In addition to rifles, artillery is a vital support weapon for the army, the Qing army is actually not bad, it can be said that whether it is the Huai Army in the First Sino-Japanese Period or the Wuwei Army during the Gengzi Incident, the number of their artillery is not a lot, and in some new equipment is also trying to keep up with the pace of the great powers, such as artillery balloons, and for example, countries are not equipped with many machine guns, these Qing troops have.

Of course, this does not mean that the equipment level of the army at the end of the Qing Dynasty is better than that of the great powers, but it only means that the gap between the army and the army of the great powers is not large, at least not so bad that it can affect the outcome of the war. As for why there is a rout, it has nothing to do with equipment, it is mainly a matter of tactical thinking and personnel.

During the First Sino-Japanese War, what did people think of that war, when the Huai army took a ship from Tianjin to Korea to participate in the war, the family members on the dock cried loudly all day long. From Li Hongzhang to the Huai army, almost everyone is reluctant to fight, and it is strange that they can win a foreign war under such circumstances.

The reluctance to fight is actually good, at least there were not many big traitors at that time, and when it came to the Gengzi year, there were countless Chinese people pushing wheelbarrows to form a huge logistics supply force for the Eight-Nation Alliance, and countless Chinese people sweated in the Beijing Defense War to build positions for the Eight-Nation Alliance.

It is estimated that the Chinese people in Beijing at that time thought that since the Dongyu like the Aixin Jueluo family could be the emperor of the Chinese, it was okay to change to a blonde and blue-eyed foreigner to be the emperor, and maybe they could still make a fortune from the dragon.

The Chinese people during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Gengzi Incident were not as patriotic as later generations imagined!

The various equipment of the Wuwei Right Army in 1901 was naturally not bad, but in the official equipment list, it was equipment without machine guns, which made Zhao Dongyun a little incomprehensible.

"Machine guns? You mean those Makqin guns! Duan Qirui was slightly stunned at first when he heard Zhao Dongyun say that he was looking for a machine gun, but he quickly reacted: "I remember that there were some Makqin fast guns in the past, but they haven't been used much after the first Wu year, maybe there are still some in the warehouse, but what do you want those things for?" ”

Duan Qirui also didn't quite understand why Zhao Dongyun wanted the Makqin machine gun, it was not that he hadn't played that thing, although it sounded very powerful, but it was actually not easy to use.

Not only can the weight be compared with the small-caliber artillery, but also the frequent breakdowns, although it played a certain role in the Korean battlefield that year, but was not liked by the domestic generals, and in last year's Gengzi Incident, the armed guards who participated in the war were also equipped with Makqin machine guns, but they still did not play their due role, so that the only few left after the end of the war were also thrown into the warehouse.

After all, these machine guns are expensive, not to mention many failures, and the bullets are consumed too much.

Zhao Dongyun said: "We didn't want to defend in that drill, I just thought to see if we could get a few machine guns for defensive operations!" ”

Duan Qirui is an old qualified general, and he is also a rare high-level general with a broad vision in the Beiyang system, he is no stranger to machine guns, and he has also thought about building a batch of new machine guns, but now it is the time when the standing army is newly built, and the military expenditure gap originally required is very large, and the limited funds have to be used to buy artillery and rifles, so the mention of buying machine guns is still in words.

At the moment, he heard that Zhao Dongyun wanted to use the machine gun to conduct defensive operations, although he didn't know how Zhao Dongyun planned to arrange the defensive tactics of the machine gun, but since Zhao Dongyun mentioned it today, he must have already had a case.

So he didn't ask much, and after thinking about it, he said: "There should be a few more doors in the military warehouse, but I don't know if they can still be used, I'll give you a note, you can get it yourself." If that's not enough, I'll look elsewhere and I should be able to find a few more! ”

Duan Qirui didn't ask Zhao Dongyun too much why, but directly supported Zhao Dongyun very happily, there are naturally reasons for this, if Duan Qirui and Zhao Dongyun can only be regarded as seniors in Germany before, then since Zhao Dongyun officially asked him for help and recommendation, and Duan Qirui also recommended Zhao Dongyun in front of Yuan Shikai, it can be said that Zhao Dongyun has been tied to him.

In layman's and superficial terms, Zhao Dongyun is now his person.

Duan Qirui was able to compete for power and profit with Feng Guozhang after Yuan Shikai's death, and led a group of Beiyang warlords and Feng Guozhang to a Zhiwan War, and climbed to the top of Chinese politics several times, but not only relying on his military talent, but also relying on his personality charm, otherwise why would those warlord leaders follow him desperately!

Everyone who gets up step by step and can step to the top, whether it is a so-called great man or a dictator, they all have the same characteristic, that is, they have a personality charm that ordinary people do not have, and this charm can make them tightly unite everyone around them!

To put it bluntly, this is the spirit of the king!

And now Duan Qirui has already shown this temperament, just a few words from Zhao Dongyun, and he didn't even need Zhao Dongyun to explain why in detail, he just waved his hand and gave Zhao Dongyun a note, and directly gave him the machine gun that Zhao Dongyun wanted.

In Zhao Dongyun's view, this kind of decisiveness is trust!

In this case, Rao is Zhao Dongyun has a soul of the twenty-first century, and he has the idea of being willing to serve Duan Qirui.

After talking about the machine gun, Duan Qirui looked at Zhao Dongyun and said: "I remember that Dongyun has twenty-three, as the saying goes, if you start a family, you can also establish this industry, and this family should also be solved!" ”

Duan Qirui said this is not an old woman's family, let alone that he has a daughter who can't marry and wants to recruit Zhao Dongyun as a son-in-law, he is purely from a business point of view, Zhao Dongyun is twenty-three years old this year, but he has not yet married, in this era, many men are already married at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and there are still relatively few who are not married at the age of twenty.

If he is an ordinary person, forget it, but he is not, Zhao Dongyun is a New Army officer with more than 1,500 people, and if he does not get married for a long time, he will give people a feeling of immaturity and lack of stability. If it continues to drag on, being unmarried will become an obstacle to his continued promotion.

After all, in the concept of ordinary people, only after becoming a family will they be stable and can be boldly reused.

As a senior, Duan Qirui felt that he needed to remind Zhao Dongyun!

"Dongyun, you also know, now I have a new standing army in Beiyang, this standing army has the establishment of two towns, and the imperial court also wants our Beiyang to help train a standing army of Beijing Banner, which adds up to the establishment of three towns, and there are a lot of empty positions in the short term. You are now in the eyes of Lord Governor, and if this exercise is done well, it will be logical to mention it next year! Duan Qirui said this, paused and looked at Zhao Dongyun, and then spoke again:

"But at this time, the more you need to be careful, don't give those people the slightest excuse!"

Coming out of Duan Qirui's mansion, Duan Qirui's words once again came to Zhao Dongyun's mind, he thought that he was only twenty-three years old and had a lot of time to squander, but he would think that if he didn't start a family, it would become an obstacle to his career.

Judging from Duan Qirui's words just now, he can be reused in the Beiyang system, and if nothing else, he will be able to rise next year, and only by climbing to a higher position can he participate more in future changes. In this case, in order to avoid the attack of political enemies, it is necessary to raise the schedule of your marriage.

It's just that this kind of thing is really in a hurry for a while, and I can only take one step at a time!

Suppressing this matter, now Zhao Dongyun is still focused on the upcoming exercise, he has heard that not only Yuan Shikai and other Beiyang bigwigs will come to watch in person, but also many powerful people in the imperial court will also come to watch.

From a big point of view, this exercise is not only a performance to demonstrate Yuan Shikai's training ability, but also an opportunity and stage for him Zhao Dongyun!

As long as you leave an indelible impression in the hearts of these people, then you can really rise quickly, instead of relying on your qualifications to climb slowly step by step like others. If you rely on your qualifications to boil slowly, it is estimated that by the time of the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, it would be good for you to be able to mix in the position of an assistant commander, and this is far from the result that Zhao Dongyun expected!

Since God has brought him to this era and made him Zhao Dongyun, it is equivalent to giving him an empty stage, and if he wants to win the applause and cheers of the audience on the stage, he has to work hard!

In the afternoon, Zhao Dongyun took the people of the second battalion to a military warehouse in Baoding, this warehouse has been some years and the weapons stored here are too old for a long time, so there is no careful maintenance.

The warehouse is not small, and there are all kinds of weapons that have been equipped in the Huai Army era and the Wuwei Army era, including old-fashioned front-loading flintlock guns, single-shot rear-loading guns with fixed paper shells, and single-shot rear-loading guns with metal fixed bullets.

There are also a few pre-loading guns that are unknown how many years old, and in this pile of rags, Zhao Dongyun soon found four Makqin machine guns, like other sealed weapons, they are also covered with dust and even have a lot of rust, one of which is incomplete even the gun carriage.

"That's it, pull them out!" Zhao Dongyun ignored the smoke and dust around him, and directly stepped forward and pointed at these Makqin machine guns.

There are soldiers behind him to follow, and then they want to drag them out and pull, these Maxim machine guns are really big guys, with a water-cooled sleeve barrel barrel is thick enough, not to mention, under the barrel is also a thick gun carriage, there are two huge iron wheels on the gun rack, this Maxim heavy machine gun, but more than a hundred pounds of big guys.

It looks like a small-caliber artillery!

Looking at the Makqin machine gun that took three or four people to move, Lin Yongquan, who was standing behind Zhao Dongyun, frowned: "My lord, I don't know if this thing can be used!" ”

Lin Yongquan was an officer who knew how to fight machine guns in the second battalion that Zhao Dongyun had managed to find, he was a machine gunner in the Huai Army in his early years, and he also fought in Korea with his Makqin machine gun. After the first year, he joined Yuan Shikai's newly built army and mixed into the position of sentry officer.