In late July 1926, the Northern Expeditionary Army swept through Hunan with a stormy and rainy force, quickly conquered Changsha and other places, and the warlord Wu Peifu, who was directly related to the army, burned his eyebrows and sent a sharp telegram to Sun Chuanfang, another warlord who was entrenched in the five southeastern provinces, to ask for help, asking his troops to enter Jiangxi and attack the rear road of the Northern Expeditionary Army.
Jiang Baili offered advice and suggested that the Northern Expeditionary Army should be cut off from the way back
At that time, Sun Chuanfang's military adviser, China's first-class military expert Jiang Baili, gave Sun Jin three strategies: When the Northern Expeditionary Army was fighting with the Wu Army, Sun Surprise invaded from Jiangxi and went all out to occupy Changsha, cutting off the Northern Expeditionary Army's retreat back to Guangdong through Hunan. When the Northern Expeditionary Army entered wuhan, Sun Jun went back to the west of the river and lifted the siege of Wuhan, so that the Wu Army and the Northern Expeditionary Army were in a position south of Wuhan, and Sun Jun waited for action; The next strategy was to concentrate the main force of Sun Jun's army in Jiangxi to wait for work and fight a decisive battle with the Northern Expeditionary Army.
Fortunately, sun Chuanfang, whose ambitions were inflated, did not adopt Jiang Baili's good strategy, and he was bent on occupying the two lakes and expanding his commander-in-chief of the five provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Gansu, Anhui, and Suzhou into seven provinces. However, Wu Peifu was after all the elder of Beiyang and the old boss of Sun Chuanfang, and Sun Chuanfang did not dare to directly seize the territory from Wu Peifu's hands no matter how greedy he was.
It was decided to encircle and annihilate the Northern Expeditionary Army under the city of Wuchang
Therefore, he made up his mind to sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight, and wanted to wait for the Northern Expeditionary Army to defeat Wu Peifu and occupy the two lakes, and then send troops to seize it from the Hands of the Northern Expeditionary Army. On September 7, after annihilating Wu Peifu's elite main forces at the Battles of Tingsi Bridge and Hesheng Bridge, the Northern Expeditionary Army quickly moved north to occupy Hankou and drove directly under the city of Wuchang. After Wu Peifu suffered a crushing defeat, he had to let Sun "the general town of the Yangtze River", which was equivalent to handing over Hubei, Hubei and other central China provinces.
At this time, the Northern Expeditionary Army was intensively besieging Wuchang, and Sun Chuanfang decided to lead his troops to first attack the Cantonese-Han railway from Wuhan to Changsha, cut off its retreat route, and then dispatch the armies of the five southeastern provinces to form a larger encirclement around Wuchang and eliminate the main force of the Northern Expeditionary Army. Once Sun's plan succeeded, the final outcome of the Northern Expedition would be difficult to predict.
Each of his subordinates was pregnant with a ghost fetus and defected one after another
But what Sun Chuanfang did not expect was that the performance of the Northern Expeditionary Army in the early days was too conspicuous, and the Guangdong National Government also showed strong vitality and bright future, and many people within Sun Chuanfang's group began to brew rebellion. Xia Chao, the governor of Zhejiang Province, first turned on the enemy and burned a fire in Sun's backyard, causing the coalition forces to have heavy psychological worries.
After that, Sun Bu's generals either secretly communicated with Chiang Kai-shek and did not move, or they violated the plan to encircle Wuchang, and the troops always moved around in place. On October 10, the isolated defenders of Wuchang were besieged for more than 40 days and surrendered en masse. The Northern Expeditionary Army, which had freed its hands, began to march eastward with all its might, launching a fierce attack on Sun Chuanfang, who was concentrated in Jiangxi.
Sun Chuanfang was unfavorable in several battles, and the Northern Expeditionary Army began to attack Zhejiang from Fujian, in order to avoid being caught between two sides, Sun Chuanfang had to retreat to the area north of the Yangtze River, completely abandoning the rich land in Jiangnan and the Shanghai Arsenal.