In the Republic of China, there is one army that we may forget, that is, the Yunnan Army, which is controlled by the Yunnan Armed Forces. How can they be called the elite of the country? This title was created by the Yunnan army by relying on flesh and blood, and in Taierzhuang and Burma, punching down one punch after another. Sadly, they seem to have long since been forgotten by the world. Yunnan is located in the central and western parts of China, has always been a place that has not been reclaimed, and the land is mostly brown and acidic.
Nature is not suitable for growing high-yielding grains such as barley and sorghum, but this kind of soil is the favorite of the poppy, and the Dian army relies on charming flowers to feed. The content of maca is high, and the quality of the tobacco soil is comparable to that of high-quality production areas such as India, so the trade volume is large, and the trade exchanges between home and abroad are frequent, so the supply of the army is not a problem. The army is better equipped than the central army and other local armies, and for a while, it is no different.
In terms of regulation, the state's forces were divided into two main categories, field battles and garrisons. In terms of strength, the former is weaker than the latter. As the name suggests, the field combat area is generally a harsh environment outside the field and the national border, which may be a tropical rainforest area or a barren desert land, to fight the enemy, such places can be very good command, so the state attaches great importance to this area. The garrison is the opposite, the combat area is mainly in the city, mainly responsible for the defense of the city.
Generally they are facing the enemy head-on, and obedience to the army is their standard. Just like the guards with swords in front of the court, the kung fu does not have to be high, but it must be from a famous origin. The state attaches great importance to the border defense of Yunnan, so the Yunnan Army has become an important strategic point for attacking the enemy in the Yunnan region. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, France wanted to fight with the Qing Dynasty, and the Sino-French War broke out, and Zuo Zongtang and others spared no effort to invest a large number of advanced weapons to support it, and since then this war has become one of the few wars in which the Chinese side defeated foreign countries.
After the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government began to build new armies in various places, and Yunnan finally established only one army 19 towns, which was the predecessor of the Dian Army. Originally, the army was under the administration of the state, and the state allocated military expenses to take care of their expenses, but because of the revolution, their food problems were up to them to figure out. Yunnan is very depressed, obviously not enough for their army to survive, and they can only rely on the cultivation of "tobacco" to accumulate wealth.
The Yunnan warlord Tang Jiyao initially used taxes to open up the cultivation of "tobacco", he ordered the people to plant poppies in large quantities, taking advantage of the opportunity in exchange for money, in the Patriotic Movement, the army hid opium and sold these, and the money was collected for military pay. Relying on a windfall fortune, Tang Jiyao not only brought the wealth of many regions to Yunnan, he also firmly held the power of the surrounding warlords in his own hands, because he had the tobacco they wanted.
However, judging from the whole incident, it can be clearly seen that Tang Jiyao used unusual methods to raise the army. The opium trade has not been interrupted since the end of the Qing Dynasty, and Tang Jiyao's move is actually self-preservation, expanding the sources of military salaries and expanding armaments. First, the Yunnan region is poor and the mountains and rivers are poor, and the peasants' knowledge level only stays at the level of common sense, and there is no self-judgment to speak of, and if they are used by other warlords, the consequences will be extremely serious. Although the cultivation of opium poppies may cause soil erosion and the production of food that may be reduced when they are wanted to grow them, it guarantees their living standards.
Second, at that time, the central authorities were already unable to protect themselves, and there was no source of stability, so why talk about killing the enemy on the battlefield? Third, Tang Jiyao was ambitious, and he did not want to just live in a corner at all, and it became a must to strengthen the Dian army.