Due to the continued tension in the northeast, Yuan Shikai repeatedly told the imperial court that his troops were insufficient, and asked the imperial court to allocate more funds to train the new army.

Yuan Shikai cried and shouted that he was poor, and in the end, although he didn't get much, he also cut a piece of meat from the court to train the new army.

In terms of the tax revenue of Zhili Province, it is absolutely impossible to afford the military expenses required by many Beiyang New Army, so the funds required by the Beiyang New Army are not supported by Yuan Shikai as later generations imagined, but half of them are allocated by the Qing court's household department, and about 30% are supported from the southern provinces, and Zhili's side actually only took out about 20%.

With Yuan Shikaiser rolling around to raise military expenses, the Beiyang officers below are naturally more at ease when they train their soldiers, at least they don't have to worry about the soldiers not having salaries, and they don't have to worry about continuing to use old-fashioned single-loading rifles in terms of ordnance.

Among the many new ordnances used by the Beiyang New Army, in addition to the Japanese ordnance and German-made ordnance, as well as the artillery and guns produced by the manufacturing bureaus in Jiangnan and Hubei, it was also the first time that the ordnance products on the Fuyuan Machinery Factory appeared.

At the end of 1902, Yuan Shikai officially placed the first batch of orders for the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, ordering 2,000 grenades and 200 Type 88 rifles.

Although the profit of this order is extremely limited, it makes the management of Fuyuan Machinery Factory see the hope of future profits, on the one hand, it has increased investment in the improved design of the Type 88 rifle, and at the same time, it has invested in the research and development of mortars.

And more importantly, Fuyuan Machinery Factory was not satisfied with the existing equipment scale, and set its sights on a large number of equipment in the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, and Zhao Chenbin and others directly approached Zhao Dongyun and asked him to find a way to buy this batch of equipment.

This requirement made Zhao Dongyun a little headache, because it was the equipment of the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, although it was said that the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau had been destroyed because of the Gengzi Incident, but since last year, Yuan Shikai also planned to rebuild the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, and even planned to add hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to purchase equipment to expand the scale.

It was only later that because Zhao Dongyun built a Fuyuan Machinery Factory, Yuan Shikai temporarily put down the reconstruction work of the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau.

However, even if the reconstruction work is slowed down, but the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau will be rebuilt after all, in this case, Zhao Dongyun wants to persuade Yuan Shikai to give up the reconstruction work of the Beiyang Manufacturing Bureau and sell the equipment to the Fuyuan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, which is not ordinary.

"The Fuyuan Machinery Factory has not yet entered mass production, where is the money needed to purchase equipment and expand production?" Yuan Shikai did not directly refuse as Zhao Dongyun imagined, but asked about the funding of Fuyuan Machine.

In Yuan Shikai's heart, the money of this Fuyuan machine factory is too easy, last summer, it didn't take a month to get together more than 800,000 taels of silver, but now more than half a year has passed, this Fuyuan machine is losing money every day, but no profit has been generated. In this case, he even wanted to purchase equipment to expand production again, which made Yuan Shikai a little suspicious, could it be that Zhao Dongyun's money fell from the sky?

Zhao Dongyun is also a little embarrassed, although he said that he is a major shareholder, others say that he owns this Fuyuan Factory, but he is a big shopkeeper who does not care about things, the specific management of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory is managed by the board of directors, and the real person in charge is the chairman Zhao Chenbin and the general manager Douglas and others.

They said that the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, which has not received a dime now, has a good prospect and urgently needs to expand the scale of investment and increase production, but Zhao Dongyun is not easy to say and refuse directly.

can only say: "Fu Yuan is ready to borrow from several banks and ticket numbers!" ”

Yuan Shikai frowned when he heard this: "Borrowing, if you borrow money from foreign businessmen, it is difficult to guarantee that Fuyuan will not fall into the control of outsiders!" ”

He frowned and said: "Now that Fuyuan's foundation is not stable, even if you borrow money from the domestic ticket number, you need to be cautious!" As for the purchase of the machine, I will ask in detail, and I will give you an answer when the time comes!

But having said that, if Beiyang's equipment is sold by Fuyuan and the ammunition cannot be supplied for a long time, it will not be a matter of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver! ”

Yuan Shikai doesn't mind those Fuyuan buy these machines and equipment, in fact, the current reconstruction of the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau is much more difficult than in history, in history Yuan Shikai is to invest hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to purchase new equipment and then add those old equipment to rebuild the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, and because of the emergence of the Fuyuan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, he did not invest in the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, so it is very difficult to rebuild the old equipment alone, and it is impossible to produce new products after rebuilding.

Therefore, it is also possible to sell it to the Fuyuanji Factory, but the problem is that the Fuyuanji Factory's output must be formed, and the products produced must be supplied to the Beiyang Army.

After getting Yuan Shikai's tacit approval, the factory invested 300,000 taels of cash to purchase the old equipment of the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, which was still being repaired in Tianjin, and these old equipment were mainly used for the production of black powder, maroon powder, smokeless gunpowder, bullets, shells and various semi-finished products.

These things mainly play a supplementary role for the newly established Fuyuanji Factory, so that the Fuyuanji Factory, which can produce black powder, and at the same time can also expand the production of smokeless gunpowder, and at the same time expand the production of bullets and increase the production of shells!

But these equipment is not so easy to get, this Fuyuan machine qì factory just took over the equipment, Zhao Dongyun received Yuan Shikai's words, asked the Fuyuan machine qì factory to do its best to establish a 6.5 mm bullet production line, in order to supply the Japanese rifle ammunition consumption in the Beiyang Army.

At the same time, it also placed an order for a batch of 57 mm and 75 mm shells for the Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory!

If it can be produced, it is hello everyone, if you can't get it, Yuan Shikai will be angry, with the expansion of the scale of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, with the reconstruction of the Texas Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, Yuan Shikai has already regarded the Fuyuan Machinery Factory as the core arsenal of Beiyang, as for whether it is commercial or governmental, it makes no difference to him.

When the Fuyuan Machinery Factory accepted the old equipment of the Beiyang Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, the time passed 1903!

At the beginning of the year, Yuan Shikai spent a lot of money to purchase a large number of ordnance from Japan, and finally arrived, and redressed the Beiyang Standing Army Zuozhen and Jingqi Standing Army in batches, looking at the piles of munitions Zhao Dongyun could only drool.

Although his Third Association also recruited more than 2,000 people, his soldiers were still using all kinds of old-fashioned rifles, and they were messy with all kinds of guns, and his more than 2,000 people were now mainly equipped with Martini rifles, single-armed Mauser, and a small number of Lai Yi rifles and quick rifles. It is worth mentioning that the first three are rear-loading single-shot rifles, while the fast rifle in the back is the first new repeating rifle mass-produced in China.

This gun was redesigned by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau on the basis of rifles such as Manlixia, but despite its reputation as the number one in China, its design was very poor and the quality was poor, and many troops preferred to use the old single-loading rifle rather than use this fast rifle.

The Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau has been famous for producing garbage for more than 20 years, and the Lin Mingden rifles produced from 1884 to 1890 are not only expensive, but also easy to misfire, and no one is willing to use more than 10,000 rifles. Then the Li Yi rifle produced from 1890 to 1892 was not good, and the subsequent production of fast rifles was also a pit goods that no one was willing to use, and finally forced to stop the production of fast rifles and switch to the production of 88 rifles, but the 88 rifles produced were far inferior to the products of the Hubei Gun Factory in terms of reliability, let alone compared with the original goods.

But having said that, in fact, the quality of the Type 88 rifles produced by the Hanyang factory in recent years is not good, and the historical evaluation is high price and quality.

And Zhao Dongyun can't help it, he doesn't have a better gun in his hand, so now he can only train with these rags first.

After all, it is impossible for the Third Association to equip the old guns for too long, and it will definitely be replaced with new rifles without a year or two, and the rifles that are scheduled to be replaced have been determined, that is, the 88-type rifles produced by the Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory, and now it is barely enough to train new recruits with old guns.

In late February, Zhao Dongyun's Third Association finally accepted the first batch of 200 Type 88 rifles produced by the Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

These two hundred rifles are the products of small-scale trial production at the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and in order to ensure the normal production of the original German Type 88 rifle, the design of the original German Type 88 rifle is the style that later people are familiar with: the old sleeve.

"Finally got a new gun, this is used to using repeating fast guns, and then I am really not used to using those old guns!" Lin Yongquan skillfully picked up a Type 88 rifle, loaded it, and then shot continuously, and the action was very smooth.

"How? Let's fight smoothly! Pei Lianying, who was on the side, also came to try out the new gun: "I have used this 88 rifle before, although it is difficult to fight after all, but it is a new gun, which is much stronger than those single-loading old guns!" ”

"This recoil is a little bigger, much more than the thirty-year style of the Japanese 'Ben!" Lin Yongquan put down the gun in his hand, still rubbing his shoulders at this time, obviously still a little dissatisfied with the huge recoil of the Type 88 rifle.

At this time, Chen Guangyuan on the side also came over: "Now that the Fuyuan factory has started production, it is estimated that it will not be long before we can all replace them with new guns!" ”

Although Chen Guangyuan and Zhao Dongyun are mortal enemies, it can be regarded as an internal contradiction of the Third Association anyway, and it is also an external contradiction instigated by Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai and others, and the current issue of gun refitting is related to the overall interests of the Third Association, so it is not surprising that he cares.

Chen Guangyuan said: "As far as I know, this Fuyuan factory is the factory that leads your family, I don't know when it will be mass-produced?" ”

Zhao Dongyun did not have a personal dislike for Chen Guangyuan, and the factional disputes were not on his face every day, and he immediately said kindly: "The Fuyuan factory is still only a small-scale trial production, and it will probably take next year to really mass production, but even if it is a trial production, three or four hundred guns can be produced from this month, and it is more than a month, according to the amount required by our third association, at most it will be half a year!" ”

Zhao Dongyun's words made a group of subordinates smile!

What he didn't know was that since he learned that the Fuyuan Machine Qì Factory had started small-scale trial production, Yuan Shikai had already accelerated the pace of army expansion again!