Chapter 385 New Military Framework Completed

In the form of a loan, he provided a loan of 50 million blue coins to the Prime Minister's Office. The construction of Jiangnan Industrial Group has just ended. Master Li actually wanted to build a railway from Qinghai to Lhasa, Tibet Province with his own investment. Did he hear it wrong, or was the emperor angry with the four empress recently?

Not to mention Li Enfu, even Chen Ping, who is most familiar with Li Mo, was shocked. Qinghai to Lhasa were on the plateau all the way. The mountains were high and the gorge was deep, and the frozen soil was difficult. It was not a joke to build a railway on it. When everyone thought that Li Mo was painstaking **, Li Xiufeng quietly registered the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company in Shanghai, and After 10 million pounds earned by rubber speculation was exchanged for gold in Europe and shipped back to Xinhua at the Central Bank for 70 million blue coins, another 30 million yuan was added, raising 100 million yuan to announce the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.

According to the news, Long Guozhang almost hit his head to death. A few months ago, Master Li said that he had no money in Shanghai and did not want to continue to build submarines. Unexpectedly, half a year had not arrived, and he actually took out 100 million yuan to repair the railway. Moreover, he also heard that this 100 million yuan was only a preliminary budget, and it is likely that the final investment would exceed 200 million yuan!

200 million! That's a whole of 15 Chinese ships. If you have so many Chinese ships at the same time, not to mention the British Far East Fleet, you will directly occupy the Suez Canal!

Nowadays, the rivets in Europe are becoming more and more intense. After Germany built four scrackers, Britain waited for the last few wounded soldiers to board the ship, and the new ambassador to China, Sa Daoyi finally got the hydraulic withdrawal technology. Even the drawings of the Chinese ship were not needed, and immediately rushed back to the United Kingdom with technical materials.

But no one expected that when he had just arrived in London with thick drawings and technical materials, the British naval technicians finally kicked out a beautiful kick and solved the technical difficulties of withdrawal technology, which was equivalent to saying that Britain spent one million pounds to buy it for only three months.

More than 10,000 pounds a day!

This news completely angered the Prime Minister of Salisbury. He finally couldn't stand Prince Badenberg's delay in technological innovation. In the end, the first minister of the navy finally had to announce his resignation under the pressure of Parliament and the Prime Minister, giving the throne to John Fisher, who was younger and more attention to technology. At that time, Felix, the commander of the Far East Fleet, who made two major mistakes, was also removed from office.

John Fisher is worthy of being the most outstanding fighter of the Imperial British Navy. When the new battleship has lagged behind Germany, he was not in a hurry to compete with Germany after taking office, because he knew that if Britain concentrated all its strength, it would soon surpass Germany, and he did not have the test results of such new warships. Unlike Germany, which not only bought the whole warship for testing for several months, but also bought all the data tested by Xinhua at that time, so he chose to build an experiment first.

On the first day after taking office, he announced the construction of a new battleship, named Fearless, which means that Britain is fearless of any challenge.

The dreadnought finally appeared, starting four years earlier than history, which made many technologies imperfect, especially in terms of power, which was more than the picture in Fisher's mind.

The British ship-building ability is indeed amazing. In just three months, the dreadnought ship shows its rout, and the speed is even faster than the scratching class, which started half a year earlier!

The failure of the Far East, Germany took the lead in building new battleships, which completely angered the powerful empire. The workers were almost busy all night, and the jingling knocks and roars kept echoing over the Armstrong Shipyard.

Although other countries are also in the intention to build new battleships at this time, on the one hand, their docks have not been expanded to build 20,000 tons of warships. On the other hand, they do not know whether this kind of warship is really as powerful as expected, because the British actually only built one, so they have taken a wait-and-see for the time being. In fact, France has also After secretly breaking through the naval gun retreat technology a month ago, the news that the Far East Fleet was trapped in Hong Kong strengthened their determination to build submarines, and even temporarily slowed down the speed of building new battleships, still working hard to build the Dandong class.

When Britain and Germany started construction, Xinhua, as the founding country, would certainly not lag much behind. Even the Coward Osmen Empire ordered one, but this worried Nicholas II, and finally he had to turn to Britain for help.

In the case that it could not go to the Far East to avenge, the British political axe immediately agreed to Nicholas II's request for assistance, but proposed that it must wait for the construction of the Dreadnaught. Judging from the ten-month cycle of the construction of the Dreadnought, this is equivalent to that Russia could not have such a new battleship at least 1903 years ago!

When the news came back, Long Guozhang was finally relieved, because by 1903 at the latest, his first two battleships and four heavy patrols could be delivered. If it was dragged to 2004, the last two were estimated to be almost the same, so he temporarily gave up the idea of pestering the Prime Minister's Office and Li Mo to continue building ships. Law.

However, he was not idle. A total of four million pounds of gold from Germany, Britain and the Ottoman countries obtained from the sale of Chinese ship technology and orders were printed by the Prime Minister's Office to support the country's construction. However, according to the principle that the battle products can be earmarked, the navy can deal with the loot by itself, so he took the British Far East Fleet. A large number of equipment that could not be taken away when they left were available for their own use, and the rest were bought, and the naval base in Hong Kong was also split and sold to rich Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong and Nanyang. It is said that the mansions where the British lived in were very attractive, and more than a dozen British [***] ships sank in Victoria Bay. It was salvaged and sold to Taiwan Steel Factory as scrap iron.

His move really made Li Mo and Li Enfu laugh and cry, but fortunately, after confirming that Guangzhou and Hainan will be the second-line naval bases, Hong Kong Island, which is narrow and lacks resources and heavy industry support, does not need to retain so many military facilities, so he is allowed to fool around.

But I didn't expect that this beard, who likes to mess around, was quite economical. He abruptly collected 10 million blue coins and immediately handed it over to the Equipment Department to build six additional defense-class destroyers, two supply ships and two hydrological investigation ships, which not only improved the navy's supply and support capabilities, but also made the defense. The total number of units will reach as many as 30 after completion!

Dragon Guozhang can't do anything about raising money to build a destroyer and a support ship instead of his favorite submarine. Although the performance of the submarine is eye-catching twice in a row, if this kind of underwater big guy lacks water support, he has no reading combat ability at all. The main reason is that he has two defects: short legs and no eyes, so he can only give priority. To build much-needed destroyers and auxiliary ships.

In addition to raising funds for the navy, he also commanded the whole army as the commander-in-chief of the navy for the first time, criticizing the fleet's lack of combat capability in harsh weather. Under the reprimand of this beloved commander, not to mention the officers, even ordinary sailors felt I'm sorry for him, so I began to use these rare years to strengthen training and improve all kinds of tactics, especially combat ability in bad weather.

The vigorous action of the navy also made the army move, which is different from the navy's no big harvest this time. The army can be said to be a great harvest, but this kind of harvest made Zhao Long, deputy chief of staff and commander of the army, very sad.

The army's gains are very rich, but most of them are useless guns and ammunition. Before, Britain, France and other countries desperately stuffed more than 100,000 rifles to the southeast. Nearly a hundred cannons and a large amount of ammunition are fundamentally inconsistent with the system of the Xinhua Army. When scrap iron is definitely a waste, Li Mo gave him a move to contact Marseille.

Although Cuba and the United States have tied, it does not mean that they can be on an equal footing. The great powers are unwilling to talk to Xinhua, not to mention Cuba, so Cuba did not receive any assistance at all after the war, and it has been consumed too much before, and the weapons and equipment have been damaged a lot. It will be very dangerous if it is not replenished.

This heavenly weapon and ammunition really ruined Marseille, but the problem is that this time Xinhua only needs gold and hard currency, and does not want the land of the sugar cane garden. Finally, after some negotiations, after 20 torpedo boats and the old-fashioned white-head torpedo production technology, Xinhua gave priority to the use of Cuban employees, and And at the cost of priority procurement rights, Cuba invested 500,000 pounds to obtain the right to mine a large nickel mine left by a former Spanish colonist in Cuba. According to Spanish survey data, the recoverable amount there is estimated to be 500,000 tons.

500,000 yuan for 500,000 tons of nickel is really a more cost-effective deal in Marseille, because nickel is not a scarce resource and does not have much effect, but he does not know that the Ministry of Science and Technology of Xinhua has been studying stainless steel, which has reached the point of approaching the door, and the previous data under the lazy style of Spanish men is not Accurately, according to the secret mapping research of several mineral experts brought by Lin Jiye before, it is estimated that the output of this nickel mine is at least about 3 million tons.

In fact, Li Mo did not pay much attention to Cuba's poor nickel resources, because compared with Thomas Mines in Canada and several nickel mines controlled in Australia, Cuba's reserves are really small, not to mention more Siberia, and Cuba's transportation problem is troublesome, so it must be dug out first. The rough refining method is to try to send finished products instead of ores to reduce transportation costs, but fortunately, the Panama Canal can be opened in a few years, and the biggest problem is that Cuba really has nothing good.

However, the deal has aroused strong dissatisfaction from the United States, especially the 20 torpedo boats, and even proposed to block Cuba's offshore and expel Xinhua weapons ships.

In fact, Li Mo is very clear that the United States is not afraid that Cuba will get 20 torpedo boats, and that the war for 20 torpedo boats and Xinhua is not worth the loss, but wants to take this opportunity to beat Xinhua and don't take the United States seriously.

After consultation between the two countries, Tang Shaoyi finally persuaded the United States to reach an agreement on the condition of increasing the procurement of rail steel from the United States.

Railway steel is originally a much-needed material, so this deal is not a loss. Moreover, the steel industry in the United States is much ahead of Xinhua, and the price is also much cheaper. It only makes the emerging steel industry in China a little a little aggrieved, but the domestic steel gap is really too big, so Mouth is also necessary. From the perspective of geographical location, purchasing from the United States is also the best choice.

After solving the weapon problem, the army focused on more than 100,000 surrendered soldiers. Many of them were southeast soldiers recruited later, most of whom were trained by foreigners. And after the rapid pacification in the north, Li Hongzhang and others also saw that there was no new army, which was not enough to fight against Li Mo, so they only recruited The children are poor, and the training is also very strict. These are all good seedlings.

However, Zhao Long's plan to expand the army again suffered a major blow, because after considering that some of the soldiers were indeed of good qualities, the General Staff negotiated with the Prime Minister's Office, and finally selected 40,000 of them from these people to send them to the Marine Corps and organized the previous five Marine Corps into four. The Marine Division established the Marine Corps Reading Command for the first time. Zhang Shun became the first commander, and most of the rest were divided by the Royal National Guard and the Police Department.

The predecessor of the Royal National Guard was the internal affairs force controlled by Yan Fu. This division has a total of ten divisions, each of which has two regiments of 10,000 light troops. It is mainly used to suppress bandits in China, protect the coast, ensure the stability of various places and other affairs, and can assist the main force in stabilizing the war zone and other combat tasks when necessary.

Like the Marines, the Royal National Guard has set up its own reading headquarters for the first time, and has also incorporated the garrison battalions of the 20 naval second-line bases originally stationed in the huge sea area, under the direct command of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. The supreme commander-in-chief is still the royal family.

Although the army got nothing and gave it to the navy as a wedding dress, the General Staff and the Prime Minister's Office also promised that after the financial difficulties, they would meet the minimum requirements of 15 infantry divisions and five cavalry divisions.

Li Mo suddenly reorganized the army continuously and set up the Marine Corps and National Guard Command, which not only improved the organization of the Xinhua Army, but also began to prepare for the future. In addition, the establishment of the Royal National Guard also made the focus of the navy, army and air force more clear, that is, to defend the country. Protect the sea.

After the completion of the formation, Li Mo took action again and took advantage of the opportunity of the four land divisions to carry out reorganization, running-in and training to place them in the garrison including Daxia, Honolulu, Guam, Borneo, Luzon, and Hokkaido, as well as the trusteeship of Shikoku Island, strengthening the control of the outer sea territory.

On June 1, 1901, while Li Mo and the General Staff were actively reorganizing the army, good news finally came from the northwest. After the surrender was rejected, the rebels led by Ma Anliang and Dong Fuxiang began to despair and tried to flee to Russia, but too many non-military personnel made it impossible for the troops to move quickly and were finally hidden. The two regiments of the hidden Fourth Division were blocked on the border.

After receiving the news, the main force of the Northwest Army set off overnight, and finally after a day-and-night battle, it announced the recovery of Xinjiang Province...

(to be continued)