Since Yuan Shikai allowed him to try out a machine gun team, he naturally gave him a certain amount of funds, although this fund is not much, but he can still sell a few new machine guns if he squeezes it, but now money is not a problem, the key is that money cannot buy new machine guns.

At present, there are two categories of machine guns, one is the Makqin water-cooled heavy machine gun, Germany and the United Kingdom and Russia and other countries have purchased licenses to produce their own, at present, the more typical models of this category are the British MK1 and the German MG99 \MG01 type, of which the MG01 type is the predecessor of the famous MG08 type.

The other is the French Hatch Chase air-cooled machine gun, in addition to a large number of French equipment, Japan also imported a part, its latest model is Hatch Chase 1900, which is improved from Hatch Chase 1897, this new model in addition to a large number of French equipment, was also introduced by Japan in large quantities to become the main machine gun of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese were very satisfied with this type of machine gun, and after the Russo-Japanese War, they specially imported relevant patents from France to imitate it, which was later the Meiji 38-year heavy machine gun.

The MG01 and Hatch 1900 machine guns have gotten rid of many of the problems of the early machine guns, making them truly a harvester of soldiers' lives, but due to the embargo, China is not yet able to buy these weapons openly from Western countries.

However, there is an embargo, and there is smuggling, and there is smuggling in the 21st century, let alone in 1901, the arms dealers of various countries do not care about your national interests, as long as you pay enough price, those British businessmen dare to sell you Queen Victoria's crown!

So if you can't buy it through official channels, it doesn't mean that Zhao Dongyun can't buy a machine gun!

As the residence of the governor of Zhili and the minister of trade in Beiyang, Baoding can be said to be a city with a political status second only to Beijing, and a large number of various political speculators and arms dealers have gathered in Baoding.

It couldn't be easier to find an arms dealer in Baoding.

At the beginning, when those arms dealers heard that the Wuwei Right Army was going to buy machine guns, no matter what country the arms dealers were, they all poured up, and they all promised that as long as the purchase quantity reached more than that, they would be able to discount as much as they could, and guarantee door-to-door delivery.

"But when they heard that we only sold three or four of them, they all ......," Zhao Dongping said here, with a sad and indignant look on his face: "Those people, even if they look down on people, the price is still so expensive!" ”

This can't be blamed for being so snobbish arms dealers, after all, everyone is now staring at the big arms orders of the Beiyang Standing Army and the Beijing Banner Standing Army, and the equipment of tens of thousands of people is as high as a few million taels, who doesn't want to get a piece of the pie!

If Yuan Shikai planned to popularize machine guns in the whole army, those arms dealers would definitely come in a hurry, but now it is just Zhao Dongyun who buys a few, no wonder people are not highly motivated.

Zhao Dongyun was not interested in understanding the attitude of the arms dealers, and he was not interested in listening to Zhao Dongping's complaints, he just asked: "Then can you buy it now?" ”

Whether the machine gun is bought or not, and when it will arrive, this is what Zhao Dongyun cares about, and one very important thing is that Zhao Dongyun does not like to be controlled by others The rhythm of the conversation, not to mention talking with his subordinates, he likes to control the rhythm, even if he talks with Duan Qirui and other bosses, he tries his best to lead the topic in the direction he wants.

Zhao Dongping is not very old, and he didn't have much contact with Zhao Dongyun before, and when he first spoke, he still followed the way he used to be in his hometown, a little deliberately whining and showing off the meaning of his words, but seeing that his cousin had shown his positive color, he didn't dare to continue to waste his tongue, but said directly: "I negotiated with a Russian foreign company, and they shipped it directly from Lushun in the past few days, and there are four of them, all of which are new!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded when he heard this, he didn't need to know what channels Zhao Dongping used to buy the machine gun, he just needed to know that Zhao Dongping bought the machine gun.

"Well, this time we did a good job, and you have to follow up in time in the follow-up, you can't let them delay for too long, you know, our time is limited!" While appreciating his little cousin, Zhao Dongyun did not forget to warn him.

Zhao Dongping immediately said: "Third brother, don't worry, you won't delay the drill at the end of the year!" ”

Zhao Dongping naturally knew what Zhao Dongyun was worried about, that is, the drill at the end of the year, although the scale of this drill was not large, but at the end of 1901, the imperial court wanted to organize and train the new army on a large scale and cut out the old army, so its influence was actually beyond the imagination of Zhao Dongyun and others.

Although the imperial court now says that it will organize and train the new army, how it should be organized and trained is a problem, so the scale of this exercise at the end of the year is not large on the surface, but it has actually attracted the attention of many people, and they want to know what kind of combat effectiveness Yuan Shikai's new army has, whether it is the same as the other three new armies of the Wuwei Army last year, just a shelf with nothing on the surface.

To put it bluntly, people want to see something different from the old army from this exercise!

For this point, Yuan Shikai is confident, Duan Qirui and other people in other systems in Beiyang are also confident, in fact, Zhao Dongyun was also confident, but Zhao Dongyun wanted not only to sit in this position, he also wanted to go further, so he would move the machine gun out.

He is ready to make the Beiyang bigwigs who watched the show drop their jaws when the time comes!

As time passed, the Russian arms dealer Zhao Dongping was looking for was not slow, and he didn't know what means Tong Guò used to pull the four Makqin heavy machine guns in front of Zhao Dongyun's eyes a few days later.

"These four machine guns are brand new!" Zhao Dongping has been fiddling with the machine gun for a while, and it is also decent: "This gun body is produced by the Germans, look, this gun still has the logo of the German Arms Company, but this gun carriage is Russian, you see, this gun carriage not only has a steel shield on it, but also the gun body supported by this small steel wheel is not too high, according to the Russians, this is the gun carriage that they Russians made themselves, called the Sokolov gun carriage." ”

While listening to Zhao Dongping speak, Zhao Dongyun also looked at the four Makqin machine guns in front of him, the shape of the four machine guns in front of him is not much different from the heavy machine guns used by various countries in World War I in later film and television dramas, at least it looks much more reliable than Zhao Dongyun's existing four old Makqin.

"Yongquan, let people try!" Zhao Dongyun instructed Lin Yongquan to say, things have to be tested when they arrive.

Lin Yongquan walked over with a happy face, and with a wave of his big hand, a group of soldiers followed him, these soldiers were ordinary riflemen not long ago, but now they walked up and fiddled with one of the machine guns, and it looked quite good.

Lin Yongquan stood beside Zhao Dongyun and said: "My lord, this machine gun also has a steel shield, and the body of the gun is low, when the time comes, swing in front of the enemy's position, unless it is directly hit by the cannon, otherwise they really can't help us!" ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't answer, but watched the soldiers in front of him fiddling with the machine gun, and after a while, these soldiers had already loaded the bullet chain into the machine gun, and as the machine gun shooter pulled the trigger, the muzzle of the gun was spewing out a lightning-like tongue of fire, and the unique clicking sound of the heavy machine gun echoed in the ears, and the golden brass cartridge shells continued to be thrown, and as the sudden sound continued, a bunch of yellow bullet casings soon accumulated on the ground, and the water-cooled casing on the barrel was also flooded with moisture.

The machine gunner who tested the fire had been ordered earlier, and he didn't feel sorry for the bullets at this time, and he intermittently fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the ammunition box before stopping, and at this time, the row of thick planks that were the target in the distance of the shooting range had already been shattered.

Zhao Dongping, who watched the machine gun shoot continuously for the first time, opened his mouth from the moment the machine gun began to shoot, and he didn't come back to his senses for a long time, and he came back to his senses after the sound of the machine gun stopped: "No wonder the third brother has always wanted this machine gun, look at how much this machine gun rushes over from the opposite side, and how many can't be killed!" ”

Of course, not everyone like Zhao Dongping has never seen the market, and the machine gun is not something that has just come out, China began to make its own products more than ten years ago and has also used it in the war, so including Lin Yongquan, several other officers and soldiers of the second battalion who watched the show already knew how powerful the machine gun was.

But whether it was Lin Yongquan or the others, they were just as surprised at this moment, they were not surprised by the huge power of the machine gun, they were surprised that the new machine gun smuggled from the arms dealers in front of them had unimaginable reliability.

Machine guns are no strangers to the Qing Dynasty army that used machine guns many times in the Korean War and Gengzi War, but why they didn't pay much attention to machine guns before, the main reason is that the machine guns used by China in these two wars were manufactured by the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau before the First Sino-Japanese War, and these Makqin machine guns are the earliest models, and the reliability of machine guns is very low, and they will fail if they can't shoot a few bullets.

However, the new machine gun in front of me is a product of Makqin's improvement for many years, and its reliability and performance are very close to the machine guns used by various countries during the First World War, and it can be said that the machine guns before the First Sino-Japanese War and the machine guns after the First Sino-Japanese War are the products of two eras.

Lin Pingxiong, the leader of the second battalion standing behind Zhao Dongyun, had already begun to imagine in his heart that if his troops had such machine guns in a defensive battle, they would not need more than two, as long as there was a sufficient supply of bullets, the enemy on the opposite side would not be able to rush even if they were several times their own!

Compared with the surprise of his subordinates, Zhao Dongyun didn't feel too much, for him, this machine gun should exert such power, if not, it would surprise him!

"Now that these four machine guns have also been allocated to you, you have to take the soldiers to step up the training, and as for the soldiers in front of you, I will first transfer some of them to you from the other teams!" Zhao Dongyun said to Lin Yongquan: "Don't be afraid of waste and don't train, those four old-style Makqin will be useless in the future, so it doesn't hurt to use more daily exercises!" ”