Although the road between Chongming and Chengdu is long, there is not much difference between Zhang Huangyan's army and the Sichuan army, and Zhang Huangyan has been trying his best to promote the integration of the eastern Zhejiang army and the Sichuan army. Three years ago, under the facilitation of Zhang Huangyan, the Imperial Diet was unified to be responsible for the salaries and pensions of officers in eastern Zhejiang; From the same moment on, the newly recruited officers and soldiers of the Eastern Zhejiang Army also had to be approved by the officials sent by Sichuan.

Whether it is Ma Fengzhi or Zheng Zhanxu and their troops, every new officer promoted now must be a military cadet in Sichuan, and the status of Ma Fengzhi, these generals of the older generation, of course, will not be questioned, but if their children want to join the army to inherit their father's and brother's career, they also need to go to military school.

After an ordinary soldier has made enough merit to be promoted to an officer, he will receive a ticket to Sichuan, and after graduation he will return to the army to become an officer. And now the ranks of the Eastern Zhejiang Army and the Sichuan Army are also completely unified, because the highest rank in the Sichuan Army except for Deng Ming is Major General Zhao Tianba, so Ma Fengzhi and Zheng Zhanxu are embarrassed to set themselves too high, and they are both considered brigadier generals. Although the military rank does not sound high, but Ma Fengzhi is still quite satisfied, in private, the Eastern Zhejiang Army feels that this is the atmosphere of the new dynasty, if it is like the Yongli Emperor, there are seven or eight general soldiers with general seals under Li Laiheng, a Linguo Gong, how to look at it It looks like it is not far from the death of the country.

Because of Zhang Huangyan's reforms, now Deng Ming basically treats the Sichuan Army and the Eastern Zhejiang Army equally, and this time a large number of Eastern Zhejiang Army followed Deng Ming to the sea; It was precisely because tens of thousands of soldiers participated in the expedition to Luzon that Zhang Huangyan did not react immediately after hearing about the war in southern Zhejiang.

At the end of July, Zhao Tianba rushed to Chongming to meet Zhang Huangyan, the secretary of the Ministry of War. Zhang Huangyan was nominally the Ming Dynasty's defense minister, but he had not commanded the army for many years, and always delegated military power to senior officers in wartime.

"Now you are the highest-ranking general in the Southeast." As a person who knew the inside of the Sichuan army, Zhang Huangyan was very confident in Zhao Tianba's ability, so he handed over the command to him: "What are you going to do?" ”

"The last general has asked Liang Huafeng to organize a 'rebel army', which is the name given from the position of the Qing court. Wasn't Geng Jingzhong a traitor to the Qing court? Dong Weiguo will soon send troops to participate in the 'rebel army', and the food and salary of the Jiangxi army will come from Liangjiang, and the two of them have just become governors with our support, so they have to show their loyalty. ”

In addition to the support of Chengdu, there was also the support of Beijing, and the Beijing court felt that the riot was quite partly instigated by the emperor and the royalists.

For the emperor's instigation of the three feudatories to make a rebellion, Jieshu and Suo Etu are full of resentment, they feel that the three feudatories are not good people, if they make it bigger, they will not listen to the emperor and the court. In that case, even if the Deng Ming group suddenly broke up, the three feudatories might compete with the Qing Dynasty for the world; If such an accident had not occurred in Sichuan, it would not have benefited the imperial court in any way if the three feudatories had been separated from the imperial court. Therefore, Beijing also asked Liang Huafeng and Dong Weiguo to come to Zhejiang's aid and suppress Geng Jingzhong as much as possible.

"But the eastern Zhejiang army will also participate in the war," Zhao Tianba was not at ease to let the Manchu governor Fu himself go to fight Geng Jingzhong. Let these people contribute to the effort, you have to give them some benefits, but the right to distribute the spoils is still in the hands of your own people: "Geng Jingzhong is the first person to lead a large army in more than ten years, although we do not welcome or require him to do so, but we can't completely lose face -- the idea of the last general is that eastern Zhejiang organizes a 'reinforcement army', since Geng Jingzhong is fighting hard with the Qing army in Liangjiang and Zhejiang under the banner of the Ming army, then it is always appropriate for the Ming army in eastern Zhejiang to come to the aid of Fujian." ”

"Reinforcement of the Fujian army?" Zhang Huangyan pondered for a moment and nodded: "General Zhao decided that the battlefield of this battle will be in Fujian?" ”

"Sooner or later." Zhao Tianba replied confidently.

Ma Fengzhi and Zheng Zhanxu both said that they would unconditionally obey Zhao Tianba's orders, and both of them were like lost dogs at the beginning, but they were transferred after climbing the high branch of Zhang Huangyan. Over the years, Ma Fengzhi and Zheng Zhanxu have lived a good life, and their territory in Zhejiang has become bigger and bigger, and they have become loyal to the empire because of continuous victories.

There were many young military cadets in the staff assigned to Zhao Tianba who had graduated a few years ago, and he also recognized two acquaintances from them, Gu Jin and Chen Dake were both Zhao Tianba's world friends - their fathers were also old people in Xiying, and like Zhao Tianba's father, they worked for Li Dingguo for the rest of their lives. Since Li Siye, the son of the Jin dynasty, took charge of Jianchang, a large number of children of the Yunnan army went to Chengdu to go to school, and Li Siye and Zhao Tianba both thought that this was a good way to unite Chengdu and Kunming; Some of the Jin generals, who were suspicious of Chengdu, saw this as a good opportunity to infiltrate Sichuan.

For example, this Gu Jin is the nephew of Ma Bao, the general of King Jin, and Chen Dake is He Jiuyi's son-in-law. When they and other children of the Dian army left Kunming to go to Chengdu, they also shouldered the mission of the Jin Palace, that is, to help Kunming spy on intelligence, and if Chengdu was found to be plotting against Kunming, then they must try to warn the King of Jin. When they arrived in Chengdu, they were also prepared to be quarantined or monitored. However, Chengdu does not have any discriminatory policies, and the students in the military academy are not only from Sichuan, but also from Shandong and Zhejiang. When they graduated, officers came to ask them about their willingness to serve. Most of the children of the Yunnan army stayed in the emperor's ** team, and not long ago, Li Siye also helped Bai Wenxuan's son become the head of the standing regiment in Jianchang. Since three years ago, these Yunnan people, like Sichuanese, began to serve in the eastern Zhejiang army.

Although it is not like the past when the son directly inherits the official position of the father, as in the past, like the personnel in the imperial government, these generals with status backgrounds can always be taken care of. Ma Fengzhi also deliberately sent these two people to Zhao Tianba's staff, as Ma Fengzhi expected, after seeing the world friend, Zhao Tianba was really happy, and after the meal, the three people from Xiying also got together to chat.

According to Gu Jin's description, the Self-Defense Forces in northern Zhejiang may be stronger than Zhao Guozuo's provincial green battalion. Because Zhuang Tingyue is a graduate of the Sichuan Military Academy, he is regarded as a potential person by the academy, and the military training and weapons and equipment they receive are also modeled after the standards of their allies; Although Zhao Guozuo's Zhejiang is a model province of the Qing Dynasty in the eyes of the Academy, it is still a province of the Qing court in the final analysis, and not only can it not obtain the correct military training in Sichuan, but also cannot directly purchase arms from Sichuan.

Although Zhou Peigong set up a number of arms factories in Anqing, but that was only in name, in fact, those arms factories did not produce a single rifle themselves. Every time the weapons in Sichuan were replaced, or the old guns of the army and civilians were scrapped, those weapons would be collected and sold to Zhou Peigong's munitions factory after being reviewed and approved by the government, and then Zhou Peigong would paint the rifle with new paint and sell it to the governor of the southeast as a new gun produced by him; Later, Zhou Peigong found that painting was also very troublesome, and there were always people who embezzled paint money, which made the renovation cost high, so he subcontracted the painting work to a private factory in Sichuan. Now the munitions factory in Anqing is just hanging a signboard, which has a group of bureaucrats and account offices, and many of Zhou Peigong's relatives and fellow villagers can go there to get a salary, but there is not a single worker, and both painting and transportation are outsourced to the commercial houses in Sichuan.

Relying on the monopoly of the arms trade of the southeastern governor, Zhou Peigong's Anqing arms group has always had a huge profit. After the fiasco in Beijing in the sixth year of Kangxi, the empress dowager ordered the production of firearms, and the munitions factory presided over by Prince Kang could not produce qualified products because it was forcibly launched, so Prince Kang sent someone to contact Zhou Peigong, handed over seventy percent of the funds given to him by the imperial court, and asked the Anqing Arms Group to manufacture rifles, and then sent them to Beijing with the steel seal of "supervised by Prince Kang".

Zhou Peigong repeated his old tricks, bidding in Sichuan, buying old arms from Sichuan arms dealers at the lowest price, and then painting them, grinding off the original logos, and putting them on the steel seal, and a series of work was outsourced for bidding...... In general, 30 percent of the military spending given by Beijing went into the pockets of Prince Kang and the cabinet ministers, 20 percent went into the profits of the Anqing arms group, and the rest went into the pockets of Sichuan arms dealers.

In order to facilitate the receipt of goods, Prince Kang also specially set up the factory in Tianjin, and the goods can be directly entered into the warehouse after the sea comes. Lafayette was overjoyed to see these rifles that were completely "self-produced in the Qing Dynasty", and Prince Kang and his ministers also boasted on the sidelines, saying that this rifle had reached the leading point in the world, and many technological innovations were far more advanced than those in Sichuan, and the Empress Dowager was even more smiling.

This kind of weapons sold by Zhou Peigong's arms group, Gu Jin and Chen Dake are completely disdainful, and they will not be eliminated if they have no design deficiencies; And the guns are not just bought back, the same Xiucai in Sichuan all know that when you buy a gun, you have to buy an oil can, and you usually need to maintain the rifle. But Zhou Peigong had never bought any skin care products, and the arms dealers in Sichuan also tacitly agreed not to mention this matter -- if the rifles in the hands of the Qing army were not scrapped as quickly as possible, then how could Zhou Peigong and the Sichuan merchants continue to make money?

"Hangzhou's armaments are sluggish, because Zhao Guozuo and Song Kui both think that no one will come to fight them, and they didn't even buy a few rifles for Zhou Peigong." Gu Jin said disdainfully.

"If the army in Jiangnan can quickly enter Zhejiang to fight, then Geng Jingzhong should not be able to defeat Hangzhou." Chen Dake replied.

In recent years, Jiang Guozhu has been pondering about expanding his territory, unifying the two rivers, and gaining wealth for himself, so the equipment and training level of the Jiangnan army is much stronger than that of Zhejiang. Similar to the speculation on the Taiwan side, Chen Dake also believes that if there is no more external interference, the armies of Jiangnan and Zhejiang have a chance to compete with Geng Jingzhong. But now that Jiangnan has just ended from chaos, if Jiangxi will also participate in the war, it seems that it will be no problem to block Geng Jingzhong.