The Japanese wanted to buy Zhao Dongyun's ordnance directly through guò, and then cut off the arms trade between Zhao Dongyun and the Russians, but they didn't expect that Zhao Dongyun wanted more than just making money, and they didn't expect that Zhao Dongyun would be able to scavenge more supplies.

In June, Zhao Dongyun sold a batch of arms worth more than 200,000 taels of silver to Japan, but he still did not cut off the arms trade with Russia, and provided Russia with up to 300,000 taels of silver in arms and other materials needed for the war.

The big head of this is naturally a shell, and in addition, machine gun bullets are also an important one!

Since the outbreak of large-scale ground operations between the Japanese army and Russia in April, the early Yalu River operation and the Jinzhou, Dalian and other battles, although the Russian army has not yet used large-scale centralized machine guns, but the original machine guns of the troops have also played a huge role, plus Zhao Dongyun pointed out two sentences in the back, in the Liaoyang defense line built by Russia in the future, heavy machine guns have been deployed, so the demand for machine gun ammunition is greater.

In June, Zhao Dongyun's arms business can be said to be very happy, and even in order to meet the needs of the business, and the orders from the Fuyuan Machinery Factory were not delivered so quickly for a while, Zhao Dongyun even pulled some of the bullets and shells in his inventory out of the warehouse and sold them.

In the eyes of today's Chinese people, this kind of behavior is a proper traitor to the enemy!

However, this arms business brought Zhao Dongyun a lot of additional income, and the accumulation of arms trade in the past few months, and the expansion of the army, which had been stagnant for a long time, also began again.

"Now that our third town is fully staffed, and the mortar equipment work has been completed, we will be able to free up some mortars to equip the Jinzhou patrol battalion from next month!" Lin Yongquan said as he handed the compilation table in his hand to Zhao Dongyun.

Zhao Dongyun did not leave his eyes on the establishment table for too long, the above establishment table was determined as early as the beginning of the year, infantry, cavalry and artillery are all standard formations of the Beiyang Standing Army, and the third town has added an additional mortar establishment, and at the same time the machine guns have been delegated to the battalion level and standard level troops.

"After several years, our third town has finally become an army!" Zhao Dongyun closed the compilation table, and sighed very much in his heart, he has been working hard for the past two years to train the army, and he has worked hard to train a new army, and now it is finally the beginning.

The formation and training of the third town began in 1902 in the Third Association, and then in the summer of 1903 it was reorganized into the Third Mixed Association, and at the end of 1903, the third town was expanded.

In other words, although there was a third town at the end of last year, it was actually at full capacity until June this year.

"Now that the expansion of the third town has come to an end, the focus of your work will be on the Jinzhou patrol battalion!" Zhao Dongyun did not stop the pace of expanding the army, although the third town has been trained, but there is still a Jinzhou patrol battalion under his hands.

And unlike the third town, which has a fixed establishment, the Jinzhou patrol battalion under him does not have a fixed establishment, to put it bluntly, as long as Zhao Dongyun has the ability to train 100,000 troops, no one can say anything.

Jinzhou patrol battalion, the word "battalion" here is generally regarded as "army", and the battalion of the Shengzi battalion and the Yuanzi battalion in the Huai Army is the same concept. The concept of the Jinzhou patrol battalion is actually quite the same as the Fengtian patrol battalion, the two are independent of each other, as long as Zhao Dongyun, the supervisor of the Jinzhou patrol battalion, has the ability, it is possible to train more than 100,000 troops.

In fact, compared with the third town, the Jinzhou patrol battalion is more like Zhao Dongyun's private army, because there is a Beiyang standing army and Yuan Shikai on the third town, and the Jinzhou patrol battalion belongs to Zhao Dongyun's full supervision, military expenses, ordnance, and personnel are all managed by Zhao Dongyun himself, and he doesn't even need to report to the imperial court if he wants to expand the army, as long as he reports his training results in the last chapter afterwards.

For example, not long ago, Zhao Dongyun gave a recital to the imperial court, but said: "Since the minister supervised the Jinzhou patrol battalion, he has been trained into three battalions of the infantry team, one battalion of the artillery team, and one battalion ......of the cavalry team."

These words are the meaning of the announcement, not the meaning of the request, the difference here is very big, of course, the premise is not to ask the court for money......

And this year, the cost of training the new army is too much, even if Zhao Dongyun makes money, it is impossible for him to raise a Jinzhou virtual patrol battalion alone, so there is such a sentence at the back of the chapter: The minister was ordered to press Jinzhou and guard Liaoxi, and the number of available soldiers in his hands was less than 50,000, but the number of Japanese and Russian soldiers fighting 100,000 miles away reached 500,000.

It is planned to add nine battalions of the infantry team, two battalions of the artillery team, and three battalions of the cavalry team in the Jinzhou patrol battalion, and organize them into two associations of the infantry team, one standard of the artillery team, and one standard of the cavalry team, and the number of towns is expected to be formed. ”

I have to say that this piece is actually a lion's mouth, Zhao Dongyun told the court that I want to organize the Jinzhou patrol battalion into a new military town, what is the purpose? It's clear that you want money.

The imperial court will naturally not agree lightly, although the training of the new army is the main theme of 1904, but there are more places to train the new army, and now the focus of the imperial court is still on the Beiyang Standing Army and the Beijing Banner Standing Army, as for the new army training in other provinces, basically don't expect the imperial court to give money, not to mention the expansion funds requested by Zhao Dongyun, even if the Fengtian Standing Army under Zengqi wants to expand, I don't know how many times it will be said, the imperial court has not given a tael of silver, and the replies are the same: "It is known!" ”

The ostensible meaning is: I know about the expansion of the army!

But the actual meaning is: if you want to expand the army, find a way to go by yourself, don't ask the court for money!

This is also the common practice of training the new army in the late Qing Dynasty, except for the Beiyang Standing Army and the Beijing Banner Standing Army, which is borne by the imperial court for most of the military expenses, the expenses required for the formation and training of the new army in other provinces can only be raised by themselves.

However, Zhao Dongyun naturally didn't expect the imperial court to give much money, he mainly wanted Yuan Shikai to sponsor him a little, after all, the current military funding sources of the Jinzhou patrol battalion came from the old defense army of Zhili and Fengtian respectively.

Zhao Dongyun estimated that whether it was Zhili or Fengtian, there would be no more, but a little bit would be given, which was better than nothing, in order to obtain the military expenses for the training of the Jinzhou patrol battalion, Zhao Dongyun even gave Yuan Shikai a mention and asked him to allow him to reorganize several other old armies in Zhili, so as to free up the military expenses of these old armies for himself to train the Jinzhou patrol battalion.

If you want to get enough money from above to support the expansion of the army, it is naturally unrealistic, the third town is a Beiyang decent descendant force, it is good to say, Yuan Shikai will also give enough military funds, but the Jinzhou patrol battalion This kind of supernumerary troops have to rely on Zhao Dongyun to make money himself.

"Now there are still fewer infantry teams in the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion, and your Education Department will continue to increase recruitment in the next step, well, this time there is no need to limit recruitment in Zhili and Shandong, I have already discussed with General Sheng Jing, the recruits of the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion can be recruited in Liaoxi, this time you will recruit three battalions of infantry first!" To expand the army, Zhao Dongyun naturally ordered Lin Yongquan to do this.

Lin Yongquan was slightly puzzled when he heard this: "Raising three battalions at once, I'm afraid we can't afford our military expenses, right?" ”

If you expand the army, the number of soldiers is not too big a problem, even if it is difficult to recruit some, you can always recruit it with some time, but military spending is not an easy solution.

Zhao Dongyun said: "Now there is still some money, find a shelf to set up, and then find a way when there is no money in the future!" ”

Zhao Dongyun's idea is actually simple, with the current small treasury in his hand, there is no problem in supporting the expansion of the army in the early stage, the problem is that there is no way to continue, but as long as the army is trained, Yuan Shikai and the imperial court will see a ready-made new army, it is impossible for Zhao Dongyun to disband him directly because he has no money in his hand, you must know that the Qing court has spent a lot of effort to train so many towns, so Zhao Dongyun is not worried about the follow-up maintenance funds.

The problem now is that it is difficult at the beginning, at least the soldiers must be summoned, and after a few months of training of the ordnance, they will really want the court to ask for money, which is not a small cost in the early stage.

Lin Yongquan is in charge of recruitment and training, and Zhao Dongyun asked him to expand the scale of recruitment, and he can only do it, but he said: "If you train three more battalions, plus the original two battalions, and the third battalion that is currently being trained, that is, six battalion heads, do you want to make two more infantry standards?" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "Now that the Jinzhou patrol battalion has a cavalry battalion and an artillery battalion, and other baggage and engineering troops are also easy to handle, if we can add three more infantry battalions, then we will be able to set up a mixed shelf, which will not be much worse than when we first came to Jinzhou!" ”

Lin Yongquan was surprised when he heard this: "Directly expanded into a mixed association? ”

Don't blame Lin Yongquan for being so surprised, anyone who hears that the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion, which now has only more than 2,000 people, is going to be expanded into a mixed association all at once, and you must know that the mixed association in the establishment of the Beiyang New Army in this year is not a small-scale unit.

At that time, the 3rd Mixed Association had six infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, a machine gun battalion, and a cavalry battalion.

Although this cavalry standard can be changed to the size of a large cavalry battalion, the sum of the above troops is not a small number, that is the scale of five or six thousand people.

For the current Jinzhou patrol battalion, that is a direct doubling of the strength!