May 28, 1862, Lichun Yuan, Wusong Port, Shanghai.

"Company commander, open the door quickly, Company Commander Liang, there is an emergency, open the door quickly......"

"What are you yelling about!" Liang Chengfu, who was completely naked, opened his eyes impatiently, glanced at the young woman lying beside him who was also awakened and was also smooth, clicked his mouth, and suddenly roared loudly, "Who doesn't open your eyes?" Dare to disturb my dream! ”

"Company commander, it's me, your orderly Xiao Zhang." There was another knock at the door, "Hurry up and open the door, urgent military situation!" ”

"Urgent military intelligence?" As soon as he heard these four words, Liang Chengfu, who was impatient, was awakened suddenly, but he quickly reacted, and opened his mouth and scolded, "Urgently, you are paralyzed!" Lao Tzu is on vacation, do you know when he is on vacation, he is not on duty, where is the emergency military situation when he is not on duty? If you dare to talk nonsense again, believe it or not, Lao Tzu abolished you? ”

"No, company commander." Xiao Zhang, the orderly outside the door, continued to shout loudly through the door, "The brigade commander has an order, all officers and soldiers will cancel one qiē vacation, and anyone, no matter where they are or what they are doing, must immediately return to the unit to report after receiving the order, and those who do not arrive at nine o'clock in the morning will be punished as violating discipline, and those who run with a weight of 10,000 meters, and those who are more than three hours late will be locked up for three days!" ”

"No, it won't." Liang Chengfu was stunned, reacted immediately, and began to grope around the bedside, "Hey, where is it?" Why can't I find it? ”

"Uncle, what are you looking for?" The naked woman asked delicately.

"Where's my watch?" Liang Chengfu hurriedly said, "Look at the time...... Quick, help me find it. ”

"Uncle, when you came last night, you didn't see a watch." The woman said, "The concubine remembers it really, you really didn't bring a watch." ”

"Don't have a watch? How can it be? "Liang Chengfu is angry and corrupt." We have to have a watch in everything we carry around, this is discipline...... Say, are you hiding? ”

"Wronged, uncle." The woman immediately called out, "This Lichun Courtyard is a model shop that pays taxes according to the rules, although we have a humble status, but we also have our own morality and discipline, selling our body is selling our body, but we will definitely not steal the property of guests, do you want to say so, do you have any evidence?" If there is no evidence. Be careful, I'll go to the yamen to sue you for false accusations! ”

"You, you, you, you ......" Looking at the young woman who sat up straight and had no scruples about her upper body, Liang Chengfu was speechless for a while, and then he was furious, "I don't mess with you!" Where's my watch? Sue you, it's a military product, but stealing is a crime! It's a felony! ”

Liang Chengfu is not wrong. As a company commander, he will be equipped with a watch as standard in the army, which is naturally convenient for timekeeping and convenient for commanding troops to coordinate operations. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that military products are very important military supplies.

However, because watches are still rare, especially military watches. They are all stainless steel quartz watches imported from modern society, which are accurate and have not been produced in this time and space. Therefore, the value on the market is very high, four or five times more expensive than some foreigners' gold-plated pocket watches.

In order to prevent officers from taking pawns for money and greedy for military supplies, there are a series of regulations in the army, that is, once a military watch is lost, it is a violation of discipline, and a case must be opened for investigation, and punishment of different sizes is given according to the circumstances of the investigation.

That is to say, if you accidentally lose your watch, it is okay, generally it is a fine and cleaning the toilet, but if it is deliberately pawned for money, or even deliberately reselled, no matter what the reason, the lightest one must be immediately expelled from the military and punished with double compensation, if the number involved is too large, then even the death penalty is possible.

Of course, from another point of view, if it is theft, then according to the laws of the empire, theft is generally calculated according to the value of the item, and the value of the watch is very high, then stealing a watch is a felony, especially a military watch, and the punishment is usually increased.

Generally speaking, if a thief steals a watch and is found to be able to return the stolen goods, he will be sentenced to at least five years in prison!

In short, the laws of the empire punish petty theft and robbers according to the severity of the circumstances, and the higher the value of the stolen or robbed items, the heavier the sentence.

"Ouch, it's amazing, but unfortunately it doesn't scare me." The woman simply didn't pretend to be pitiful, and brushed her hair directly, "Don't do anything wrong, don't be afraid of ghosts knocking on the door, if you don't take it, you don't take it, and it's useless to talk about it."

If you scare me with military law, you can, go and apply for a search warrant first, if there is a search warrant, it is easy to say, if there is no search warrant, then I am sorry. Of course, you can use force, and the little woman can't stop it, but unless you kill me, otherwise, I will definitely go to the police and accuse you of a false accusation! If you kill me, that's okay, it's murder, and the police will do it for me. ”

It's no wonder that this dusty woman is so confident, it's really because of the imperial law.

Since Li Yongji announced the abolition of the slave and maid system, women like Fengchen are no longer lowly, they are commoners, and they enjoy the same rights and obligations as civilians, and they are also protected and restricted by the same laws.

Due to the relationship between their professions, the dust women are different from ordinary people, and they are more sensitive to the official law, so they quickly learned to use the law to protect their own rights and interests.

So far, the three crimes of intentional injury, defamation and false accusation are mostly from the reports of these dust girls, once the guests scold or beat them as before, they will immediately go to the police station to report to the police, if the police do not care or the results are not satisfactory to these dust women, they will go to the court to make trouble, so even the police are a little afraid to get around.

Perhaps because of this, many readers who are not accustomed to this world often talk about these behaviors of the dust girl when discussing in private, and regard this as a typical case of the world's declining style.

"You!" Facing this fierce and dusty girl, Liang Chengfu was speechless again, and just raised his hand to hit someone, but after thinking about it, he put down his hand and forcibly suppressed the fire in his heart, "You really didn't take my watch?" ”

"No, no, no." The woman's tone softened again, "Uncle, our Lichun Courtyard is a high-end club, not a roadside wild shop." Our staff are absolutely guaranteed in terms of conduct. Besides, your watch is so valuable, and stealing is a felony, can I be guilty of ruining most of my life for that little money? ”

"This ......" Liang Chengfu frowned, feeling as if this was really the case.

Just when Liang Chengfu was about to say something again, the door was knocked again: "Company commander, hurry up, it's eight twenty, if you don't leave, you won't be able to catch up!" ”

"What? You didn't say it earlier! Heard this. Liang Chengfu was no longer entangled, directly pulled open the quilt, and hurriedly began to get dressed.

After simply dressing it, Liang Chengfu immediately rushed out, no longer caring about the woman behind him.

After Liang Chengfu left, the woman looked left and right to confirm that there was no one, then she bent down and took out a black stainless steel watch from her shoes under the bed. smiled lightly: "Tsk, it's really a good product, at least worth fifty taels of silver." Hmph, that's stupid. When I didn't know you were a soldier? It's you who pits! ”

Indeed, because Lishunin is close to the barracks and often receives soldiers, I know a little about some things in the barracks. For example, the punishment of the military table, they are very clear.

These dusty women know very well that although the army prohibits prostitution. However, it is only stipulated that prostitutes are prohibited during the period of duty, and it is not concerned during the period of vacation, so many soldiers will take advantage of the vacation period to come over and have fun.

However, although officers and men are not prohibited from sleeping for prostitutes while on leave, if they go out for prostitution without permission, it is a violation of discipline.

And because of legal problems, as the woman said, even if it is an army, unless it is special military affairs such as the arrest of spies, if you want to search a brothel, you must apply for a search warrant in advance, and once you apply for a search warrant, you must explain the reason, and if it is known that the watch was lost during the prostitution, then the sin is great.

Therefore, the woman decided that nine times out of ten, this military master would suffer a dumb loss and report it on the grounds of accidental loss, in that case, the punishment would be much smaller.

Of course, the women of the wind and dust do not dare to stretch out their hands indiscriminately, they will also look at people, some regular customers do not dare to mess around, only some infrequent guests, face to face, will occasionally make a vote.

In the final analysis, the value of military watches is too high, so even if there is a heavy punishment, it still can't stop the black hand of crime.

In fact, although the reselling of munitions by soldiers has not yet reached the point where it has become a common practice, it is already an organized situation, except for the Praetorian Guard and the volunteers in the Wehrmacht, which are relatively good, the matter of conscripts reselling munitions has long been not news, the difference is only whether they can be found and whether they can be caught.

In other words, although the Chinese Empire was not established for a long time, the signs of corruption had already begun to appear, and not only did extravagance and corruption gradually begin to develop in the local government, but also the military gradually began to deteriorate.

Fundamentally speaking, this is the reason for the rapid expansion of the army, and it is precisely because of the rapid expansion of more than one million new soldiers that the good and bad of the troops are mixed, and some social customs have also been brought into the barracks.

Of course, for the time being, this kind of corruption in the military and political areas is only showing some signs and has not had much impact on the state finances, but if we do not find a way to stop it and let it develop, sooner or later a trend will be formed, and the situation will be strict at that time.

However, this cannot be said to be a problem of the centralized system, in fact, it has nothing to do with the system, this is due to the social atmosphere and habits, and after Li Yongji unified China, he has been busy interfering in foreign countries, and has not paid much attention to the internal situation of the country, and has not made any big moves such as anti-corruption and anti-corruption, which makes these things happen naturally.

Getting back to the point, and said that after Liang Chengfu, who was in a hurry to get dressed, rushed out of the door, he immediately saw a young soldier in a light gray military uniform standing at the door, it was his orderly Xiao Zhang.

"Company commander!"

"Say no more!" Liang Chengfu, whose face was stinky, waved his hand, "Time is urgent, leave first, say on the way." ”

first paid the overnight silver in front of the counter, Liang Chengfu hurriedly escaped in the voice of the old bustard's "welcome again", and then, in order to hurry, Liang Chengfu didn't care about saving money, instead of taking a rickshaw, he directly called a four-wheeled taxi carriage and went straight to the military camp outside the city.

When he was in the car, Liang Chengfu's heart was still dripping blood, and he had been silently settling accounts. Anyway, last night was a romantic night, and he had a lot of money. On this night, almost one-third of his normal income after defecting to the Imperial Army was spent. (This is the compensation for the watch.) ）

"I knew I would stay in Seoul and not come back." Liang Chengfu, whose heart was dripping blood, sighed, "How nice a North Korean girl is, gentle, cheap and beautiful, which one is the same as Shanghainese, the philistine is going to die, and it is a loss." I lost my heart, and I was blinded by lard, so I participated in the expeditionary volunteers. ”

The Expeditionary Volunteer Army is a separate military organization, which does not belong to the Janissaries, nor to the Wehrmacht or the militia, to be precise, it is not a national armed force, but a private mercenary organization, a nominal employer. It's the Eastern bloc.

As the name suggests, an expedition is to go overseas, and the volunteer army is a mercenary who voluntarily signed up, and the purpose of the establishment of this army was earlier to intervene in the American Civil War and prepare for the expedition to the north of the United States, but later the plan changed, and it was changed to go to Mexico.

Why Mexico? We have to start from the beginning.

It is said that Li Yongji secretly arrived in Hollywood City, that is, after Los Angeles. He began to organize an army, but because of the addition of many new weapons, especially those vehicles, it was not something that could be mastered in a short time. Therefore, it will take some time for the pioneer army to adapt to the new equipment.

During the training of the pioneer army, Li Yongji advocated a low-key approach, that is, to first appear to be soft to the California government.

Didn't the California government say that Chinese people should register with the government and pay a deposit when they come again? Well, the Chinese will not move in the short term, so you don't have to let those armed sailing ships hang around Hollywood Harbor. Even if the Second Fleet of the Navy is vulnerable in the face of itself, it is disgusting to watch.

In short, whether it is from the perspective of forbearance or supply, Li Yongji does not want to increase the number of immigrants in the short term, because too many immigrants will also be a burden to himself.

On the contrary, I don't know if it's a matter of the butterfly effect, Li Yongji heard a news, that is, in this time and space, the Mexicans are quite fierce, although the navy is defeated, but the Mexicans are in Inácio. Under the leadership of Zaragoza, on April 14, 1862, the French army was defeated in Puebla.

However, although the French army suffered a major defeat, its strength remained, and although Mexico was victorious, the losses were not small. So far, the armies of France and Mexico are facing off in Oriszaba, and the French are building up their forces and preparing for revenge.

Although Mexico won a game, but its strength was limited, Li Yongji concluded that Mexico would lose sooner or later without foreign aid, so why not take advantage of this opportunity to find some benefits?

You must know that the French have recently signed a military mutual assistance alliance with China, but this military mutual assistance alliance is a separate alliance, the full name is the Sino-French military mutual assistance agreement, and there is nothing to do with a third country.

To put it simply, the French are not interested in joint intervention in the American Civil War, but China's military strength is now quite strong, and it is showing an aggressive trend, especially in East Asia, and it is frequently flexing its muscles and showing its own survival.

For example, taking down the Manchus and North Korea in three times and dividing five by two has highlighted the military power of a great power, of course, this matter is just that, but the most worrying thing is that China is actually funding Vietnam!

After the collapse of the original Anglo-French combined fleet, due to the loss of a large number of troops, the French did not live well in Vietnam, and at that time they still relied on the help of the Chinese, that is, Li Shixian's department.

However, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fell and an amnesty was issued to the Taiping army, this Chinese army could not be relied on because many people wanted to go home.

Originally, the French did not let go, and these Chinese could not leave, but what is worrying is that the Chinese and the British sent a fleet to Saigon, which made the French no longer able to hold these Chinese cannon fodder.

Now that the Chinese cannon fodder is gone, the reinforcements from the French mainland have not come for a long time, and the Vietnamese don't know where to get a batch of advanced weapons, many of which have better performance than the French.

In between, the French began to seek an alliance with China, not for anything else, but to hope that the Chinese would no longer support the Vietnamese.

The French also have the capital, because the trade volume between France and China has increased sharply year after year, especially in the consumption of luxury goods such as cultured pearls and aluminum products, it has surpassed the United Kingdom, and is the largest overseas sales of China.

Therefore, the French threatened to cut off trade and threaten China to stop supporting Vietnam.

In the end, the French established a military mutual assistance agreement with the Chinese, asking for nothing else, only asking the Chinese not to take the initiative to provoke and temporarily maintain the status quo in East Asia, or the Indochina Peninsula.

Of course, since this agreement on mutual military assistance was signed between the French ambassador plenipotentiary and China, it has not yet been approved by the French emperor. Therefore, strictly speaking, it is only valid in East Asia.

In other words, as long as the French government does not explicitly oppose this agreement, then this agreement is valid, which is also the general diplomatic norm of this era.

Because of the looseness of this agreement, there is no offensive clause in the agreement, that is, unlike the Sino-British convention, in this agreement, one of the signatories takes the initiative to attack an unrelated enemy, and the other party can ignore it. There is no obligation to follow the declaration of war; However, if both parties have a common enemy, they can fight together within their capabilities, and once they enter the war together, they must ensure that they do not conclude a peace treaty with the enemy alone.

The French regarded this agreement as a proof of the partition of Vietnam, believing that the Chinese were doing this to attack the Indochina Peninsula with the French, and to divide Vietnam and even Burma and Cambodia.

Although it is necessary for multiple people to share the cake together, but in this situation, the French have to endure it. After all, if you refuse to share the cake together, you can swallow it alone, with the strength of the Chinese. There's no way, who makes the geographical location of the home good, the country borders, and it is closer.

However. What the French don't know is that the Chinese did it, or what Li Yongji asked them to do. It's for Mexico!

That's right, Li Yongji is planning to send troops to Mexico, at least to take down Lower California, if possible, it's not bad to cut a little more land, such as Sonora or something, it's not a bad thing to get more land.

It would be no problem for China to fight Mexico alone, but the French are playing with Mexico, and it is really difficult to explain the past by themselves. This is not because of the military fear of the French, but mainly because the economy does not want to tear up with the French so quickly, after all, the contribution of the French is still very large, and the French market is also quite delicious.

It is precisely because of this that such an agreement was made in a hurry, and it deliberately did not appear to be within the scope of military mutual assistance.

In short, the main target of the Expeditionary Volunteer Force at present is Mexico, not the United States, and the attack on Mexico will not involve the will of the state, but will only be armed intervention in the nature of a private company, similar to the East India Company.

That's right, the Expeditionary Volunteer Force is affiliated with the Eastern Bloc, and the Eastern Bloc is a consortium incorporated in China, so the Expeditionary Force is only a mercenary or security guard of the Eastern Bloc. It is not a national army or a royal army, that is to say, it does not represent the Chinese government, it is a private mercenary army, which only represents the interests of private consortia, and cannot be guaranteed by international law.

Because of the nature of this private mercenary, it is different from the Chinese Imperial Army in terms of personnel organization and establishment, simply put, it is smaller in scale and more free.

Although it is called an expeditionary force, it is actually only a brigade-level establishment, so it can also be called an expeditionary brigade.

The expeditionary brigade has two infantry regiments, an engineer regiment, and the artillery is scattered in the regiment, that is, the regiment is the most basic independent combat unit.

For the sake of saving money, the establishment of a standard regiment of the expeditionary force is 2,000 people, which means that the entire expeditionary force has only 6,000 places in total, and the Eastern Bloc only pays 6,000 military salaries at most.

In the organization of grass-roots units, a three-three system is implemented, with a group of 5 people, a squad of 15 people, a platoon of 45 people, and a company of 130 people.

However, this refers to the Chinese volunteers, after going abroad, the expeditionary force can recruit overseas soldiers on the spot, then it is not under the control of the Eastern Bloc, it depends on how the commander of the corps, or the brigade commander, loots.

In other words, as the head of the expeditionary force, he has a great deal of autonomy, not only to manage the army, but also to manage internal affairs, and once the territory is established, it is very likely that he will be the governor of the local area for a period of time.

Perhaps because of this, there was a lot of competition for this position, and in the end, Shi Dakai, who was only thirty-one years old, stood out and became the commander of this expeditionary force.

After Shi Dakai became the boss, he was divided into three regiments, namely the first regiment, the second regiment and the third regiment.

Among them, the first regiment is mainly Whampoa military academy students, and the regiment commander is Li Hezhang; The second regiment was dominated by the Taiping Army, with the regiment commander Chen Yucheng; The third regiment was dominated by the old Qing army, and the regiment commander was Peng Yulin.

In terms of weapons, all light weapons are equipped with 1860-type 7.62 mm caliber large-cap rifles, grenadiers, homemade revolvers, and homemade imitation 67 wooden-handled grenades, and heavy weapons are simpler, only the 85 mm caliber front-loading rifled Hua 2 field gun produced by the Ma'anshan Arsenal is nothing more than that the shells are equipped with flowering blasting shells.

It can be seen from this that the weapons of the expeditionary force are mainly simple and self-produced, and do not pursue high-end, at least there are no modern imported weapons such as semi-automatic rifles and fully automatic assault rifles.

This is done to reduce the logistical burden, and it is also an attempt, because the supply of this expeditionary corps will be fully responsible for itself, and Li Yongji will no longer cheat on the golden finger to help.

According to the plan, the expeditionary force will first arrive in Shanghai for a month of intensive training, the main purpose is to get acquainted with each other and run in, after the end of the first training period, they will go directly to Kaohsiung by boat, and the second phase of training will be launched again in Kaohsiung, with the aim of adapting to the tropical environment, after all, many places in Mexico are in the tropics and subtropics.

The second phase of the training camp will last until September, to avoid the high incidence of typhoons in the summer, and then set off to fight Mexico in the autumn, when it is estimated that the reinforcements of the French army have also arrived, and Mexico should be dying. (To be continued......)