Chapter 90 Beiyang Six Towns

The move to abolish the civil service is set aside for the time being. Compared with the imperial examinations, the top officials of the Qing Dynasty faced a more urgent problem: defending the imperial capital without soldiers.When the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded, Manchuria's old foundation was crippled by the Allied Forces, and Ronglu's Wuwei Army, which was directly descended from the army, was basically wiped out. Therefore, training the new army has become a top priority. But who is in charge of training the new army?This is a problem. Yuan Shikai, who has experience in similar projects, of course wants to seize this opportunity, but there will be no pie in the sky, and he has to create opportunities by himself!

The old way: cater to the leaders, treat guests and give gifts, and form cliques.Through this series of actions, Yuan Shikai believed that someone would say a few good words for him in front of the big boss Cixi or "unintentionally" leak some key information to him. Having said that, it is necessary to emphasize Yuan Daguan's third skill—the ability to quickly identify and show favor to key people. Yuan Daguan was well aware of "nine thousand years old" Li Lianying's prominent position in the palace and his ability to act in front of Cixi.In order to curry favor with "Eunuch Li", he has gone to great lengths to give precious gifts for many years, but he has never asked for it.When Li Lianying sent someone to ask, Yuan Daguan only replied: I admire my father-in-law as a man, and I don't ask for anything.

Li Lianying didn't meet Yuan Shikai in person until she felt that she was being rewarded for nothing and felt like sitting on pins and needles. The two expressed their admiration to each other, and finally became brothers. Moreover, Yuan Shikai was also courteous to Li Lianying's eunuchs.You must know that the society at that time still treated super-disabled people like eunuchs unfairly. In the early winter of 1903, Cixi finally agreed to Yuan Shikai's proposal to set up a military training office with the "nine thousand years old" as an internal response. Of course, this military training office is set up for the whole country, which means that the imperial court will arrange suitable candidates in various regions of the country, hold large-scale military training, and plan to train new troops in 36 towns.What kind of concept is a town?The full staff is about 12,000 people, which is probably the current division.

After bargaining, Cixi agreed with Yuan Shikai to train the new army of six towns in Zhili.Cixi also put forward a condition: among the six towns, one town must be controlled by bannermen, that is, Yuan Shikai had to train an army controlled by Manchurians for the imperial court. Well, that's it. Yuan Shikai threw off his arms and worked hard. Now that he has money, power, and experience, and there are three good helpers, Wang Shizhen, Duan Qirui, and Feng Guozhang, there is no difficulty in training soldiers. Since the "Xin Chou Treaty" stipulates that troops are not allowed to be stationed near Tianjin, naturally it is impossible to train troops at Tianjin Station, so Yuan Shikai moved to Baoding.

After these years of war, Yuan Shikai keenly realized that the country not only lacks high-quality soldiers, but also lacks high-level elite generals.Now most of the generals' combat methods are extremely conservative and backward, and they are completely fighting cold wars with modern weapons.Therefore, Yuan Shikai opened a school in Baoding, the Beiyang Army Crash School of Military Equipment, to train new officers. This school is very good, just change the name and you will know: Baoding Military Academy!To put it another way, the only one who can PK with Baoding Military Academy is the later Whampoa Military Academy.

Look at the students here: Wu Peifu, Sun Chuanfang, Chiang Kai-shek, Li Jishen, Ye Ting, Zhang Zhizhong, Fu Zuoyi, Jiang Guangnai, Chen Cheng, Bai Chongxi, Liu Wenhui, Chen Mingshu, Deng Yanda...all graduated here. And the second principal Jiang Baili is also very capable.This Jin Yong fellow from Haining, Zhejiang has two great achievements: one is that he later came up with a good idea to attack Japan - protracted war; the other is to choose a good son-in-law and marry his third daughter Jiang Ying to a man named Qian Xuesen young people.As for how powerful Qian Xuesen is, most Chinese people now know it, so I won't go into details.

Two years later, the general rehearsal of the Six Towns was completed. Because Yuan Shikai was also the Minister of Beiyang at this time, the six elite soldiers he trained were called "Six Beiyang Towns". In the six towns of Beiyang, except for the first town which Yuan Shikai could not completely control because it was a banner soldier, the other five towns were all direct-line troops brought out by him. Yuan Shikai single-handedly selected, for example, Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen, and Feng Guozhang were all ruled by the same town. In short, all of them were from Tianjin Xiaozhan.

Due to Yuan Shikai's superb level of training and the particularity of Zhili's location, the six towns of Beiyang have always been regarded by the imperial court as the central army defending the capital. The reason why the new army of the six towns of Beiyang ruled the world. In addition to Yuan Shikai, the new army in Zhangzhidong, Hubei also trained well. He trained into a town (division) and a union (strengthened brigade), with a total of about 16,000 people. As for other parts of the country that claim to have developed sixteen towns and sixteen mixed associations of the New Army (one said fourteen towns and eighteen mixed associations), the truth will be discussed later.Let’s get to the bottom of it a bit: the result is quite ironic, and it should be the first irony in modern Chinese history.