Due to the influence of the Russo-Japanese War, the area east of the Liao River in Fengtian was affected by the war, and many refugees took refuge in the area west of the Liao River in order to escape the war.

The war not only created a large number of refugees, but also dealt a heavy blow to the commercial and economic activities of Mukden, especially in the area east of the Liao River.

In addition, there are still a large number of inherent problems in Fengtian, the first is the bandits in Fengtian who are inexhaustible, although the three giant bandits in Liaoxi were killed by Zhao Dongyun two, and the remaining one Feng Delin was also appeased, but the remaining small bandits are still not a few, these people are more than a dozen people, dozens of people The small bandits are almost all over the three eastern provinces, killing a batch and popping up, and even you kill all the bandits in Liaoxi, it won't take long for the bandits in Liaodong, Jilin, and even Mongolia to quickly run over to fill the gap, Within a few months, Liaoxi was full of bandits again.

Then there is the problem of the army, this army does not refer to the training of the new army, but refers to the elimination of the old army, Zengqi can tolerate the old army that wastes money such as the Eight Banners and the Defense Army, it does not mean that he Zhao Dongyun can tolerate these old armies, so these Eight Banners, the Defense Army and the like have to be abolished, and the Fengtian Patrol Battalion, this patrol battalion is not only a little valuable for the thousands of people in Feng Delin's hands, but the other two roads are goods that even bandits can't beat, and keeping them is a waste of rice and grain, so they have to be cut and reorganized.

It's just that after these old troops are eliminated, it is estimated that they will make trouble, but Zhao Dongyun is afraid that they will not make trouble, if they don't make trouble, he will have to come up with a large amount of money to dismiss them, if there is a mutiny, Zhao Dongyun will dare to directly kill all the rebels, and he has also killed a lot of bandits in Shengjing, and it is nothing to kill a few more batches of rebels.

In history, why did the Beiyang Army dare to play the old and practice the new on a large scale, and other provinces could only make small troubles, it was not that Yuan Shikai had a large army in his hands, and as long as the rebels dared to make trouble, he would dare to kill, as the so-called name of the person, the shadow of the tree, whether it was Yuan Shikai or Zhao Dongyun, their power was killed.

Therefore, among the many affairs of Fengtian, military affairs are still the best to solve, because he is not Zengqi has no military power in his hands and can only be an empty general, Zhao Dongyun has nearly 20,000 new troops in his hands, and it is not a big problem to rectify the old army or train the new army in the future.

The real problem is civil affairs and finance, not to mention the economic development of civil affairs, it is not easy to resettle war refugees, and Zengqi has been doing this before, but the results are not great.

Secondly, it takes a lot of money to restore people's livelihood, relieve refugees, and cut off the old and train the new, and half of Mukden's province is now in the place where the Japanese and Russian armies are fighting, and there is no money to be collected under the war.

In addition, there is another trouble that Zhao Dongyun does not have qualified civil affairs officials and a large number of staff under his hands, and if he wants to become the general of Shengjing, he must first recruit a large number of staff.

The feudal ministers of this era, whether they were Yuan Shikai, the governor of Zhili, Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, the head of the world's most popular local Xinjiang ministers, or Zhao Dongyun, who had just stepped into the ranks of Xinjiang ministers and held half of Fengtian, they were all fully responsible for the jurisdiction and had complete military, civilian, financial, and religious powers.

And these ministers need to be responsible for many affairs, so they have a complete staff team to assist the ministers to deal with various affairs, and the talents they need range from military to civil affairs, to law and diplomacy and even water conservancy, coastal defense, etc., basically what institutions and talents are needed by the central court of a country, then similar or similar institutions and personnel can be found in the shogunate of Xinjiang ministers.

Although Zhao Dongyun has just stepped into the ranks of Xinjiang ministers, and nominally has a whole Fengtian, but because of the Russo-Japanese War, in fact, there is only one Liaoxi, Liaodong and Liaodong Peninsula that he can manage, but only occupying the small territory of Liaoxi does not mean that he does not need many staff.

Although the Shengjing General's Mansion under Zhao Dongyun has a small territory and small strength, it should be in charge of all the affairs, and there should be no lesser personnel.

It's just that there are more officers under him who can fight, but there are few civil officials and other types of talents who can take on big responsibilities, and it is estimated that he can only find a few humanistic cases in the headquarters of the third town, and there is no other civil official.

So the first thing he did when he received the appointment from the imperial court was to cast a net everywhere to gather talents, as long as he was not a revolutionary party, did not oppose Beiyang, and had a little bit of talent, then Zhao Dongyun would not be stingy with his telegram fee to send telegrams to invite, and he also wrote a personal letter to some of the more important.

Most of the people invited by Zhao Dongyun have known and known each other in the past few years, some of them have heard of talent, and some of them have been recommended by others.

For example, Zhao E, this person often drank and bragged with Zhao Dongyun when he was in Guangzong, although he was not a great talent of the Western-style school, but he was pragmatic, he was not as good as he wanted in recent years, and this time Zhao Dongyun planned to invite him over.

There is also Deng Jiazhen, this person was recommended by Zhao Erxun, Zhao Dongyun felt that this person was still quite talented in civil affairs after seeing it once, so he didn't care that he was recommended by Zhao Erxun, but was ready to be promoted to the prefect of Fengtian.

At the same time, there is Xiong Xiling, this person Zhao Dongyun has only heard of it before but has never seen it, but he heard that he was good at running a new policy in Hubei before, so he wrote a letter to invite him.

In addition to these people, in fact, Zhao Dongyun found more people from within the Beiyang faction!

Zhao Dongyun has no talents, but it doesn't mean that Beiyang doesn't have it, there are not many traditional civil officials who play political tricks in the Beiyang system in this era, but the new talents who play foreign affairs are grabbed one by one.

In fact, he doesn't need to solicit it, Zhao Dongyun's appointment as General Shengjing must come down, and every day he can receive telegrams and letters from many people, and there are many self-recommendations, and even many people who are trying to go out of the way to get errands.

In just three days, Zhao Dongyun had already recruited a staff team of more than ten people, and the arrival of Zhao E, Deng Jiazhen, Xiong Xiling and others soon formed Zhao Dongyun's staff team, and at the same time, Zhao Dongyun also accepted many officials under Zengqi's original hands.

Not to mention how strong these people are, but they have finally set up the administrative team of the Shengjing General's Mansion and taken over the military and civilian affairs of Fengtian.

While recruiting talents, Zhao Dongyun also went to the imperial court, asking for a postponement of his trip to Mukden on the grounds that "the situation is not stable and cannot be taken lightly", and that Jinzhou should handle affairs instead, and then return to Mukden after the matter between Japan and Russia.

Immediately afterwards, he went to Baoding to meet Yuan Shikai, on the one hand, to ask Yuan Shikai how to deal with Fengtian affairs, and on the other hand, he naturally expressed his loyalty to Yuan Shikai.

After seeing Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai said to him: "You are in Fengtian, the top priority is to guard Liaoxi, and the rest can be postponed!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "There are 100,000 soldiers to defend Liaoxi Africa, and now there is only one town and one association in the hands of the department, I am afraid it will be difficult to continue!" ”

Seeing Yuan Shikai, Zhao Dongyun's posture was quite low, not only as a junior, but also as a subordinate in the past, without the slightest momentum of a frontier minister, if he was seen by others, he would inevitably despise him.

Yuan Shikai said: "Take out your ability to cut the old and train the new, and cut those old armies, let alone this fund, you can train another association!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "If the old army is eliminated strongly, I am afraid that it will cause a rebellion!" ”

Yuan Shikai snorted coldly: "Then kill all the people who should be killed!" ”

Zhao Dongyun was waiting for Yuan Shikai's words, and immediately said: "If there is an adult's words, I have a number in my heart." ”

Yuan Shikai nodded: "Well, you also know how important Liaoxi is, and now countless people from the government and the opposition are staring at a few of us, just waiting for us to make mistakes and pick thorns, and we can't give them an excuse!" ”

"Don't worry, my lord, with me Zhao Dongyun here, Liaoxi won't lose a day!" Zhao Dongyun hurriedly expressed his determination, but Yuan Shikai smiled: "It's good to be determined, but if you really want to fight, you still have to be cautious, you can't belittle the lives of my Beiyang disciples!" ”

These words almost didn't tell Zhao Dongyun clearly, if you can resist, you can resist, if you can't resist, you will run, there is nothing to lose Liaoxi, and even if you lose Jingshi and Zhili, there is nothing, but the army in your hand can't fold in.

Zhao Dongyun naturally said: "I remember, in addition, this is the Fengtian Mince policy I wrote earlier, you can see if there is anything wrong!" ”

After this is said about military affairs, it is also the turn of people's livelihood affairs, to be honest, playing the new deal, local governance Yuan Shikai is much stronger than Zhao Dongyun, only a few cursory glances at Yuan Shikai said: "The relief of refugees and the restoration of people's livelihood are generally good, but I am afraid that it is difficult to solve the problem of too much money!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "I want to let the imperial court allocate a part, and then I will raise a part of it myself in Fengtian!" ”

Yuan Shikai said: "Although the household department of the imperial court has money, it can't give you too much, and you have to find a few southern provinces to get money. ”

When Zhao Dongyun heard this, he had to admire Yuan Shikai, and the way he thought before was to make money by himself and ask for money from the household department, but Yuan Shikai's idea was to skip these frameworks directly, and to ask for money from the southern provinces, which was worthy of being able to solve Beiyang's annual military spending of tens of millions.

Immediately, Zhao Dongyun said: "The governor of the world is headed by Zhili, and I will ask the boss to support one or two more at that time!" ”

Yuan Shikai said with a smile: "You don't have to worry about this, I will give you 400,000 yuan when the time comes, and then I will let them do their best to support the two provinces of Shandong and Henan, if there is more, but 100,000 should be able to take it, with 600,000 of these three provinces as an example, other provinces should not be too little!" ”

Yuan Shikai opened his mouth, which solved the funding gap of 600,000 yuan for Zhao Dongyun, and the feeling of having a big tree to lean on is different, if it is replaced by someone from a non-Beiyang faction to be the general of Shengjing, it is strange that Yuan Shikai will take care of them, and he will take the initiative to help send money!

Zhao Dongyun estimated that he should be able to get a million taels of silver from other provinces, and the total should be about 1.5 million by then, and if he has this money, he can barely clean up the mess in Fengtian.

And when Zhao Dongyun was recruiting talents and raising money everywhere, the Second Pacific Fleet of the Russian Navy, which had spanned almost half the world, finally came to the Far East.

At this time, whether it is the domestic princes or the great powers, they are all aiming at the Japanese and Russian navies!