After the banquet, Yuan Shikai invited everyone to the barracks meeting hall.
The Beiyang Army is so rich, so the barracks are naturally not just a few marching tents, and the decoration is quite in place. Moreover, Yuan Shikai liked to learn from the West, and even the design style imitated Germany.
Yuan Shikai said to Li Yu: "Sir, I have to ask you to help me in the camp these days."
Li Yu was not surprised to learn that he would stay in the Beiyang military camp temporarily. Their discussions had been heard at the banquet. But just thinking about facing a bunch of big soldiers feels a bit headache.
"I will definitely do my best to help if I can."
Yuan Shikai chuckled: "You don't have to do your best. If you do your best, my soldiers won't be able to learn. I feel satisfied if they can learn basic theoretical knowledge and understand operating procedures and field manuals. .”
"General Manager Feng!" Yuan Shikai called over Feng Guozhang, "You are in charge of the coaching office. You have to instruct me to take good care of Mr. Li."
Feng Guozhang gave Yuan Shikai a military salute and said, "Yes, Marshal."
Then he said to Li Yu: "We don't have so much profound knowledge in the army. Mr. Li can just use one or two of his skills."
Li Yu replied: "Then I will do my best."
If you are talking about physics, mathematics, or engineering, it really only requires a small amount of effort.
"Sir, please follow me."
Feng Guozhang took Li Yu out of the barracks and walked to the school.
Li Yu took a closer look and found out that Feng Guozhang was Feng Gong's great-grandfather. At a closer look, he looked very much like him.
Nowadays, the Beiyang Standing Army has established many schools, including the Armed Forces School, the Normal School, the Staff School, the Surveying and Mapping School, the Military Medical School, the Horse Medical School, the Officer School, the Gendarmerie School, and the Beiyang Army Crash Course.
What Feng Guozhang brought Li Yu to was the last-mentioned Beiyang Army Crash Course. This school will be moved to Baoding in the future, which is the famous Baoding Army Officer School.
The Baoding Army Officer Academy later produced Chiang Kai-shek, Bai Chongxi, Fu Zuoyi and many other senior figures in the national army.
But when it comes to the origin of Baoding Military Academy, it is the Beiyang Army Crash Course established by Yuan Shikai in the Beiyang Standing Army.
Feng Guozhang was the first supervisor of Beiyang Crash Academy. Many officers who graduated from this academy later became Feng Guozhang's disciples. His ability to become a direct warlord leader has a lot to do with this.
Four years later, the school's supervisor will become Duan Qirui from the Anhui Clan.
Unexpectedly, the struggle between Zhizhi and Anhui was foreshadowed at this time.
The school is located in a fort with quite a few houses.
Feng Guozhang took Li Yu around and stopped under the eaves of a house. "The school is a bit crude. It can't be compared with the schools in the capital, and it can't be compared with the West. There are no decent conditions, so I can only feel sorry for you." Stay overnight.”
Li Yu didn't care: "It's better to have something than nothing."
Feng Guozhang can't stay here forever. He is the head coach of the three major institutions under the Beiyang Standing Army, but he also serves as the school supervisor.
So Feng Guozhang called Li Chun, "Li Tidiao, you will assist the good teacher in the school."
"It's an order."
Feng Guozhang's coaching office has jurisdiction over the academic affairs department and the school military department, among which Li Chun is promoted to the academic affairs department.
In short, Li Yu felt that the people he met the most today were the generals of the direct faction.
Li Chun sat under Li Yu at the banquet and also helped Cao Kun get Zhang Xun a drink. Li Yu was impressed.
Li Chun later became the governor of the Yangtze River and was known as the "King of Jiangsu".
However, I don’t know if it was due to the influence of Feng Guozhang, who also loved education. Later, he built three primary schools in Tianjin with his name "Xiushan"; he also donated 500,000 silver dollars to Nankai University and built "Xiushan". Hall".
Now Li Chun is in charge of some specific affairs of the school. If Feng Guozhang is the principal, Li Chun is the assistant to the principal.
Li Chun led Li Yu into his office, "Sir, please sit down! It's not easy to have a university scholar who understands science come to our place. It's really not easy! In the past, everyone thought that soldiers were prostitutes or gangsters. We are treated as uneducated bastards. After all, they say that when a scholar encounters a soldier, there is no reason to explain."
Li Yu smiled and said: "General, you are funny."
It is true that scholars at that time were unwilling to serve as soldiers. This is true. There were not many people who could read, and those who knew how to read were not willing to serve as soldiers. One can imagine the cultural quality of the troops.
Li Chun chuckled: "Actually, we also know that. Nowadays, we can't understand how to fight without some culture. General Manager Feng and General Manager Duan are both people who have studied abroad. In fact, we can also see that only educated people can Going up, if you are uneducated, you can only be a cannon fodder rushing forward."
"That's right."
Li Yu discovered that Li Chun, the governor of the Yangtze River, did understand some truth. These are troubled times, and the risks of being a soldier are very high. If you want to save your life, it is safest to climb to the top as much as possible. At least it is much better than being a soldier.
"How many students are there in the Beiyang Army's academy now?" Li Yu asked again.
Li Chun said: "If you include the several short-term training schools managed by General Office Duan, there are almost a thousand people."
The Staff School, Surveying and Mapping School, and Military Preparation School are all short-term training courses. Duan Qirui, the General Office of the General Staff Office, also serves as the General Office of the three schools. This short-term training class also trained many well-known figures, such as Chen Tiaoyuan, Wu Xintian, Yang Wenkai, Shi Jingyun, etc., all of whom later became general-level figures.
Look, Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang are really at odds with each other.
Li Yu nodded, "If we can train these people into the backbone and then spread them to the new armies training in various places, we can maximize efficiency. It is indeed a good way."
Yuan Shikai really wanted to do this, and it would be of great benefit to both the public and private parties: for the public, he could quickly train a group of officers and the chief instructors or supervisors of the army primary schools opened in various places, which could improve the overall military strength; for the private, it could Let yourself have better control over the country's military power.
Being able to see so far-reaching and take care of his own interests, Yuan Shikai has played a big game.
Li Yu was sitting on a chair, with several rifles of different models placed on the table in front of him.
Li Chun noticed Li Yu's gaze and said: "Some soldiers down there felt that the gun was not easy to use, so they handed it to the Military Preparation Department. The Military Preparation Department thought it was the soldiers messing around, so they started a quarrel. I happened to see it yesterday, so I took it come and see."
Li Yu didn't know much about the military, but he had studied mechanical design after all. There were many military fans among his classmates. One roommate even took the postgraduate entrance examination for a major called weapons systems and application engineering.
Under his influence, Li Yu understood a little bit, and the weapons at the beginning of the 20th century were not very advanced, and the principles were not complicated.
Take the rifle in front of you, for example. Even those who have watched the Anti-Japanese War drama will find that there is something wrong with it: the bolt of this gun is a direct pull type.
No matter which Anti-Japanese War drama you have watched (except for the drama, because I haven’t watched it, I am not sure whether the settings in it are rigorous or not, and I don’t know whether I used hairspray during the war), anyway, you will see that the soldiers in it use After firing a round of bullets, most rifles rotate and pull to change bullets. The bolt action is very short and the bullet changing efficiency is very high.
But the bolt of the rifle in front of me is actually on the buttocks. When the bolt is pulled, it goes straight forward and backward, that is, a straight-pull bolt.
The direct-pull bolt pulls the bolt hard and has a long stroke, so the rate of fire is slow and it is easy to malfunction.
Li Yu asked casually: "All the military equipment is this rifle now?"
Li Chun nodded: "Yes, the commander-in-chief bought these guns from Austria through the German instructor Hannagan seven years ago. They are relatively easy to use."
"I heard at the banquet that Beiyang is planning to purchase a batch of rifles from Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau. I wonder what models they are?" Li Yu continued to ask.
Li Chun was a little surprised: "I didn't expect that sir is also interested in weapons?"
Li Yu said: "Now that I have arrived at the military camp, I am naturally a little curious."
"Well, it's not a secret that cannot be revealed," Li Chun said, "Jiangnan Machinery Bureau has probably produced quite a few. I heard that the drawings were taken from Hanyang Arsenal. It is a new model, and its performance is said to be close to that of the Germans. Mauser rifle.”
Li Yu's mind flashed: "Hanyang Arsenal?"
Well, isn’t this the famous Made in Hanyang!
Hanyang Made was born in the late Qing Dynasty, but it has been used throughout the entire Anti-Japanese War, and was even used on the Korean battlefield. It has witnessed almost half a century of war history, and can be regarded as an outstanding meritorious service.
But to say that the performance is comparable to the Mauser rifle is exaggerating.
In fact, the reason why Hanyang was made was that the Germans deceived the Qing Dynasty because the Qing Dynasty was almost obsessed with the German Mauser brand.
The Hanyang was copied from a rifle called the 1888 Type Committee. The name is not as famous as the Hanyang, and it is definitely not the German army's standard rifle that has been galloping on the European battlefield for decades - the Mauser rifle.
But at that time, German businessmen figured out the superstition of the word "Mauser" among the Qing Dynasty's top officials and falsely claimed that this was a Mauser rifle. After all, it also used Mauser bullets. Anyway, with the word "Mauser" in it, the Qing Dynasty actually thought it was a Mauser rifle.
Daqing was fooled and bought all the design materials and production machinery as a treasure.
Worshiping foreigners and fawning over foreigners kills people!
It is a pity that this phenomenon will not stop after 100 years.
However, Li Yu was not prepared to interfere in these major military and political affairs. On the one hand, he did not have such ability, and on the other hand, it was not necessarily true that Hanyang was a failure.
He remembered what Mingyue said about Wang Anshi and Zhang Juzheng's reforms:
Wang Anshi failed because he thought he was smart; Zhang Juzheng succeeded because he thought he was stupid.
In this world, everything that exists must have its rationality, otherwise it would never be born. But Wang Anshi didn't quite understand this truth. He hated the old system and the large group of people in the Northern Song Dynasty who were freeloaders. But what he doesn't know is that the old system may be stubborn or unreasonable, but it is also the crystallization of the great wisdom of countless predecessors. Those who formulate systems and implement them are unparalleled smart people, much smarter than all those who think they are smart. No matter how rigid or cumbersome they are, they are effective.
Therefore, Wang Anshi was ambitious and worked hard on the Green Seedling Method with great enthusiasm, but in the end it could not be used, so it was all in vain.
In fact, the same principle applies to weapons and firearms in the late Qing Dynasty.
Zhang Zhidong, Yuan Shikai, and Duan Qirui are all smart people. They are not stupid. They must have discovered that they got the wrong drawings later.
But the key is to be able to use it, and then spend a lot of energy to buy it again. The Qing Dynasty simply doesn't have this ability and doesn't have much time to waste.
The Mauser rifle is definitely more advanced, just like Wang Anshi's reform is definitely more advanced, but the key is to adapt to the times.
——What is right may not necessarily be correct, sometimes what is wrong is also correct.
Whether it was the late Qing Dynasty or the Anti-Japanese War, what China needed most was not top-notch weapons, but enough weapons that could be used.
After all, the equipment of the national army in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War was actually reasonable, but it soon lost all its capital in Songhu and Taiyuan. After this, the difference in equipment of the national army was really appalling.
Otherwise, traitor Wang would not have uttered the infamous phrase "resistance means only sacrifice."
There is a big gap in equipment between China and Japan, but to be honest, there is not as big a generation gap in army weapons as there is in navy and air force.
As we all know, Japan invests most of its military expenditures in the navy. The Japanese navy can even fight the US Navy in a super naval battle between aircraft carriers such as the Battle of Midway in the Pacific.
Japan's navy was definitely among the top three in the world at that time, at least two generations ahead of Germany.
However, Japan's army was indeed at least a generation behind Germany.
The German Army fought a mechanized blitzkrieg of heavily armored groups. Take the King of Land War tanks as an example. German tanks were very strong throughout World War II.
But Japan, Bean Chariot!
Germany's opponent, the Soviet Union's T34 tank, weighs more than 30 tons, while Xiaodou only weighs 2.4 tons!
Not even much heavier than a 21st century Jeep SUV!
In the eyes of Soviet, German, British and American tanks, the bean tank was simply ridiculous.
Although Xiaodou is also very powerful on the Chinese battlefield, after all, he can only fight with force. But its defensive capabilities are not strong, and it is much easier to deal with than the real kings of land warfare such as the Panther tank and T34.
You can imagine what it would be like to turn a jeep into a tank and go to the battlefield. How much steel plate does it weigh?
With such a low self-respect, it's like... forget it, let's figure it out on our own.
In addition, you may not believe it, but one of the core tactics of the Japanese army has always been bayonet fighting. There are a lot of explanations about "white soldiers and pigs jumping" in the Japanese army's combat regulations and tactical examples.
"Pig charging" means ignoring the opponent's number and charging like a wild boar.
"Pig" is definitely a complimentary word in Japan. Li Yu was always curious at first about why the country of Xiaoli respected "pig" so much, but later he learned that people regard wild boars just like China views tigers, and they are the most ferocious beasts they can see in the country...
Anyway, wild boars, oh no, this Japanese tactic shocked us a lot. Bayonet fighting is really powerful.
Therefore, whether it is the late Qing Dynasty or later, advanced weapons are not important. If Hanyang can manufacture a large number of equipment and continue to produce large quantities, then it will be happy.
After all, in the Franco-Prussian War, the Chassepo rifle used by France was obviously better than the German Dresser rifle, but France still lost.
Well, after talking for a long time, I am really not insulting the law...
If Li Yu wanted to, he could help produce and improve the rifle. At least he could do it to the design level of the Mauser rifle.
After all, he has a bachelor's degree in mechanical design, and his abilities are not weak, and his drawing ability is even more outstanding. He passed the drawing geometry course with full marks back then. Looking at the current Qing Dynasty, there should be few people with better design and drawing abilities than him.
However, it was limited to simple bolt-action single-shot rifles. If it was a light machine gun or even a heavy machine gun, or even various cannons, he would have to learn specifically.
But he didn’t want to do it because it didn’t make much sense: design capability is design capability, and production capability is production capability.
Again, what is lacking is not good weapons, but strong logistics production.
