On the one hand, Zhou Wen considered this for safety reasons. He wanted to let Yangtze River No. 1 take a trip to test the waters first. At the same time, it could also have the effect of starvation sales. After all, things are rare and expensive, and the harder they are to get, the more likely they are to be obtained. Popular.
On the other hand, the current guard strength is insufficient.
It's impossible for you to arrange a company of troops to escort each ship, right? Wouldn't those three ships require the deployment of a battalion of troops?
This requires considering the feelings of others. Although this is Shanghai, it is also under the nose of Nanjing. I wonder if there are many people in the upper echelons of the Republic of China who are watching. Even if you open your own business, the Kong family will use it as a way to ridicule the Liu family, let alone if you do anything outrageous.
If you directly treat the army as your own private soldier, then in the eyes of some people, it is too unscrupulous. Not to mention others, even the principal will not be able to explain it.
But this situation will change only if the first batch of arms smuggled by Qichang Foreign Company arrives.
Just because Zhou Wen placed all the smuggled gunboats under the Tiger Defense Company, they are officially registered private security forces and have nothing to do with the military. Naturally, there is no need to worry about using them?
Moreover, with the gunboat escort, a cargo ship only needs one squad of troops to protect it at most. With about twenty people on the gunboat, the total defense force required for the three cargo ships will not exceed one company, and all aspects can be accounted for.
Zhou Wen and James agreed to purchase 8-10 inland river gunboats of less than 100 tons. After the Yangtze River Company's shipping is fully and smoothly next year, they will purchase two more cargo ships to reach the scale of one shipping per week. In this way, one With a monthly shipping volume of 4,000-5,000 tons, and nearly 10,000 tons of freight going back and forth, it is already considered the largest shipping company in the Republic of China.
Zhou Wen planned that part of these smuggled gunboats would be used for escort, and the other part would be assigned to Zhao Qinghu's Jiang Defense Brigade in Hukou.
Some people here may have noticed that Zhou Wen's actions of reorganizing the Second Regiment and recruiting the Yihu Gang seemed to be for the Yangtze River Company's shipping services and to protect the Shanghai gold rush, but the price was a bit high. .
Let’s not talk about the Second Regiment. This was Zhou Wen’s good deed to protect some of the anti-Japanese soldiers of the original 19th Route Army from falling into subsequent tragedies. It is also appropriate to recruit and train them.
But he spent so much time and energy to go to Hukou to recruit an armed bandit, which is a bit excessive. (Some readers may think that it is not only Zhou Wen who spends time and energy, but also the author himself who spends a lot of time and effort. , a small incident involving the recruitment of the Yihu Gang was forced to be written into twenty chapters).
Even if the Yihu Gang is a righteous bandit, even if Zhao Qinghu has a reputation as a chivalrous man, for the mercenary group that is already strong and has countless capable people, the addition of the Yihu Gang is not even the icing on the cake. How can it be allowed? Mr. Zhou, who was busy with everything, personally went out to inspect and recruit, and even transferred Chen Wanli, who was responsible for the Second Regiment?
In fact, Zhou Wen was making some arrangements to deal with the future Sino-Japanese war.
Anyone with a discerning eye can see that both the Second Regiment and the newly established Jiang Defense Brigade are deploying around the Yangtze River, which is equivalent to deploying around Nanjing.
The Second Regiment is now stationed in Pukou, just across the river from Nanjing.
The Jiang Defense Brigade is located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River hundreds of kilometers away. If the war in Nanjing requires it, it can go down the river from the upper reaches and arrive overnight.
In history, Nanjing during the Anti-Japanese War became a pain that the Chinese nation could never recover from.
The most critical reason is that General Tang, who volunteered to serve as the commander of the Nanjing garrison and claimed to live and die with the city of Nanjing, burned all the ships on the Yangtze River ferry in order to show his determination to burn everything before the battle.
So when the nearly 100,000 anti-Japanese soldiers who received the order to retreat retreated to the Yangtze River, all they saw was the turbulent water and empty docks. Every cargo ship and fishing boat was missing.
But General Tang, who had vowed to live and die with Nanjing, escaped on a small steamer specially reserved for his own escape. He left behind his loyal and brave men, nearly 100,000 soldiers who fought against the Japanese invaders for several months, and their desperate and helpless eyes standing on the edge of the vast river.
If these elite officers and soldiers of the Nationalist Army can retreat to the north bank of the Yangtze River, they will play an immeasurable role in the future war of resistance. Because they were the most experienced officers and soldiers in the national army at that time in fighting against Japan, they would become the seeds and backbone of the later formation of the army, and would not make China's resistance so difficult in the middle and late stages of the Anti-Japanese War.
Moreover, most of the officers and soldiers were members of the prestigious German Arms Division at that time.
The German armorers, who had left a strong mark on the history of the Republic of China, disappeared from the long river of history as these officers and soldiers were massacred by the Japanese army.
This tragic history that makes every Chinese feel both humiliating and heartbreaking forces Zhou Wen, a time-traveler, to not just let things go, but to do something.
Zhou Wen believes that no matter who travels to this era, this painful history will be like a heavy boulder, pressing on your heart, your mind, and your dreams. It forces you to shout, shout, and do things.
Even if you can't change the big outcome, even if you try your best to save only some people, or even just a few people, you have made your own contribution.
This is not a constraint of national justice, but a responsibility, a responsibility that you cannot escape even if you want to lie down - the responsibility of history.
So Zhou Wen tried his best to gain the principal's trust and gain the status of speaking out in front of the principal.
So when the time was right, he used the remaining power of his victory in the Great Wall War to express his suggestions and strategies for the future War of Resistance Against Japan in front of the principal.
But simply expecting principals to make changes is not enough.
Even if the principal agrees with Zhou Wen's strategy of turning Nanjing into a meat grinder and a main battlefield that consumes the Japanese army's combat power, he cannot personally take command in Nanjing. He must appoint his general as the commander-in-chief.
This made Zhou Wen a little worried.
You must know that in the current national army, although there are not many candidates with status and qualifications to serve as the commander-in-chief of the first army, most of these people are no longer professional soldiers, and almost all of them are involved in many political matters.
Since politics is involved, the character and bloodiness of these people are a bit worrying.
Not to mention the historical General Tang, even if it were replaced by someone else, such as General Gu, General He, General Chen, etc., I am afraid it would not be safe.
