In the book "Review of History", Marshal Xu Qianqian recounted the ten-month anti-six-way siege, from the external offensive to the inner defense.
The Red Fourth Front successively won major victories in the external offensive, threatening the whole of Sichuan, and the Sichuan warlords united to deal with the Red Army in unison.
In the late autumn of 1933, Liu Xiang, commander-in-chief of the Sichuan "suppression of bandits," with the strong support of Chiang Kai-shek, gathered the forces of various warlords and launched a six-way siege of our base area.
We then moved from the outside to the interior defense. The enemy has successively invested 140 regiments and no less than 250,000 men.
We spent a full ten months fighting the enemy, smashing the enemy's four phases of the attack and annihilating more than 80,000 enemy personnel, of course, the Red Army also paid a heavy price, with a total of more than 20,000 casualties.
The anti-six-way siege is the most arduous battle we fought in Sichuan, and in the history of the Red Fourth Front, it can also be said that it is the largest campaign, the longest duration, and the most brilliant battle results.
Our campaign against Liu Cunhou was not completely over, and Liu Xiang's offensive began.
At the end of October 1933, I was leading the Tenth Division of the Fourth Army (division commander Wang Naigui, deputy division commander Wang Jinshan) and other units to the south to pursue the fleeing enemy Liao Yuchen's troops, preparing to take advantage of the victory to enter Zhankai County and Kaijiang.
The two sides are relatively rich, which is conducive to our army receiving greater replenishment. However, in the Yangliuguan area west of Kai County, it encountered the base of Wang Ling, liu Xiang's main third division.
That night, our camp and the enemy's camp were not far apart, unaware of each other.
I sent a messenger to deliver a letter to the troops, and he found the wrong way, ran into the enemy camp's room, asked for a bowl of water to drink, looked up, the man's hat was wrong, and quickly ran outside.
When the enemy found out, he fired a random shot and did not hurt him. He came back to report the situation, and we learned that the enemy was right in front of us.
Since you have encountered the enemy, let's beat up a guy! However, the enemy's Third Division is worthy of Liu Xiang's elite, its weapons and equipment are good, its combat effectiveness is not weak, and it has the cover of aircraft artillery, so we can't move it.
At the same time, our troops on the left and right flanks also engaged the enemy's two divisions and fought fiercely.
We only had eight regiments, and after five days of fierce fighting, although we annihilated more than 5,000 enemy personnel, we were unable to repel the enemy, and the enemy's follow-up troops continued to increase, so our army was turned into defense, resisted step by step, and gradually shrank its position backwards.
This encounter opened the curtain on the anti-six-way siege.
At the beginning of Liu Xiang's six-way siege, more than 110 regiments, about 200,000 troops, and eighteen aircraft assisted in the battle.
Deng Xihou, commander-in-chief of the First Road and commander of the Twenty-eighth Army, led eighteen regiments to attack from Guangyuan and Zhaohua in the direction of Mumen and Nanjiang
Tian Songyao, commander-in-chief of the Second Route and commander of the Twenty-ninth Army, led twenty-four regiments to attack from Langzhong in the direction of Bazhong.
Li Jiayu, commander-in-chief of the Third Route and commander of the newly organized Sixth Division, and Luo Zezhou, deputy commander-in-chief and commander of the Twenty-third Division, led fifteen regiments to attack from Nanchong in the direction of Yilong and Bazhong.
Yang Sen, commander-in-chief of the Fourth Road and commander of the 20th Army, led twelve regiments from Peng'an to yingshan, Dingshanchang, and Tongjiang.
Wang Lingji, commander of the Fifth Road and commander of the Third Division of Liu Xiang's Twenty-first Army, led twenty-four regiments to attack from Kaijiang and Kaixian to Xuanhan, Daxian and Wanyuan
Liu Bangjun, commander-in-chief of the Sixth Route and commander of the Twenty-third Army (formerly reorganized from Liu Cunhou's department), led twelve regiments, as well as six regiments of the bandit Wang Sanchun's army, a total of eighteen regiments, attacked from the Kaixian and Chengkou areas in the direction of Wanyuan.
In short, relying on superior troops, the enemy formed a combined encirclement attack on our base area from Guangyuan in the northwest to more than a thousand miles in the east to the mouth of the city. The main direction of attack is the fifth road of Wang Lingji, and the other roads are auxiliary directions.
Liu Xiang's siege plan was divided into three phases: the first phase would occupy Xuanhan, Daxian, Jiangkou, Yingshan, Wangcang, Mumen, Enyang River, Zengkouchang, and other places; the second phase would occupy Tongjiang, Nanjiang, and Bazhong; and the third phase would attack the Kucao Dam in the rear of our strategy.
In an attempt to "wipe out" our Red Fourth Front within three months with the tactics of advancing in separate attacks, taking step by step as a battalion, and fighting steadily and steadily.
The Sichuan warlord factions are numerous, the struggle between cutting up the land and the dog biting the dog is very fierce. At this time, it was no accident that they were able to move from civil strife to reunification, unite to listen to Liu Xiang's dispatches, and send troops one after another to encircle the Sichuan-Shaanxi base area.
The growth of the Red Fourth Front and the development of the Sichuan-Shaanxi-Shaanxi base areas have become serious, threatening the ruling interests of various warlords.
Chiang Kai-shek has already begun in accordance with the fifth "encirclement and suppression" of the Central Revolution against us, and he urgently needs the Sichuan warlords to abandon internal strife, act in a unified manner, and join forces to besiege the Sichuan-Shaanxi base areas in order to relieve the "worries of the west."
Faced with the serious situation of the joint offensive of the warlords in Sichuan, we ordered the front-line troops to resist the enemy while meeting in Tongjiang to study countermeasures.
There are two ways: one is to actively defend and lure the enemy to go deeper, and the other is to extensively mobilize the masses.
This is unprecedented, composed of more than 80,000 Red Army and a large number of local armed forces, a wide frontal, focused, large depth, multi-echelon defense system, to resist the attack of more than 200,000 enemy troops of the 6-way warlords, thus opening a new chapter in the history of the front's combat.
After the meeting, Wang Shusheng and Li Xiannian went to the east and west fronts separately, with Chen Changhao in the middle, Zhang Guotao sitting in the rear, and the party, government, and military and people in the Sichuan-Shaanxi base area uniting as one and throwing themselves into the tense and arduous anti-sixth road siege.