readx; Wuzhou, since the day the Gui army occupied here, Lu Rongting is to take Wuzhou as a strategic place to guard in and out of Guangdong and Guangxi's business, in recent years the Gui army has built a large number of fortifications in Wuzhou, in addition to the ordinary large number of trenches, there are many cement fortresses, although limited by the Gui army's financial resources so that they can not build Wuzhou into a fortress like Lushun and Qingdao, but a large number of fortress fortifications still make Wuzhou the city with the most complete defense system in southwest China. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

In addition to a large number of fortifications, the Gui army also invested its main forces here, and the 12th and 14th divisions were deployed here. Although there are only two divisions of the Gui Army in Wuzhou, the establishment of the Gui Army is not the same as that of other warlord troops, and the Gui Army has not increased the number in the expansion of the army in recent years, but has been strictly in accordance with the number given to the other three mixed brigades of the Third Division of the Fifth Army of the Gui Army in strict accordance with the original Nanjing Republican Political Axe. In the expansion of the army in recent years, Lu Rongting did not increase the number of one brigade and one division, but the regiment of the Gui army is getting bigger and bigger, and today, although a division of the Gui army is the same as the national army, the number of a regiment of the Gui army is as high as four or five thousand, which is actually the size of a brigade.

The strength of such a Gui army division can reach 15,600 people, and a mixed brigade can reach the scale of nearly 10,000 people. And this is still based on the serious shortage of baggage and other technical arms such as artillery in the Gui army, resulting in the vast majority of these fifteen or six thousand people are infantry. If we follow the proportion of technical arms such as infantry and artillery of the National Army, then the first division of the Gui Army is at least more than 20,000 men after the addition of artillery, baggage and other technical auxiliary arms.

Of course, Lu Rongting would never have found so many artillery pieces, and in fact, it was precisely because of the lack of artillery power that the Gui army continued to increase the number of infantry, trying to offset the heavy firepower advantage of the national army with the advantage of the number of infantry.

The official name of the Gui Army was the Fifth Army, which had the 12th, 13th, 14th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Mixed Brigades. The regular field force exceeded 100,000 people, of which the Sixth Mixed Brigade was deployed in Zhuzhou and participated in the Battle of Changsha, which was the main force that blocked the Fourth Mixed Brigade of the National Army from going north to Changsha.

The 13th Division was deployed on the front line of Hengyang and Zhuzhou, and a regiment under it was also sent to Zhuzhou to participate in the Battle of Changsha, and was heavily damaged together with the 6th Mixed Brigade, while the remaining two regiments of the 13th Division were engaged in Hengyang with the 3rd Mixed Brigade of the Nationalist Army.

The 7th Mixed Brigade was deployed on the front line of Chenzhou and engaged the 1st Mixed Brigade of the National Army, but the 7th Mixed Brigade and the 1st Mixed Brigade were not too fierce, and both sides still maintained their strength to fight.

The 8th Mixed Brigade was in Nanning, where it was confronting Long Jiguang's 24th Mixed Brigade.

In addition to the above 1st Division and 3rd Brigade, the two main divisions of the Gui Army were deployed in Wuzhou, and their front was the first in the Nationalist Army, and the only 11th Division in the Nationalist Army that had completed the establishment in 1915, and there was also a 14th Mixed Brigade stationed in Guangzhou for a long time.

In fact, the comparison of the strength of the two sides in Wuzhou is not too large, the two divisions of the Gui Army together are about 30,000 or more, plus some other affiliated units of the Gui Army and the artillery regiment directly under the central government, the total strength is close to 40,000. As for the Nationalist Army, the 11th Division is 15,000 men, and the 14th Mixed Brigade is 6,000 men, and the two together have more than 21,000 troops. In terms of firepower, the Nationalist Army had 48 75-mm guns, of which 12 were 1915-style 75L17 mountain guns with a range of 6,000 meters, and the remaining 36 were 1912-style 75L14 mountain guns with a range of less than 5,000 meters. In addition to these 75-mm guns, the National Army had a battalion of 120-mm heavy mortars with twelve guns, in addition to forty-two 80-mm mortars and eighty-six 60-mm mortars. Although the Gui Army on the opposite side concentrated almost most of its heavy firepower, and the artillery regiments directly under the Fifth Army were all transferred here, all of them added up to only more than 20 new and old 57-mm guns of various types, more than 10 75-mm guns, and only more than 20 60-mm mortars made and purchased from the Nationalist Army.

It can be said that if you only compare the artillery of the two sides, then the Gui army is incomparably comparable to the national army in any case, not only the artillery power, but also the machine gun power, the two divisions of the Gui army have only more than 30 heavy machine guns, and the light machine guns are also more than 30, but the 11th division alone has 54 heavy machine guns and more than 100 light machine guns.

Although it was in an advantageous position in terms of troops, the Gui army was at an absolute disadvantage in terms of firepower.

However, at the very beginning, the firepower superiority of the Nationalist Army was not effectively brought into play, because the 11th Division was a new establishment of the 1915 type of integrated division, and the firepower was completely different from before, and more importantly, due to the change in the establishment of the company and platoon level, the tactics of the grass-roots units that the Nationalist Army had been using for many years became inapplicable, especially after the fourth company under the jurisdiction of the battalion became the third company under the jurisdiction of the battalion, many middle-level officers of the Nationalist Army could not adapt to it, resulting in many problems when commanding operations.

Army operations are a complex project with a systematic surname, and in many cases, they strictly follow the infantry rules and various tactical plans to conduct operations, and by no means say that the officers on the front line can command them on a whim, and in 1915 the new establishment had just begun, and the staff of the staff of the various infantry and tactical plans adapted to this kind of establishment had not yet received enough experience in combat to guide the troops, so they had to rely on the 11 th Division to fight and explore it at the same time.

In this case, the 11th Division has strong firepower, but it is unable to give full play to the firepower of its huge machine guns and mortars, and although the firepower opposite the Gui Army is not good, but the people have been operating in Wuzhou for many years, and the fortifications are quite complete, it is the combination of these two situations that led to the 11th Division's progress in the early stage of attacking Wuzhou, but as the 11th Division slowly fought, the combat experience increased rapidly. In particular, after the grassroots officers on the front line mastered how to give full play to their powerful machine gun and mortar firepower, the progress of the 11th Division was much smoother.

By November, the Nationalist Army had almost cleared the outlying positions of the Gui Army in Wuzhou, and when the General Staff had officially issued an order for the Nationalist Army to launch a full-scale counteroffensive against the Changsha area, Li Lianyang's 12th Army also took the opportunity to launch a large-scale offensive in Guangxi, and the 11th Division, which had been resting for several days, launched a large-scale attack on Wuzhou again, and the 14th Mixed Brigade, which had been serving as a reserve, also transferred a regiment to participate in offensive operations.

Although the two divisions of the Gui Army resisted very tenaciously, and the large number of fortifications they built also brought considerable trouble to the Nationalist Army, the Twelfth Army, relying on its strong firepower superiority, smashed the walnut of Wuzhou with artillery shells. On November 9, the day the Nationalist Army occupied Changsha, the 11th Division also broke through the last line of defense deployed by the Gui Army in Wuzhou.

The next time, the Gui army finally gave up the idea of resisting in Wuzhou and retreated, and the 11th Division occupied Wuzhou that day. Although the 11th Division occupied Wuzhou for more than half a month set by Chen Jingyun for Li Lianyang, it was finally taken.

In this battle, the combined casualties of the 11th Division and the 14th Mixed Brigade of Li Lianyang's 12th Army were less than 1,200, of which only 500 were killed, while the Gui Army on the opposite side lost more than 20,000 people, with at least 5,600 killed and more than 10,000 wounded. The reason why the casualty ratio of the two sides is so large is because Li Lianyang fought more cautiously, and did not attack hard at the beginning, and in the later stage, he also gave full play to the powerful firepower of the 11th Division, in other words, the 11th Division replaced its own casualties with a large number of shells and bullets. In this way, the casualties of the 11th Division were not high, but the artillery shells and other combat materials consumed were more than twice that of the main forces of the other Nationalist Army, and nearly 70 or 80 tons of combat materials were consumed almost every day, while the main divisions of the other Nationalist Army consumed only 30 or 40 tons of materials a day.

After the Twelfth Army conquered Wuzhou, it also meant that the eastern gate of Guangxi had been opened to the Nationalist Army, and the Twelfth Army would be able to enter the hinterland of Guangxi, and the strategic situation of the Gui Army would suddenly become extremely unfavorable.

Lu Rongting, like Tang Jiyao, gathered the last troops and prepared to establish the next line of defense to block the national army, but although the two of them were unwilling to fail, from a military perspective, they had already failed.

The Dian army has only 100,000 left from the 200,000 main force before the war, and the more than 100,000 people of the Gui army have also fought to only 70,000 or 80,000 people.

In November, when the temperature in the north has begun to drop, and the northeast region even begins to snow and freeze, the war in southwest China is still in full swing, but at this time the war seems to have become a one-sided march game of the national army, large-scale battles have rarely happened, the 13th division of the Gui army in the Hengyang area was soon defeated in the face of the attack of more than 10,000 national troops after receiving reinforcements, and then the 13th division mutinied, The commander of the 131st Regiment of the 13th Division led his troops to assassinate the commander of the 13th Division and several other high-ranking generals, and then announced the surrender of the Nationalist Army.

Naturally, there were the efforts of the intelligence officers in the Military Intelligence Department, and the commander of the 131st Regiment was immediately awarded the rank of Major General by the National Army and promoted to the commander of the 13th Division.

The mutiny and surrender of the 13th Division was like a boulder thrown into the originally calm water, although the defeat of the [***] connection before, and small-scale surrender and mutiny also occurred from time to time, but the surrender at the division and brigade level has not yet appeared, but the 13th Division has set this precedent, and thus created a wave of large-scale surrender of the [***].

Two days later, a brigade of the Dian army, which had resisted stubbornly in northern Hunan, announced its surrender at the last moment of its annihilation, and soon after, the 7th Mixed Brigade of the Gui Army in Chenzhou announced its surrender, and a brigade of the Dian Army in Shaoyang announced its surrender.

In just a few days, tens of thousands of people have announced their surrender, and by the time the Nationalist Army arrived at the Huaihua line, there were only more than 20,000 people left in Hunan.

When Lin Chengkun was ready to launch a general attack on Huaihua, Xie Ruyi also announced his surrender.