Chapter 348 Tragic Liangjiang First Brigade

Seven or eight miles north of Dingyuan County, Duan Qirui, like the ordinary soldiers under his command, marched on foot on long military boots, and behind him were more than a dozen senior officers of the Anhui army. Behind these people, there were naturally personal guards and adjutants leading everyone's horses.

These dozens of horses can be used as mounts of senior generals such as Duan Qirui. Naturally, they are first-class tall horses. In an army, the best horses are not the horses of cavalry, but the mounts of senior generals and messengers. It's just that Duan Qirui and others' mounts were gasping and sweating at this time. Obviously, they had just gone through a sprint.

Duan Qirui, who walked in front of him, did not care that the long barrel of ordnance was stained with dirt and slowly dust on the road, but said to Zhang Yongcheng beside him while walking: "The supplementary brigade should have reached a fixed distance now!"

Zhang Yongcheng said, "The supplementary brigade set out half a day earlier than other troops. In addition, they don't have too much delay, and the speed of the march is still relatively fast. If nothing unexpected happens, it should have arrived at Dingyuan now!

And after we arrived at Dingyuan, did we have a short rest for half a day and marched for a few days? The brothers' physical energy consumption was very great!"

Duan Qirui shook his head: "It's okay to take a few hours of rest, but after a long time, I'm afraid the third division will catch up. When we rest, Gu Lanyu won't rest!"

Zhang Yongcheng couldn't help frowning when he heard Gu Lanyu's name: "This Gu Lanyu, just like a fur dog, can't be dumped!"

Duan Qirui didn't think so: "What's so strange about this? We can abandon some of the heavy and light troops. Naturally, they can do it. And the faster they chase, the faster they are. Yesterday, there were more than 20 kilometers away, and now it has been shortened to about 15 kilometers. I don't think they bring too much heavy troops. March lightly and chase us!"

"In this case, we will keep watching them get closer to us?" Zhang Yongcheng wondered, "Is it okay to let the cavalry delay their pace, even for a few hours!"

"Although our cavalry regiment is larger than the Feng army's cavalry regiment, it is difficult for thousands of cavalry to delay the third division. In addition, our fourth cavalry regiment cannot be used easily, otherwise how can we control the surrounding situation?" Duan Qirui did not intend to let the cavalry regiment delay the Third Division of the Feng Army.

This fourth cavalry regiment is the only large-scale cavalry unit under him. The cavalry units in the southern provinces have been extremely rare since the pre-Qing Dynasty. Although Duan Qirui has expanded a large number of infantry troops after control of the two rivers, and even artillery units have also expanded a lot, but this cavalry force The expansion is difficult at this time. During the war, he could not get enough horses from the northern provinces on a large scale. There is no way to expand the cavalry without horses.

Although many war horses were collected from the defeated army of the Southern Federation when they went south of the two rivers, the number is also very limited, most of which are used to supplement the war damage of the fourth cavalry regiment. As for other troops, only the second mixed brigade has a cavalry battalion with more than 200 horses, while the other Liangjiang army, Zhejiang The Jiang Provincial Army or something basically has no cavalry, and there are only a hundred riders, dozens of riders.

Before this cavalry fought with the Feng army, all the cavalry of the Anhui army was only more than 1,600 (excluding officers riding horses), which was not even as large as the 19th town under Zhao Erxun's command in the Southern Federation, and the 19th town was under the jurisdiction of a whole cavalry association. There are nearly 3,000 cavalry, and all Hui cavalry are recruited. The combat effectiveness cannot be underestimated. At least Wu Fengling's cavalry unit, that is, the second cavalry regiment of the Second Division, suffered a lot of losses under Zhao Erxun's cavalry.

Limited by geographical factors, there are only three of the many warlords in China that have more cavalry. The first one is Fengjun, then Zhao Erxun's 19th town, and the direct army that has been destroyed.

Although the direct army before the destruction was not organized into a cavalry brigade, the 1st Division, 7th Division, 11th Division and 12th Mixed Brigade of the direct army all had a complete cavalry regiment, that is to say, they had a total of four cavalry regiments and a cavalry battalion before the Feng army entered the customs. It is worth noting that their cavalry regiment is far more than the Feng army's cavalry regiment. Unlike the Feng army's Western-style Dalian small regiment system, they still follow the small battalion regiment system of the Beiyang standing army era, and each cavalry regiment has thousands of horses. The total number of direct cavalry units of the 4th Regiment and 1st Battalion reached more than 4,000, which was the second largest cavalry force after the Feng army at the beginning.

As for the Feng army, there are more. On the eve of entering the customs, there are two cavalry brigades, three division cavalry regiments, three mixed brigades of cavalry companies, and a number of patrol cavalry battalions in the patrol force, with a total number of cavalry of more than 8,000 cavalry, but the loss of cavalry in the battle is also relatively large, of which the second cavalry brigade is due to the attack on the Shi family. Zhuang, although he has created a military initiative of marching more than 300 kilometers in a short period of time, many horses have been killed and injured. Now the second cavalry brigade fighting in Jiangbei is said to be a cavalry brigade, but in fact it has become a foot cavalry, and the total number of remaining war horses will not exceed 800. This is still the case that Duolun supplemented the captured the war horses. If there is no prisoner's war horse, the second cavalry brigade will probably have no war horse.

However, although the second cavalry brigade was seriously damaged, the overall scale of the cavalry of the Feng army is still rising rapidly. Although it has accepted a large number of cavalry horses of the direct army and the cavalry troops under Wang Ruxian, Zhang Huaizhi and other places in Henan, Shandong and other places, the existing cavalry scale of the Feng army has exceeded 12,000. Ride.

Different from the Feng army with many cavalry, although the total strength of the Anhui army is also as high as more than 100,000, their cavalry is extremely small, and there is only one fourth cavalry regiment and the second cavalry battalion.

This small-scale cavalry has an extremely important combat mission. They want to open the way for the army and provide the surrounding military intelligence for the army. They are Duan Qirui's eyes in this war, so he does not want to risk this fourth cavalry regiment before he has to.

So Duan Qirui rejected Zhang Yongcheng's proposal!

Anyway, it will take time for Gu Lanyu to catch up. By the time they catch up, they may have arrived in Chuzhou, and the first mixed brigade of the Liangjiang Army on the north bank of Jinling is already going north to Chuzhou to prepare to receive the fourth division. At that time, with the response of the first mixed brigade of the Liangjiang Army, his own After replenishing ammunition, food and other materials, the fourth division will be able to recover its combat effectiveness in its heyday in a short time. At that time, Gu Lanyu's third division, which did not carry artillery and other heavy troops, will catch up, and it may not matter who will fight.

So Duan Qirui simply gave up the idea of sending broken troops to intercept the Third Division of the Feng Army, but only ordered the remnants of the First Brigade of the Liangjiang Army to continue to resist.

Under Duan Qirui's order, the fourth division continued to run south. After arriving in Dingyuan County, it only rested for half a night. The next day, before dawn, the fourth division began to bury the pot to make rice, and then set off again as soon as it was clear.

This made Gu Lanyu, who was chasing behind, very depressed. No matter how you are, Duan Qirui is as virtuous as Wang Zhanyuan. There is a powerful fourth division that doesn't even stop it, and he knows how to escape.

Under depression, Gu Lanyu could only vent his anger on the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army again. The next afternoon in Dingyuan County, the 5th Brigade led by Kong Guanbei of the 3rd Division once again beat the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army. More than 1,000 left were left to escape south, and the others were killed and injured. There are not many. Most of them are scattered, and some of them simply surrender in place if they really don't want to continue to escape.

Speaking of which, the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army is actually really unlucky!

When fighting in Xuzhou, the first brigade was defeated once in Xiao County. Then, after the Anhui army fled south and was defeated twice by the third division in Bengbu and Fengyang County. Now it has finally escaped to Dingyuan County and was defeated by the third division again.

And it is also strange that the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army can collect the remnants in a short time after being defeated, and the interesting thing is that every time they are defeated, the casualties are not large. After several collapses, there are still more than 3,000 people left when they fled to Dingyuan.

This kind of organization is unimaginable even for strong forces such as the 4th and 3rd Divisions of the Central Army.

However, it was defeated one after another. The first brigade of the Liangjiang Army had been completely lost its temper. When it was in Dingyuan County, it saw Kong View North's Fifth Brigade coming to attack, and it did not even have the courage to resist. It directly collapsed and left more than 800 prisoners for the Feng army.

It is not accurate to say that the prisoners were captured, because they had no resistance at all, so they abandoned their guns and surrendered directly in the city. Nima fled hundreds of kilometers south from Xuzhou, and this first brigade is still the last unit, which has been chased by the Feng army, which is a serious blow to military morale. Seriously, it is impossible to escape anyway. As for being a deserter after the collapse, to be honest, it is not the best choice for many soldiers.

In the domestic war in the past year, there are still not many deserters in the major warlord forces, because if they can't be beaten, those officers may still have all kinds of worries, but for ordinary soldiers, surrender is the best choice.

Why? Because they are here to be soldiers, they don't care who to serve as soldiers. These ordinary soldiers don't have much concept of loyalty. Anyway, they eat food as soldiers. There is not much difference between being a soldier for Duan Qirui and being a soldier for Zhao Dongyun.

In addition, whether it is the Feng army or the Anhui army, they are more welcome to the enemy's surrender soldiers. Generally speaking, whether they are willing to surrender or captured, as long as they are willing to join them, they will basically accept it. Therefore, surrender has little impact on ordinary soldiers to tell the truth.

For example, many Anhui soldiers accepted by the Feng Army in the Battle of Northern Jiangsu. In fact, many of these soldiers were soldiers of the Southern Federal Army at the beginning. After Duan Qirui defeated many troops of the Southern Federation, he integrated these soldiers of the former Southern Federation into the Liangjiang Army. However, After these troops were defeated by the Feng army, they were absorbed into the Feng army.

Although thousands of people have escaped from the First Brigade of the First Division of the Liangjiang Army after the First World War, it has basically completely lost its combat effectiveness.

However, even if the First Brigade of the First Division of the Liangjiang Army performed quite garbage in the three battles of Bengbu, Fengyang and Dingyuan, in the eyes of Duan Qirui, they have completed their task.

blocked the Third Division for at least two days, and only two days seemed to be short. However, it was quite good for the retreat of the Fourth Division. In the meantime, the distance between the Fourth Division and the Third Division was at least several tens of kilometers. Even if the Third Division marched lightly later, it was difficult to shorten this distance.

However, Duan Qirui obviously did not expect that Gu Lanyu's determination to pursue them would not give up because of the obstruction of a Fifth Brigade of the Liangjiang Army.

After taking Dingyuan County, the fifth brigade in Kongview North only hurriedly rested for three hours, and then set out again. Their goal was still the fourth division!

As you chased me from the Fourth Division and the Third Division, Chuzhou was already in sight. At this time, through the light and urgent march, even day and night march, the exhausted Third Division finally caught up with the tail of the Fourth Division.

Gu Lanyu looked at the fourth division in the distance in the telescope, and his face was full of fatigue. He couldn't help showing excitement: "After chasing for so many days, I finally caught up!"