After Lin Yongquan finished talking about the mortar equipment plan, he said: "Considering that mortars are about to be equipped with battalion-level troops on a large scale, and at the same time, battalion-level and standard-level troops will also improve their logistics supply capacity on a large scale, many colleagues in the Education Department feel that the heavy machine gun, which is also an infantry support weapon, can also be appropriately delegated to battalion-level troops!" ”

"At the beginning of the large-scale equipment of heavy machine guns in Beiyang, in order to quickly train the corresponding technical officers to ensure the combat effectiveness of the machine guns as much as possible, a centralized system was adopted, but now several years have passed, and the heavy machine gun equipment in our army has matured, and at this time, it is already possible to consider following the example of many Western troops and lowering the machine guns to the battalion standard!"

"According to this plan, my colleagues in the education department have drawn up a new equipment plan for heavy machine guns, which is initially scheduled to equip each infantry battalion with two heavy machine guns, and six more heavy machine guns at the infantry standard."

"The decentralized equipment of mortars and heavy machine guns is aimed at strengthening the independent combat capability of our army's battalion-level and standard-level troops, so that they have independent offensive and defensive capabilities!"

As soon as Lin Yongquan's words fell, Chen Guangyuan immediately said: "This is a good thing, the application of heavy machine guns in our army should have kept up with the pace of the armies of the Taixi countries a long time ago!" ”

Since 1901, the Beiyang New Army has been limited by the limitation of funds, and has formulated an equipment plan for a town to be equipped with 24 heavy machine guns belonging to a machine gun battalion, and with the increasing role of heavy machine guns in the Beiyang New Army system, especially with the promotion of Zhao Dongyun and a group of young Zhuang officers, the tactical application of heavy machine guns has become more and more clear, and the call for increasing the equipment of heavy machine guns is also getting louder and louder.

A few months ago, Meng Enyuan's cavalry team was equipped with a machine gun team of the third standard, and the number of heavy machine guns in the Third Mixed Association at that time increased from 24 to 30.

The same situation still appears in other units of the Beiyang New Army, Yuan Shikai has been continuously buying heavy machine guns in the past few years, and has purchased more than 100 heavy machine guns before and after, not only equipped with the Beiyang Standing Army, but also equipped with the Wuwei Right Army, the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army, and the Self-Strengthening Army.

Even the behavior of large-scale equipment of the Beiyang New Army has affected the new armies of other provinces, why? This is because after the establishment of the training office, it was required that the training of the standing army in all provinces of the country must follow the establishment of the Beiyang Standing Army, and now in the official establishment of the Beiyang Standing Army, there is a machine gun battalion.

The large-scale armament of the Beiyang Standing Army with heavy machine guns has also affected the production of domestic arsenals, and the Hubei Gun Factory is said to have begun to try to imitate the Makqin machine gun, and as the main competitor of the Hubei Gun Factory, the Fuyuan Machinery Factory has a more straightforward and fast method, and does not bury its head in copying itself, but adopts the international standard business practice, directly imports technology from the German Arms Company and buys relevant patents from Makqin, and then purchases the machine for patent authorized production.

It has to be said here that Fuyuan Machinery Factory is a purely commercial enterprise, and has a very close cooperative relationship with several major arsenals in the world, and the management is composed of foreigners, and a lot of raw materials need to be imported, and at the same time, it is also necessary to introduce foreign advanced technology from time to time, so it is still relatively sensitive to patented technology, and generally wants to imitate a certain weapon when it does not directly make it out by itself, but will choose to buy patented technology and then authorize production.

It is worth noting that the mortar design of Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory has also been patented in many foreign countries.

Of course, the heavy machine gun is to be processed and assembled with supplied materials, but the difficulty is still not as simple as manufacturing a rifle, not to mention that the Fuyuan machine factory is aiming at the most advanced MG01 Maxim machine gun in the international weapons market today.

Although the imitation process is much stronger than that of the Hubei Gun Factory itself, it will not be able to get it out for a while.

The domestic arsenal began to imitate production, and at the same time, the domestic new army also began to pay attention to and equip machine guns, which can also prove from the side that China's heavy machine gun application has reached a relatively normal level.

Under such a big backdrop, Zhao Dongyun also began to try to decentralize heavy machine guns to battalion-level units, so as to further strengthen the tactical role of heavy machine guns in the troops. dabeijing

If the plan mentioned by Lin Yongquan is successfully implemented, it means that the number of machine guns in the third town will be further increased to 46.

The continuous increase in mortar equipment and heavy machine guns shows Zhao Dongyun's urgent need for the third town's combat effectiveness to increase!

Because there is not much time left for him, the situation in the northeast can already be said to be on the verge of breaking out, and war may break out at any time.

Recently, many domestic newspapers have frequently mentioned his name, which obviously regards him as Yuan Shikai's direct representative in the northeast, and his every move is also related to the progress of the situation in the northeast.

He even received a petition from hundreds of Chinese students studying in Japan, asking him to send troops east of the Liaohe River to recover the three eastern provinces.

There are even many radical people who openly accuse Zhao Dongyun of doing nothing in the past six months, and just sit back and watch the situation in the northeast continue to deteriorate, and almost directly scold him as a traitor.

Ordinary people will know that his Zhao Dongyun's mission to Jinzhou is not to recover the Northeast, his main task is to ensure the safety of the Western Liaoning Corridor, if war breaks out between China and Russia, he will have to hold the Western Liaoning Corridor, so as to leave time for Beiyang to carry out general mobilization, this is the fundamental reason why he came to Jinzhou, and it is also the reason why Yuan Shikai continued to let him expand the army.

As for what to recover Mukden and march east of the Liao River, it is not his main task, at least from the perspective of the interests of the Beiyang system, that is not his task.

Although Zhao Dongyun did not think that he would participate in the Russo-Japanese War in the future, who can say clearly, after all, the current situation in the Northeast is very different from history. There has been no change between Japan and Russia, but there has been considerable change on the Chinese side or the Beiyang side.

The current Beiyang military strength is much stronger than in history, the Beiyang Standing Army Four Towns, the Wuwei Right Army, the Wuwei Right Army Vanguard, the Ziqiang Army and other Yuan Shikai's descendants of the troops combined, the new army has more than 50,000 troops, and it is also expanding rapidly, it is expected that in less than three months, the Beiyang New Army will be able to have more than 70,000 people.

And the momentum of Beiyang's expansion will not stop like this, at least Zhao Dongyun knew that after preparing for the establishment of the four towns of the Beiyang Standing Army, Yuan Shikai had already asked Zhao Dongyun about the reorganization of the Wuwei Right Army, the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army, and the Ziqiang Army, and Zhao Dongyun replied and agreed with Yuan Shikai's opinion in a secret telegram, saying that the establishment and combat strength of the above three armies were far inferior to the standing army, and they should be properly reorganized.

According to Zhao Dongyun's understanding of Yuan Shikai, the reorganization of the above three Beiyang New Army should be carried out in the first half of next year, and at least two more towns will be organized by then.

The six towns of Beiyang in history will be formed several years earlier than in history!

Zhao Dongyun came to this world, although he did not lead Beiyang to fight a large-scale war, on the surface, he didn't even change Beiyang, how much China changed, but in fact, the changes he brought to Beiyang were great.

Without Zhao Dongyun, Beiyang would not have been equipped with machine guns so many years in advance!

Without Zhao Dongyun, there would have been no Third Mixed Association in Beiyang, and the three standing armies of Beiyang in history would not have become the four standing armies of Beiyang.

Moreover, because Zhao Dongyun guided the pace of Beiyang army expansion to speed up a lot, and at the same time, he also guided the formation and training of the entire Chinese new army much earlier, and the early establishment of the training department is the most obvious sign.

In turn, the early establishment of the training department has further promoted the expansion of the Beiyang New Army, thus forming a cycle!

And Zhao Dongyun is the starting point of this series of cycles!

Zhao Dongyun brought this series of changes to China to Beiyang, in addition to the change in strength, there is also a Jinzhou garrison, although Beiyang sent troops to the east in history, but it was in 1904 when the troops were sent to Shanhaiguan, but did not leave Shanhaiguan to continue to move eastward, the main reason is that Beiyang in history did not have so many troops at the beginning of 1904, but more than a town of standing army, the second town and the third town have just been trained, there is no force to guard the West Liaoning Corridor.

Now that the strength of Beiyang is strengthened, Yuan Shikai will be able to free up more troops to influence the situation in the northeast, and it is logical to send Zhao Dongyun to Jinzhou.

However, Zhao Dongyun's entry into Jinzhou also affected the further changes in the situation in Northeast China, making the situation between Japan and Russia unpredictable!

Anyway, until now, Zhao Dongyun is not sure that the Russians will definitely not attack Jinzhou or even Beijing.

Another change is that he himself has been pushed into the mouth of domestic public opinion, and the accusations of inaction by the Chinese people have also made him feel huge political pressure.

And this pressure increased with the passage of time, and the months at the end of 1903 were better, but by 1904, Zhao Dongyun began to frequently receive telegrams and letters from various important officials of the imperial court and feudal officials.

Zhang Zhidong sent him a telegram on the 7th of January, saying a great deal of truth, hoping that Zhao Dongyun would put the interests of the state and the nation above and carry the anti-Russian banner into Mukden to force Russia to implement the 'Treaty on the Settlement of the Three Eastern Provinces,' and that all Chinese people were his strong backing for Zhao Dongyun.

Seeing this telegram, Zhao Dongyun snorted coldly and said, "He doesn't have back pain when he stands and talks!" ”

"Now in this country, only a few people in Beiyang can see the situation clearly, and the others are all full of empty words, talking nonsense with their eyes open!" Chen Guangyuan is now also a high-level officer in Beiyang, and he naturally considers himself a Beiyang person when he speaks, and he is full of disdain for other feudal officials in the country, and the ministers of the imperial court: "It is said that it is the backing, why don't you see that he sent the rifles produced by the Hubei Gun Factory to Fengtian, and that Cen Chunxuan also said it nicely, why didn't he allocate millions of taels of silver to support my Beiyang military expansion war!" ”