The term warlord first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, and it is recorded in the New Book of Tang: "Guo Qianwan, a native of Licheng, Qizhou, was a warlord at the beginning of the Kaiyuan Dynasty. After that, the warlords were described as those military organizations that used military means to divide one side and master local administrative and judicial education institutions, in fact, whenever a dynasty came to an end, there would be a group of warlords, such as the Three Kingdoms of Wei Shu and Wu at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms in the late Tang Dynasty, Chen Youyi in the late Yuan Dynasty, Han Shantong, Zhu Yuanzhang and other rebels, etc. The closest to us is undoubtedly the Beiyang warlords of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.
In 1903, the Qing Dynasty established 36 town-level new armies in the country modeled on the Beiyang Army, but these new armies gradually became warlords, of which the three branches of the direct line, the Feng family, and the Anhui family were the most powerful. When it comes to Beiyang warlords, many people will think of some warlord leaders collaborating with the enemy to commit treason, oppressing the people, and creating turmoil. However, not all warlords are villains, and some warlords still have dignity and backbone in the face of major issues of right and wrong, such as the Gui warlord Li Zongren and so on. In China's Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, there is a warlord of the Republic of China known as a national hero.
The warlord's name was Long Yun, a native of En'an, Yunnan, and belonged to the ethnic minority Yi. Long Yun was born on November 19, 1884, when long yun's father died when he was six years old, Long Yun followed his mother to his uncle's house, which made him conditional to learn martial arts under the samurai Ma Desheng. In the process of learning martial arts, Long Yun and his cousin Lu Han met Zou Ruoheng by chance, and the three of them met Jinlan as they were, and became known as the Three Musketeers of Shaotong.
In 1911, Long Yun officially joined the army and joined the Wei HuanZhang Department of the Baolu Army, and in the same year joined the Aid Chuan dian army, serving as a captain under Xie Ruyi. The following year, Long Yun and Lu Han entered the Yunnan Daowu Hall together to learn cavalry combat, and after graduation, they served as platoon leaders in the independent battalion. Long Yun then followed Tang Jiyao to join Cai Yi's patriotic movement against Yuan Shikai, and Long Yun also became a vanguard general under Tang Jiyao. Long Yun also assisted Tang Jiyao in developing his own power in yunnan.
As the leader of the Warlords of the Yunnan Clan, Tang Jiyao established education and development industry in Yunnan, making indelible contributions to the people's livelihood and modernization in Yunnan. However, in his later years, Tang Jiyao was dazed and began to collude with Wu Peifu to resist the revolution. Tang Jiyao's behavior caused dissatisfaction among his subordinates, and in 1927, Long Yun joined forces with three other town guards to launch a military advisory, Tang Jiyao stepped down, and two years later Long Yun became the successor of Tang Jiyao's clique.
In the 1930s, Longyun had taken some detours, but after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Longyun finally chose a correct path. After the 1937 Falugou Bridge Incident in Japan, it began to invade China in an all-round way, and Long Yun began to mobilize the entire Yunnan forces to join the anti-Japanese army. At that time, Long Yun mobilized the financial resources of the whole of Yunnan to purchase weapons from foreign arms dealers to train the army, and then transferred these new-style troops to the southern provinces to participate in the anti-Japanese movement.
In August 1937, in order to invade China, Japan blockaded important coastal ports in China and prevented other countries from transporting military supplies for China, and Long Yun received an order to build the Burma Road within one year. The border between Yunnan and Myanmar is full of primeval forests and mountains, but Longyun only took 9 months to build a 959.4-kilometer Yunnan Burma Highway, during which Longyun mobilized more than 200,000 militiamen, and this road also provided a lot of convenience for the anti-Japanese action in the south.
It is precisely because of these two major events that after Long Yun died of a heart attack in 1962, all sectors of society, especially the people of Yunnan, spontaneously mourned for Long Yun, and Long Yun's ashes were placed in Babaoshan, and Long Yun became the only warlord buried in Babaoshan.