The Survival Wisdom of the Beiyang Era (307): People are like Qiu Hong.
In the summer of the sixteenth year of Beiyang, the remnants of the Feng Army, the Lu Army, and Sun Chuanfang engaged in a tug-of-war with the Southern Army on the Jingpu Line. The Feng army also divided its troops to the north and east to support the southern army's offensive, and did not forget to send Fang Zhenwu, Yue Weijun, and Fan Zhongxiu to attack Nanyang. The Beiyang Army of Yu Xuezhong's troops stationed in Deng County and Nanyang was already the only remaining man and horse of a generation of "jade marshals" Wu Peifu, who had earlier traveled south from Dengfeng, and was still attacked by the Red Gun Society along the way, and it was difficult to retreat to Nanyang, and the Feng army had already tracked it down. Wu Peifu left his guard, a brigade of men and horses under Lou Yunhe's command, in Nanyang to help defend the city, and personally went to Deng County, Where Yu Xuezhong's garrison, met with him, hoping that the old department could join the Nanyang Town Guard, Ma Wende's men and horses, to take the northern Anhui Province, and retreat to Shandong to meet Sun Chuanfang and others before making plans.
However, Yu Xuezhong refused to accept this order, and was forced to refuse bluntly due to the affection of the "Jade Marshal", so he took the initiative to resign, and the hearts of his men and horses began to disperse, so the troops were handed over to the brigade commanders to make their own living. At the same time, Ma Wende's troops stationed in Nanyang also defected, and Ma Wende was captured and executed, and Wu Peifu had to collect the remaining men and horses and retreat to northern Hubei. On July 2 of that year, when Wu Peifu led his troops to the ash shop in Xinye County, the local squires who had received the news came to Wu Yushuai's residence and asked Wu Peifu to write a couplet. Wu Peifu resigned, but had to order his men and horses to camp and write couplets for the squires themselves. However, from early morning to afternoon, more than a hundred paintings had not yet been written, and the staff member Zhang Qiyong had no patience to continue to wait, worried that Feng Jun's pursuit of the soldiers would arrive, so he took a few guards on horseback to explore the way first.
After that, Fang Cai left the camp and walked more than ten miles, and Zhang Qipeng was ambushed by the local Red Gun Society and shot and killed. Wu Peifu was very sad after learning the news, and then continued to the south, and found three small boats at the zhutiaopu ferry, but the people and horses had not yet finished crossing, and suddenly there was a loud gunshot behind them. Zhang Liansheng's troops, who were originally stationed in Xiangfan, had already defected and wanted to capture Wu Ligong and sent cavalry to intercept it. Wu Peifu's guards covered Yu Shuai's retreat in panic, and most of the men and horses began to collapse, except for about 500 people on the north shore who were captured in battle, Wu Peifu had to lead more than 200 people to retreat to Nanzhang overnight. Later, he took Baokang, Xingshan and other places to Badong, and the Sichuan warlord Yang Sen admired it for a long time and sent someone to welcome Wu Peifu to move to the White Emperor City.
Eventually, Wu Peifu's remnants in Henan, such as Kou Yingjie and Tian Weiqin, defected to the Feng warlords, Jin Yunlu and Liu Zhenhua. If Wu Peifu had not stayed in Xinye for a long time to write couplets for the squires, the backbone of his unit could still follow around, but after this setback, Wu Peifu lost the only remaining people and horses, and the former joint marshal of the fourteen provinces was now a lonely man, and the comeback became an illusion of longing and unattainability. As a rare talent among the Beiyang warlords, Wu Peifu's scribe style is by no means selling fame and reputation, otherwise the squire would not have spontaneously come to ask for words, but for the advice of his confidant Zhang Qiyong, Wu Peifu's true disposition has become a drag, burying not only his own future, but also destroying the last hope of the direct warlords. With the counterattack of Sun Chuanfang, the king of the southeast, and the defeat of Wu Peifu to the White Emperor City, Beiyang no longer had the time to chase deer by the direct warlords.