they also drew their command knives and shouted loudly: "Go!" ”

Soon, the army was already marching south in a neat queue, and in front of it was a group of cavalry temporarily under the command of Zhao Dongyun.

The cavalry of this team originally did not belong to Zhao Dongyun's command, but they also received an order to go south to Shunde Mansion, so Duan Qirui also sent this cavalry team directly to Zhao Dongyun to serve as a reconnaissance cavalry for Zhao Dongyun's troops.

Behind them were the infantry carrying the rifles of the 1888 Commission, and then the machine-gun units of the machine-gun battalion, which were pulled by horses.

Then there was a large number of vehicles with heavy loads and the infantry teams escorting them.

Looking at the army in front of him, Zhao Dongyun even had an illusion, if he commanded this army to turn around and go north, it is estimated that there is a good chance to take Beijing and capture Cixi alive, that should be quite interesting!

Not long after the troops set off, Zhao Dongyun saw Wang Shizhen and his party from Baoding, and they came with a large amount of cash, which was the opening fee, and also brought an additional batch of bullets

After neatly stamping his seal on the receipt, Zhao Dongyun looked up at Wang Shizhen: "Lord Wang, you have worked hard all the way!" ”

Wang Shizhen nodded slightly, then looked at Zhao Dongyun and said: "Lord Duxian said to me before I came: Tell Dongyun to let him do things well, be sure to protect the safety of the villagers in Shunde, and don't let the chaotic people harm the township." I've now relayed to you what Lord Governor said, and I hope you won't disappoint you! ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "Please also ask Lord Wang to tell Lord Duxian, I will not let him down, and I will definitely protect the integrity of the villagers of Shunde Mansion!" ”

Wang Shizhen nodded: "I will tell you the truth!" After saying that, he said: "When the time comes, don't have the kindness of a woman, the way to solve the boxing bandits is to punish the evil and coerce the subordinates, and you must not treat the boxers as ordinary villagers and do not kill them!" ”

Zhao Dongyun had heard about Wang Shizhen's killing of the Boxers in Shandong, and knew that this person was extremely disgusted with the Boxers, so he immediately said: "Dongyun knows!" ”

"Then I won't delay your time, let's go!" Wang Shizhen raised his hand and signaled that Zhao Dongyun could go, but Zhao Dongyun didn't stay when he saw it, and immediately turned over and led the generals under his command to integrate into the army and go south.

Watching Zhao Dongyun ride away, Wang Shizhen sighed lightly: "There is a good junior in Hefei that period!" ”