readx; It has to be said that the high-level thinking of the Beiyang Army and the Nationalist Army is very similar, that is, to avoid the southern Jiangsu region where the two sides are heavily stationed, and choose to go west, the Anhui area where the forces of both sides are not too concentrated, and there are no large number of fortifications and fortresses, as a breakthrough area for the south or north. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

And this kind of strategic thinking can even be traced back to the time when the two sides just ended the first war in southern Jiangsu, after all, they gave each other a great shock in the first war in southern Jiangsu, needless to say, the Beiyang Army not only completely withdrew from the south of the Yangtze River, lost Nanjing, but also lost troops in Nanjing, an eighth division was completely defeated, only escaped Zhang Xun and a few other senior generals and a few remnants. The Fifth Division and the Third Division were also greatly damaged, including the follow-up reinforcement of Wang Ruxian's Seventh Division, which suffered a lot of losses.

And the national army is not comfortable, in the face of the first strong army in the country, the Beiyang Army, although the national army finally held Zhenjiang, and finally captured Nanjing to lay the situation in southern Jiangsu, but its own losses are not small, the first division was disabled at the beginning, the guard division that crossed the river to attack Jiangbei lost more than half, and the follow-up siege of Nanjing took the way of frontal breakthrough and hard attack, the second division, the fourth division, and the seventh division participated in the war suffered varying degrees of losses, after a war, the Beiyang Army lost more than 20,000 people, But the losses of the Nationalist Army were no less than those of the Beiyang Army, if not greater.

It can be said that judging from the losses of troops on both sides, this is a war in which both sides are defeated, and killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 can be described as the best portrayal.

After this battle, the perception of the enemy on both sides did not decrease, but on the contrary, they attached more importance to each other, and both regarded the other side as an opponent with little difference in strength from their own.

In this case, neither the Nationalist Army nor the Beiyang Army had much confidence in defeating the enemy with the same strength, let alone attacking the enemy's heavy garrison, and there were also fixed fortifications in the area, but the two sides carried out military confrontation after the war in southern Jiangsu, not only the Nationalist Army built a large number of fortifications, but also Beiyang was not idle, and also built a large number of fortifications in Jiangbei.

Therefore, in the frontal breakthrough of the river crossing operation in southern Jiangsu, they were all abandoned by the high-ranking generals of both sides, and even in the battle plan proposed by the General Staff of the National Army for the first time, only Yangzhou was the main direction of attack, and at the same time, the practice of crossing the river from the Wuhu area of southern Anhui was also added.

Since it is impossible to break through the front, then it will take a roundabout attack, and if it goes back there, it will naturally be Anhui.

As soon as Chen Jingyun found an opportunity, he took advantage of the assassination incident to pour the rising water on the revolutionaries, and then launched the Anhui and Jiangxi campaigns without hesitation, Yuan Shikai was not far behind, and followed Chen Jingyun to send troops to the northern and central regions of Anhui.

Jiangxi and Anhui of the revolutionaries were divided between the Nationalist Army and the Beiyang Army in less than a month, and not only that, but even Sun Wen, Song Jiaoren, Huang Xing, and others were wanted for treason.

After the Nationalist Army occupied Jiangxi and Anhui, many high-level generals couldn't wait to set their sights on Beiyang, preparing for a life-and-death decisive battle with Beiyang. Later, in the battle plan for crossing the Yangtze River jointly proposed by Yuan Fang, Chen Yi and others of the General Staff and Shen Gang, although the final strategic goal was still placed in the Jiangbei region, a series of battles in the early and middle stages were carried out around Hefei, Chuzhou, and other places in Anhui, and for this reason, the Nationalist Army was ready to send up to six divisions and one brigade of the main force to cross the river into Anhui to fight, and at the same time prepared a large number of reserves, while the troops in the early and middle stages of southern Jiangsu were only used as defensive and containment forces.

Coincidentally, Yuan Shikai, Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui, the three Beiyang bigwigs, also have similar ideas, although the ultimate strategic goal is Nanjing, Zhenjiang and other Jiangnan regions. However, the direction of breakthrough in the early and middle stages was to choose the southern Anhui region, preparing to invest heavy troops in the southern Anhui region, and after taking Anhui and Wuhu, turn to the east, and then take Nanjing and Zhenjiang, and even directly continue to go south to take Hangzhou, completely cutting off the retreat of a large number of national troops in southern Jiangsu. To this end, the Beiyang Army was not only prepared to invest in the expanded Cao Kun Third Division and the three divisions of the Anhui Army, but also prepared to invest in Tang Tianxi's 10th Division stationed in Chuzhou and the 9th Division stationed in Henan and northern Anhui. Finally, he was also preparing to send Xu Shuzheng's 11th Division (PS1) stationed in Shandong to continue south to reinforce Anhui, and when the war situation was tense to the point that it was necessary, Yuan Shikai could also continue to transfer the troops of Feng Guozhang's mixed brigade in the Jiangbei region.

In order to fill the gap after these troops were transferred, Yuan Shikai had secretly dispatched the 20th and 23rd Divisions in the northeast region to enter the customs, and as for the town guards in the northeast region, they were handed over to the local troops in the northeast region and the newly established 3rd and 4th Mixed Brigades of the Central Army.

After Yuan Shikai received a large amount of loans for the aftermath, in addition to supplementing and restoring the existing Central Army, he also followed the model of the Second Mixed Brigade, transferred some troops from the existing main force, and then formed the Central Army Mixed Brigade. As for the reorganized provincial army divisions and brigades, Yuan Shikai never expected them to be able to fight, but more out of military power and the idea of controlling local troops. And the expanded Central Army is the descendant force of the Beiyang Army. Due to the tense situation, there was little time for Yuan Shikai to take his time like the 10th and 11th Divisions that had been trained before, and there was enough time to form two new integrated divisions. When time was tight and there was no shortage of money for the time being, Yuan Shikai followed the model of the Second Mixed Brigade and directly transferred some troops from the main divisions to form a number of mixed brigades, some troops from the 16th Division, and the First Mixed Brigade of the Central Army formed by adding some local troops directly under the Central Army to be stationed in Gyeonggi. The 3rd Mixed Brigade of the Central Army was formed by the backbone troops drawn from the 20th Division and some local troops in the northeast region, and the 4th Mixed Brigade of the Central Army formed by the backbone troops drawn from the 23rd Division and some local troops in the northeast region, and were stationed in the northeast region. The 5th Mixed Brigade, formed from a part of the Shandong army and a regiment of the 11th Division, was stationed in Shandong. Then, a regiment of the Second Division was transferred, supplemented by some other local troops, and then organized into the Sixth Mixed Brigade, which was stationed in Shanxi.

As for the several main divisions in southern Jiangsu and Anhui, because they were on the front line, Yuan Shikai did not dare to move easily, so he did not draw backbone cadres from these troops to expand the mixed brigade. For example, after Cao Kun's third division went through more than half a year of rest, it not only restored its original full strength, but also trained a new third division brigade, making the third division a huge establishment of 16,700 troops, with three infantry brigades and an artillery regiment. The Fifth Division and the Seventh Division also each got a ** regiment. Therefore, although the regular establishment of the more than a dozen Central Army divisions of the Beiyang Army is the same, the actual establishment is different.

Speaking of which, in addition to imitating the second mixed brigade, the Beiyang Army's mixed brigade expansion plan also refers to the mixed brigade model of the National Army. Both opponents are learning from each other and absorbing each other's strengths.

Such a large-scale mixed brigade expansion plan is much larger than the mixed brigade expansion plan of the National Army, and the six brigade plans are carried out almost simultaneously, but even if Yuan Shikai has a lot of spare money in his hands now, he still has so many troops to raise, so it is impossible to spend all the money, so the formation of the six brigades is fast and slow, and the first mixed brigade has Yuan Shikai's key care in the Gyeonggi area, so it is the fastest to become an army, and Yuan Shikai also appointed his confidant general Lu Jianzhang as the brigade commander. The Second Mixed Brigade was originally directly transferred from the Second Brigade of the First Division, and it was the earliest mixed brigade unit in the Beiyang Army.

The remaining third, fourth, fifth, and sixth mixed brigades are fast and slow, and most of them are still being formed, and they cannot exert much combat effectiveness, so it is unlikely that they will be transferred to the front line to fight the national army. However, it is not a problem to stay in the rear and let a few main divisions go south empty, in fact, this is the biggest purpose of forming these mixed brigades. Yuan Shikai didn't hope that these newly formed mixed brigades would be able to fight hard with southern Jiangsu and the Nationalist Army, but used them to take over the positions of the original main divisions, so that the 11th, 20th, and 23rd divisions were left empty and could go south to participate in the war.

Both the Beiyang Army and the Nationalist Army were preparing with their own plans, and the Nationalist Army was ready to send a large number of troops to gather in Wuhu, and at the same time transfer the Third Division and the Eleventh Division to the north, and as soon as the rainy season in the Yangtze River valley passed, they would wave their troops across the river to attack Hefei, Anhui. The Beiyang Army is also preparing to enter Anhui, also waiting for the weather to improve, and then cross the river to the south in one fell swoop.

In this process, the air forces of both sides have frequently used means to try to detect each other's every move to the maximum, and the reconnaissance planes of both sides have even encountered several times in the air, but the fighter units of the Nationalist Army have rarely been able to find and arrive in time to shoot down the planes of the Beiyang Army, and only five planes have been shot down in the first half of the month, two of which were shot down on the first day, that is to say, after the Beiyang Army found that the other side could shoot down its own planes in the air, it adopted tactics such as changing routes to evade. In the second half of the month, only three planes were lost, and at the same time, the movement of the ground troops of the Nationalist Army was discovered by the aerial reconnaissance of the Beiyang Army. For this reason, the General Staff Department was very dissatisfied with the Air Force, and Chen Yi even openly criticized Wu Shizhong at the joint operations meeting, saying that the Air Force had not done its due diligence and had taken so much military funds but could not stop the enemy's aerial reconnaissance. The meaning of the words is that the Air Force occupies the pit and does not.

This made Wu Shizhong, the head of the air force of the Nationalist Army, extremely dissatisfied, and it was impossible to get angry at Yuan Fang, Shen Gang and a group of army generals whose ranks were only higher than him and not lower than him in the joint operations meeting, so he could only return to the Air Force with a black face and be angry with his subordinates, and then directly crossed the first wing, removed the squadron leader of the 2nd Combat Squadron, and promoted Huang Feihang to squadron leader. At the same time, a strict order was given to the reconnaissance aircraft unit, which must find the air base of the Beiyang Army as soon as possible, and as soon as the air base of the Beiyang Army was found, Wu Shizhong did not care about anything, and dozens of bombers all went out, vowing to blow up the air base of the Beiyang Army to the ground.

In July, southern Jiangsu continued to be nervous, but Chen Jingyun quietly left Nanjing on July 22 by special train, this time he did not alarm too many people, only arrived at the guard and a battalion of guard divisions, and his special train did not stop in Zhenjiang after that, and went straight to Shanghai.