readx; Faced with the problem sent by the General Staff, Chen Jingyun also sent a telegram of inquiry to the generals in front, Lin Chengkun replied that the guard division would fight to the last soldier, and Cheng Biguang replied that he would guarantee to re-blockade the Yangtze River after receiving reinforcements from the main fleet of the Navy, and Shen Gang replied that because Cao Kun's troops had obtained ammunition supplies, the Battle of Nancheng would be further delayed for three days or even longer. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 After getting the details of the troops on the front line, Chen Jingyun did not hesitate too much, but quickly made a decision, on the night of December 7, the Shanghai Command officially ordered Lin Chengkun's guard division to retreat in the direction of [***] to the east.

According to the new round of plans formulated by many staff officers in the General Staff, Lin Chengkun's guard division temporarily retreated eastward to the [***] area, and if the Beiyang Army sent the main force to pursue, then it would further retreat to the vicinity of Yangzhou, but the guard division would remain on the north bank of the Yangtze River, still as a bridgehead for the national army to go north, and could threaten the Jinpu line at any time. If the Beiyang Army breaks away from the Jinpu Line to pursue, then the logistics supply of the Beiyang Army will be much more troublesome if it is separated from the railway, at least more troublesome than the National Army, and another very important point is that after losing the support of the railway, limited to the terrain and land transportation in the southeast region, the heavy artillery regiment of the Beiyang Army will not be able to effectively carry out long-distance maneuvering at all. Without the threat of heavy artillery, the Guard Division retreating [***] or Yangzhou will be supported by strong artillery from the Navy, and the Navy will be able to cover the Guard Division to cross the Yangtze River at any time when the situation is not good.

Of course, if the guard division wants to retreat, it does not mean that it can retreat, it needs to be prepared and completely prepared, otherwise it will have to be the same as the first division last time, and the retreat will turn into a rout. At this time, although Cao Kun had received some supplies from Feng Guozhang, it was simply unable to meet the consumption of tens of thousands of his subordinates, and Cao Kun's troops, who were still short of ammunition, could not resist the fierce offensive of the Nationalist Army at all, and were defeated in the southern city of Nanjing, and even the entire battalion was surrounded and annihilated. In addition, the news that the army was going to retreat slowly came out, which made the soldiers of the Beiyang Army have no heart to fight: why should everyone else run away, I still have to fight to the death with the national army on the front line!

Since the pontoon bridge was erected and began to retreat on a small scale, the Beiyang army in Nancheng rushed even faster than the previous desperate one, and a large number of Beiyang soldiers dropped their guns and then rushed to the north, trying to squeeze onto the several pontoon bridges in the north. Such a situation was not expected by either Cao Kun or Feng Guozhang.

Among so many troops in Nancheng, Zhang Xun's troops were the first to collapse, because Zhang Xun's Eighth Division had already been disabled, and the follow-up defense of Nancheng suffered heavy losses, and there were less than 4,000 people on the eve of retreat, and when Cao Kun organized the retreat, it was natural that he was selfish, and arranged the troops of the Third Division to go first, and then the Fifth Division followed, and the Eighth Division was at the bottom.

On the night of the 8th, several officers of the 8th Division were dissatisfied with Cao Kun's military order, and refused to carry out the task of blocking the enemy after leading the guards to storm the headquarters of the 3rd Division, and there was a firefight during the conflict, these officers were ordered by Cao Kun to be shot on the spot, Zhang Xun rushed to the scene and cried bitterly, after which Cao Kun personally explained to Zhang Xun before and after, although it was suppressed at this time, but it caused a great sensation in the 8th Division, although the 8th Division is now a remnant of the defeated army, but no one wants to be used as cannon fodder to die.

If Cao Kun is staring at the disobedience, and if he escapes, now the southern city of Nanjing is surrounded by the Nationalist Army on three sides, leaving only the river in the north, and he can't flee to the north, and he doesn't want to be cannon fodder and sent to death as a rear army, then there are not many options left.

On the morning of the 9th, more than 300 people from a battalion on the front line of the Eighth Division surrendered to the Nationalist Army under the leadership of the battalion commander, creating the first large-scale surrender of the Beiyang Army since the Beiyang Army and the Nationalist Army were engaged. Chen Jingyun, who learned the news as soon as possible, immediately gave instructions: "All the soldiers of the Beiyang Army who led the troops to surrender to Cheng were promoted to one rank, and the soldiers who were willing to join the National Army were paid a month's salary, and those who were willing to return to their hometowns were provided with three yuan for the journey, and the follow-up cases were also handled in the same way."

On the one hand, they are regarded as outcasts, and on the other hand, they are high-ranking officials, and everyone understands that the rise of the National Army is now unstoppable, so many officers of the Beiyang Army have a little more strange thoughts in their hearts, especially the officers of the Eighth Division of the Beiyang Army.

On the morning of the 9th, one battalion surrendered, and in the afternoon, another battalion of the Eighth Division surrendered, and the rest of the small companies and platoons surrendered even more.

This kind of large-scale surrender of the Beiyang Army was something that neither side had expected in advance, and Cao Kun was a little suspicious at first when a few officers of the Eighth Division disobeyed his orders, but after all, he did not expect that the troops of the Eighth Division would surrender on a large scale.

Zhang Xun is more depressed than Cao Kun, the Eighth Division can be his troops, his life's roots, although after all the battles in southern Jiangsu, his Eighth Division has existed in name only, the first brigade and two regiments left in Nanjing before are completely gone, the main force withdrawn from the Zhenjiang front has gone through many hard battles, and it has already suffered heavy losses, when it set off from Qingjiangpu, it was 13,400 people, plus the people who transported supplies and the like were as high as more than 15,000, and then less than two months after a fight in southern Jiangsu, The Eighth Division now has only more than 4,000 men left, and all the heavy weapons such as artillery have been lost. It can be said that the foundation has been knocked down, but in order to let Zhang Xun promise to be the back road for the whole army, Feng Guozhang and Yuan Shikai have already given him a double promise that they will rebuild the Eighth Division as soon as the war is over, and they will allocate enough military funds at that time, and even a batch of artillery will be allocated to the Eighth Division, which gives Zhang Xun a hope.

Although it is very dangerous to serve as the rear army, but under the persecution of Cao Kun and Feng Guozhang, he could not help but agree, originally thought that if he acted quickly, his eighth division should also be able to follow the third division and the fifth division back, but he did not expect that the eighth division took on the cover task for less than a day, and it was almost defeated, if it was defeated by the onslaught of the national army, it was not, but the eighth division's own self-disordered position, and the national army had not come up, so he surrendered with a white flag.

Because the Eighth Division had fallen into chaos, Cao Kun was ruthless, and immediately ordered Tang Tianxi to lead the remnants of his regiment to undertake the task of blocking the attack, and stepped up the organization of the whole army to cross the river and retreat.

At this time, the Nationalist Army had also discovered that Cao Kun's department of the Beiyang Army wanted to fully cross the river and retreat, so on the night of the 8th, he ordered the guard division to suspend the retreat, and ordered to quickly organize mobile forces to contain and attack Feng Guozhang's troops on the north bank, and at the same time, the headquarters had already issued an order to the naval fleet, requiring the main fleet to re-arrive in Nanjing within one day to resume artillery support. In order to transfer the main force, the navy even urgently dispatched the Hairong, which was still under repair, and all the other gunboats, large and small, regardless of the old and new, were sent to Nanjing in an attempt to block the Beiyang Army's return from crossing the river to the north.

Cheng Biguang was also strictly ordered to block the Beiyang Army's crossing of the river, so he braved the fire of the Beiyang Army's land heavy artillery regiment to sail upstream again, and shelled the Cao Kun Department of the Beiyang Army who was crossing the river, but because the firepower of the Beiyang Army's heavy artillery regiment was too fierce, Cheng Biguang did not dare to stay, and when a gunboat was hit by a six-inch grenade, Cheng Biguang had to order a retreat again, so it did not effectively block the crossing of Cao Kun's troops.

In the early morning of the 10th, the 2nd Division of the Nationalist Army broke through the last line of defense of the 8th Division, defeated the last 2,000 main forces of the 8th Division, killed and wounded more than 500 or 600 people of the Beiyang Army, and the rest either fled or surrendered, the commander of the 16th Brigade, Major General Jiang Yanxing, and a large number of officers were captured, and Jiang Yanxing also became the first general to be captured in the Beiyang Army system since Xinhai. This Jiang Yanxing was the co-commander of the 13th Mixed Association of the Army before Xinhai, and after Xinhai, he also organized a military and political axe with the general stream to recognize himself as the governor of Jiangbei, but he had a bad relationship with the revolutionaries, and he hunted and killed many revolutionaries in the later period and broke with the Nanjing Provisional Political Axe and threw himself to Yuan Shikai, and later Yuan Shikai revoked the governor of Jiangbei and sent Zhang Xun to lead his troops to Qingjiangpu, with Zhang Xun's Jiangfang Army as the main body to form the Eighth Division, and the original Jiangbei Army also joined the Eighth Division, Jiang Yanxing also became the commander of the newly established 16th Brigade of the Army.

Since Xinhai, the Beiyang Army has experienced several wars, including the Hubei War, the Shanxi War, and the Nanjing War, and most of the officers lost are some captains, and even a few school officers, but after more than a month of fighting in southern Jiangsu, there are almost 40,000 people in the three divisions of the Beiyang Army that originally went south, and now there are only more than 20,000 remnants left. If the colonel is considered a mid-level officer, and it is not strange that he was captured and killed, then the major general Fu is a big deal.

Among the three divisions of the Beiyang Army, which originally went south, except for the observation generals sent by the War Department and Yuan Shikai, there were few high-ranking generals in the fixed establishment of the Second Army, and even Feng Guozhang was only a dozen. In the awarding of titles by the Beiyang Army some time ago, the awarding of titles to subordinate units was still very strictly controlled, and there was no situation in which a large group of generals appeared, and in the current Beiyang Army system, there were no deputy positions such as deputy army commanders and deputy division commanders, which led to fewer lieutenant generals and officers in combat units. They are the brigade commanders of each brigade, the three lieutenant generals and division commanders, the major generals and chief of staff of the Second Army, and then there is only Feng Guozhang, the general commander, which adds up to only eleven people.

In a division, the division commander is a lieutenant general or a major general, and the deputy division commander is a major general, and there are only two generals, and the chief of staff of the rest of the divisions is a colonel, and there is no brigade level, and the next regiment commander is either a colonel or a lieutenant colonel.

However, whether it is the National Army or the Beiyang Army, there are few generals in the combat troops, but there are a large number of generals in the General Headquarters of the War Department or the Headquarters, some of which are simply idle to place people, and some of them need such a high rank to do things, and the other is the need for promotion, etc., for example, in the headquarters of the National Army, if you don't count the Navy Department, only the chief and deputy director of the three departments, and then there are almost 20 generals in each department, and these still have real power positions, Then there are a number of idle positions such as consultants, such as Sun Daoren's appointment as a senior adviser to the General Staff, which is also worthy of the rank of lieutenant general. Yuan Shikai also has a large number of generals, advisers, staff officers and the like.

However, no matter how you calculate it, it is very difficult to capture or kill a local general in the front-line troops, because even if a junior major general is the brigade commander of a mixed brigade in Beiyang, and then he is also a deputy division commander in the National Army, and he usually goes forward to lead a reinforced regiment or a mixed brigade-sized unit to fight, and it is very difficult for such a character to be injured or captured, because even if he is defeated, he will run faster than ordinary soldiers.

Death and capture can only occur when they are surrounded and cannot break through, and unfortunately, Jiang Yanxing was surrounded and captured under such circumstances.

Jiang Yanxing was captured, which would have been a sensational event in normal times, but in the southern city of Nanjing on December 10, this incident seemed so insignificant compared to other major events.

On the night of 10 December, the Nationalist Army, which had been launching a fierce offensive along the river for several days, finally saw the surface of the Yangtze River.

On the 11th, the main force of the south bank of the Nationalist Army occupied all areas of the southern city of Nanjing, and after prior preparations, the guard division of Taishan Town successfully evacuated the front line of Taishan Town, and then turned in the direction of [***].

On the same day, a large number of main ships of the navy under the Fuzhou Fleet of the Nationalist Army arrived on the Nanjing River, carried out a large-scale artillery bombardment of the Beiyang Army on the north bank, and engaged in a fierce artillery battle with the heavy artillery regiment of the Beiyang Army on the north bank.

On the 12th, the British Minister to China, Zhu Erdian, asked the British Consul in Shanghai, Sir Fa Lei, to meet Chen Jingyun and inquire about the armistice of the Nationalist Army and related matters.