▲ Yuan Shikai's restoration caused the War to Protect the Country
▲Map of the situation of the National Defense Movement
On June 6, 1916, with the death of the thief Yuan Shikai, Li Yuanhong succeeded him as The President of the Republic of China, and the War to Protect the Motherland, which had originally aimed to oppose Yuan's restoration of the imperial system, was also ended. However, the fighting in the Liangguang region far south did not subside, and Lu Rongting, the leader of the old Gui clan entrenched in Guangxi, was not satisfied with his territory in one province, and brazenly sent troops to defeat the Guangdong overseer Long Jiguang, controlled most of the province, and sent his own Gui army to garrison.
▲ Lu Rongting, the leader of the old Gui family
▲Revolutionary pioneer Sun Yat-sen
The old Gui family was a total defeat in Guangdong
After a long period of conquest in backward and barren Guangxi, and suddenly entering Guangdong, a premier rich hometown, the Gui army was overjoyed and immediately adopted a policy of exhaustion and fishing desperately searching everywhere. At the same time, Lu Rongting's own ambitions were further expanded, and Sun Yat-sen, who launched the Dharma Protection Movement in Guangzhou, was also hindered and ostracized at every turn. In November 1917, Lu even instructed Mo Rongxin, the new overseer of Guangdong, to shoot and kill more than 60 Sun Yat-sen's guard company, platoon commanders, and soldiers. In May of the following year, Sun Yat-sen was forced to leave Guangzhou and sail to Shanghai.
On August 11, 1920, Lu Rongting provoked the First Guangdong-Gui War and ordered the siege of Chen Jiongming's troops of the Guangdong army, which was entrenched at the junction of Fujian and Guangdong, preparing to completely disarm the Cantonese forces and eliminate future troubles forever. However, the battle situation was unexpected from the beginning, because Lu Rongting and the Gui army were not popular in Guangdong, and the people everywhere stood firm and cleared. The Gui army could not get supplies, so it could only burn and loot everywhere, and military discipline became more and more ruthless, which aroused greater public indignation, and the people's army and even bandit armed forces everywhere joined in, blocking and ambushing the Gui army everywhere.
▲ Guangdong-Guangxi War situation map
▲ Chen Jiongming, commander of the Guangdong Army, launched a large-scale counterattack against Guangdong
Tens of thousands of Gui troops were defeated and blocked at the mountain pass
The main force of the Gui army was quickly defeated and began to retreat to the west in a chaotic manner, preparing to bypass Guangzhou and withdraw to the old nest of Guangxi. However, when he reached Liantangkou between Sihui and Zhaoqing, he was blocked. It turned out that Wei Bangping, chief of the Guangzhou Municipal Police Department and commander of Jiangsu Defense, and Li Fulin, the defender of Guanghui Town, saw that the Gui family was losing momentum, so he turned against the battle, and commanded the troops to arrive first by train from Guangzhou, preparing to take advantage of the dangerous terrain of Liantangkou to wait for work and eat the remaining 30,000-odd Gui army in one bite.
The mountains on both sides of Liantangkou are steep, stretching for more than 30 miles, and Wei Bangping and Li Fulin's town guards the only way out of the pass. Coupled with the heavy rain for several days, the roads were muddy, and the Gui army organized several charges in a row, but to no avail. A large number of officers and men were squeezed in front of the mountain pass, unable to move an inch, and at the same time, a large number of enemy troops were condescending from three sides, shooting desperately, and the situation was extremely dangerous.
▲ Li Zongrenjung's life
The commander of the rearguard battalion stepped forward and opened the passage in one fell swoop
At the critical moment, 1 battalion, which was originally acting as a rearguard, caught up. The battalion commander took the initiative to ask for help, led his troops to rush into battle, and after a desperate struggle, finally broke through to the central position on the opposite side. The main force of the Gui army took the opportunity to rush up and quickly passed the mountain pass. This battalion commander was the commander of the old Gui clan who later eliminated Lu Rongting and other old Gui forces, successively served as commander of the 7th Army, chairman of Anhui Province, commander of the 5th Theater of Operations, director of the Northern Parallel Battalion, and finally became the acting president of the Republic of China, the new Gui leader Li Zongren.
After the Battle of Liantangkou, some senior officers of the Gui Army were discouraged and quietly left, and many troops were led only by middle and lower-ranking officers, and the officers and soldiers were panicked. With his outstanding performance in the Battle of Liantangkou, Li Zongren soon became the backbone of some battalion and company commanders. In June 1921, Cantonese troops marched into Guangxi under the call of Sun Yat-sen, attacked Lu Rongting, and soon occupied the provincial capital of Nanning. Lu Rongting was forced to announce his resignation, and there was great chaos in Guangxi.
▲ In 1948, Li Zongren was elected vice president
Li Zongren took the opportunity to lead his troops away from the old Gui lineage, relying on his prestige not only to pull away all four companies under his command, but also gathered some other companies, pulled up a team of nearly 2,000 people, occupied seven counties in the densely populated and convenient transportation of Yulin, and since then began the legendary experience of unifying Guangxi and traversing the Northern Expedition and the Anti-Japanese Battlefield.