With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Zhao Dongyun's name was often hung up when discussing the current situation in China, and in order to alleviate the pressure of domestic public opinion, the Beiyang led by Yuan Shikai was also doing some propaganda work, such as the small exercise held by the Third Town in mid-February.

At the same time, in order to show the strong combat effectiveness and new look of the Beiyang New Army, the Beiyang official released relevant photos on a large scale to the outside world for the first time, not only exercises, marches and other photos, but also a large number of posed photos, such as in order to show that Beiyang is equipped with the world's latest weapons, heavy machine gun crews, German artillery crews and more firing balloons.

In addition, the uniforms of many high-level generals in Beiyang have also been released on a large scale, and among these people, Zhao Dongyun has attracted the most attention, in addition to the fact that he is the highest military leader of the Beiyang New Army in the Northeast region, it is also related to his age.

In a certain way, Yuan Shikai pushed Zhao Dongyun out, in order to show that he Yuan Shikai uses people only for talent, qualifications, and age are not a problem, as long as you have the ability, then you can quickly become a pivotal person like Zhao Dongyun, so on the one hand, it is to improve the overall image of the Beiyang New Army, and at the same time, it is also to try to attract more talents.

The Beiyang system in the late Qing Dynasty was able to attract countless young people to work, and there was naturally a reason why Beiyang under the leadership of Yuan Shikai grew into China's largest political group.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when talking about revolution, it is natural to think of Sun Wen, but when it comes to reform, most people will think of Yuan Shikai.

The New Deal reform led by Yuan Shikai in the late Qing Dynasty was not only military, but also covered education, transportation, industry and commerce, and politics.

In terms of education, he advocated the abolition of the imperial examination, the establishment of a modern education system from primary school to middle school to university, the encouragement of scholars to study abroad, and the awarding of meritorious names to international students as people or scholars.

In terms of industry and commerce, the establishment of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce was promoted, the company law was promulgated, and a new industrial and commercial environment was established for China, which greatly accelerated the development of China's modern national capital economy.

In terms of transportation and communications, including the establishment of a postal system, support for the establishment of the Jinghan Railway and the Tianjin-Pudong Railway, and the recovery of the Kanwai Railway, he also had a great deal to do with it.

In politics, he promoted a constitutional monarchy, forcing the Qing court to start booking a constitution, etc.

Although he had such a bad move as the emperor in later generations, he was nailed to the pillar of humiliation in history, but in the New Deal period of the late Qing Dynasty after the Gengzi year, he Yuan Shikai was a reformer who was pinned on by countless Chinese people, and in just ten years of the New Deal period at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was the golden period of Yuan Shikai's political career.

During this time, his prestige and influence can be said to have improved day by day, even if China was forced to declare neutrality at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, there are many people in China who have critical voices against the primitive, but this voice is not the mainstream.

Especially in mid-February, in order to further save public opinion and expand Beiyang's influence throughout the country, Yuan Shikai announced that he would dispatch the second town of the Beiyang Standing Army to Shanhaiguan.

In the eyes of ordinary Chinese people, this move was a gesture of Yuan Shikai's tough attitude towards Japan and Russia, and although the Beiyang New Army did not have enough strength to enter the northeast and engage Japan and Russia at war, it was still doing its best to ensure the implementation of armed neutrality and avoid the war from being spread to the western Liaoning region, especially the Guannai region.

This series of political methods may not seem to be too clever, but Yuan Shikai's power is here, he doesn't need many complicated means, skills and other things, he just shows his attitude and determination to the people, and this is enough for him to gain more prestige.

Relatively speaking, in the Russo-Japanese War, Zhang Zhidong and Cen Chunxuan and other important domestic political officials were much inferior.

Of course, these public opinion contentions, political influence, these things have nothing to do with Zhao Dongyun for the time being, he has not yet reached that level, those are Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong and Cen Chunxuan's games.

Now Zhao Dongyun just relied on Beiyang's public opinion competition to make a small limelight, so that his name appeared in many newspapers, so that the majority of Chinese people knew that there was such a person as Zhao Dongyun in the Beiyang New Army.

For the time being, Zhao Dongyun's national fame can be directly ignored, but on the other hand, his reputation is very prominent among the domestic military and political leaders, and the domestic military circles generally regard him as one of the bigwigs of the Beiyang New Army, and at the same time, because he is stationed in Jinzhou, a strategic place in the northeast, closest to the Japanese-Russian war zone, his name is also frequently mentioned by the domestic military and political circles.

To put it simply, as long as we talk about the Russo-Japanese War, when we talk about armed neutrality, the expansion of the situation, and the security of the Guannai, then we will definitely not be able to bypass Zhao Dongyun and his third town, who made him firmly nailed to Jinzhou now.

However, there are many discussions about him in China, and Zhao Dongyun can't pay attention to it, he has been very busy in this short period of time!

On the one hand, it is necessary to secretly do arms business with the Russians, and transport the batch of artillery shells and the newly arrived batch of machine gun bullets to the Russians, and the Russians' own transportation capacity is tight, and due to the problem of China's neutrality, it is naturally inconvenient for the Russians to send a large number of men and horses to accept this batch of ammunition and other war materials, so Zhao Dongyun has to send people to escort this batch of ordnance to Yingkou, and then the local Russian army will accept it.

Of course, the above are all secret operations, and it is impossible for the countrymen and the Japanese to find out, otherwise they will destroy neutrality, not to mention, and it is easy to attract domestic scolding, at this time, Lu Shuanggun and Shi Yang, the two bandit cavalry recovered by Zhao Dongyun, played a huge role.

Lu Shuanggun and Shi Yang are not professional officers from professional classes trained by any country, they don't have any such things as countries and nationalities in their hearts, they take refuge in Zhao Dongyun, not Beiyang or the imperial court.

In other words, their allegiance is not to Yuan Shikai or Cixi Guangxu, they are only loyal to Zhao Dongyun personally, and there is a very big difference here.

This kind of relationship also made Zhao Dongyun feel much more at ease using them to smuggle and transport ordnance and ammunition, at least he didn't have to worry about meeting people who shouted about the country and the nation.

In order to ensure the transportation of materials to Russia, Lu Shuanggun and Shi Yang also jointly launched a large-scale purge operation in the Liaohe area, and wiped out the bandits who were wandering in this place.

It's just that Feng Delin and Zhang Zuolin are also the ones who accepted the appeasement, and the headquarters have also become part of the Fengtian patrol battalion, so Zhao Dongyun naturally won't find something to do to eliminate these two giant bandits at this juncture.

However, these two giant bandits are fine, but the other bandits who are estimated to be more tragic, either driven to the east of the Liao River or exterminated.

After Zhao Dongyun arrived in Jinzhou, counting the three large-scale anti-bandit operations launched before and after, the operation in the western and northern parts of Jinzhou at the end of last year, and the operation to exterminate Du Lisan in January this year and the current operation to eliminate bandits in the area east of the Liaohe River, it can be said that it has dealt a great blow to the bandit activities west of the Liaohe River, especially the bandits within a hundred miles of Jinzhou, who can hardly be seen and touched again.

Although the main reason for launching these anti-bandit actions is to obtain money, it is also indirectly to bring great convenience to the local people's life, at least those ladies who go to burn incense and worship Buddha do not have to worry about a few bandits running out of the roadside to kidnap themselves, and those businessmen do not have to worry about the ground in Jinzhou, and worry about their goods being robbed every day.

If purely from the perspective of benefiting the country and the people, Zhao Dongyun's establishment of the Fuyuan Machine Factory is the first commendable thing, then the Jinzhou bandit suppression is his second commendable thing.

Although the original intention of the above two things has little to do with the country, the nation and the like!

In addition to being busy smuggling arms and other war materials with the Russians, on the other hand, he also continued to strengthen combat readiness, since the official declaration of war between Japan and Russia in early February, the third town of Jinzhou also entered a state of combat readiness at the same time, and many fixed fortifications in the Jinzhou defense line that began to be built last year were also officially stationed with many soldiers.

If Zhao Dongyun was forced to shrink his forces to the west of the Xiaoling River because of insufficient troops in the summer and autumn of last year, then after the expansion of the Third Mixed Association into the third town, and at the same time the Jinzhou patrol battalion under his supervision was initially formed, the strength of Zhao Dongyun's troops almost doubled, reaching about 15,000 people.

On the one hand, he continued to strengthen the two flank defense lines of Songshan and Cuiyan, and at the same time, Zhao Dongyun also moved the central defense line forward, in addition to directly deploying troops in Jinzhou City, he also took the large and small Bauhinia Mountains in the east of Jinzhou City as the main deployment location.

The reason why Jinzhou City and the Big and Small Bauhinia Mountains were abandoned in the deployment of the defense line last year was because the troops were not enough, but now that the troops were relaxed, Zhao Dongyun also tried to expand the defense line, trying to operate the Big and Small Bauhinia Mountains and Jinzhou City as the fixed main defense line, so as to better exert the machine gun firepower.

However, although the central defense line has moved forward, Zhao Dongyun still has no idea of dying, he still resists in his plan, waiting for the second town of Shanhaiguan and other troops to come to help, if he can't bear it, he will continue to retreat towards the western Liaoning corridor as before.

On the one hand, Zhao Dongyun further strengthened the training of his subordinate troops, and even spent a huge amount of money to purchase a large number of training bullets and artillery shells from the Fuzhou Machinery Factory to improve the ability of the artillery units and the firing level of rifles.

At the same time, preparations were also made to hold several more confrontation exercises within the Third Town in a short period of time to improve the command level of the subordinate officers.

Whether it is to build a defensive line, or to strengthen training or to conduct confrontation exercises, these are very expensive things, although Yuan Shikai temporarily allocated a batch of 50,000 taels of additional funds to Zhao Dongyun because of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War to purchase bullets and shells to prepare for war, but it is impossible to want more, because although Yuan Shikai has obtained a lot of training funds from the imperial court this year, Yuan Shikai has to manage the entire Beiyang New Army, and he needs to spend more money. Not only does the newly trained Fourth Town require a lot of capital investment, but Yuan Shikai's plan to reorganize the Wuwei Right Army, the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army, and the Ziqiang Army in preparation also requires millions of funds.

In 1904, the expansion of the Beiyang New Army required tens of millions of funds, so even if he received a lot of funds from the imperial court, Yuan Shikai was still able to save money.

But for the more than 15,000 people under Zhao Dongyun, these tens of thousands of taels of silver are far from enough, and the insufficient part can only rely on the small treasury of the third town.

Yuan Shikai tried his best to raise money for the funds of the Beiyang New Army, and Zhao Dongyun also raised money everywhere for the funds of the Third Town and the Jinzhou Patrol Battalion.