What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Chen Mingren was one of the few nationalist generals who was awarded the rank of general after the uprising.
He and Cheng Qian, who led 70,000 or 80,000 people in Changsha, abandoned the secret and surrendered to the People's Liberation Army, making great contributions to the liberation of Changsha and the liberation of Hunan. Heroes of such an uprising, our army have given him very generous.
However, many people do not know that chen Mingren made a serious mistake during the uprising at that time. Of the 77,000 men and horses in his hands, only 36,000 people eventually followed his uprising, and nearly half of them were turned back by Bai Chongxi. Pulled away more than 40,000 horses?
In July 1948, Cheng Qian was sent to Hunan by Chiang Kai-shek to serve as the chairman of Hunan Province. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to use Cheng Qian's prestige in Hunan to contain and weaken Bai Chongxi's Gui forces.
Cheng Qian was a native of Hunan, born in Hunan, joined the army in Hunan, was quite prestigious in Hunan, and had many contradictions with the Gui clan in his early years, so Chiang Kai-shek chose him to preside over the overall situation in Hunan. It is precisely because Cheng Has the potential for influence in Hunan that after liberation, our army made him the governor of Hunan Province for more than twenty years.
In October of the same year, Chen Mingren was sent to Wuhan as commander of the First Corps. Bai Chongxi also transferred Chen Mingren's First Corps to Hunan in an attempt to get him to control Hunan and contain Cheng Qian. It can be seen from this that there are many factions within the Kuomintang and there are many contradictions.
However, after Chen Mingren arrived in Changsha, he directly visited Cheng Qian, and directly stated that he had come to Changsha to monitor him, and at the same time expressed his willingness to obey Cheng Qian's command. This was something that Chiang Kai-shek and Bai Chongxi did not expect.
The reason why Chen Mingren trusts Cheng Qian so much is because more than twenty years ago, in 1923, when Cheng Qian was the principal of the Sun Yat-sen Army Headquarters Teaching Martial Arts School, he admitted Chen Mingren out of the box, and the friendship between the two teachers and students was very deep.
Cheng Qian has the grace of knowing Chen Mingren, and it is precisely because these two people have such a relationship. In order to plot an uprising against Chen and Cheng, our army dispatched Li Minghao, who was the head of education at the Wushu School, and when Chen Mingren applied for the military academy that year, it was already overdue, and it was Li Minghao who reported to Cheng Qian that he was admitted out of the ordinary.
In June 1949, after many secret consultations between our army and Cheng Qian and others, we initially reached a consensus on the uprising, and asked Cheng Qian and Chen Mingren to write a memorandum to sign it to show their attitude. At that time, Cheng Qian signed without saying a word, and although Chen Mingren agreed to the uprising, he was worried that our army would settle the old accounts of the Siping Campaign. So, at the time, he didn't sign the memo.
As for Chen Mingren's unwillingness to sign the memorandum, our side did a lot of work, and sent negotiators to carefully declare to him that in the past, he "did not blame the past" for everything he did to our army, and finally Chen Mingren made up his mind to say that "the great affairs of the uprising will never change." ”
On July 27, 1949, Bai Chongxi, under the threat of our army, retreated to the Hengyang area, and ordered Chen Mingren to destroy Changsha's production and living equipment and blow up 14 railway bridges between the Xinqiang River and The Mouth of the New Wall, but in the end Chen Mingren did not carry out the implementation, which made the Kuomintang feel that the situation was a little wrong.
As a result, he stepped up his efforts to woo Chen Mingren and promoted him to the post of chairman of Hunan Province and commander of the Hunan Appeasement Headquarters. Previously, in early July, the Kuomintang side was aware of Cheng Qian and asked him to go to Guangzhou to serve as the president of the examination institute, but Cheng Qian did not agree, so he left Changsha for Shaoyang to temporarily avoid the storm. Therefore, at this time, the military and political leaders in Hunan Province were all Chen Mingren.
Not only that, the Nationalist side also sent two Huangpu classmates of Chen Mingren, with gold bars and Chiang Kai-shek's handwritten letters, to lobby Chen Mingren. After the two left, Chen Mingren's heart was still a little fluctuating, and he clearly proposed to our army that after the uprising, he should retain the post of commander of the corps.
Later, Cheng Qian came up with an idea for our army to set up the Kuomintang Hunan People's Army Political Committee and the Kuomintang Hunan People's Liberation Army Headquarters, two institutions headed by Chen Mingren. Our army agreed at that time, but the next day there were moths.
The Hunan Daily misunderstood the concepts of uprising, adaptation, and surrender, and published an article entitled "Hunan 100,000 Troops Lay Down Their Arms and Align themselves with Fu Zuoyi." After reading this article, Chen Mingren was very angry, and then put forward six conditions, among which the unreasonable demands of postponing the reorganization, postponing the handover of the provincial government, and temporarily not cooperating with the operation were all rejected by our army, and only agreed to the condition of not handing over Yuelu Mountain.
On the afternoon of the same day, that is, on August 4, Chen Mingren, Cheng Qian, and more than 30 other Kuomintang military and political leaders telegraphed the uprising. Bai Chongxi knew that Chen Mingren had revolted and was very angry, and Cheng Qian was not in line with him to revolt, which he expected. However, Bai Chongxi felt that he was good to Chen Mingren, and when Chiang Kai-shek snubbed him, he pulled him aside, and now that he has turned his face, Bai Chongxi feels that he is ungrateful.
What is even more fatal is that Chen Mingren's uprising directly made the "Xianggan Defense Line" set up by Bai Chongxi self-defeating, and Hengyang was also directly exposed to our army.
However, Bai Chongxi was a well-known military man after all, and he quickly made three measures to directly make more than 40,000 of the 77,000 people defect.
First, he quickly dispatched planes to carry out military bombardments in Changsha, Xianggan, and other places, and at the same time distributed leaflets, the contents of which were quite vicious, slandering our army's fake peace and real war. He also said that Chen Mingren and Cheng Qian had already been detained by our army, and Siye was about to call and hand over their weapons.
The leaflet also lists that whoever brings a company to Hengyang to report will be given a promotion and a reward of 500 oceans. Take a battalion to Hengyang to reward 1,000 oceans, and at the same time promote the officer to a higher level. If the guards of the First Corps could execute or abduct Chen Renming and others, they would be directly promoted to the third level and rewarded with 10,000 oceans.
Second, let Huang Jie serve as the commander of the First Corps, directly reorganize the First Corps, and shelter the deserters of the Corps.
Third, two divisions of the Third Corps were dispatched from Hengyang to Shaoyang and the northeast to block our army and save the dangerous situation in western Hunan Province.
Bai Chongxi's three strategies did play a very important role, especially the first one, because Chen Mingren's First Corps was a newly formed corps before the Peaceful Uprising in Hunan, chen Mingren did not have much friendship with his generals, and before chen Mingren's uprising, he did not communicate with his subordinates at all, and none of his subordinates signed the electricity list.
That is to say, at the time of the uprising, his subordinates did not know that Bai Chongxi's rumors spread, and the various ministries could not contact Chen Renming.
All the generals believed it, not to mention the soldiers below, the first unit to defect was the guard regiment of the First Corps, and then more and more uncontrollable troops, although Chen Mingren tried his best to control, but in the end could not control, asked the Fourth Field Army for help, hoping that they would come to quell the rebellion. However, because the rebels ran too fast, and Bai Chongxi sent his ace main force, the Seventh Army, to meet them, our army was powerless to eliminate only a part of the rebels.
The troops who participated in the Hunan uprising originally had 77,000 people before the uprising, but only 36,000 people remained after the counter-uprising, which was more than 40,000 less. Although there were serious mistakes, but did not affect the overall situation of the war, the remaining troops were reorganized into the 21st Corps of the People's Liberation Army, and Chen Mingren served as the commander of the corps.