Chiang Kai-shek had three trips to the wilderness in his lifetime, in 1927, 1931 and 1949. One thing that these three times have in common is that the Gui clan was involved in it, especially the third time after the Battle of Huaihai, which was basically run by the Gui clan.
Judging from the time node, Chiang Kai-shek's rule in the Kuomintang in the first two times was not yet stable, and there were many opposition forces inside and outside the party, so it was really a helpless move to go to the field. However, by 1949, he had been painstakingly operating for more than ten years, and his power was unparalleled in the Kuomintang, so why could the Gui clan still push him out of power?
On this issue, we can understand the strength of the Gui clan after the three major battles!
In fact, in the history of the Republic of China, the Gui clan had the opportunity to reach the peak of power, and on April 12, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek launched a counter-revolutionary coup, and soon after announced the establishment of a new government in Nanjing, in opposition to Wang Jingwei's Wuhan government, which made Chiang Kai-shek the target of public criticism.
On June 23, Wang Jingwei appointed Tang Shengzhi as the "commander-in-chief of the Eastern Crusade Army" and launched a major attack on Nanjing. In order to block this offensive, Chiang Kai-shek urgently drew troops from the Xuzhou front to return to the defense, but this left Xuzhou's troops empty.
Sun Chuanfang, a warlord of his immediate lineage who had already defeated Shandong, saw the opportunity to counterattack, occupied Xuzhou, and then marched along the Jinpu Road to Nanjing.
When the two strong enemies attacked, Chiang Kai-shek was at a loss for words, so he had to return to Nanjing to convene a meeting of important party, government, and military officials, hoping to discuss a solution. At the meeting, Chiang Kai-shek hoped that the Gui clan would send troops to fight against Tang Shengzhi and continue the Northern Expedition after taking Wuhan.
However, Bai Chongxi directly refused, and the Gui clan was thinking of peace talks with Wuhan at that time, repelling Sun Chuanfang and making other plans.
Such an answer surprised Chiang Kai-shek, and in anger, he threatened to resign and wanted the Gui clan to back down, but Bai Chongxi directly said: At this time, in order to unite the party and take into account the overall situation, it is better for the commander-in-chief to leave.
Among the people attending the meeting, only four people spoke with weight, in addition to Jiang and Bai, there were also Li Zongren and He Yingqin. Needless to say, Li Zongren must have been out of his nose with Bai Chongxi, and He Yingqin, an important figure of the Huangpu clan, silently approved of the Gui clan's forced palace at this time.
He Yingqin's idea is very realistic, at present, old Jiang is embattled, this shaky ship may not be overturned at any time, instead of sinking, it is better to change his position. As soon as Old Jiang leaves, the core of Huangpu will be He Yingqin, so he will make such a choice.
On August 13, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek announced his resignation, and the military and political power of the Nanjing government was handed over to Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, He Yingqin, and others. The Gui clan immediately negotiated peace with Wuhan, and Tang Shengzhi stopped moving east.
Now that the Nanjing government has become its own, the Gui clan has begun to work hard. In the face of Sun Chuanfang's 11 divisions plus 6 mixed brigades, Li and Bai personally commanded the front line, and finally repelled the enemy after six days of bloody fighting.
After solving the foreign enemy, the Nanjing government and the Wuhan government announced the merger, which is known in history as the "Ninghan Confluence".
However, how could Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi be willing to share the power that was hard to obtain? On October 20, they dismissed Tang Shengzhi from his post on the charge of "collaborating with the enemy and rebelling against the party" and organized a western expedition to conquer Wuhan.
Jiang and Wang both went, and the Gui clan seemed to have reached the top, but the repeated conquests caused heavy casualties to the troops, and the soldiers who fought Sun Chuanfang in Guangxi paid nearly 8,000 casualties, and the capture of Wuhan caused the three armies to sink into two lakes.
In this way, the Gui clan was unable to take care of the southeast anymore, and although He Yingqin had prestige in the Huangpu clan, Gu Zhutong, Liu Zhi, and other people who became military commanders were all diehards of old Chiang Kai-shek, so He Yingqin finally issued a telegram inviting Chiang Kai-shek to come out of the mountains.
On January 4, 1928, Chiang Kai-shek returned to Nanjing to resume his duties, and since then he has always held a grudge against the Gui clan and tried his best to attack Li, Bai and others.
In March 1929, the Jiang-Gui War broke out, and three months later the Gui clan was defeated and its power was seriously weakened. In 1930, the Central Plains War broke out, Chiang Kai-shek's Central Army won again, and the Gui clan was comprehensively suppressed.
After these several battles, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi also knew that they were temporarily invincible to Chiang Kai-shek, so they also lay dormant for a while and did not dare to expand their troops. According to data at the time, in July 1933, the 7th and 15th armies under the Gui clan had a total of more than 29,000 people, less than 30,000.
It can be seen that the Gui clan is still afraid of arousing Chiang Kai-shek's jealousy.
It was not until July 1936, when Li Zongren was appointed director of the Guangxi Appeasement Office, announcing reconciliation with Nanjing, that the Gui clan began to gradually expand its military strength.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Chiang Kai-shek temporarily relaxed his control over various forces in response to the Japanese attack, and the Gui clan was expanded into the 11th Group Army and the 21st Group Army to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance, and by 1938 there were 160,000 people.
Throughout the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Gui clan contributed a lot of power, and at the same time gained a lot of power, like the Fifth Theater of Operations where Li Zongren was the commander and the Dabie Mountain area were all extended into the hands of the Gui clan, and by the time of Japan's surrender in 1945, the Gui clan had more than 240,000 people.
This kind of strength naturally aroused Chiang Kai-shek's displeasure, so the old Chiang Kai-shek began to secretly attack the Gui clan, on the one hand, Li Zongren was transferred to such a famous and powerless post as "director of the North Parallel Battalion" and Bai Chongxi was transferred to such a prestigious and powerless post; on the other hand, he began to drastically reduce the Gui army, and the 31st Army, the 16th Group Army, and the 84th Army were withdrawn successively.
Chiang Kai-shek's reasoning was that "the War of Resistance has been won, the country should rest and recuperate, and it does not need so many troops," and Li and Bai dared not speak out.
Although Bai Chongxi is the minister of national defense, the real power is in the hands of Chen Cheng, the chief of staff. In 1946, chen Cheng, at the behest of Chiang Kai-shek, only gave the guizhou 7th division, the 46th division, and the 48th division the number of three reorganized divisions, and at the same time, Guangxi, the headquarters of the Guizhou army, was only allowed to retain 10 local security regiments and 5 special battalions, adding up to less than 100,000 people.
After such a rectification, the strength of the Gui clan was greatly damaged, so it would disappear in the early stage of the Liberation War.
Chiang Kai-shek was still uneasy about the only three reorganized divisions of the Gui clan, and adhered to the idea of "killing the enemy to eliminate troubles, killing friendly troops to quell civil unrest" and throwing them all into the East China Battlefield, and the entire 46th Division was destroyed in the Battle of Laiwu.
It was not until July 1947 that the Gui family ushered in a turnaround. At that time, Liu Deng's army advanced into the Dabie Mountains, and Chiang Kai-shek was horrified and quickly dispatched 33 integrated brigades to besiege him. Because he could not find a suitable commander for a while, Lao Jiang let Bai Chongxi take charge.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Bai Chongxi dispatched three reorganized divisions of the Gui clan to leave the East China battlefield and formed Zhang Gan's Third Corps, which was a very important step for the Gui clan, at least to retain the seeds. Of course, it was 1948 that was the year of further growth.
In April 1948, Li Zongren was elected vice president of the Republic of China, and Chiang Kai-shek was very displeased. In order to avoid a situation in which the two giants of Li and Bai were both powerful in Nanjing, Lao Jiang appointed Bai Chongxi as the commander-in-chief of the "Suppression General" in central China on June 1 and sent him to Wuhan.
Because this move was far from the center of power, Bai Chongxi was initially very reluctant, and on June 11, he resigned as the commander-in-chief of the "Suppression General" and ran to Shanghai in a negative mood, and it was Huang Shaohu who persuaded Li Zongren to take power inside, he could take charge of the army outside, and the Gui clan inside and outside was bound to be strong, which made Bai Chongxi change his mind and officially take office in Hankou on the 28th.
Of course, Chiang Kai-shek was not so kind enough to let the Gui clan grasp the military power, and the "Suppression General" in central China at that time had three corps under its jurisdiction, the third, twelfth, and fourteenth corps, and except for the third corps, the other troops Bai Chongxi could not command at all. Moreover, there was also a Huangpu Phase I Song Xilian who served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the "Suppression General" in central China.
This situation is somewhat similar to Fu Zuoyi's "suppression of the general" in North China, where Chiang Kai-shek's heavy troops gathered in the vicinity of the left and were not at all afraid that Bai Chongxi would cause trouble.
The idea is good, but over time, everything is different. After the Battle of Huaihai began, Huang Wei led the 12th Corps to support, while a large part of Song Xilian's 14th Corps was from the Sichuan Army, not the Central Army. As a result, the 3rd Corps of the Gui Clan was transformed into one of the few armed forces in central China.
Based on this strength, Bai Chongxi wantonly installed cronies in important positions in central China, and then co-opted Chen Mingren's First Corps, which was rebuilt in Wuhan, and basically controlled central China.
As the main forces of the Central Army were eliminated one by one, Bai Chongxi's ambitions were further expanded, and he contacted Cheng Qian, chairman of Hunan Province, Zhang Yun, chairman of Henan Province, and others to attack Chiang Kai-shek, asking the old Chiang Kai-shek to "resolutely retire and show his statesmanship."
Bai Chongxi controlled nearly 300,000 regular troops at that time, and almost all of Chiang Kai-shek's main forces were lost, so Bai Chongxi, who had been suppressed for so many years, became more and more rude in his telegram to chiang kai-shek: make a clear decision on the issue of personal advance and retreat, and avoid making mistakes in peace negotiations.
Chiang Kai-shek did not want to retreat, but he could not but retreat, because he found that the Americans did not seem to be on his side anymore.
At the end of 1948, U.S. Ambassador to China Stuart Layden, Military Adviser Chief Bada-David, and others all wrote to the White House, concluding that Chiang Kai-shek had lost the hearts of the people and that if he did not want the Nanjing government to fail so early, he should turn to supporting Li Zongren.
In his dialogue with Sun Ke, Stuart Leiden even bluntly said: The only way out for the Nanjing government is to negotiate peace with the Communist Party, and Chiang Kai-shek's descent into the wilderness is the prerequisite for peace talks.
Originally, Chiang Kai-shek had already suffered enough headaches from defeat on the battlefield, and there was still entanglement within the party, so he was anxious in his heart, and at a party he angrily said: My wish to go to the wilderness is not because of the Communist Party, but because of a certain faction in my party. It goes without saying which faction Old Jiang is referring to.
On January 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to step down, and Li Zongren immediately took over the Nanjing government as "acting president", 22 years after the first control of the center in 1927.
Originally, the reason for forcing Chiang Kai-shek to go down was peace talks, but after the Gui clan came to power, they were no longer willing to sincerely negotiate peace, and they began to desperately expand their armaments and did not care about negotiations.
Li Zongren said at a meeting: We have no problem staying in Shanghai for 6 months to a year. Bai Chongxi was even more arrogant, saying that the Gui clan was born to fight guerrillas, and could not go up the mountain to fight guerrilla warfare with the CCP again.
With such a perception, coupled with Chiang Kai-shek's behind-the-scenes obstruction, how can the two sides talk closely.
Our party has still made great efforts for peace, and to postpone the crossing of the river in the face of the momentum of the whole army is to show sincerity, and during the negotiations, our party also stated that as long as the Gui clan does not obstruct the reunification of the country, they do not attack, and our army will not attack each other. If Bai Chongxi is willing to lead the army, he can still let him take the 300,000 soldiers under his command after the founding of the country.
This is the end of benevolence. Unfortunately, under the pressure of the Kuomintang, the negotiations ultimately failed.
On April 20, the People's Liberation Army launched the Battle of the Crossing River, and the Yangtze River defense line, which the Kuomintang thought was "impregnable", collapsed in an instant, and the Gui army was devastated in the subsequent Battle of Hengbao.
In December 1949, guangxi was liberated, the Gui family was completely reimbursed, and Bai Chongxi, who became the commander of the light pole, was lured to Taiwan and eventually died a little strangely. Li Zongren first went overseas, chose to return to China in 1965, and settled in Beijing in his later years, which can be regarded as seeing the aspirations of the people.
The Gui clan is an important political and military force in China's modern history, during the Northern Expedition and the War of Resistance Against Japan, it was still meritorious to the country, but under the general trend of the Liberation War, it did not conform to the trend, resulting in an increase in many unnecessary casualties, and some should not.