Although Meng Enyuan has become the commander of the First Mixed Association in Fengtian, he has been able to break away from the limitations of the small arms of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and has officially entered the level of a high-level general of the army, but he is now the leader of the cavalry in the Soviet Union because of his cavalry background.

In this case, it is not surprising that he supported the development of cavalry.

"A cavalry association?" Zhao Dongyun still frowned after hearing this, to be honest, he has not relaxed the development of cavalry over the years, on the contrary, he is still more concerned.

For example, the 'brigade and small battalion' system he created in the Jinzhou patrol battalion was to enable the cavalry under his jurisdiction to better integrate into the modern army system.

Therefore, after the restructuring of the new army in the country, the cavalry unit of the third town under Zhao Dongyun was not modified to become a standard cavalry standard, but adopted a separate brigade small battalion system, what is the brigade small battalion system? That is, the level of the cavalry was expanded from a few dozen cavalry to about two hundred cavalry, and one battalion governed three cavalry teams, and then a cavalry battalion of about 600 cavalry was formed.

Such a battalion is equivalent to three battalions of the New Army at the end of the Qing Dynasty, but why is this kind of cavalry battalion still small? This is relative to the cavalry standard, originally the basic tactical unit of the cavalry of the new army in the late Qing Dynasty was the standard, but when it came to Zhao Dongyun, it was changed to a battalion, and the battalion was much smaller than the scale of the target. In fact, the so-called 'brigade and small battalion' system is more appropriate to call it the 'brigade small standard' system.

However, in this way, it is not easy to organize and name, because the cavalry standard of the third town has jurisdiction over three large cavalry battalions, and if the battalion is renamed the standard, then the cavalry standard of the third town will have to be renamed the cavalry association, and such a blatant change of the establishment and title of the third town is easy to be accused of being a political problem, so it simply follows the 'battalion' level of organization.

In today's countries, there is generally no such establishment as a cavalry battalion, and usually three to five cavalry companies form a cavalry regiment of about 500 to 800. Then two or three cavalry brigades, and then four or five regiments of cavalry divisions.

However, in Zhao Dongyun's establishment, because the battalion was used, the subsequent compilation and title of the guide zhì were different.

According to the preparation plan proposed by Meng Enyuan, two or three cavalry battalions were used to form a cavalry association, and two cavalry associations were formed to form a cavalry town. Therefore, compared to the Western-style cavalry, the content is the same, but the name is different.

However, no matter how the name changes, the development of the cavalry under Zhao Dongyun follows the development direction of the contemporary mainstream cavalry, not only the latest is adopted, but the equipment is also all made of Fuzai 88 cavalry rifles, and even large-scale heavy machine guns and mortars, and the intensity of fire is much higher than that of the cavalry units in other towns in Beiyang.

It can be seen that Zhao Dongyun has always attached more importance to the development of cavalry, but this attention is still not satisfied with Meng Enyuan and other cavalry generals.

"My lord, although the number of cavalry in our army is insufficient, we can barely make up a cavalry association!" Meng Enyuan continued to persuade Zhao Dongyun.

However, Zhao Dongyun still shook his head: "The cavalry of the third town can't move!" ”

Why? Because the third town is not only his Zhao Dongyun's descendant troops, but also one of the six towns in Beiyang, in other words, Yuan Shikai's descendant troops, the importance is far from the two Fengtian mixed associations that Zhao Dongyun himself made can be compared, Zhao Dongyun himself tossed the two Fengtian mixed associations It's fine, but Zhao Dongyun in the third town has no opinion on equipping himself with mortars, equipping himself with more machine guns, and even changing the cavalry formation. Instead of opinions, on the contrary, he will greatly praise Zhao Dongyun for his good training.

But if Zhao Dongyun said that the troops of the Third Town would be transferred and incorporated into the local troops of Fengtian, then Yuan Shikai would have an opinion, and any move to weaken the troops of the six towns of Beiyang would be unacceptable.

You must know that Zhao Dongyun spent a lot of saliva on Yuan Shikai in order to transfer an infantry battalion from the Third Town to Fengtian Second Mixed Association to serve as the core combat force, and promised to refill the vacancy in the Third Town within two months, otherwise Yuan Shikai would not allow it.

Not long after an infantry battalion was transferred, another cavalry battalion was transferred? Yuan Shikai must have an opinion!

And the establishment of the cavalry association is too big, not to mention the cost, and the political impact will be relatively large, you must know that the cavalry establishment under Zhao Dongyun is different from the new army establishment stipulated by the imperial court, which is nothing in private, but it is openly taken out for people to see, and it is also fanfare to make a cavalry association, when the time comes to play the imperial court, what do you let the chief officers of the military training department and the military department think?

"Let's stop this cavalry association for the time being, and I'll do it again when I have a chance in the future!" Zhao Dongyun was no longer ready to listen to Meng Enyuan's persuasion and explanation at this time, because the subordinate officers such as Meng Enyuan and Chen Guangyuan considered the problem in a different direction than Zhao Dongyun.

Zhao Dongyun was more concerned about the influence of politics, while Meng Enyuan was thinking very simply, that is, how to strengthen the cavalry force!

Meng Enyuan looked disappointed when he heard this, but he was also a cheeky person when he heard that Zhao Dongyun had vetoed the cavalry association and the matter of transferring cavalry from the third town, but there was one more thing, that is, the newly trained cavalry battalion.

Sure enough, then he listened to Zhao Dongyun and said: "However, our army is located in the northeast, and the lack of cavalry cannot be less, so in this way, you will train another cavalry battalion in the first mixed association!" ”

Anyway, the cavalry troops under Zhao Dongyun have almost developed recently, but Zhao Dongyun has always been a guy who doesn't like to defend himself, since the existing five cavalry battalions have all been fully equipped, it is time to continue to train a new cavalry battalion!

Meng Enyuan heard this, and immediately said with a happy face: "My lord, I see it!" ”

Zhao Dongyun's face still didn't change: "Don't be in a hurry to leave, I'll give you a few approvals, and then go find everywhere to handle it."

If Meng Enyuan wants to train another cavalry battalion, he needs military horses, weapons and personnel, and these things can't be obtained from the Supervision and Training Office, the Education Department, the Ordnance Department and other places without Zhao Dongyun's rules.

Training a cavalry battalion is much more troublesome than training an infantry battalion, in which the ordnance is the best solution, the war horse is second, the problem is the cavalry, if you want to recruit cavalry, it is best to recruit those who are skilled in equestrianism, what bandits, herdsmen and the like can be, but if it is the children of ordinary farmers, they have to train equestrianism, and when they are trained to become an army, the cucumber vegetables are cold, so in recent years, Zhao Dongyun's cavalry troops have been expanded, and they are generally recruited with skilled horsemanship, and rarely recruit ordinary recruits.

There are several ways to solve the war horse, one is to take the road of the imperial court through the guò formal way to ask for military horses, of course, this has to give money, one is to buy directly in the locality, there are many horses in the northeast, and there are more Mongolian horses nearby, just from these two ways, you can know that the new army in Beiyang and the old army in the provinces are not short of horses, of course, the new army in the south is another matter.

However, there is no shortage does not mean that there are good horses, and the war horses that can be obtained in the towns of Beiyang are generally Mongolian horses, although this kind of horse is barely usable, but the distance is still relatively large.

There are many kinds of military horses, which can be divided into riding horses, pack horses, pull horses, etc., among which the most used amount is actually not riding horses, but pack horses and pulling horses, the latter mainly serves as logistics horses for the troops, carrying mountain guns, machine guns, ammunition, pulling field artillery, baggage wagons, etc.

The so-called mule and horse use is the special use of a large number of horses as the main logistical force.

In the towns of Beiyang, the logistics of horses is not a problem, although the Mongolian horse is not suitable for charge combat, but the pull cart to carry goods is still possible, but as a horse for riding is inferior, far inferior to the Russian cavalry used by the Don hippo, the Japanese army's Anglo-Norman horse, which is commonly known as the 'Oriental horse' in later generations.

However, in terms of the development of today's cavalry, although the Mongolian horse is not as good as these traditional fine war horses in terms of speed, weight and explosiveness, it has a very strong advantage, that is, its excellent endurance. The Mongol horse was able to allow cavalry to maneuver long distances, which was unmatched by any other type of war horse in the world.

And this advantage was even more prominent in the era when cavalry gradually became mounted infantry.

Although the cavalry and logistics troops under Zhao Dongyun were mainly Mongolian horses, there were also a small number of horses of other bloodlines, such as more than 20 Don hippos in Russia and more than 10 Anglo-Arabian horses in Japan.

Among them, the more than 10 Anglo-Arab horses presented by Japan are better riding horses than Anglo-Normandy horses, and have always been used as horses for senior officers in the Japanese army, and these more than 10 Anglo-Arab horses are horses given to Zhao Dongyun by the Japanese army, and then given by Zhao Dongyun to Chen Guangyuan and other senior officers to use as riding horses.

It's a pity that these Anglo-Arabian horses have been castrated and can't be used for breeding, otherwise Zhao Dongyun's men might have gotten a good riding horse.

As for the more than 20 Don hippos, they are not the active military horses of the Russian army, these horses are more than 10 stallions that Zhao Dongyun sent someone to buy from Russia at a high price in the name of a private person a few years ago, including two stallions and thirteen mares, as well as eight ponies that have been born in the past two years.

Zhao Dongyun had high hopes for these Don hippos, who hoped that he would be able to obtain a large number of excellent Don hippos from them, and also hoped to breed Mongolian horses with Don hippos, so as to breed horses that were more suitable for China's terrain.

In fact, Zhao Dongyun originally thought of getting his own Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Arabian horses, but he had no opinion on giving him more than a dozen castrated stallions, but the stallion refused to give them alive.

In fact, if Zhao Dongyun is willing, he can also go directly to France and even the United Kingdom and other places to introduce excellent stallions, but after the introduction, he still has to breed and crossbreed by himself, which takes too long and may not be able to breed better horses than Don hippos, so he simply put the center on breeding Don hippos.

Although the cavalry under Zhao Dongyun or the entire Beiyang New Army is relatively lacking in excellent war horses, the overall cavalry force in Beiyang is not large, and it can barely be handled, and there is no shortage of horses for logistics troops.

Compared with the complexity and trouble of developing cavalry and the high cost of developing artillery, it is much simpler for Zhao Dongyun to expand a few infantry battalions!