readx; And the 11th Division, which has the same treatment as the Guard Division, at the beginning of the Northern Expedition last year, was because the three infantry regiments of the 11th Division had just formed an army, and the artillery ordered from the United States had not yet returned, so the 11th Division was stationed in Shanghai as a reserve. At that time, even the newly established 21st and 22nd Divisions were left in southern Jiangsu, and the 11th Division naturally continued to be stationed in Shanghai. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

After the Northern Expedition, because Chen Jingyun was preparing for the Qingdao Campaign, he originally wanted to transfer other troops to the coastal provinces to garrison, so the 11th Division could not leave, and continued to take on the important task of garrisoning Shanghai.

This situation lasted until the end of the Battle of Qingdao, when the 11th Division was given the order to be transferred, in order to prevent this well-equipped unit from being wasted on garrisoning all the time, and at the same time, other troops were more or less lacking and were in the process of being reorganized, so Chen Jingyun planned to send the 11th Division to Guangdong.

Before heading for Guangdong by boat, the 11 th Division took the lead in completing the reorganization in accordance with the army reorganization plan, and this reorganization was to directly transfer ready-made equipment and personnel from other units in southern Jiangsu, that is, the Eighth Division and the 21 st Division, in order to enable the 11 th Division to form combat effectiveness in the shortest possible time. In just half a month, the 11th Division became the first unit in the Nationalist Army to complete the establishment of an infantry division in 1915.

Because it was preparing to fight in the southern mountains, the 11th Division was reorganized according to the standard of the lightly armed division in the integrated division, that is, the so-called pack horse system, and the original two field artillery battalions and one mountain artillery battalion were adjusted into three mountain artillery battalions, one of which was called a 17-fold mountain artillery battalion, and the remaining two were self-produced 14-fold mountain artillery battalions. The weight of these two types of artillery is only 550 kilograms, of which the Type 41 mountain cannon is naturally the best, but there are not too many of these mountain artillery in the national army, and there are only more than 70 in total, which is just organized into six battalions, and it is just right to assign one to each of the six lightly armed divisions. The large number of 75-mm mountain guns of the Nationalist Army is 14 times that of imported and self-produced and captured mountain artillery, including German-made and made-made guns, and then there are a large number of 1912-style 75-mm 14-caliber guns produced by the Fuzhou Arsenal itself in the past two years, and these 14-fold mountain guns are the main force of mountain artillery in the Nationalist Army at present, with a total of nearly 30 battalions. In addition to the 75-mm mountain artillery, there were two battalions of 60-mm mountain artillery and five captured battalions of 57-mm mountain artillery, all of which together constituted the mountain artillery unit of the National Army.

After the 11th Division took the lead in completing the new establishment in 1915, it immediately went to Guangdong, and as for what Lu Rongting would think after the 11th Division arrived in Guangdong, it was not a question that Chen Jingyun needed to care about.

Because in addition to the 11th Division, Chen Jingyun also sent a large number of Nationalist troops to Hunan, Hubei and Henan, and the 30th Division of Cao Kun's division of the Beiyang Surrender Army was sent to Yueyang and could go to Changsha at any time.

The 26th Mixed Brigade of Baoding was sent to Zhangjiakou, and at the same time, the 1st Division of the main force of the Nationalist Army stationed in Yanjing also went to Shijiazhuang, and the 9th Division, which had participated in the Qingdao Campaign in Shandong, returned to defend Yanjing and could reinforce Shanxi at any time.

In addition to the northern part of Shanxi, the 17th and 20th Mixed Brigades of the National Army in the southern part of Shanxi have also approached the border of Shanxi Province one after another.

This posture of the Nationalist Army already shows that it is ready to solve Yan Xishan in Shanxi.

"In order to solve the problem of the secession of our [***] lords, it is necessary to completely eliminate the warlords of the southwest garrison and the warlords of Shanxi! And among these warlords, it is very likely that we reached some kind of agreement like Tang Jiyao and Lu Rongting back then, after all, they should also understand the truth of cold lips and teeth, so if we want to solve the problem of warlord secession militarily, then we must be prepared for an all-out war with these warlords. Shen Gang, as always, explained the battle plan of the General Staff to Chen Jingyun in a calm tone.

Shen Gang said: "According to the intelligence gathered from all sides, the troops under Tang Jiyao, who occupy Yunnan and Guizhou and the southern part of Xichuan, have swelled to at least 200,000 people, and the Dian army has stationed a considerable number of troops in Guizhou and Hubei in addition to stationing heavy troops in Sichuan to compete with Sichuan Duan Zhigui. The Dian army participated in many battles and had rich combat experience, and although its weapons and equipment were not strong, its combat effectiveness was medium among the warlord troops stationed in the southwest.

Duan Zhigui, also in Sichuan, is believed to have integrated many of Sichuan's original minor warlords and now controls two key locations in Yucheng and Chengdu, with his headquarters currently numbering around 100,000 men. However, his subordinate troops are seriously polarized, and their descendants are the troops of the second and sixth divisions of the former Beiyang Army, about 30,000 people, and this part of the descendants maintains a considerable amount of heavy firepower. The rest of the collateral troops were originally small warlords from all over Sichuan, with uneven quality and extremely poor equipment! ”

Among the three warlords in the southwest, Lu Rongting's troops have always been relatively stable, and now they have about 80,000 to 100,000 troops, half of which are deployed in Hunan and half in Guangxi. The equipment of the Gui army was slightly inferior to that of the Yunnan army, and the quality of the soldiers was about the same; with the unanimous opinion of many colleagues in the General Staff, if we only dealt with the Gui army, our army would be able to gain partial superiority by investing only two divisions, and by investing more than three divisions, it would be able to gain strategic superiority.

The strength of these three is not weak, if united, although our army can maintain a certain advantage, but if you want to win quickly, there are also certain difficulties, in addition to the difference in troops, more important is that the southwest region is mountainous, the transportation is inconvenient, although the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway has been completed for the most part, our army from Wuhan, Hubei to Changsha is not a big problem, but after leaving the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway to continue to attack in the southwest direction, then it is difficult for our army to have a large number of field artillery units to maneuver for the front-line infantry artillery support. Since it is not possible to maneuver quickly, it becomes difficult to quickly resolve the battle.

For this reason, the suggestion of the General Staff Department is to adopt a small offensive in the early stage in the face of the three warlords in the southwest, so as to attract the enemy's active forces to gather on the front line of Hunan, Hubei, and Guangdong, while our army is to avoid carrying out a large-scale roundabout maneuver, and if necessary, to a certain extent, temporarily abandon some areas in the early stage, constantly exert pressure on the enemy's front-line troops to force the enemy to continue to increase troops, and quickly concentrate superior forces to defeat the enemy's main force in one fell swoop when the time comes! In a word, it is to induce the enemy army and our army to engage in a strategic decisive battle, and then give full play to the heavy firepower advantage of our army, and the victory or defeat will be decided in one battle! ”

Chen Jingyun also nodded after hearing this, the strategic concept of the General Staff was still quite practical, considering that the biggest obstacle for the Nationalist Army to advance into the southwest was not the many warlords stationed in the southwest themselves, but the extremely bad terrain in the southwest. Among the three major warlords in the southwest, each is far inferior to the national army, but if these three parties are combined, then they will have a huge force of more than 500,000 troops, and this is still their field army, and in fact, like the national army, in addition to the central army, they also have a large number of troops similar to local garrison regiments, although these troops are not very good in combat but can also contain a lot of troops in the national army at critical moments. At that time, it would be great if the Nationalist Army could come up with 200,000 troops, after all, in addition to dealing with the warlords in the southwest, the Nationalist Army has deployed troops in the coastal provinces and other areas in the northeast, and it cannot put all its troops into the southwest front in one go.

If the artillery units of the Nationalist Army are unable to follow the infantry for maneuvering because of the terrain in the southwest, then the strategic advantage of the Nationalist Army will be greatly reduced. You must know that among the warlords in the southwest, in addition to the more than 20,000 descendants of the old Beiyang troops under Duan Zhigui, the other warlord troops have seven or eight artillery pieces in a division of 10,000 people, which is quite good, and in fact, many troops have no other artillery or even heavy machine guns except rifles, and they are veritable light infantry.

Therefore, in order to give full play to the greatest strategic superiority of the Nationalist Army, the Nationalist Army must move with static, avoid mobile combat as much as possible, and force the enemy to take a frontal battle and fight a decisive battle with itself. Therefore, when the time comes, all tactics are fake, and after gathering the main forces, they will go straight to the places where the enemy has to defend, such as Guiyang, such as Dali in Yunnan, such as Nanning and Guilin, if the enemy forces hold hard, then it is in line with the will of the national army, if they do not defend it, they will lose these strategic points, and these warlord forces will have to completely collapse in a few months.

Before sweeping away the three major warlords in the southwest, the national army still has one more thing to do first, that is, to settle it with Yan Xishan in Shanxi first.

Yan Xishan in Shanxi actually did not have a strong army, although he had 50,000 or 60,000 troops, but it was still a big gap compared to the three major warlords in the southwest. And the reason why Chen Jingyun decided to solve him first was not because Yan Xishan's strength was the worst, but because the Shanxi occupied by Yan Xishan was on the edge of Zhili, Henan and Hubei. In the unlikely event that the main force of the Nationalist Army was fighting on the southwestern front, Yan Xishan would come to raid Shijiazhuang and then cut off the Jinghan Line and attack Hubei, the Nationalist Army would be attacked on its back.

Just like when Feng Guozhang first captured Huang Xing's Nanjing in order to fight Chen Jingyun, no general would allow him to fight on the front line, and there was still an army of tens of thousands that was not under his control behind him.