According to his previous plan, as long as he mixes this into a cooperative, then whether it is the imperial court or Yuan Shikai sees that such a force that has already become an army is naturally impossible to let go, and the biggest possibility at that time is to give tens of thousands of this and tens of thousands of that, and finally make up enough military expenses for the expansion of the Jinzhou patrol battalion.

But what he didn't expect was that the money was not so easy to get in these years, even if Yuan Shikai was willing to do so in Baoding, Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai, Wang Shizhen, and Wu Changchun were all opposed, saying that the expansion of Beiyang Yan Town was not enough, and there was still money left over for expansion, which could only be regarded as the Jinzhou patrol battalion of the Beiyang branch.

Not to mention the imperial court, if the provinces below want to train a new army, it is no less difficult to get money from the imperial court.

On the Fengtian side, Zengqi himself wanted to get the Fengtian Standing Army, and he was not willing to move the money out to develop the Jinzhou patrol battalion.

In this way, it is to break many of Zhao Dongyun's follow-up plans!

"My lord, now let's raise our own funds, this is not easy to do!" Meng Enyuan, who had been appointed by Zhao Dongyun as the commander of the first mixed association of the Jinzhou patrol battalion, was also full of bitterness at this time.

Although he already knew in advance that the status of the so-called 'Jinzhou Patrol Battalion No. 1 Mixed Association' was embarrassing, he did not expect that the imperial court, Beiyang, and Fengtian were unwilling to come up with tens of thousands of taels of silver to support the expansion needs, and he also regretted it a little when he said this, and he knew that he should have refused to be the commander of this mixed association.

Zhao Dongyun also frowned: "This matter is indeed a bit tricky!" ”

After he said that, he glanced at the other subordinates present, the expansion of the Jinzhou patrol battalion is related to the expansion of the third town system, and naturally it is also related to other high-level officials of the third town.

Zhao Dongyun looked at all the subordinates present, and then he set his eyes on Zhao Dongping, who was in charge of the small treasury of the third town: "General Manager Zhao, how much money do we have now, and how are the revenues and expenditures?" ”

If you want to solve the problem, you naturally have to know how much money you have and how much you need!

Zhao Dongping stood up after hearing this, at this time he looked much stronger than a few years ago, and he could no longer tell that he was just a young man in his early twenties, on the contrary, he looked like he was twenty-seven or eighteen years old, and he said: "The finances of our third town have always been relatively tight.

Now we receive 180,000 taels of silver every month from the household department of the imperial court and Baoding, and the Fengtian side will also give us 40,000 taels of defense expenses every month, and the total of the two is 220,000 taels of silver.

This figure was enough for the third town to support the standard establishment and the Jinzhou patrol battalion before the expansion, but later we were equipped with mortars and increased the cost of heavy machine gun equipment, and this part of the funds was not given, so we could only take it ourselves, not counting the need to purchase ordnance in the early stage, and we also needed to increase the maintenance cost of about 10,000 taels of silver every month.

After the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion was expanded into a mixed association, the cost of purchasing ordnance was also not calculated, and the maintenance cost of about 40,000 taels of silver was added every month.

In addition, the training intensity of our army is generally higher than that of other friendly troops, which increases the consumption of guns and guns, as well as the consumption of training bullets and live ammunition of bullets and shells, and at the same time, the food and uniforms of the sergeants also need to be additionally replenished. ”

After saying this, Zhao Dongping paused to let everyone digest his words, and then said the summary words: "According to the current income and expenditure, our official income is 220,000 taels per month, and our fixed expenditure is 290,000 taels, and if other odd expenses are included, it will reach 300,000 taels of silver fixed expenditure, and according to the above, our monthly deficit will reach 80,000 taels of silver per month." ”

300,000 taels of silver, this is the maintenance fund required by the army of more than 13,000 people in the third town under Zhao Dongyun and more than 5,000 people in the Jinzhou patrol battalion, with a total of more than 18,000 people!

After everyone digested it a little, Zhao Dongping continued: "In the past, the funds required for the purchase of ordnance and expansion were all solved by ourselves, and the self-raised funds fluctuated greatly, and the sources were relatively stable: Jinzhou and the counties in western Liaoning paid me about 5,000 taels of 'assistance defense fees' for the third town every month, and the ferry fees and tolls collected by the Jinzhou patrol battalion at the checkpoints set up in Jinzhou, Liaozhong, and Panshan are currently about 4,000 taels per month, and in addition, our army began to provide paid protection services for major business travelers in western Liaoning last yearThe caravans of the major merchant brigades were allowed to follow the logistics and transport convoys of our army, and the monthly income in this regard was as high as 8,000 and as little as 4,000. ”

Two of the above three aspects are the more common additional income of local garrisons, which are generally the defense fees paid by the local government and the road purchase fees collected by the private establishment of checkpoints. As for the third bodyguard service, this is based on the special environment of many bandits in the Northeast and the danger of business travel, since the third town has been stationed in various parts of western Liaoning, many business travelers like to follow the logistics transport team of the third town to act together to avoid the attack of bandits, and later Zhao Dongping, who was responsible for making money, saw the business opportunity and simply provided bodyguard services at a clear price.

Even in order to expand the development of the bodyguard business, Zhao Dongyun also specially left some small bandits in western Liaoning, although those small bandits are not in the way, but they are a great threat to past business travel.

"Adding up the three, you can get about 15,000 taels of silver every month, counting these, our army is short of about 65,000 taels!"

After Zhao Dongping said this, he closed his mouth!

In fact, Zhao Dongping still has a lot of hidden and private income that he has not said, such as the income from the suppression of bandits and the income from the arms trade with Japan and Russia, the reason why he did not say it is because these incomes are not fixed income, and they are available this month but may be gone next month. In addition, most of the above hidden income is also used to purchase ordnance and serve as a small treasury for emergency backup, and it is impossible to use it for the daily expenses of the troops!

Moreover, those hidden incomes, such as those from the arms trade with Japan and Russia, although no longer a secret among the upper echelons of the Third Town, could not be said publicly.

If you count those hidden incomes, in fact, the funds in Zhao Dongyun's hands are still very rich, and the harvest of the bandits in the early stage adds up to 400,000 taels of silver, and the military trade with Russia and the military trade with Japan can bring Zhao Dongyun at least 300,000 taels of silver every month.

However, the more you earn, the more you spend, and the early stage of the bandit also needs to be expended, and the cost is 100,000 silver, so the net profit is actually only about 300,000, and this thing is a one-time income, and it will be gone in the future.

For example, Zhao Dongyun repeatedly cracked down on bandits in the Liaohe area to clear the smuggling channels of trade, and at the same time, the soldiers and officers involved in the transportation of ordnance also shared part of the silver, so they could not let people risk their lives to smuggle ordnance without letting people earn dozens of taels of silver.

After these costs are excluded, the current arms trade between Japan and Russia is actually only about 200,000 yuan per month in the hands of Zhao Dongyun.

Normally, the 200,000 yuan is too much to fill the gap in the third town, but this money is not the regular income of the third town, but an additional income, and cannot be included in the regular expenses.

Because of this part of the money, Zhao Dongyun also had to be used to purchase ordnance and expand the army, just in the early stage to equip mortars, heavy machine guns and expand the Jinzhou patrol battalion, Zhao Dongyun spent at least 600,000 taels of silver, it can be said that he basically invested the income from the ordnance trade and the suppression of bandits.

The remaining hundreds of thousands are stored in the small treasury of the third town in accordance with the old rules for emergencies, and they must not be used until the moment of life and death.

So from this point of view, Zhao Dongyun is rich but not enough money to spend!

"According to my opinion, it is estimated that there is no way to do it from Hubu and Baoding, but can you get a batch from Fengtian?" It was Chen Guangyuan who spoke: "Didn't he say every day that he wanted us to help him practice the Fengtian Patrol Battalion, as long as he promised to give money, we might as well help him practice!" ”

This is simply a sale of labor! Zeng Qi wanted to go crazy if he wanted to train the Fengtian Standing Army, and he had already begged Zhao Dongyun to send someone over to help him train the new army, but for things that were beneficial to others and not beneficial to himself, whether it was Zhao Dongyun or the other officers in the third town, they were not interested in it, so they didn't pay attention to him at all.

And if there is no professional help to train the new army in these years, he will rely on Zengqi and the half-baked men under him, and he will not be able to train a qualified new army for ten years.

However, Wang Zhanyuan objected: "Brother Xiufeng's words are too much, if he gives us tens of thousands of taels of silver, we will help him train a standing army in Fengtian, then other provinces will not be able to follow suit, so it won't take a few years to work hard all over the world to be a new army, what is the use of waiting for us to be foreigners?" ”

Wang Zhanyuan is considering the problem from the perspective of the overall interests of Beiyang, what is the biggest support of Beiyang now? It's this Beiyang New Army! And it is not a matter of one or two years for the provinces to organize and train the new army, why can't they get it out in general, and even if they do, it is still at the level of a half-ass? In addition to the factors of funding and provincial governors, it is actually related to the lack of support from Beiyang.

The Beiyang system and Nanyang led by Zhang Zhidong, and the two Guangxi and other southern identities led by Cen Chunxuan are all mortal enemies, and they will only help them train when they are sick!

Therefore, many years after the formation of the Beiyang army in history, the new army in the southern provinces is still only a half-ass, in addition to financial and other factors, the main reason is that Beiyang is unwilling to send people to help them train troops.

The pillars of the expansion of the army have always been those professional officers and technical soldiers who have been trained for many years, as long as these backbones are used to build a shelf, they can be organized into a new army in half a year, but without these backbones, it will not be possible to start over for five or six years.

Based on the above reasons, Yuan Shikai and Zhao Dongyun have always refused to send people to the Fengtian Patrol Battalion to help them train!

Chen Guangyuan retorted: "What is Brother Zichun afraid of, don't you know what the result of the imperial court asking Lord Duxian to help organize and train the Standing Army of the Beijing Banner back then?" Do you say that the current standing army of the Beijing Banner is from the imperial court or from my Beiyang? ”