readx; With Cao Kun's troops in Feng Guozhang's request for help to cross the river to the north in a hurry, the southern Jiangsu region south of the Yangtze River declared that all fell into the control of the Nationalist Army, and also with the withdrawal of the Beiyang Army to Jiangbei, but also announced that the war in southern Jiangsu was about to come to an end, at this time the Nationalist Army and the Beiyang Army across the Yangtze River in Nanjing, even though the Nationalist Army's guard division was still in the [***] area east of Nanjing, but it was no longer able to play a greater role, after receiving Cao Kun's troops to cross the river, Feng Guozhang immediately sent Wang Ruxian's Seventh Division and the Second Mixed Brigade as the main force to march eastward [*** After the initial engagement, the Nationalist Army Headquarters ordered the guard division to withdraw further eastward to avoid indifferent losses, and then, under the coastal cover of the navy, quickly retreated in the direction of Yangzhou along the route that had just crossed the river west to Nanjing, trying to re-establish a solid defensive line on the line of Yizheng and Yangzhou. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

However, Feng Guozhang was holding his breath at this time, the failure of the war in southern Jiangsu made him suffer huge political pressure, and then in the end, Cao Kun's troops crossed the river and retreated to the north with Yuan Shikai personally approved, but as the actual commander of the Beiyang Army in the entire southern Jiangsu war, he has an unshirkable responsibility for the defeat of the war in southern Jiangsu. In order to save the crisis, and at the same time, as one of the reasons for advocating Cao Kun's retreat across the Jiangbei River, that is, to eat the Nationalist Army Guard Division in Jiangbei, so as soon as Cao Kun successfully crossed the river, he couldn't wait to dispatch the main force to prepare to pursue the guard division that encircled and suppressed Jiangbei.

In the face of the Beiyang Army's close pursuit, the Nationalist Army Headquarters was worried that the guard division that had suffered heavy losses would be surrounded and annihilated, and even Chen Jingyun was extremely worried, and ordered the staff to come up with a feasible plan, and finally the staff department passed the rehearsal and determined that the main force of the Beiyang Army in the direction of Nanjing no longer had the strength to launch another river-crossing operation, and it was no longer necessary to continue to maintain a large number of main forces on the Nanjing front. Subsequently, Liang Xunqin, Chen Yi and other officers in the General Staff Department of the Operations Division formulated a new round of adjustment plans, transferring the main forces of the Nationalist Army concentrated in the vicinity of Nanjing to the east, leaving the Second and Seventh Divisions of the Nationalist Army to guard the areas near Nanjing, the first division returning to the Zhenjiang to Shanghai line, and the main force of the Fourth Division preparing to urgently cross the river to reinforce the guard division in the direction of Yangzhou.

However, this operational plan was not yet completed, and the eastward advance troops of the Beiyang Army had already launched an attack on Yizheng and Yangzhou, and the guard division was defeated, connecting the important defense lines on the periphery of Yangzhou such as Yizheng, and the 42nd Regiment of the Fourth Division, which was attached to the guard division, suffered heavy losses. At this time, the main force of the Nationalist Army was ready to mobilize the main force of the Fourth Division to cross the river and reinforcements had not yet arrived so quickly, so the guard division was shrinking in the main front of Yangzhou like a duck being driven.

"The Second Brigade has been fighting very well in the past few days, and it can be said that it has greatly shocked the prestige of our army!" In Taishan Town, Jiangbei, in the headquarters of the Second Army of the Beiyang Army, Cao Kun and Feng Guozhang had a detailed conversation about the war in Yangzhou.

Feng Guozhang also nodded and said, "This time, I want this guard division of the National Army to not go back!" ”

Cao Kun said at this time: "I'm afraid this matter is not so easy, didn't Wang Ruxian say that the Nationalist Army has begun to build a fortified defense line in Yangzhou, and judging from the movements of the Nationalist Army on the other side, their main force should also begin to move eastward, and it is very likely that they will reinforce Yangzhou!" ”

Feng Guozhang also sighed when he heard this: "There are more and more national troops on the other side, and in the past two months, we have killed more than 20,000 of them, but they are still the main force undamaged, and they look at us?" Alas, if we have enough troops, send another division to reinforce the direction of Yangzhou, and say anything can be taken! ”

Feng Guozhang's sigh did not come out of thin air, the war in southern Jiangsu has been fought to this day, both sides can be said to have suffered heavy losses, how big the losses of the national army are Feng Guozhang naturally does not know the detailed data, but through the battle reports of his subordinate troops and his own estimates, he can also estimate that the two months before and after the total have also killed 20,000 people of the national army. And what about the Beiyang Army itself, the losses were even greater.

At this time, during the war in southern Jiangsu, the Beiyang Army invested a total of four divisions, a mixed brigade and a heavy artillery regiment. They were the third, fifth, and eighth divisions of the Beiyang Army that fought southward in the early stage. The Seventh Division, the Second Brigade, and the Heavy Artillery Regiment, which were urgently reinforced from Shandong and Yanjing after the loss of Jiangbei, had a total strength of more than 60,000 troops, more than 170 medium-caliber artillery pieces and more than 30 large-caliber heavy artillery pieces under the division.

Such a large-scale war can be said to be the first large-scale war experienced by the Beiyang Army since it became an army, and the degree of tragedy is far from last year's Hubei War and the Nanjing War can be compared, before and after two months of fighting, although the Beiyang Army controlled the entire Nanjing and went south to Lishui and Zhenjiang in the early stage, but in the follow-up operations step by step retreated, and finally lost the southern city of Nanjing, so that the Nationalist Army occupied the entire south of the Yangtze River. In this war, so far the Beiyang Army has suffered heavy losses, with a total of nearly 30,000 casualties, of which Zhang Xun's Eighth Division can be said to have been almost wiped out by the formation, Zhang Xun's Eighth Division was relatively unlucky from the beginning, and it lost a lot of money when it was still in Yangzhou when it was ready to cross the river, and then the two regiments that stayed in Jiangbei to garrison Yangzhou and Nanjing were almost wiped out under the leadership of Feng Guozhang, leaving only the remnants of less than a few hundred people.

The main force of the Eighth Division suffered great losses on the Zhenjiang front line and later in the defensive operation of Nanjing, and by the eve of the Beiyang Army's northward retreat there were less than 4,000 people, and on the eve of the retreat, the Eighth Division had a large-scale collapse, and many troops surrendered to the Nationalist Army. And Zhang Xun cried to Feng Guozhang and Yuan Shikai after returning to Jiangbei, and finally Yuan Shikai had to let Zhang Xun temporarily lead his remnants to withdraw from the Nanjing front, and now Zhang Xun has taken his remnants to Qingjiangpu back, as for the reconstruction of the Eighth Division promised in advance, Yuan Shikai also made it clear that he would do it, but now that the war is tense, it is naturally impossible to give Zhang Xun how much money or equipment or the like now, just gave Zhang Xun a name and asked him to go back to the Qingjiangpu area to recuperate. If you want to rebuild the Eighth Division, I'm afraid you will have to face the sky alone and cry while ruthlessly searching the place.

The 3rd Division, the 5th Division and the 7th Division were damaged to varying degrees, among which the 5th Brigade of the 3rd Division Tang Tianxi suffered heavy losses, and Tang Tianxi's 5th Brigade played an important role in the entire battle in southern Jiangsu, and was the first to arrive at the Zhenjiang front line and inflicted heavy losses on the 1st Division of the Nationalist Army, which caused the defeat of the Nationalist Army in Zhenjiang at the beginning of the war, and the dismissal of Chen Weihua, the former commander of the 1st Division of the Nationalist Army. Later, after the loss of Taishan Town in Jiangbei, Cao Kun asked him to lead his headquarters to defend Dazhuo Town, and successfully used less than 3,000 infantry and less than 1,000 cavalry troops to block the northward pace of the Seventh Division of the Nationalist Army's Lin Zhaomin Division, ensuring the route of Cao Kun and Zhang Xun's main force retreating westward. On the eve of the retreat, Tang Tianxi was entrusted with the important task of Cao Kun, replacing the Eighth Division, which had been defeated, as the rear army of the whole army crossing the river and retreating, blocking the pursuit of the Nationalist Army, Tang Tianxi's Fifth Brigade was the last Beiyang Army unit to cross the river and retreat north.

In this series of battles, Tang Tianxi's fifth brigade became the only bright spot of the Beiyang Army's war in southern Jiangsu, although the Beiyang Army was finally defeated in southern Jiangsu, but it could not cover up Tang Tianxi's outstanding military exploits, almost Tang Tianxi just crossed the river successfully, Yuan Shikai's commendation has arrived, awarded Tang Tianxi the rank of major general plus lieutenant general, five medals. He became the only senior general of the Beiyang Army who was promoted and rewarded in the war in southern Jiangsu.

As the saying goes, when Tang Tianxi was promoted, the Fifth Brigade led by him also suffered heavy losses, with casualties as high as seventy percent, accounting for the vast majority of the casualties of the Third Division. Combined with the casualties of other units of the Third Division, the total casualties of the Third Division were close to more than 6,000, and the losses were almost as high as 40%.

The Fifth Division of the Beiyang Army was relatively better, the losses in the battle on the Lishui front line were not large, and in the subsequent retreat of Nanjing, because it did not undertake the task of covering and blocking the whole army, although there were losses in the defensive operations of Nanjing, but on the whole, the losses were not large, and the losses of the Fifth Division were not large, which made the Fifth Division the only unit among the troops of the Beiyang Army that did not suffer heavy losses, and even the subsequent reinforcements of Wang Ruxian's Seventh Division and the Second Brigade suffered greater losses than the Fifth Division.

The loss of Wang Ruxian's Seventh Division was mainly due to the fact that after the reinforcements went south, because they were anxious to rescue Feng Guozhang in the besieged Taishan Town, and later because they asked for reinforcements to Cao Kun's troops who were trapped in the southern city of Nanjing, they fought fiercely from beginning to end, so the losses were naturally very large, and the overall casualties were also thousands.

The casualties of these troops were all combined, but the casualties of the Beiyang Army were as high as nearly 30,000, of which the Eighth Division accounted for half, and the remaining units suffered their own injuries. In addition to casualties, the loss of heavy weapons was more, not to mention the Eighth Division, the entire division was gone, and the divisional artillery regiments were also completely lost, and the third and fifth divisions were mostly abandoned in the process of retreating, and most of the heavy weapons such as artillery were also abandoned, plus the previous battle losses, the artillery of the Beiyang Army lost almost more than half.

If the Beiyang Army wants to restore the third division and the fifth division, the personnel and strength are easy to say, but the loopholes in weapons and equipment are not so easy to fill, and the current Beiyang Army can't be rebuilt without external financial assistance, but the Beiyang Army system is different from the National Army, and the central government's lack of money does not mean that the following divisions have no money, for example, Zhang Xun wants to rebuild the Eighth Division, Yuan Shikai does not give money and he still grits his teeth to rebuild, Cao Kun and Jin Yunpeng want to restore the combat effectiveness of the third and fifth divisions, If the central government doesn't give money, they will find a way to do it themselves, and they just loot it themselves without giving money, it's very simple.

Feng Guozhang sighed at the losses of the Beiyang Army, and Chen Jingyun was also in Shanghai listening to Yuan Fang's report on the war in southern Jiangsu, and the casualty figures in it also moved Chen Jingyun.