After Yuan Shikai was killed in 1916 in the midst of rebellion, his Beiyang warlords were divided into three, namely the direct lineage, the Anhui clan and the Feng clan. Among them, the most powerful military group is not the direct line controlled by Feng Guozhang, with 600,000 troops at its peak, 18 divisions and 18 brigades under its jurisdiction, and the three armies of the navy, army and air force are complete, controlling the richest areas in China, such as North China, the Central Plains, the Southeast, and the Two Lakes. But this big warlord only experienced 10 years, from the War of Protection of France to the Northern Expedition, 600,000 troops quickly disappeared, why?
This has a lot to do with the rule of three big men in the direct lineage, namely Feng Guozhang, Cao Kun and Wu Peifu. Feng Guozhang helped Duan Qirui end the dispute between the government and the court, drove Li Yuanhong away, and became the president, but the actual power was controlled by Duan Qirui. Duan Qirui was very ambitious, wanting to take down the warlords in the south in one fell swoop, using Feng Guozhang's direct family as a gun, so that the direct family suffered heavy losses, and what was even more tragic was that the territory that the direct family had worked so hard to fight was occupied by the Anhui family, and did not get a little benefit, and finally the two families of Zhiwan broke up.
In 1920, after Feng Guozhang's death, Cao Kun, who came to power to take charge of his direct family, went to war with Duan Qirui, and he united Feng Yuxiang and Zhang Zuolin to defeat Duan Qirui. The direct family ushered in a bright moment, becoming the largest warlord in Kannai, and the members of the National Assembly and the Presidential Office were basically from the direct family, and they wanted the wind to be windy and the rain to be rainy. In 1922, Cao Kun accepted the suggestions of his generals Sun Chuanfang and Wu Peifu to let the National Assembly hold a new election, which led to a scandal, and he became a bribery of the president, turning himself into a street rat, triggering two zhifeng wars.
The Zhi clan won the First Zhifeng War with the heroic command of the Confucian general Wu Peifu, but two years later, the Second Zhifeng War, due to Feng Yuxiang's defection, led to the boss Cao Kun being placed under house arrest, and the front-line army of the direct clan collapsed. The only direct warlords in 1925 were Wu Peifu's Two Lakes Army and the five provinces controlled by Sun Chuanfang. Both armies were trampled under the feet of the subsequent Northern Expedition under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, and with the fall of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang, the direct family completely withdrew from the stage of history.