After the banquet, Yuan Shikai invited everyone to the barracks meeting hall.
Since the Beiyang Army was so rich, the barracks were naturally not just a few marching tents, but rather well decorated. Moreover, Yuan Shikai liked to learn from the West, and even the design style was imitated in 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. However, the thought of facing a bunch of big soldiers felt a little headache.
"I will definitely do my best to help."
Yuan Shikai chuckled: "You don't have to do your best. If you do your best, these soldiers of mine won't be able to learn. I feel satisfied if they can learn basic theoretical knowledge and understand the operating procedures and field manuals."
.”
"General Manager Feng!" Yuan Shikai called Feng Guozhang over, "You are in charge of the coaching office. Instruct me to take good care of Mr. Li."
Feng Guozhang gave Yuan Shikai a military salute and said, "Yes, Commander."
Then he said to Li Yu: "Our army does not need so much profound knowledge. Mr. Li can just apply a little bit 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 come with 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 quite similar.
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 Officers 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 would later be moved to Baoding, which is the famous Baoding Army Officer School.
Baoding Army Officer Academy later graduated Chiang Kai-shek, Bai Chongxi, Fu Zuoyi and many other big 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 the leader of the direct warlords had a lot to do with this.
Four years later, the school’s supervisor will be 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 couldn't stay here forever. He was the head coach of the three major institutions under the Beiyang Standing Army, but he also served 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 Zhili faction.
Li Chun sat under Li Yu at the banquet, and also helped Cao Kun drink Zhang Xun. 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 a "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 took Li Yu into his office and said, "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 gangsters, and they didn't take us seriously.
After all, the big bosses of culture say that when a scholar encounters a soldier, he can't explain why."
Li Yu laughed and said, "The general is so funny."
It is true that scholars at that time were unwilling to serve as soldiers. This was true. There were not many people who could read, and those who could read were not willing to serve as soldiers. You can imagine the cultural quality of the troops.
Li Chun chuckled: "Actually, we also know it. Nowadays, we can't even fight a war 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 cannon fodder rushing forward."
"That's right."
Li Yu found 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 better than being a soldier.
Much stronger.
"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 Duan's Office, 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, concurrently serves as the General Office of the three schools. Such short-term training courses have also trained many well-known figures, such as Chen Tiaoyuan, Wu Xintian, and Yang Wenkai
, Shi Jingyun, etc., they were all general-level figures later.
Look, Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang are really at odds with each other all the time.
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, which 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
Give yourself 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 over 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 have a look.”
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 that 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 have never seen it, I am not sure whether the settings in it are rigorous or not, and I don’t know whether I wore hair gel 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, the bolt moves straight forward and backward, which is a direct-pull bolt.
The direct-pull bolt is laborious to pull the bolt and the stroke is too long, 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, these guns were bought from Austria by the commander-in-chief 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 the 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 its performance is comparable to that of a Mauser rifle is an exaggeration.
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 on the European battlefield for decades - the Mauser rifle.
But at that time, the German businessmen figured out the superstition of the word "Mauser" by the Qing Dynasty's senior officials and falsely claimed that this was a Mauser rifle. After all, it also used Mauser bullets. Anyway, with the word "Mauser", the Qing Dynasty actually thought it was a Mauser rifle.
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. Wang Anshi didn't quite understand this truth. He hated the old system and hated the large group of people in the Northern Song Dynasty who were freeloaders. But he didn't know
The thing is, the old system may be stubborn or unreasonable, but it is also the crystallization of the great wisdom of countless predecessors. The people who formulate the system and implement the system are unparalleled smart people, much smarter than all those who think they are smart.
It may be rigid or cumbersome, but it is 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 later that they got the wrong drawings.
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 didn't have this ability and didn'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 was actually reasonable in the early days of the War of Resistance, but it soon lost all its capital in Songhu and Taiyuan. After that, the difference in equipment of the national army was really shocking.
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 at that time was indeed at least a full 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!
The T34 tank of Germany's opponent, the Soviet Union, 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 a joke.
Although Xiaodou is also very fierce on the Chinese battlefield, after all, it can only fight with force. However, its defensive capabilities are not strong, and it is much easier to deal with than the Panther tank and T34, the real king of land warfare.
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?
Such a low self-respect is 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. The Japanese army's combat regulations and tactical examples contain a lot of explanations about "white soldiers and pigs rushing".
"Pig charging" means ignoring the opponent's number of people 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 Little Japan respected "pig" so much. 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 kind of tactics of the Japanese army shocked us very much. The bayonet fight was really fierce.
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 achieve 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 doesn’t want to do it because it doesn’t make much sense: design ability is design ability, and production ability is production ability.
As the saying goes, what is lacking is not good weapons, but strong logistics and production.