On February 16, 1927, the Northern Expeditionary Army captured Hangzhou, and the next day its forward reached Jiaxing and approached Shanghai. Sun Chuanfang's power had become a candle in the wind, and he was forced to make peace with the old enemy of the past, Fengzhi, and planned to lead his troops to withdraw to northern Jiangsu and hand over the territory of the Shanghai-Nanjing front to Zhang Zongchang's Fenglu coalition army to take over.
Just as Sun Jun was retreating and Feng Lujun had not yet arrived, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang District Committees launched a strike of the General League in Shanghai, and on February 19, as soon as the general strike order of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions was issued, it was echoed by 150,000 workers, and by the fourth day, the number of strikers had increased to 360,000. The whole of Shanghai quickly fell into paralysis, and even Nanjing Road, which was usually bustling, was very deserted due to the closure of several major department stores.
Shanghai garrison commander Li Baozhang was originally a brigade commander under Sun Chuanfang, because of his "merits" in suppressing Xia Chao and the shanghai workers' armed uprising, he was able to sit in a new chair, and he did not think that his ass was not hot, he was sent to the first army, and he was immediately angry. He immediately sent a large knife team to patrol the streets everywhere, and these large knife teams were a small group of more than ten people, one of whom held a command arrow in his hand, and the rest of them each held a large knife that was dangling brightly, and whenever they saw people handing out leaflets or shouting slogans, they would be killed in the street.
Once, some people were reading the instruction manual of the staged play at the entrance of the theater, and the big knife team mistakenly thought that they were reading the revolutionary leaflets, rushed up and brandished a knife and slashed, resulting in killing and injuring many people on the spot. There was a hawker in Pudong who shouted "sell big cakes", and the big knife team said that he was shouting the slogan of "defeating the soldiers", and he stabbed him to death with a knife.
The big knife team killed people and was not allowed to collect the corpses, known as "violent corpses showed to the public". At that time, only on the telephone pole near the Zhabei Railway Station, several bloody heads were hung, and the streets of Shanghai were a gloomy and terrifying atmosphere, and pedestrians could not help but change their colors.
Li Baozhang's indiscriminate and indiscriminate killing measures have greatly angered the people of Shanghai. From the second day of the general strike, there were constant incidents of workers seizing weapons from the military and police, and the strike of the General League began to turn into an armed uprising on the third day.
Compared with the first armed uprising, Zhao Shiyan should be said to have made relatively good preparations this time. He specially sent Zhu Yingru, a female worker in the spinning mill and a member of the Communist Party, to spy on the enemy's situation, and told Zhu Yingru how to scout specifically: Don't be serious, but deliberately dress up as a wandering woman, wear slippers on her feet, and smoke cigarettes in her mouth.
Zhu Yingru circled around outside and reported to Zhao Shiyan when he returned. After hearing this, Zhao Shiyan still felt that the investigation was not meticulous enough, and in addition to correcting the posture of holding cigarettes for Zhu Yingru, he once again sent her to inquire everywhere.
At this time, the "Jianwei" and "Jiankang" warships of the Central Navy were moored on the Huangpu River. As in the first uprising, underground party members were developed among the naval soldiers, and Zhao Shiyan sent letters to them, asking them to first control the command of the warships, and then open fire to bombard important military targets in Shanghai, using the sound of artillery as a signal of the uprising.
Wang Shouhua saw the letter and thought that it was very difficult for the underground party in the navy to complete the prescribed tasks and was in danger of losing its head. He said to Zhao Shiyan: "This order is a document of urging orders, and if it succeeds, it is a hero, and if it is not successful, the lives of these comrades will be finished." Zhao Shiyan's attitude was very resolute and decisive: "Revolution, that's it, either we have revolutionized the enemy's life, or the enemy has revolutionized our heads!" ”
Zhao Shiyan (6) serial, to be continued.......