The situation of Zhu Dadian's suppression of bandits in Anhui at the end of the year was unexpectedly successful. After the autumn harvest, the Yingzhou regiment sent a huge force from two infantry battalions and one cavalry battalion to encircle and suppress the Fifth Battalion of the Gezuo in the Dabie Mountains.

Zhu Dadian mobilized more than 20,000 official troops in Fengyang and Yangzhou, with a total force of 50,000, and staged a good show of ambushing on all sides.

Zhu Dadian mobilized 20,000 people to search the mountains. The Fifth Battalion of Gezuo had already received the information and immediately rushed out of the Dabie Mountains to the west. Unfortunately, he bumped into the officers and soldiers of the Yingzhou regiment head-on.

Although the Fifth Battalion of the Gezuo knew the direction of Zhu Dadian's troops and horse mobilization, it was not known about the mobilization situation in Yingzhou. As soon as the Yingzhou regiment's cannons and rockets were exerted, the Fifth Battalion of the Gezuo was already frightened.

"Oh my God! It's Zhao Shaxing."

"Zhao Shaxing is here, Zhao Shaxing is here!" The thieves shouted and immediately defeated.

Zhao Shaxing's troops had a clear sign, that was the sharp firearm. At that time, the coalition forces led by Gao Yingxiang fought against Zhao Shaxing's troops, but in just a few incense sticks, tens of thousands of people were killed.

The Fifth Battalion of the Left was exactly the five branches scattered from the coalition forces. His fear of Zhao Yan was truly at the point of being terrified of the news, and he was defeated as soon as he contacted him.

The Yingzhou regiment bit the sternly, and the infantry chased the infantry, and the cavalry began to pursue the Fifth Battalion of Gezuo, which had more than 50,000 people. It was very troublesome to pursue. The Yingzhou regiment had few infantry camps, and the bandits themselves were good at guerrilla warfare, so it was very difficult to pursue.

However, Zhu Dadian's official army then joined the encirclement, and the encirclement gradually tightened. Finally, more than 30,000 bandits were surrounded by more than 30,000 bandits on the banks of the Xifeishui River.

As soon as they were killed, the thieves had knelt down and begged for surrender. And their leader was already out of luck and was not in the encirclement.

A few days later, the cavalry battalion brought back Ge Liyan He Yilong, Zuo Jin King He Jin, and changed the head of King Liu Xiyao, while Lao Hui returned to Ma Shouying, and Wang Lin Yangcheng took hundreds of cavalry to the west in troubled times.

Zhu Dadian immediately called Fengyang Censor to inspect the head and sent good news to the capital overnight.

After this battle, the thieves in Anhui were basically pacified, and only some remnants were left in various places, so it was very easy to send troops to eliminate them.

Before the New Year, Zhu Dadian and Lu Xiangsheng sent good news, and Zhu Youjian couldn't help but feel happy. However, the Yingzhou regiment was very unfamiliar to Zhu Youjian. He didn't know when such a soldier appeared, so he issued an edict to ask Zhu Dadian. Zhu Dadian reported that it was a rebel captured by Zhao Yan in Fengyang last year. After being placed in Yingzhou, he had become a village soldier.

Just a village soldier!

Zhu Youjian had no idea about military affairs. He thought that the Yingzhou regiment was just a village soldier and a second-rate official army. At the same time, he mistakenly thought that this army was led by Zhu Dadian, so he did not pay much attention. According to the military merits reported by Zhu Dadian, he would reward what he should be granted and what he should be granted.

At the same time, Zhu Dadian gave Anhui 20,000 more troops, and Zhu Youjian was very pleased to commend him. Zhu Dadian received the commendation from Zhu Youjian and didn't know what to say for a moment.

The Yingzhou regiment was not under his control at all, let alone he practiced it. It was completely wrong for Zhu Youjian to think so, so Zhu Dadian couldn't explain it. Since the emperor thought it was, that's right!

As a result, the Yingzhou regiment inexplicably became a unit under Zhu Dadian, and the court officials also did not know that it was Zhao Yan who was actually under the Yingzhou regiment.

According to common sense, Zhao Yan is in Denglai and Yingzhou Group is in Fengyang Prefecture. There seems to be no connection between them, and Zhao Yan cannot control the Yingzhou Group.

But in fact, this is not the case. Zhao Yan is not an ordinary military man. He does not rely on the court's military pay to support soldiers, and the Yingzhou regiment cannot support soldiers even with the court's military pay.

Even the second-line troops of the Denglai Army were unable to support the court, unless the Liao salary was cut out.

During the Chinese New Year, Lu Xiangsheng's letter was delivered to Zhao Yan. After Zhao Yan finished reading it, he weighed the pros and cons for a long time.

There is no problem in ordering people to help Lu Xiangsheng train troops, but the problem lies in the artillery. The artillery currently used is all grenades, which are not solid bullets.

Zhao Yan's army used dense formations. If it was shot, the casualties would be severe.

He didn't know how long the relationship with Zhu Youjian could last, nor did he know whether he would break up with Zhu Youjian in the future. However, with his development method, it would be inevitable that he would be cold-hearted with Zhu Youjian in the future, but whether to break up is another matter.

After weighing the trade-offs, Zhao Yan decided to transfer 300 cannons to Lu Xiangsheng 75mm howitzers, but not to cast artisans, and the shells will also be provided by Zhao Yan.

If you pinch the shells, you will generally be worry-free, and the cannon has a service life.

The price of cannons is not expensive. A 75mm grenade bronze cannon is only about 100 taels, weighing 260 kilograms, and the price of copper accounts for 25 taels (eight kilograms is one tael of silver). The rest are processing costs, and the burning of money is still shells.

The military weapons bureau's casting cannons have never stopped. Dengzhou will practice forty bastions, each bastion needs artillery. According to the defense system, each bastion has five to six heavy city defense cannons and ten to fifteen 75mm howitzers, mainly depending on how many sides of the bastion are and which direction the enemy can launch an attack.

Heavy city defense cannons are used to attack enemies 1,500 meters away, and are mainly built to destroy enemy artillery. Each distribution point of howitzer is united to form an airtight firepower net to prevent enemy personnel from approaching the bastion.

In addition, Longkou Port and Qingdao Port both need shore defense artillery, so the casting of artillery is a bit nervous. However, most of the shore defense artillery has been cast and has been transported to the turrets of each port.

The Military Weapons Bureau has started working in the third year of junior high school. This year there are a lot of equipment that needs to be produced, and the swords, guns and armor of the 100,000 second-line troops will be built one by one.

In addition, the weapons required for training in each village should also be built, long spear muskets, or sabers. Nowadays, young and strong training is divided into three parts: long spear, musket, and riding. Longbows are no longer used as training events.

Because of the large-scale manufacturing of spears, the trees suitable for spears in Dendlai have dropped sharply. Now the gun bars have to be purchased from the south. Although Dendlai still has suitable wood, they are all in remote places.

Nowadays, most of the swords produced by the Military Weapons Bureau are first forged and pressed with a water press, and then manually trimmed, which is much faster than pure manpower.

...On the second day of the lunar month, Dengzhou began to repair the road. 400,000 households were stationed in the village, each of which was responsible for the road from the village to the fort, and then worked together to build the road from the fort to the main road.

The road conditions in Dengzhou are so bad that they can only barely enter the roads in many rural areas.

Such a path cannot adapt to commercial development at all, and agricultural products cannot be transported out.

From the second day of the Chinese New Year, Dengzhou was filled with busy scenes of mountain bombing and road construction. The roads from the trench to the trench, and the main roads between the trench and the trench are all low-cost plain concrete pouring.

Last year, the concrete research team of the Institute of Science and Technology successfully developed concrete pavement, divided into plain concrete and reinforced concrete.

Reinforced concrete is more expensive, and there is no need, so you choose to use plain concrete.

There are not many things to pay attention to when building roads. Just pave the road. Generally, plasterers can do it. Such roads are definitely tofu projects. However, in this era, there were no cars crushing, and there were no trucks with a load capacity of dozens of tons. The carriages were only loaded at most seven or eight hundred kilograms. Even if they were repaired casually, such roads could last for a long time. Even if they were damaged, it was easy to repair them. Just make up for them.

In addition to Dengzhou's road construction, Laizhou will build a Jiaolai Highway, which connects Jiaozhou Bay Salt Field and Qingdao Port, but this road will be built with reinforced concrete.

After this highway is completed, the transportation volume will be relatively large. After all, there is so much salt. The inconvenient place for salt trading in Shandong is transportation. In order to eliminate this disadvantage, Zhao Yan decided to take the sea route.

First transport salt from Qingdao to Songjiang, and then you can travel through the Huaihe River, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River for trafficking. These three-day rivers are very close, which is one of the reasons why salt merchants in the two Huaihe Rivers can sell salt all over the world.

Zhao Yan ordered the concrete research team to send technical personnel to set up the first construction brigade. The first brigade is majoring in Jiaolai Highway this year and also accumulates construction experience for reinforced concrete roads.

In order to cope with the road construction at the beginning of the year, the gunpowder factory and the cement factory started construction on the third year of the Chinese New Year, and stepped up the production of gunpowder and cement to meet the needs of road construction.

...After the sixth day of the lunar calendar, all departments were busy and began to complete this year's new indicators and tasks.

At the end of the year, ten 500-ton clippers have been successfully launched at the Longkou Shipyard, and the Shanghai, Qingdao and Long slogans have been modified.

There are 34 guns on the side of the Shanghai side, and one heavy gun at the head and tail, with a total of 70 guns.

There are 30 guns on the side of the Qingdao side, and one heavy gun at the head and tail, with a total of 62 guns.

The dragon slogan has twenty-seven side-rotating cannons, one heavy cannon at the beginning and the tail, a total of 56.

The speed of these three warships reached 3 to 8 knots per hour, which was much faster than the Fu Ship. After the New Year, the crew of the First Fleet immediately began to adapt to the new warships.

The crew on each warship is between 300 and 400. Although Western warships are fast, their crew capacity is not high. Although they can be squeezed, they are very inconvenient.

However, in terms of naval battles, 300 to 400 sailors were distributed on one warship, which was enough.

After the new warship was put into use, the Wei Qing, Meng Tian, ​​Yue Fei and Qi Jiguang, which were originally used, were responsible for attacking in naval battles, and these three warships were responsible for pursuing. At the same time, the four warships transformed by the Fu Ship will also be used to send to the Marine Corps.

After the launch of ten 500-ton clippers, trade with Japan will enter an accelerated period. The ten flybys have a transportation capacity of 260 tons. A total of 2,600 tons of transportation capacity has been added, and 650,000 taels of brass can be transported back from Japan at one time.

However, Zhao Yan did not intend to use all his transportation capacity for Japan's trade, but formed the American fleet after the Chinese New Year.

The personnel of the American Fleet were drawn from the First Fleet and were composed of Qingdao, Meng Tian, ​​Yue Fei, and two 500-ton clippers with numbers F001 and F002.

On the 16th day of the first lunar month, the two flying scissors F001 and F002 in the American fleet carried a total of 700 crew members, and the cabin was equipped with more than 300 artillery pieces and a large number of shells and supplies, heading towards South America.

Their mission is to open a stronghold in the former Peru. After the stronghold is opened, the American fleet will go to Central and South America one after another.

The Institute of Science and Technology urgently needs rubber in the manufacturing of steam engines, so it is already very urgent to go to America to find rubber.

Zhao Yan remembers that the origin of rubber is Brazil and is also distributed in Peru. Brazil is on the east coast, and now it is not the era of Drake. The Drake Strait has been heavily defended by the Spaniards. It is obviously not easy for Zhao Yan's ship to go around the east coast.

Rubber trees can also be found in Peru on the West Bank, and there are also cinchona trees in Peru, which can be used to restrain malaria.

(To be continued)
Chapter completed!