Hearing Song Xiangtang say this, the others naturally did not show any dissatisfaction or disdain, and they all knew that the First Division had never stopped fighting in the past year.

When the Sixth Army was heading north, the First Division, as the only main force deployed by the Chinese Army in Shandong, fought alone against the 60,000 or 70,000 troops of Duxing'a, and was even able to launch several battles in eastern Shandong one after another when there was a shortage of troops, and seized the eastern part of Shandong.

During the Battle of Jinan, the First Division also resisted the counteroffensive of Duxing'a alone, and then participated in the offensive against Jinan, after the Battle of Jinan, the Sixth Army pursued northward, but there was no large-scale battle in the follow-up, and after capturing Dezhou, it was to stop the pace of going north and enter the rest.

However, the 1st Division was rushing all the way, successively conquering the Daimyo Prefecture in the south of Zhili and the two prefectures in the north of Henan, and then marching north non-stop to converge with the Sixth Army.

There was no rest at all along the way, and everyone here knew that the 1st Division had transferred the 3rd Infantry Regiment to form the 6th Mixed Brigade.

Naturally, they know very well that the current state of the First Division is not very good, and the combat effectiveness that the First Division can exert now is at most only about seventy percent of what it was at its peak.

On the other hand, as the only officer with the rank of colonel or above to participate in this high-level strategic meeting, Colonel Zhou Ren, commander of the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division, looked a little more excited.

"Our division has already completed some adaptive training, and the morale of all departments is high!"

Speaking of the various units of the Sixth Army, the best state is actually not the Eighth Division or the Ninth Division, but the Ninth Auxiliary Division, the younger brother of many troops.

Because after the Battle of Jinan. The military has already allowed the 9th Auxiliary Division to enjoy the same treatment as the Royal Army, whether it is in terms of the salaries of soldiers or the supply of logistics materials. They are all of the same specifications as the Royal Army.

This made the officers and ordinary soldiers in the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division extremely excited.

You must know that the treatment of the Ninth Assistant Defense Division was also higher than that of ordinary Assistant Defense Divisions. But compared to the Royal Army, it is still much worse, the simplest thing is that the soldiers of the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division are still unpaid, but the food treatment is similar to that of the Royal Army.

However, since the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division was gradually changed into a line infantry division, the operations were basically collective operations, and it was impossible to count how many enemies a single soldier had killed or wounded. After all, it is impossible for the Chinese army to issue a bounty of tens of thousands to the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division for a casual battle, and only when a large-scale battle and excellent performance will it be issued more, for example, in the Jinan Campaign, each soldier of the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division received a bounty of about four yuan.

Don't look at a battle, there are four rounds, but there are not several large-scale battles like the Jinan Campaign a year, and there are no bonuses at all for small and medium-sized battles in peacetime.

Nowadays, the officers and men of the 9th Division are compared with the Royal Army in terms of salary, although there is no direct bounty for the campaign, but they have a standard salary of five yuan and five jiao a month (private class). In addition, they can enjoy various subsidies, such as in wartime, they will not deduct the cost of food, clothing and other daily necessities, and combat post subsidies.

The soldiers of the 9th Auxiliary Division are now the same as the soldiers of the Royal Army. For example, in the non-combat period, the monthly salary of the lowest private is the standard five yuan and five jiao (the cost of food, clothing and other expenses need to be deducted), and the monthly food subsidy of one yuan and five jiao can be obtained (not paid directly to improve the food standard). The salary that can be obtained every month is about four yuan.

And during the battle. The soldiers' salaries are about 50 percent more, and they can get about six yuan a month.

This is a salary scale compared to the current per capita income. It's already quite good, you have to know the ordinary farmers in the countryside. After a busy year, they can't accumulate a few silver yuan, and ordinary city residents, a male middle-aged manual laborer, have a monthly income of only four or five yuan, and they have to support a family with this money.

But then again, the reason why so many people have come to the Chinese army to serve as soldiers in recent years is because of money, but in fact, it is more important because of the food of the Chinese army.

If the Chinese army counts all the food subsidies spent on soldiers, the monthly expenses spent on soldiers are far more than what soldiers get.

Not to mention anything else, the Chinese army has nearly 100,000 Royal Army soldiers, and the food allowance alone costs more than 100,000 yuan every month, and the total cost of salaries and mules, horses and livestock is about 1.6 million.

Then the troops still have to be trained, and if an artillery regiment casually conducts a live-fire exercise, it will have to throw out thousands or even tens of thousands.

The salaries of personnel, the food and horses, the training and office expenses add up, and the Royal Army will get more than 20 million silver dollars a year to maintain its current size.

And that's not even counting the many expenses of the Auxiliary Defense Army, the garrison, the high command, the various military stations, and the new barracks.

If all of them are counted, only according to the current scale of the Chinese Army, the annual maintenance expenses are about 30 million yuan.

The above-mentioned expenses do not include the expenses of the war, and it is impossible to calculate the amount of money spent in the event of a war.

Otherwise, why did the army demand that the military expenditure in 1858 be as much as 60 million, and that it would not be possible to spend so much just to raise the army, because there were still additional funds for army expansion and war purposes.

The reason why the Chinese army can be proud of the domestic monarchs and fight and retreat more than several other new armies, regardless of tactical factors, is actually quite simple: the Chinese army has money, and it is willing to spend money!

When the Qing court had 10 million to train the new army, the Chinese army used 20 million or even 50 million to train the army.

To put it in cliché terms, the Chinese military can also smash other forces in the country to death with money.

Now the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division has received the same treatment as the Royal Army, which is a classic behavior of the Chinese Army throwing money, and there are more than 100,000 expenses per month, but in exchange for the rebirth of the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division.

The same soldiers. It's still equipped with those weapons, but the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division has been since the Battle of Jinan. The morale is extremely high, and fighting a war is like eating gunpowder. On the way to the north, he attacked the city all the way, and successively fought more than ten large and small battles with the Qing army along the way, and defeated tens of thousands of Qing troops in total.

Taking advantage of the spring breeze of the reform of the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division, many Royal Army officers serving in the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division have also risen to the top, and most of them have been promoted to the first level.

The most obvious example of this is Zhou Ren, the commander of the 9th Auxiliary Defense Division, who previously served as the commander of the 9th Auxiliary Defense Division with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and has now been promoted to colonel, although he is slightly inferior to the Royal Army, where he is mostly a major general.

But his Zhou Ren's qualifications in all aspects are very different from those of the division commanders of the Royal Army. Looking at the generals at the level of division commanders and brigade commanders in the Royal Army, basically all of them were students from the first phase of the Suiying Academy, a small number of students were students from the second period, and the current third phase is only Lin Wei, who was helped by Lin Zhe's seedlings.

As for him, Zhou Ren, is a student of the third period, and he is not very good in the third period, otherwise he would not have been assigned to serve as an assistant defense division.

He also served in the Royal Army at the beginning of his graduation, but later his performance was mediocre, so he was transferred to serve in the Auxiliary Division while he was a captain. As compensation for his transfer to the Assisting Division, he was promoted to Army Major and served as the commander of the 26th Regiment of the 9th Assisting Division.

Later, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and took over as the commander of the Ninth Assistant Defense Division!

On weekdays. Although he was the commander of a division, his rank was actually not as high as that of some Royal Army regiments, such as the commanders of three cavalry regiments of the Royal Army. It was all cavalry major generals in the army who served as regimental commanders, and for example, the commanders of various artillery regiments. Most of his military ranks are colonels.

And some of the main infantry regiments, such as the infantry regiment commanders of the old main forces of the 1st Division. All with the rank of colonel.

In other words, his status in the Royal Army is actually about the same as that of some junior lieutenant colonels.

Interestingly, however, he commanded the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division with more than 7,000 men!

At the beginning, he was transferred to the auxiliary defense division system because he was not good enough, but he gradually grew up in the auxiliary defense division system, and if he was promoted to colonel, he was very likely to be promoted to major general in the ninth auxiliary defense division commander in the future.

Zhou Ren has already heard the rumors of the reform of his own Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division, and now the Command is making large-scale reforms to the existing Auxiliary Defense Division system, and his Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division is very likely to be directly reorganized into the Royal Army at that time, and he is very likely to be promoted to Major General at that time.

Because the commanders and brigade commanders of infantry divisions and brigades of the Royal Army are all generals, there has never been a precedent for a colonel to serve as a division commander or brigade commander, and it is impossible for the military to set this precedent because of Zhou Ren.

Therefore, he is very likely to become the first general from the assistant defense division system, the second student in the third phase of the Suiying Academy, and the first student to be promoted to a general by virtue of his military exploits.

With such a great prospect, it is no wonder that Zhou Ren is smiling on today's occasion.

Listening to the generals under his command reporting on the preparations, Shi Qingxuan was also thinking about how to allocate troops for the next strategic planning.

The core goal of this northward operation was to conquer Beiping, the political center of the puppet Qing Dynasty, completely destroy the rule of the puppet Qing Dynasty, and declare that the Chinese Empire was the only central power in China, and His Majesty Lin Zhe was the only emperor.

The significance of attacking Beiping is not only of great military significance, but also of extremely important political significance, so there is no room for any mistakes.

Shi Qingxuan knows the importance of going north this time, and if he succeeds, he will become more famous and add to his career, but if he accidentally sails in the gutter, it is very likely that his military career will fall to the bottom.

The higher he climbs, the more he can't tolerate any mistakes, and now in the empire, not only His Majesty Lin Zhe is paying attention to him, but also the civilian officials and even ordinary people in the empire are waiting for his battle report, and even Shi Qingxuan knows that there are many people in the military who are envious and jealous of themselves, and there are many people who have careful thoughts in their hearts to defeat themselves, so as to pull themselves down from a high position.

So he does not allow the slightest possibility of failure! (To be continued......)