Chapter 445 Battle of Jiujiang 2

"Isn't their eighth division in Henan? When did it appear in Jiangxi?" Zhang Guotai is also a core high-level general in the Anhui army. He still knows that some of the troops of the Feng army are there, especially several troops stationed in a certain place. As far as he knows, the 8th Division of the Central Army in the Feng army was reorganised according to the remnants after the Battle of Zhengzhou in 1907. After Wang Ruxian's defeat in the Zhengzhou Campaign, its master After the remnants of the 8th Division surrendered, Zhao Dongyun did not directly revoke the number of the 8th Division, but transferred a large number of officers and recruits to rebuild and continued to use the number of the 8th Division of the Central Army.

After the reconstruction of the department, it has been stationed in Henan and belongs to the Third Army of the Feng Army until this spring and summer, but at this time, the Eighth Division appeared in Jiangxi.

After the battle in the south of the Yangtze River, the Feng army carried out a series of large-scale mobilizations. Although other warlords and other warlords also tried their best to collect the relevant dynamics of the Feng army, in June 1908, in July 1908, the scale of the Feng army was too large. In addition, the continuous expansion of the Feng army had reached hundreds of thousands in full control. The mobilization of each unit of the Feng army is a very difficult thing.

Not to mention in this era of information collection and transmission, even in a modern society of later generations, it is impossible to control all the military mobilization of a country.

In the first two months, the collection of military intelligence of other warlords, especially the Anhui army, mainly focused on the Jiangnan region, and the focus was on Meng Enyuan's fourth army in southern Anhui, Xu Bangjie's second army in southern Zhejiang, Lu Yongxiang's first army, and Chen Guangyuan's third army and other Feng army troops in Henan. Less.

In this case, Zhang Guotai naturally did not know that Zhao Dongyun had transferred the 8th Division south and joined the first army.

However, it doesn't matter if you don't know in advance. Now Zhang Guotai already knows that the Eighth Division of the Feng Army has appeared south of Peng Ze, and it is obvious that he wants to bypass Peng Ze and go straight to the mouth of the lake.

Zhang Guotai has been prepared for this situation for a long time. The troops under his command are not only one Liangjiang Sixth Division, but also the Liangjiang Third Division and two independent regiments.

Due to the limitations of the terrain of the Jiujiang River, it is impossible for Zhang Guotai to say that all his troops are directly deployed in Jiujiang City. In fact, this battle called the Jiujiang Campaign is not in Jiujiang, but in the Pengze and Hukou areas in the east of the Jiujiang River. As long as these two areas are guarded, then Jiujiang can Rest assured. Similarly, if these two areas are lost, it is actually meaningless to stay in Jiujiang.

Now it is not the 18th or 19th century. A castle fortress alone can persevere in the siege of dozens of troops for many years. For the war of this era, no matter how strong the fortress is, once it is surrounded by the enemy, once the ammunition is exhausted, it is basically a dead word.

Although the terrain of Jiujiang is very conducive to defense, it is also very easy to be surrounded by the enemy. In addition, it is impossible for Duan Qirui to build Jiujiang into a fortress such as Lushun and Qingdao, so based on many situations, it is impossible for Zhang Guotai to retreat his main forces to Jiujiang.

And in this way, it highlights the importance of Peng Ze and Hukou.

Zhang Guotai deployed the main Liangjiang Sixth Division in Pengze, and the third Liangjiang Third Division was deployed in Hukou. An independent infantry regiment was deployed to defend Jiujiang, and another independent regiment was regarded as a mobile deployment of reserve troops.

When he learned that the Eighth Division of the Feng Army was coming towards the mouth of the lake, Zhang Guotai immediately named the third division of the two rivers eastward, and he wanted to stop the eighth division of the two rivers.

As the first and eighth divisions of the Feng army's first army were put into the battlefield one after another, the second and third divisions of the two rivers of the Anhui army fought and resisted one after another. It was announced that since the Battle of Dangtu and the Jinling Campaign, the Feng and Anhui armies once again broke out a large-scale battle with tens of tens of thousands of people participating in the war.

Although Zhao Dongyun maintained a limited attention to the ongoing Jiujiang Campaign, his main energy did not go to Jiujiang, because from the whole southward strategy, Jiujiang is actually only a secondary battlefield. The real main direction of the Feng army is not Jiujiang, but southern Zhejiang and Jiang Western hinterland.

Lu Yongxiang's First Army launched the Jiujiang Campaign, which was to capture the Jiujiang River, let alone to contain the Anhui army in the direction of Jiujiang, so as to ensure the safety of the flank of the Fourth Army of the Feng Army in the hinterland of Jiangxi.

So when Lu Yongxiang's First Army launched the Battle of Jiujiang, Meng Enyuan's Fourth Army did not stop at all. After capturing Jingdezhen, an important town in northeastern Jiangxi, their forward Third Division took a short break and then set off to the south again.

Their short-term goal is Raozhou Prefecture, and after taking Raozhou, the Fourth Army will continue to go south and march into a series of important towns in the hinterland of Jiangxi, such as Nanchang Prefecture, Hengzhou Prefecture, Guangxin Prefecture and Fuzhou Prefecture, and then join forces with Xu Bangjie's Second Army in southern Zhejiang to cover the second Feng army fighting in southern Zhejiang from the side. The flank of the army is safe.

At present, Xu Bangjie's Second Army in southern Zhejiang has successively captured Yanzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo, and is currently fighting with the Anhui army in Jinhua and Taizhou.

Because it has entered the hilly area of southern Zhejiang, Xu Bangjie's second army also encountered the problem of the Anhui army to go south to Zhejiang last year, that is, the hilly mountains in southern Zhejiang brought great trouble to the mobility and logistics transportation of the troops, resulting in the slow march of the troops, to a certain extent, giving the retreating Anhui army more More reorganization and assembly time.

Of course, this is also related to the desperate resistance of the Fourth Division of the Anhui Army.

The 4th Division of the Central Army of the Anhui Army is the same as the immortal Xiaoqiang. In the previous battles with the Feng Army, this 4th Division has brought a lot of casualties to the Feng Army, but also suffered heavy losses. It lost the supplementary brigade in Jinling. Later, in a series of small-scale battles in Huzhou and Hangzhou, the Fourth Division served as Duan Qi Rui's most capable troops have repeatedly served as heavy responsibilities and successfully covered the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops of the Anhui army to southern Zhejiang. In the process, the Fourth Division has lost thousands of people.

This is not that Duan Qirui wants to use his main fourth division as a broken force, but that other troops are really useless. He has to push those provincial army troops up. As a result, they are either completely annihilated and captured, or turn around and run away.

This situation has happened many times. The first division, second division, ninth division and tenth division of Liangjiang are all so missing, and the fourth division of Liangjiang is more exemplary. The fourth division of Liangjiang fled all the way south from Shanghai, Jiaxing, Hangzhou and Ningbo, and was chased by the Feng army all the way. , there is no resistance at all. After running to Taizhou, the main force can still be preserved, which is a military miracle.

Since these provincial troops are unreliable, Duan Qirui does not intend to expect them to be annihilated. If they are sent to annihilate, it is better to step back down and reorganize, hoping to restore certain combat effectiveness in subsequent battles.

Due to the terrain restrictions in southern Zhejiang and the tenacious resistance of the Fourth Division of the Feng army, the Feng army's offensive suddenly slowed down after entering the Jinhua area.

Because it was impossible to see the possibility of a quick battle, the combat headquarters of the Feng army also became cautious when formulating the follow-up combat plan, and began to deliberately let the flanks of the Fourth Army and the Second Army cover each other to avoid being alone.

However, although the follow-up strategy has become cautious, it still cannot stop the overall offensive of the Feng army to the south.

On July 23, after a long-distance attack by Gu Lanyu's third division of the Feng army, it finally arrived at Nanchang, a political, military and economic town in the hinterland of Jiangxi.

Subsequently, with the cooperation of the 18th Brigade of the 9th Division, another unit of the Fourth Army, officially launched a large-scale attack on Nanchang.

In order to defend Wuchang and Guangxinfu and other places, Duan Qirui gathered all the troops that could be taken out, including the four old troops of the 2nd Mixed Brigade of the Central Army, the Eighth Division of Liangjiang, the 11th Division of Liangjiang and the 12th Division of Liangjiang, as well as the emergency formation of the 13th Division of Liangjiang.

In terms of unit numbers alone, the troops deployed by the Anhui army on the front line of Wuchang and Guangxin have exceeded one mixed brigade and four Liangjiang infantry divisions, but these troops are in a very bad state.

After the two battles of the Central Army, the second mixed brigade lost more than half of the battles of Dangtu and Jinling. In the future, although Duan Qirui tried his best to restore the combat effectiveness of the second mixed brigade, it only restored the scale of 10,000 people. More importantly, half of these 10,000 were recruits, and the quality of the new recruits, whether in the Feng army or the Anhui army, That's all obvious.

The second mixed brigade is not in good condition, and the other four Liangjiang infantry divisions are not good enough to go there. Although the Eighth Division of Liangjiang has been formed in the first half of last year and has also undergone many battles with the Southern Federation, its combat effectiveness is still not comparable to the main forces in the Feng army and Anhui armies. The strength of this eighth division is 13,000. There are more than a thousand, but the artillery is only two battalions.

The troops with the higher number of the 8th Division are the same. The other 11th Division, 12th Division and 13th Division of Liangjiang knew that they were newly formed at a glance.

Among them, the 11th Division of Liangjiang was organized in Nanchang, formerly known as the Jiangxi Army. There were newly recruited soldiers and surrendered Southern Federal soldiers. Last year, when Duan Qirui reformed the military system, he was organized into this division, but its combat effectiveness was quite limited, with less than 10,000 troops, and only one area of artillery battalions.

The predecessor of the 12th Division of Liangjiang was a mixed brigade of Guangdong. The soldiers are all surrendered by the Southern Federation, and not only the soldiers, but also the officers below the middle level. It is not an outwe-ofable to say that it has always been a Southern Federation force. There are only more than 8,000 troops in this army, and the artillery battalion is estimated to fight. A regiment of the Fourth Division of the Wan Army can chase them.

The 13th Division of Liangjiang is an emergency newly formed unit. The soldiers are all good families who are expropriated. They have the demeanor of the 7th Division of Liangjiang at the beginning, but it took only two months. It can be said that even the most basic training has not been completed, and the equipment and weapons are also extremely scarce. Guns are The Type 88 rifle produced by Guangdong Arsenal is made of more than 20 guns, which can be imagined.