June of the fifth year of the new Qin. China and Britain reached a consensus on the Japanese issue. In July, China and Britain jointly attended Japan's East-West talks.

At that time, the Southwest Army had already crossed the horse pass a month earlier, and rushed straight to Kyoto with the momentum of a desperate decisive battle. The Southwest Military Government, which got the news from Liu Xian, was in ruins, and the troops of the five towns were dispatched to four towns, and human lives were wantonly squandered by senior generals on the battlefield. Even the elite marching teams are included.

After a month of fighting to the death, the Southwest Army paid great sacrifices and conquered Hiroshima, Fukuyama, Kurashiki, and Okayama to make big cities, but they fell short in Himeji. The 30,000 Southwest Army was firmly blocked by the Tokyo government army in Kobe and Osaka, the periphery of Japan's elite business circle.

The Tokyo government has prepared 50,000 fresh troops, just waiting for the southwest army to attack for a long time, and when the army is tired and old, it will deal a fatal blow to Saigo Takamori.

As a result, before this fatal blow came, Saigo Takamori first sent a telegram to Nagasaki, and then the telegram was sent from Nagasaki to Beijing. The British took to the stage and shouted 'stop'!

The Chinese who followed the arrival, one dragged the Tokyo government and the other led the southwest military government to conduct peace talks in Shimonoseki. It took only three days for the Treaty of Shimonoseki to be concluded, and the Southwest Army released all the captured government soldiers and government-inclined officials, policemen, etc., and retreated from Himeji to Tsuyama, with Tsuyama as the boundary, and the small half of the island to the west was owned by the Southwest Military Government, and the rest was controlled by the Tokyo government.

Of course, Ito Hirobumi disagreed, and Emperor Meiji was furious, saying only that Britain had no faith, which was a great shame for him.

But when the Sino-British combined fleet appeared in the Bay of Tonkin. The boiling Edo immediately calmed down.

"Nothing to be believed in? The axiom is only within the range of the cannon. Huang Zunxian, director of the Asian Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said to his old Japanese friend: "It is better to rely on heaven and earth than on yourself." The pursuit of profit in the West has become the norm, and so has diplomacy. How can the words of the British be fully believed? ”

But no matter how much Huang Zunxian and his Japanese friends sighed. Japan is at peace, in the short term - three years. Peace! China has lost a big burden and can go all out to provoke Russia on the Pacific coast of the Far East.

And on the third day after the news of the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki reached Beijing. The "Huaxia Daily" suddenly announced a notice of a military exercise, which was no longer on the front page, but it attracted the attention of many people across the country and attracted the attention of foreigners -- train transfer, stress test.

The Qin army will urgently transport the troops of an integrated brigade from the three important towns of Huai'an, Hanzhong, and Wuhan to Beijing through the railway network that Guò has just colluded together.

These troops are fully mobilized. Heavily armed. Not only combat troops, but also engineers, horses, field hospitals, logistics troops, and heavy artillery, as well as ammunition, supplies, and artillery reserves stipulated in military regulations, must all be carried completely. 10 days, one round trip within 10 days. After the troops arrived in Beijing to assemble, they quickly assembled, quickly disbanded, and quickly returned by train. In this way, the convenience of the railway, the dispatch and the amount of locomotives required are tested, and the speed of troop movement under modern conditions is tested.

It is necessary. Very necessary.

Many European armies have experience of railway transportation, but the Qin army has very few, let alone such 'war'-style emergency training. This is tantamount to training troops to prevent this from happening. All had no experience in dealing with urgency. And now is the time when the railway network has just been Sutong, and there are not many trains running, so it is so sudden. The damage is not large, and it is harmless at all.

If it's a locomotive, it's all on the road. The whole railway transport has been rolled out, and this kind of close motorized transport will be done again at that time. The losses are astronomical.

An integrated brigade has three integrated battalions, with units directly under the brigade headquarters and various affiliated units, with a total strength of 10,000 troops. This is the latest Qin military system, which was only implemented last winter. After all, Great Qin has already ruled the world, and the formation of field troops is certainly not as good as that in wartime, and there must be a clear regulation.

Of the three integrated battalions under the integrated brigade, two must be field battalions with the main force, and the cavalry units directly under the brigade headquarters must have one standard brigade. The total strength of two integrated brigades under an integrated division, together with the division headquarters and the infantry and cavalry artillery directly under it, reached 23,000 to 24,000 men.

Among them, the Praetorian Guard Division and the main six integrated divisions, plus the First Marine Division, these eight divisions are a large establishment of 30,000 people. The status is better than the rest of the divisions, and the commanders of each division are all military cadres with the rank of general or senior lieutenant general.

And because the Qin army was reorganized at the same time as Liu Xian was also in the great vassals, the commanders of these eight divisions were not only the cadres in the army, but also the backbone of the ministers.

Eight people, six marquises, two counts, even the two lowest counts all bear the title of 'founder', and they are hereditary nobles. In the entire civil and military system of the Qin army, including close relatives such as Liu Xian's uncle Wang Guisheng and uncle-in-law Huo Wei, there are less than 70 nobles who can be hereditary.

Mainly because the Manchus were too easy to push! There is no bitter taste.

Such a title, even if it is an earl, is much more precious than the marquis and duke of Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, Liu Changyou, Liu Songshan, Liu Mingchuan, etc.

The Liujue [Lifetime System] that cannot be inherited, or the title of degraded to attack, there are hundreds of civil and military forces in the Manchu Dynasty, accounting for the vast majority of the entire title, what is the use?

Even they themselves don't take the 'marquis' and 'dukes' on their bodies seriously.

Therefore, the status of these eight divisions in the Qin army can be imagined.

……

Wuhan Railway Station.

"Why are they all soldiers?"

"Is there going to be a war in the north?"

"Didn't you read the newspaper? This is a pull-up. The imperial court wants to test how quickly the train transports the army to the ground. ”

"Don't always stare at the anecdotes. The first edition of the main issue also took a double look......"

Since the opening of the railway from Beijing to Guangxi, Wuhan, the landmark of the middle section of the Yangtze River, has always been bustling with people at the railway station.

The role of trains has long been in the newspapers for the past two years. No more advertising at all. Wuhan Railway Station is one of the busiest stations in all of China.

As a British businessman who had traveled back and forth between Shanghai and Wuhan, Dawson had become accustomed to the hustle and bustle of people coming and going. Whether it's a wharf in Wuhan or a wharf in Shanghai, people and noise are always the main body.

Today, he came to the train station to send a friend to Guangxi, but the crowd at the train station made him, a self-proclaimed 'well-informed' person, stunned. At least tens of thousands of Chinese have gathered here.

Sending a friend on the train, Dawson didn't step out of the platform. He found that the passengers on the platform and the Chinese who were sending off relatives and friends were gathering in groups of three or five, talking loudly and quietly.

The other side of the platform, separated by a wooden fence from here, is the reason for these discussions, and why so many people are here at the train station today.

The same concrete paved floor, and the tall scaffolding also covers the platform.

But under the scaffolding, on the platform, there was not a merchant or traveler with a large bag, but a Qin soldier wearing a military uniform and carrying a rifle on his shoulder.

A train stopped at the platform, and the soldiers were lining up.

Some of the soldiers were carrying large bags that looked like cauldrons in them. Flags, ammunition boxes, and other materials that belonged to the movement of the troops were sorted out one by one and sent into the carriages together.

Dawson also saw that on the platform there, under the tarpaulins coated with green dye, one after another tightly wrapped objects were carefully fished up and landed on the flatbed cars between the carriages by a crane. That thing doesn't leak a bit of skin, but as long as it's a person, who can't recognize it?

"What caliber cannon? So big! ”

"At least three inches up."

"With so many artillery pieces in one battalion, this must be the second division."

An ordinary field infantry battalion can have sixteen cannons. Only the six main divisions of the Qin army, a field infantry battalion, could be equipped with between 24 and 30 guns. And the infantry of this battalion was also armed with so many mortars and heavy machine guns.

Seeing the mortars and heavy machine guns neatly arranged on the platform, anyone with a little insight knew that this must be the troops of the Second Division stationed in Wuhan.

The eyes of the Chinese and foreign people were all attracted by the Chinese railway network and the Qin army troops in motion.

Railways can give people great mobility and transportation capacity, and if these things are combined with the powerful Qin army and army, then there is really no possibility in this world to burn the flames of war into the hinterland of China.

The construction corps has contributed strength and speed to the construction of China's railways. This is an advantage that foreign countries do not have when building railways. The cost of railway construction in China has been greatly reduced!

Judging by the current progress of the construction of the railways, the Grand Cross project will be completed in a maximum of one year. In two years, the line from Guangdong to Shanghai can be merged with the railway from Shandong to Nanjing, and another major artery running through the north and south of China will be formed.

In the next five years, the construction of railways and highways between Mongolia and the mainland will be completed. In that case, China's strength will really grow by leaps and bounds.

Moreover, just when everyone's eyes were staring at this 'real yàn', no outsiders noticed that the Chinese cavalry units on the Mongolian Plateau were being mobilized, and the elite troops of the two integrated brigades of the Northeast Military Region [with deficiencies in formation] also arrived in Harbin in the north.

Ten days passed in a blink of an eye. The 'real yàn' was unsuccessful, the operation of the railway was a mess, and the headquarters of the Fifth Division in Hanzhong was 22 hours late before returning to the station.

There is a lot of discussion about this all over the country, some people say that they should practice frequently, and some people say that it will disrupt the operation of trains too much and affect the efficiency of railway companies. The Grand Cross Project is a public offering, and it has previously issued a large number of shares.

In the midst of this gushing controversy, a diplomatic note was handed from the Northeast Military District to Khabarovka, or Boli. It was the center of the Governor-General of the Amur River, which was newly established by the Russian Empire last year. (To be continued......)