Chapter 299 Situation in Southern Provinces

Yu Tong, the director of the Intelligence Office, continued: "The first and second divisions of the Jiang Army are all organized by the Southern Federation. Although the personnel are full, the equipment is relatively messy, and the combat strength should be comparable to that of the provincial army in the Lu army. However, the predecessor of its Jiangbei mixed brigade was the Jiangbei mixed brigade in the former Qing Dynasty. The department is After the surrender of the Nanjing Campaign, he was incorporated by Duan Qirui. Although he suffered certain losses before, the backbone of the old Beiyang era was in office, with rich combat experience. Although the equipment was relatively lacking, he still had a certain combat effectiveness.

Zhejiang's first mixed brigade was formerly known as the Zhejiang New Army. Last year, it was organized as the 18th town of the Southern Federation. It was once one of the main forces of the Southern Federation, but it was severely damaged by Duan Qirui's fourth division in the battle of Hangzhou. After surrendering, it was adapted by Duan Qirui into the Zhejiang's first mixed brigade and the number of people was less than 2,000, although it has been supplemented with troops and equipment. However, the personnel and equipment are still quite scarce. According to the intelligence, the department has less than 4,000 troops and only four artillery pieces.

In addition, a small number of miscellaneous troops, the intelligence department is limited by its ability to find out one by one, but the total number of remaining chaotic personnel will not exceed 5,000, and the equipment situation is relatively chaotic.

An Yutong's words made others look a little ugly. Duan Qirui actually deployed so many troops to the north to defend in just two months. You know, at this time, Duan Qirui was fighting on two fronts, and he is still fighting in Fujian, Jiangxi and the Southern Federation.

Like Zhao Erxun, Duanfang saw that the Feng army entered the customs and thought it was a godsend opportunity. He searched a lot of troops from Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Fujian, Yungui and other provinces, organized defenses in Xinyu, Fuzhou and other places in central Jiangxi, and also used the mountainous terrain of Fujian to defend, at least Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian at present. It is still in the hands of the Southern Federation.

Although the end of the southern federation could not launch a counterattack against the Anhui army, it was enough to contain tens of thousands of the main troops of the Anhui army. However, Duan Qirui still had room to prevent the Feng army from going south. It can be imagined that Duan Qirui's development speed far exceeded Wang Yingkai and Zhao Dongyun's expectations, although it is not clear that However, the Intelligence Department believes that the Liangjiang Army divisions under Duan Qirui have at least directed the sixth division.

Although the combat effectiveness of these Liangjiang army is still debatable, it is true that there are more than 100,000 troops under Duan Qirui.

Now, while Duan Qirui is fighting in Fujian, Liangjiang and the Southern Federation, he can actually transfer 60,000 to 70,000 people north to resist the Feng army and go south, which shows how fast Duan Qirui's Anhui army is expanding.

If the Feng army hadn't entered the customs, Duan Qirui would have been greatly afraid. If he had begun to transfer troops from Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and other places to the north when the Feng army entered the customs, he would probably have moved to Guangdong and Guangxi by relying on the advantages of the Anhui army.

Especially after the fourth division of Duan Qirui's ace unit was transferred to the north, the pressure of the southern federal troops under Duanfang was greatly reduced. Although they were still defeated, they would not gather tens of thousands of troops as before, and were completely defeated by the fourth division.

To some extent, Zhao Dongyun's entry has greatly eased the pressure of the Southern Federation, so Zhang Zhidong and Duanfang should strictly thank Zhao Dongyun.

Relatively speaking, he is also one of the northern warlords. Zhang Huaizhi, Wang Shizhen, Wang Ruxian and Wu Fengling are much worse than Duan Qirui. Zhang Huaizhi can only get about 30,000 troops in Shandong and Anhui provinces, and now he still has more than half of the main force. They were all lost in Jinan. Zhang Huaizhi, who had no troops, would not end up much better. He was either defeated and annexed by Zhao Dongyun or annexed by Duan Qirui. You know, Duan Qirui is also extremely coveted Anhui, and it is basically impossible to maintain his previous detached status.

Wang Shizhen was also very popular last year and at the beginning of this year, but with the passage of time, he was unable to cross Wuchang on the south bank of the Yangtze River, causing his energy to be dragged to Wuhan for a long time. Taking advantage of the territory in northern Hubei and southern Henan, his expansion speed is extremely limited. More than half a year has passed, but it has just expanded one division after another, with a total strength of less than 50,000.

Moreover, Duan Qirui's expansion is different from Zhang Huaizhi, Wang Ruxian and others. Zhang Huaizhi's army is often formed to draw an old army and then expand it. For example, the second mixed brigade of the Shandong Army, which was previously surrounded and annihilated by the Feng army. The predecessor of the brigade was actually several infantry battalions drawn by the Fifth Division. Although this expansion of the army can accelerate the formation of combat effectiveness, it also has a great impact on the original troops. Due to the scarcity of weapons and equipment and high-quality officers, it is very likely to make the original main forces increasingly mediocre.

However, the absolute main force of the Fourth Division under Duan Qirui's command has not been formed and transferred troops since several battalions last year to form a second mixed brigade. During the southward operation, it has always maintained its original full staffing, and weapons and equipment will be quickly replenished after loss.

The newly expanded troops mainly come from the integrated southern troops and the newly recruited troops. Duan Qirui has defeated 200,000 or 300,000 southern federal troops in Liangjiang. The main composition of the Liangjiang army is actually the prisoners of the Southern Federation. Although Duan Qirui has transferred many officers and backbones from the Fourth Division to the two Jiang's army, but it has not been formed to draw troops from the Fourth Division to expand.

In this way, the combat effectiveness of this fourth division has been excellently preserved. Even with the increase of combat experience and the increase of personnel, technical equipment, the combat effectiveness is stronger than that of Yuan Shikai's era.

And this fourth division belongs to a super unit. In the process of fighting south, Duan Qirui trained a so-called supplementary brigade for the fourth division. This supplementary brigade belongs to the formation of a mixed brigade, so the fourth division has two infantry brigades, a mixed brigade, a fully formed artillery regiment and a thousand-rider scale. The total strength of the cavalry regiment is a reinforced division of more than 20,000.

It can be seen from Duan Qirui, who has been personally serving as the commander of the fourth division, that the fourth division has a weight in the Anhui army.

If the Feng army wants to go south to northern Jiangsu, its first enemy is this fourth division. Although other Anhui troops also have certain combat power, it is far from posing too much threat to the Feng army.

After talking about the situation of the Anhui army in northern Jiangsu, he also talked about the situation in Henan: "In the direction of Henan, Wang Ruxian's remnants are thousands of people sticking to Zhengzhou, but there are also two mixed brigades of Wang Shizhen in Zhengzhou. Together, the current enemy army in Zhengzhou is about 20,000. And we have received information that Wang Shizhen has transferred a large number of troops from the front line of Wuhan to the north. At present, the number of enemy reinforcements is ominous, but the intelligence office is not expected to be less than one division!"

On the Henan front, in fact, Wang Ruxian has been disabled. Although previous battles have failed to surround Wang Ruxian's troops and annihilate them, and can make Wang Ruxian's 8th Division escape every time, after successive wars, Wang Ruxian's 20,000 people have been beaten to this day, and some of them have been killed and injured. , escaped part of it. At present, there are only about 10,000 remnants left. Not to mention their hardware and equipment, morale alone is already very low. Relying on Wang Ruxian's hands, it is absolutely impossible to stop the offensive of Meng Enyuan's first army, which is strong, but the successive reinforcements of Wang Shizhen's troops let him They stabilized their feet. Therefore, the main enemy of the army serving the subsequent battle in Henan is actually not Wang Ruxian, but Wang Shizhen.

After hearing this, Zhao Dongyun suddenly asked, "What about the Southern Federation? What's the situation now?" What is the situation in Jiangxi, Fujian, Wuhan and Shaanxi and Gansu?

Although surprised that Zhao Dongyun will suddenly have problems with the situation of the Southern Federation, although Feng Jun has not directly fought with the Southern Federation at present, the two are naturally enemies, so the Intelligence Department will naturally not ignore the Southern Federation, so the relevant intelligence collection has been maintained, but due to the distance between the two sides Far away, the focus of the previous work of the Intelligence Service has also been on Wang Yingkai, Duan Qirui and others, and the intelligence of the Southern Federation is relatively limited.

An Yutong said: "As far as we know, the Southern Federation currently has two towns commanded by Xiliang in the direction of Fujian, namely the fifth town, the sixth town and the tenth town, with a force of about 40,000 people. In Jiangxi and Hunan, there are the 11th, 12th towns, 16th towns and 17th towns under the command of Duanfang, as well as a number of mixed associations, with troops between 100,000 and 130,000 in the two provinces. In the direction of Hubei, there are about 100,000 troops in the eighth town, 21st town, 32nd town and other forces led by Zhang Zhidong, and the 19th town of Zhao Erxun in the direction of Shaanxi and Gansu.

An Yutong's intelligence about the Southern Federation is a little vague. It's not that he doesn't want to make it clear, but that the intelligence is really limited. In addition, the military numbers of the Southern Federation are relatively chaotic. Last year, there were more than 30 town-level troop numbers of the Southern Federation. As for the mixed associations of various purposes, there are more, sometimes Hundreds of people dare to pull out the number of a mixed association. Less than a thousand people are known as a town, and sometimes more than 20,000 people are also a town, such as Zhao Erxun's 19th town. The source is also quite complicated. There are new troops newly trained, new troops adapted by the former Qing army, and there are also patrol camps and training armies in the pre-Qing Dynasty. , the Green Battalion and other troops, in short, there is a mess of everything. Moreover, the troops of the Southern Federation were often defeated and defeated by the Beiyang troops. After being completely annihilated or defeated, the numbers of many troops disappeared, and then a few days later, a unit of the same number were made elsewhere, which led to the Intelligence Service's judgment of the military strength of the Southern Federation, especially the numbers of the specific troops, quite difficult. Difficult.

So An Yutong can only give a rough number. As for the specific strength, not to mention An Yutong, it is estimated that even Zhang Zhidong and Duanfang themselves do not know.

Many Fengjun generals have a very limited understanding of the Southern Federation. They only know a few well-known Southern Federal forces, such as Zhao Erxun's 19th Town, Zhang Zhidong's 8th Town and 21st Town. As for the rest, they basically have little knowledge.

After listening, Zhao Dongyun turned his head and asked Shi Yanglin: "Do you think the Southern Federation can block the attack of Duan Qiruinan's lower team?"

Shiyanglin said, "It is very difficult. Although Duan Qirui has transferred a number of main troops to the north to deal with us, there are still many troops of the Anhui army in Fujian and Jiangxi. Among them, Jiang Guiti's sixth mixed brigade and Duan Qirui's other direct unit's second mixed brigade are still fighting in Jiangxi, plus its Sooner or later, with the assistance of his Liangjiang Army, he would completely take Jiangxi and then enter Guangdong.

"The situation in Wuhan is better. Although the army under Zhang Zhidong is not strong in combat effectiveness, it also has 100,000, but it has been able to firmly hold Wuchang before, and it is not a big problem to continue to defend it in the future! Wang Shizhen is very difficult to break through the Yangtze River and conquer Wuchang!"

If Wang Shizhen could take Wuchang, he would have fought down long ago. Why did he stay across the Yangtze River across the Yangtze River in Wuchang and Zhang Zhidong for more than half a year?

Zhao Dongyun did not ask any more questions, but pondered. When others saw Zhao Dongyun's situation, they knew that Zhao Dongyun was already thinking about the overall strategy for the future.

And including Fang Biyong and Shi Yanglin, they are all waiting for Zhao Dongyun to make the final strategic decision to lead them to victory one by one, and then unify China.