The headquarters of the 3rd Division of the Japanese Army.

"Akiyama-kun, no matter what, you must defeat the enemy in front of you in the shortest possible time, and then enter the hinterland of Mukden Province! What is at stake is the reputation of our Imperial Japanese Army. The heavy voice of the commander of the North Korean Army, Lieutenant General Toshiyin Matsukawa, came from the phone. Japan's battle to capture Germany's control of Qingdao a few years ago demonstrated to the British and French powers the strong combat effectiveness of the Japanese Imperial Army, which also made Japan's combat effectiveness recognized by Britain, France and other countries. If Japan can't even take the small local troops of the Republic of China, it will be a heavy blow to Japan's reputation that has been managed with great difficulty, and this kind of loss is not something that he Lieutenant General Akiyama Yoshiko can bear, and even General Terauchi Masayi does not dare to bear this responsibility.

"Your Excellency, Commander, rest assured! The entire Third Division absolutely defended the honor of the Imperial Army with their lives. ”

"Roar! Akiyama-kun, the honor of the empire is fighting here. ”

Akiyama Yoshiko put down the phone and his expression became hideous, he was a cutting-edge general who rose to prominence in Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, and he knew what the empire had paid to win the Russo-Japanese War. More than 100,000 troops died in the icy lands of the Northeast. It was even more that the materials accumulated by the empire for decades were exhausted, and the economy of the entire empire was on the verge of collapse before it could defeat the Russians. The honor forged by hundreds of thousands of heroic martyrs must not be destroyed in the hands of Lieutenant General Akiyama Yoshiko, so even if his third division is all exhausted, the task must be completed.

"Order all the troops on the front line, concentrate on attacking the enemy's main position, and the honor of the empire is here, lords!"

Second Brigade Command!

"Commander, the attack on both flanks of the enemy has stopped, and the enemy is assembling towards the main central position." The scout sent the latest enemy situation to Lin Hu, and Lin Hu immediately put on the enemy's offensive posture on the sand table.

The sand table was invented by Feng Yong, of course, outsiders know that he invented it, but Feng Yong himself knows that it was plagiarized from later generations. After all, in later military TV series and movies, there are often sand tables to deduce this scene. Feng Yong is a typical person who has never eaten pork and has never seen a pig run! As long as the things in my memory are conducive to the development of the Northeast, I will take them out without any scruples.

At present, sand table deduction is still a new field in the world's military development, and it is also something that is not very valued by people, and its popularization seems to have been after the end of World War I. After all, both tactics and ideas will develop rapidly in war.

"Rally to the center? Does the enemy want to concentrate superior forces and forcibly break through our positions? Lin Hu couldn't make up his mind, after all, although this kind of hard-fought battle was the most direct, it was a move that injured the enemy by one thousand and damaged eight hundred. Generally, this move is also used by the side with the superior military power. Even if the Japanese artillery is stronger than the Northeast Security Army, they have not opened a relationship in terms of quality, and they want to attack the position of 30,000 people with less than 20,000 people, which is not arrogance, but madness!

The white-knuckle battle just now ended with the Japanese losing and withdrawing from the battle. In this large-scale white-knuckle battle, the total number of people on both sides reached 20,000, including more than 14,000 members of the Northeast Security Army and more than 6,000 Japanese troops. As a result, the Japanese lost one and a half wings, and the remaining troops withdrew in disarray, and if it were not for the enemy's artillery fire and indiscriminate bombardment, I am afraid that the remaining enemy would not have been able to get rid of the entanglement of the second brigade.

Even if the ratio of the number of the two sides was four to one, the real battle loss ratio was that the Chinese side lost nearly two regiments of more than 5,000 people, and the enemy lost more than 3,000 people. The battle loss ratio is close to two to one.

"Report to the brigade commander, the casualties of the troops are out! In the first battle, the 2nd Brigade participated in five regiments, with a total of 3,251 killed, 1,846 seriously wounded, and more than 3,000 lightly wounded. Lightly wounded basically do not affect combat effectiveness! ”

"What about the enemy?" This is a question that Lin Hu is more concerned about.

"There are no less than 3,000 Japanese corpses on the position, and according to the order of the young marshal, there are no prisoners left against the Japanese army, so there are no wounded Japanese soldiers on the position, only Japanese corpses."

"Excellent! Although the battle loss ratio is close to two to one, compared with the third division of the Japanese army, our second brigade can already make us proud to have such combat power compared to the time period when it was established. Lin Hu was quite satisfied with this result. After all, looking at the current situation, the 2nd Brigade has no problem resisting the enemy in front of it.

"The commander, the young marshal and the chief of staff are already on their way! And only a cavalry regiment of the four brigades was accompanied. Didn't the young marshal think that the enemy would massively increase his troops? Yan Lei asked puzzled.

"The young marshal doesn't move the Fourth Brigade and the Sixth Brigade, maybe there are other considerations! The young marshal has to consider the overall situation, and his vision is not limited to the southeast of Jidong, which we can understand. Since he and the chief of staff did not lead a large army to come, it is a trust in our Southeast Military Region. We should fight this battle even more, so that we can live up to the trust of the young marshal. ”

"I know that! I just feel that the Fourth Brigade and the Sixth Brigade may be preparing for some big action! The young marshal's character is very adventurous, and he has a very accurate vision, and he is a lucky general, and no matter what he does, he is always lucky. Yan Lei said with a smile. The first batch of people who followed Feng Yong, if it wasn't for Feng Yong's discerning eyes to discover them, they would now serve as a small soldier in the 28th Division at most, and if they were lucky, they could be a squad officer. To have the power you have now is a fool's dream. Therefore, the entire public security corps, the first-generation officers, can be said to be dead set on Feng Yong, and there is no impure mind at all.

"I have ordered the Ninth Brigade to go south to support us, and the Second Brigade now has 25,000 people plus 15,000 people from the Ninth Brigade, so we have a greater certainty!" Now the two sides are evenly matched, but no one can guarantee that the Japanese will not massively increase their troops on the Korean border, after all, the internal transportation situation in Korea is much better than that of Mukden Province, and the speed of Japanese mobilization is much faster than that of the Northeast Security Army. Lin Hu: This is a rainy day.

"Throw all the reserves into the main positions. Let's fight the Japanese head-to-head on the main front. Lin Hu's eyes flashed with excitement. He also knows that he has to preserve his strength, but in the collision of the two nations, whoever retreats will be at a disadvantage in momentum, Lin Hu's second brigade may not lose, of course he will not back down, he knows that if he retreats. The vigor that the Northeast Security Army has managed to gather will plummet for thousands of miles, and the momentum of the Japanese army will rise, and the entire situation in the Northeast will be passive at that time.

"Political commissar, let the Political Department do a good job of ideological work for the troops, and the Northeast Security Army will see this battle tomorrow!"

There is a sudden eerie stillness on the battlefield, and both sides are gathering strength in preparation for a final collision. Both sides have reasons why they cannot afford to fail.

In Beijing, the state government meeting that was in full swing was broken by a sudden event! Yuan Shikai, the founder of the Beiyang warlord and the first president of the Republic of China, who had ascended to the throne of the emperor, took his last breath in a Beijing hospital on June 12, 1916 due to the deterioration of uremia. A generation of political tycoons, a military strongman, has completed his magnificent life.

Yuan Shikai's death caught all parties off guard. The first to react was Li Yuanhong, the acting president. After all, after Yuan Shikai abdicated, he was still called the president, but he had no real power in his hands. According to the practice of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai's term of office has not ended, and it is not suitable to convene a congress to re-elect the president. Although Yuan Shikai has a bad reputation in China, he single-handedly created the Beiyang government, and he also controls a lot of power in the entire government. The top level of the Beiyang government did not dare to be overly persecuted.

Yuan Shikai's death made Li Yuanhong see his real hope of removing the pronoun and becoming the official president of the Republic of China, after all, according to the rules of the Republic of China government, the president died during his term of office, and the vice president took over the presidency.

Li Yuanhong, the mouthpiece of the government, published Yuan Shikai's life in the newspaper, made an objective evaluation of his merits and demerits, and then gave him a state funeral! At the same time, he announced that Acting President Li Yuanhong officially assumed the presidency of the Republic of China, acting as a leader internally and exercising sovereignty externally.

For Yuan Shikai's death, all parties reacted extremely fiercely! The local armed forces that had first united because of the anti-Yuan immediately collapsed, and the appeal of the Kuomintang suddenly dropped a lot. In addition, the military bosses led by Duan Qirui also suffered a great blow, after all, Yuan Shikai died, and Li Yuanhong also sat firmly on the throne of the president, which also indicated that Duan Qirui himself had no chance to ascend to the throne of the president.

After all, the Japanese government did not have much contact with Li Yuanhong, Yuan Shikai fell, Li Yuanhong came to power, and it is still uncertain what Japan's attitude is, not to mention that Japan is now at war with the Northeast Security Army. How will the newly formed government of the Republic of China deal with this? After the Third Division started the war in the northeast, the Japanese government of Okuma Shigenobu received information as soon as possible, and although Okuma Shigenobu was extremely angry about the fact that Yamaguchi Aritomo and other military veterans had bypassed the government and directly submitted to His Majesty the Emperor, he was unable to resist Yamaguchi Aritomo, a military veteran. However, after calming down, the Okuma government also acquiesced in the actions of the military department.

If the government of the Republic of China did not send troops, it would of course be a good thing to take the three eastern provinces against the Japanese Empire, and if the Republic of China rebounded on a large scale, then the government could also shirk the military's own actions, which had nothing to do with the government, although this would make outsiders look down on the authority of the government, but it was much better than going to die on one road.

On the same day, more than a dozen well-known newspapers in the country, including Shanghai Daily, received a piece of news: "The government of the Republic of China is preparing to declare war on Japan and send troops to support the Northeast Security Army." ”

As soon as this news came out, newspapers across the country reprinted it one after another, and for a while, speculation caused by this news sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. China's public opinion circles have gradually formed a unified consciousness, that is, the government of the Republic of China has resolutely upheld national sovereignty, and the first of the three fires that the new president has taken office has been on the heads of the Japanese who have attacked China's ideas.

Of course, this kind of news cannot be concealed from the well-informed parties, and the most difficult thing to do is the Kuomintang headed by Sun Wen, who does not know that his Kuomintang has received a large amount of financial support from the Japanese, and it can be regarded as a pro-Japanese party in China; when Japan really sent troops to Northeast China, the Kuomintang's position suddenly became embarrassing, after all, Japan has already stood on the opposite side of the Chinese nation. Whoever helps Japan is a traitor and a sinner of the nation.

Other political parties, which were already at odds with the Kuomintang, took the opportunity to hype up Japan's aggression against China, from the First Sino-Japanese War, to the Russo-Japanese War in Northeast China, to the Japanese battle in Shandong, which ended a year ago, and finally to send troops to Northeast China. This pile of things piled up, and the Chinese people realized the wolf ambition of the Japanese. For a time, the anti-Japanese tide was surging again.

"Bastard! What kind of wind is this? Could it be that Duan Qirui is unwilling to fail? "President Li Yuanhong, who was supposed to be in high spirits, looked worse than eating a dead fly. This is all caused by the newspaper in front of me.

"War with the Japanese? Sending troops to support the Northeast Security Army? I'm sick in the head! Li Yuanhong said in a low voice. Military strongman Yuan Shikai didn't dare to start a war with Japan, how many heads did he Li Yuanhong have?

However, after experiencing the domestic anti-Yuan movement, Li Yuanhong did not dare to underestimate the role of domestic public opinion. God knows if he made a gesture of turning a blind eye, whether those who were anti-Yuan would stand up against him, President Li. You must know that he has just sat down in this position, and it is not hot under his ass, of course he doesn't want to give up.

"Who did you find out?" Although Li Yuanhong felt in his heart that this was Duan Qirui's ghost, after all, there was not enough evidence, and Duan Qirui, who was in power, was not enough to deal with now.

"President, our people haven't found the slightest information. Moreover, the fact that major domestic newspapers published it at the same time shows that this force is definitely not weak. ”

"Of course I know this, if it is Duan Qirui's forces, it will be easy to do, and the president of this university is not a vegetarian, so he can always let him lift a stone and shoot himself in the foot. But if it weren't for Duan Qirui, what force in China would dare to get involved in this matter? Li Yuanhong has never thought of any force in China that has this ability.

"President, our government must respond, it's crazy out there right now! If you don't show up, there is a good chance of triggering demonstrations, which is the biggest attack on the authority of the government! ”

Li Yuanhong nodded and said, "Whether this matter was done by Duan Qirui or not, it can only be counted on his head." You go and pass on my order and submit your credentials to the Japanese embassy, with harsher wording, demanding that the Japanese troops withdraw from the land in the northeast, otherwise the government of the Republic of China will not hesitate to fight! ”

"Yes!"

"Inform General Duan of the resolution of President Benda, and he, the Chief of the Army, has the right to know about such a big matter." A conspiracy smile appeared on Li Yuanhong's face.

Once the war starts, it will be his Duan Qirui's business. Whether it is fought well or not, little Japan can still destroy the huge government of the Republic of China! If he fights well, he is the wise and powerful President of Li University, and if he does not fight well, it is the people's ** team commanded by Duan Qirui who can't do it, and President Li Da just took the opportunity to form a military force loyal to himself. Of course, President Li will not let go of this kind of best of both worlds.

(To be continued)