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Unemployment upon graduation
In 1908, in the 34th year of Guangxu, 17-year-old Li Zongren was admitted to the third phase of the Guangxi Army Primary School.
At school, Li Zongren showed a unique athletic talent and was known throughout the school for his Trojan horse jumping skills. Li Zongren can jump over the height of the twelve hard military hats. The students all rushed to the equipment gymnastics field to watch Li Zongren's practice, and everyone gave Li Zongren a loud nickname: Li Mengzi.
In 1912, Li Mengzi was admitted to the Guangxi Army Accelerated School run by Lu Rongting of the Lao Gui Department and graduated in 1913.
Later important members of the Gui family, including Huang Xuchu, Zhang Gan, Su Zuxin, Shihualong, Nong Zhizheng, Qi Daocheng, Su Tingxun, etc., were all Li Zongren's classmates here.
But Lu Rongting, an old Gui family, could not tolerate Li Zongren and his group of revolutionary youths.
Lu Rongting was born in the green forest, and was promoted to the governor of Guangxi in the Qing Dynasty after being recruited, picked the peaches of the Xinhai Revolution, and became the governor of Guangxi and Guangdong, essentially afraid that the revolutionaries would rob him of his kingdom.
As a result, Li Zongren interned in Lu Rongting's army for three months, and became unemployed a year after becoming a regular.
Like Chen Cheng mentioned above, Li Zongren, an unemployed young man, also chose to become a primary school teacher and a gymnastics teacher at Guilin Model Primary School, with a monthly salary of 16 yuan.
Learning is not useful, the future is bleak, and Li Mengzi is depressed.
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Leaders should be tolerant of others
About 400 Guangxi graduates from the Army University, Baoding Officers, Army Middle School, Army Primary School, Army Accelerated School, and Cadre Academy returned to Guangxi.
Later development proved that Lu Rongting's excessive rejection of military cadets in the old Gui department actually contributed to the great unity of Guangxi military cadets.
Later, Guangxi students from various army schools formed alliances with each other, united around Li Zongren and Huang Shaohong, and fought to the death against the Lao Gui faction with the same hatred, which became an important factor in overthrowing the Lu Rongting clique.
The reason is that the old Gui family can't tolerate people.
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From PE teacher to battalion commander
In May 1916, the headquarters of the Liangguang Protectorate Army was established in Zhaoqing, Guangdong. The commander of the capital is Cen Chunxuan, a native of Guangxi, the staff officer of the capital is Liang Qichao, a well-known Cantonese person, and the deputy capital staff officer is Li Gengen, a native of Yunnan.
Lin Hu is the commander of the Sixth Army of the National Protector Army. Li Liejun, commander-in-chief of the Second Army of the Yasukuo Army in Yunnan, led two divisions from Yunnan to Guangdong via Guangxi.
Lin Hu and Li Liejun both need to expand the army and urgently need lower-level cadres. As a result, graduates of Guangxi military academies who were dormant in various places rushed to Zhaoqing one after another.
Liu Zhi, the later commander-in-chief of Xuzhou, was the commander of the ninth company of Li Liejun's third battalion at this time.
At that time, these warlord troops of the Republic of China were quite similar to the formation method of the Hunan Army of Zeng Guo 50 years ago, and after the battalion commander arranged the candidates for the company commander and platoon commander, the company and platoon commander returned to their hometown to recruit soldiers, and each used his fellow villagers to form his own company.
So even if the army was organized by the Yunnan warlords in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, the junior officers and soldiers were all from Guangxi.
Li Zongren originally agreed with a battalion commander to serve as the battalion company commander. As a result, I found that the company commander's position had been snatched away, so I had to become a lieutenant platoon commander in Xie Weide's company. Xie Weide is Li Zongren's small fellow villager in Guilin County.
You have to rely on your fellow countrymen when you go out!
Li Zongren was then transferred to the Guijun Zhou Yifu regiment. During the fierce battle on the Gaotang front, a company commander of Zhou Yifu's regiment was timid, pretending to have a stomachache and refused to go to the front. Zhou Yifu then reported to Brigadier General Li Zongren to be transferred to the acting company commander of the company, and later gave him the actual title.
Company Commander Li Zongren was shot in the cheek during this battle. Fortunately, there are also gains, and from this time on, Li Zongren was transferred from the Yunnan military system to the Gui system.
In the spring of 1919, Li Zongren was promoted to battalion commander and stationed in Dongjiang Tamsui.
From a primary school physical education teacher to the commander of the Gui Jun battalion, Li Zongren only took three years.
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Return from Guangdong to Guangxi
In August 1920, Chen Jiongming of the Cantonese army attacked the Gui army stationed in the Chaohai area, and the Gui army was invincible and retreated, and the Cantonese army arrived at the city of Huizhou in late August. The Dongjiang Gui army first retreated to Guangzhou, and soon began to retreat to Guangxi.
Li Zongren is the defender.
At Lubuwei, about 60 miles upstream of Zhaoqing, Li Zongren's battalion guarded the center line together with the Huang Shaohong Company, Bai Chongxi Company, and Chen Xiong's machine gun team of Ma Xiao's military camp. They escorted more than 10,000 Gui soldiers through safely and turned back to the old nest in Guangxi.
This is the first time that Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, Huang Shaohong, and the later three giants of the Xingui family have fought side by side.
In the Lubu Breakthrough Battle, Li Zongren's most painful thing was that Qiu Mingxi, the commander of the fourth company that he had always relied on for brave and good fighting, was killed.
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Opened a sect and ran Yulin
Li Zongren retreated to Wuzhou, Guangxi, and then drove to Xingye County, Yulin, Guangxi, to garrison.
Here, battalion commander Li Zongren began to establish a sect, and he gathered another 7 company commanders, plus 4 companies of his own, with 1,000 men and horses, complete guns, as well as two mountain guns and two Makqin heavy machine guns.
From then on, Li Zongren took Yulin as a base, reorganized the army and strengthened the army, expanded its strength, recruited the strong and strong, and waited for the opportunity to move. Finally, the powerful warlords Lu Rongting and Shen Hongying in Guangxi at that time were eliminated successively and Guangxi was unified.
Li Zongren first declared himself a vassal to the Guangdong army, and was named the commander of the third route of the Guangdong-Guizhou border defense army by Chen Jiongguang. Commander Lee organized his troops into two detachments, each with two commanders, each with two battalions.
Li Zongren also greeted Ma Junwu, the new governor of Guangxi, and was named the commander of the Yulin garrison.
Between Guangdong and Guangxi.
Li Zongren's cleverness in employing people was demonstrated at this time.
Neither detachment commander was produced by Li Zongren's basic battalion, but was selected from among the new company commanders.
The commander of one detachment was He Wu, who brought several companies to Li Zongren, and the credit was the greatest, and he was promoted to the commander of the detachment without any objections.
The commander of a detachment was Li Shiyu, who was just an ordinary company commander who neither brought troops to participate nor had any combat exploits, but because he had considerable appeal in Xingye, Li Zongren also made him the commander of the detachment.
After the establishment was decided, Commander Li divided his troops into four counties other than Yulin, namely Beiliu, Luchuan, Bobai, and Xingye, and dispatched county magistrates and tax collectors from each county.
When the Guangdong army attacked, Li Zongren took his dozen companies to leave Yulin and take refuge in the 60,000 mountains.
In order to raise supplies, Li Zongren drew 5 rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition from his basic army, that is, the original battalion, and exchanged 6,000 silver dollars from the Xingye Liang family as a supply fee. Seeing no, Li Zongren once again did not move the newly joined company.
Li Zongren paid great attention to coordinating the relationship between the newly recruited troops and the basic battalion. The adjustment of human guns was always drawn from his basic battalion, and the replenishment was often to supplement the newly joined troops such as Lu Chao, Yu Zuobai, and Wu Tingyang first.
Li Zongren not only made it for the newcomers, but also did not move their cakes.
How can you be unconvinced?
In terms of operation, Li Zongren stipulated that in his defense area, all Yinyang, that is, Guangdong and Guangxi Shuanghao or Dayang, were not allowed to use paper money. Taxes, salaries and transactions are calculated on a silver basis.
Guangxi suffered from the indiscriminate issuance of paper money and various securities by warlord Lu Rongting and others, but only Li Zongren's Yulin area did not appear.
Soon, the financial and tax revenues of the counties on Li Zongren's territory were on track. Rich and easy to do, Li Zongren purchased more than 100 barge pistols and dozens of old revolvers from Hong Kong through a German foreign firm. At that time, bullets could not be made, so people were sent to Hong Kong to buy cartridge casings and smokeless gunpowder, and reloaded bullets in Yulin.
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Incorporated Huang Shaohong
In 1922, Li Zongren incorporated the Huang Shaohong Department, which was the key to the formation of the new Gui system.
Uniting the students of the military academy and strengthening their own strength is Li Zongren's unswerving policy.
Li Zongren has been paying attention to Huang Shaohong and seeing his failure in Baise and his transfer to Lingshan, Guangdong. Li Zongren judged Huang Shaohong's movements and had two choices: one was to follow Liu Zhenhuan, Huang Mingtang, and other Cantonese troops to withdraw to Guangdong; and the other was to get rid of the control of Gui Yue's army and pull the troops to Wuzhou to wait for the opportunity.
Li Zongren thinks that Huang Shaohong will choose the second plan, just like when he left Huang Yexing and stayed in Yulin to start a sect.
Li Zongren sent Huang Shaohong's elder brother Huang Tianze to find Huang Shaohong and persuade Huang Shaohong to send the troops to Yulin to cooperate.
Without waiting for Huang Tianze to come back, Li Zongren followed and sent Xia Wei to meet Huang Shaohong along the route taken by Huang Tianze with a letter of appointment appointing Huang Shaohong as the "commander of the third detachment" and a salary.
After the kung fu is done, Huang Shaohong can't help but go to Liangshan.
Huang Shaohong is also hard and doesn't eat soft rice. Although he accepted Li Zongren's reorganization, he first took the two counties of Cen Xi and Rong County, and reorganized his troops into three battalions in Rong County.
After packing up, Huang Shaohong went to Yulin to meet Li Zongren.
As a result, Li Zongren's influence expanded to Rong County and Cen Xi County.
They are all great masters!
Why the three giants of the new Gui family are them, the success is not accidental.
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Huang Shaohong defected
Huang Shaohong's heart still does not want to belong to Li Zongren.
In April 1923, Huang Shaohong stabbed him in the back, took away Li Zongren's subordinates Yu Zuobai and Wu Tingyang, and went out of Wuzhou with him.
The belongings that have been dismal for several years have gone most of them at once. Li Zongren was very annoyed, his face was gloomy, and his expression was sad.
But Li Zongren was not as impulsive as Li Shiyu, the commander of the first detachment. He held back.
Li Zongren said to the rest of his subordinates: If you don't fight, you will still be your own brothers, and you will be able to meet in the future. Only both of us were unlucky in the fight.
However, in the end, the commander of the detachment, Li Shiyu, led a small number of followers to pursue his troops to the line of Cen Xi and Liuliu to the north, and finally brought back two battalions and reduced the losses.
In the warlord army, it is common for you to seduce my subordinates to betray, and I move your team to defect. But it's not often done in the same system. Especially after such an abnormal thing has happened, it is very rare to be able to reunite and work together.
Later, Li Zongren and Huang Shaohong merged again, and Huang Shaohong was always willing to live under Li Zongren.
Li Zongren's magnanimity and ability to endure what others can't endure finally made him the boss of the new Gui family, which can be regarded as creating a generation of foundations.