May 10, 1926, Guangzhou Long Causeway Wharf. The heads and minds of the National Government gathered here, and the scene was displayed with red flags, military music and music, and crowds of people.
Not long after, a warship arrived at the shore, and everyone boarded the ship to greet them. After some greetings, the guests walked towards the city.
The guest who was welcomed with great respect was Li Zongren. As the vice president and acting president of the future National Government, this was the first time he came to the Central Committee of the National Government.
The main purpose of his visit this time is to demand the reunification of the two provinces.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="84" ></h1>
Speaking of this, everyone may wonder that Li Zongren is a representative figure of the Gui clan, and as the only warlord who has achieved fruitful results after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, his old lair, Ren Lao Jiang of Guangxi, cannot penetrate the water by all means. Will this veteran warlord take the initiative to demand to be subordinated to the central government?
That's right, yes. At least at the time when Guangxi was first reunified, Li Zongren was still a warm-blooded young man with a heart for the central authorities.
Young Li Zongren
If we say when Li Zongren had contact with the Kuomintang, we have to go back to the Qing Dynasty, when Li Zongren joined the League while studying at the Guangxi Army Primary School in 1910.
This was followed by regime change, warlords and warlords, and even Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the League, was spread around, and no one cared about Li Zongren as a member.
It was not until the reorganization of the Kuomintang in 1923, when the original members of the League had to re-enter the party according to the regulations, that he was remembered. Li Jishen then came forward and invited Li Zongren to join the Kuomintang.
At this time, Li Zongren had become a dark horse in the Guangxi army, with strong strength and domination of seven counties.
In the winter of 1924, Sun Yat-sen contracted cancer in Beijing. This is nothing less than worse for the already unstable situation in the southwest.
Although Dr. Sun Yat-sen himself did not have much strength, he was ultimately the founder of the Republic of China, with great prestige and great righteousness. As a result, it is supported by most warlords in the country, at least on the surface.
But now that his life is in danger, the Grand Marshal's Office in Guangzhou (the predecessor of the National Government) is leaderless, which is bound to arouse the covetousness of countless careerists. After all, the name "Mr. Zhongshan's mantle passed on to others" was still very marketable in the south at that time.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="86" >, Momoko Tsume</h1>
The first one to jump out was Tang Jiyao.
Tang Jiyao, a native of Dongchuan, Yunnan, graduated from the Japanese Army Non-Commissioned Officer School. In 1916, Yuan Shikai became emperor, and he joined forces with Cai Yi to launch the Patriotic War, and was one of the founders of the Dharma Protection Movement, with great fame.
Tang Jiyao's bust photo
During the Dharma Protection Movement, Sun Yat-sen established a military government in Guangzhou and appointed himself Grand Marshal, with Tang Jiyao as the marshal, ranking second. Later, the military government changed to a seven-president system, and Sun Yat-sen and Tang Jiyao went hand in hand and became presidents. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Grand Marshal's Office and appointed Tang Jiyao as deputy marshal, but Tang Jiyao was reluctant to resign because he had previously been on a par with Sun Yat-sen, but now he could only be a deputy marshal.
In fact, it was mainly because at that time, Tang Jiyao nominally owned the three provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou, with more than 100,000 soldiers and horses, and did not want to be subordinate to Sun Yat-sen.
However, when he learned the news that Sun Yat-sen was critically ill, he immediately sent a telegram to the whole country, announced his acceptance of the previous appointment in a high-profile manner, and sent a three-way army to send troops to Guangdong through Guangxi, under the name of going to office.
No matter what kind of eyes you look at, this is a typical peach picking behavior, but Tang Jiyao is powerful, and the entire southwest is silent for a while.
From Yunnan and Guizhou provinces to Guangdong through Guangxi, it is inevitable to pass through the Xijiang Waterway.
Xijiang Waterway, now known as the Xijiang Golden Waterway, along this waterway can be from Nanning to Guangzhou, even in the development of transportation now also plays an important role in shipping, at that time it was the inevitable first choice.
Coincidentally, the Xijiang waterway was under the control of Li Zongren, which made him the object of competition between the two sides.
Schematic diagram of the Xijiang Waterway
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="88" > third, Tang Jiyao's representative</h1>
In the winter of 1924, Tang Jiyao sent Wen Junyi to Nanjing to visit Li Zongren.
As soon as he arrived in Nanjing, Wen Junyi stayed in the most luxurious hotel, and then frequently befriended Li Zongren's generals with valuable gifts and scattered money everywhere.
Seeing Li Zongren, Wen Junyi did not have much nonsense, and expressed his intentions: Tang Jiyao will soon go to Guangdong to take up the post of deputy marshal, and when the time comes, he will discuss the Northern Expedition with the military governors of the southwestern provinces.
In addition, Wen Junyi also brought Tang Jiyao's letter of appointment, appointing Li Zongren and his deputy Huang Shaohu as military commanders, and if he agreed, he would give Yunnan Yantu four million two (about seven million yuan) as military salaries.
The conditions cannot be said to be rich, and the sincerity cannot be said to be insufficient, but Li Zongren does not have the slightest consciousness to be a fragrant feast.
Map of the situation in southwest China in 1925
Influenced by his father, Li Zongren was an open-minded new-school figure. In his view, Tang Jiyao's name is the Protector of the Fa, but in fact he is a feudal remnant, because Tang Jiyao is conservative in his thinking and ambitious.
Tang Jiyao named his guard "Fei Fei Jun", dressed as an ancient Roman warrior, armed with swords, guns and axes. Whenever Tang Jiyao met with guests, this guard team lined up in an honor guard at the headquarters, waved the flag, hugged the front and back, and then conveyed thousands of doors and households layer by layer before they could enter. Tang Jingyao, on the other hand, was high in the middle of the hall, and even the cushion under his ass was bright yellow, giving people the feeling that Caesar of ancient Rome was receiving a courtesy from his courtiers.
At the same time, Tang Jiyao also carved a seal on his own, which had six big characters of "Master of the East Asian Continent", listening to his words and deeds, and his various actions made Li Zongren, who was a neighbor, unaccustomed.
If such a person is allowed to take over the Grand Marshal's Office, the new atmosphere since the reorganization is bound to disappear.
Thinking of this, Li Zongren sternly rejected Tang Jiyao's "good intentions".
Although Tang Jiyao's personality was exaggerated, his military strength was real, and Li Zongren quickly summoned his subordinates to a meeting to discuss countermeasures.
A few days later, Wen Junyi came again, this time bringing Tang Jiyao's call back.
"The commander's grand plan has been decided, the division is on the way, and before it is stopped, it is transferred to Li Zongren and Huang Shaohu to know the photo."
In the telegram, Tang Jiyao's tone was arrogant and implied a threat, and if he did not agree with the word, he could turn into an attack at any time.
In the face of Tang Jiyao's threat, Li Zongren, who was only in his early thirties at the time, was flesh and blood, plus he really did not look up to Tang Jiyao as a person, and then Tang Jiyao was ambitious, and once he was attached, he was afraid that there would be no good end. Holding the idea that his head could be broken, Li Zongren flatly slapped the table, detained Wen Junyi, and responded to Tang Jiyao in this most decisive way.
Li Zongren
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="91" > fourth, the representative of Hu Hanmin</h1>
On the afternoon of wen Junyi's detention, the representative of the Grand Marshal's Office, Grand Marshal Hu Hanmin, finally arrived late.
In fact, Hu Hanmin's representative did not arrive late, but only saw Tang Jiyao Wen Junyi making a big noise and calling on friends and friends, thinking that Li Zongren had accepted Tang Jiyao's conditions, so he did not dare to show his face.
It wasn't until he saw wen Junyi's collapse surrounded by the guards today that he knew that things had turned around, that he hurried to visit Li Zongren.
Why did the representative of the Grand Marshal's Office hide his head and tail so much?
It turned out that Hu Hanmin originally belonged to Lin Sen as this representative, but Lin Sen was old and sophisticated, and he was immediately embarrassed. He directly approached Hu Hanmin and said that the mission was to stabilize Li Zongren and prevent him from falling to Tang Jiyao, but the strength of the two sides was hugely different, and Li Zongren resisted Tang Jiyao and hit the stone with an egg.
If you want Li Zongren to sell his life, at least he should come up with benefits. But the Grand Marshal's Office was now so poor that it didn't even have silver money, let alone guns and ammunition. Running empty-handed on my own really couldn't pull down this face.
Therefore, Lin Sen resolutely pushed this errand, and Hu Hanmin was helpless to change the deputy.
Unlike the meeting with Wen Junyi, the atmosphere this time was peaceful. Since Li Zongren had already made up his mind to reject Tang Jiyao, he didn't give much nonsense and directly told Hu Hanmin's representative about his decision.
Hu Hanmin's representative was naturally overjoyed, and then began to expose his shortcomings: when he came, he could not get the travel expenses, or Hu Hanmin temporarily found a friend to borrow two hundred yuan before the trip. The meaning revealed in the words was: the Grand Marshal's Office had no money.
Li Zongren naturally understood what he wanted to express, and he didn't think anything of it. He didn't want to sit on the ground and ask for benefits at all, he knew the difficulties of the Grand Marshal's Office, because from beginning to end, the Grand Marshal's Office gave him no money for food or armaments except for his title.
Shortly after Wen Junyi was detained, Tang Jiyao did indeed come, as he said, the three-way army.
And Li Zongren's response method can be summed up in eight words: "Put in to fight, each one broken", after the kunlun pass, Shapu and other battles, Li Zongren finally drove Tang Jiyao's troops out of Guangxi. It took nearly five months.
As for the specific course of the war, it is not the subject of this article, and it is not listed here.
Hu Hanmin and Chiang Kai-shek
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="93" >5</h1>
The historical significance of Li Zongren's "courting the Tang Dynasty" is enormous, protecting the later National Government in Guangzhou, preserving the revolutionary flame of China, and ensuring that Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary legacy will not be usurped.
After the completion of the "Tang Dynasty" campaign, the revolutionary legacy of Dr. Sun Yat-sen was preserved, and both Guangdong and Guangdong were revolutionary governments, and at this time, the issue of the reunification of the two Guangdong provinces was put on the agenda.
The first to move was Li Zongren.
In January 1926, Li Zongren sent Bai Chongxi to Guangzhou, and the purpose of Bai Chongxi's visit was to make a front station for him and discuss the reunification of the two provinces.
After Bai Chongxi arrived in Guangzhou, he saw that the Guangdong region had a new atmosphere and a warm revolutionary atmosphere since the reorganization of the Kuomintang, so according to Li Zongren's explanation at the time of his arrival, he formally put forward a plan for the reunification of the two provinces.
According to the plan, this unification is not nominal, but the power of the general, the people, the finance, and the religion is completely concentrated under the leadership of the National Government.
"If our province has the army in accordance with guangdong's organization, can accept the central strategy politically, and entrusts finances to the central authorities, then all issues should be in harmony with the central authorities, and the central authorities should make unified plans and adjust each other."
In the face of the olive branch that Li Zongren took the initiative to extend, the National Government naturally set up a "special committee" to discuss the details of "reunification."
However, on specific issues, two major differences have emerged between the two sides.
Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi
The first disagreement is the military.
Because of years of war, Guangxi's troops were equivalent to more than two armies in both number and strength, and in 1924 Sun Yat-sen divided Li Zongren's troops into two armies before going north, with Li Zongren and Huang Shaohu as their commanders.
Now that the Nationalist government meant to reduce Guangxi's troops to an army, Li Zongren did not dare to agree to this proposal, nor could he be the master.
Because guangxi's army was actually divided into two systems, namely Li Zongren and Huang Shaohu, both of whom had their own troops, and later united to unify Guangxi, which belonged to the nature of partners.
If only one army is retained in obedience to the National Government, it means that half of the troops need to be abolished. Who should cut more and who should cut less? What if Lee agrees and Huang disagrees? The dismissed soldiers can be dismissed, how should the officers be resettled? And how to appease the emotions of officers and soldiers? Any of these problems are very tricky, and a little carelessness will cause the two people to be dirty, and Li Zongren does not dare to agree.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="94" > the second divergence is finance. </h1>
Guangxi has few mountains and land, and does not have many ports like Guangdong (Note: Before 1952, Beihai and Qinzhou were under the jurisdiction of Guangdong, so Guangxi was an inland province), so since the Qing Dynasty, the finances have not been self-sufficient, and Guangdong and Hunan need to help. If it was unified, it would have to give Guangxi financial subsidies, and the Nationalist government at that time was so poor that it was under great pressure.
In addition, at that time, the salaries of the two provinces were responsible for each of them, and the amount was also very different. Guangdong is rich, so the military pay is more; Guangxi is poor, so the military salary is small, if it is unified, then the troops in Guangxi must also be treated equally, and then the Ministry of Finance feels that it has lost money.
The differences were not resolved, and the matter of reunification was shelved.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="96" > six or ten refused</h1>
After Bai Chongxi returned, he explained the situation to Li Zongren, and after consultation between Li Zongren and Huang Shaohu, it was decided to follow the opinion of the Nationalist government and organize the army into an army. He also sent Huang Shaohu as a representative and went to Guangzhou again with Bai Chongxi to discuss the issue of reunification.
As a result, the army was abolished into a single army, and the National Revolutionary Army was adopted as the Seventh Army of the National Revolutionary Army.
As for the finances, Guangxi is still responsible for itself, and the salaries of the military are also raised by Guangxi, and the National Government will not ask questions for the time being.
The consequence of the two points of finance is that the party affairs are also taken care of by the local government in Guangxi, and the Guangxi authorities can arrange it according to the actual local conditions, and then find the National Government to make up the formalities afterwards, after all, you do not give me a penny, why send people to eat me and drink me.
For a political party, if the local government is not able to achieve vertical leadership, the consequences are fatal, which also creates conditions for the Gui clan to be outside the central government for a long time in the future.
At this time, Li Zongren could not foresee how great the benefits of the Nationalist government's move would be for his future, but instead was angry that Guangxi had not been unified by the Nationalist government.
He secretly slandered himself for making every effort to unify the whole province, and after sorting out the military, finance, people, and religion, he dedicated them all to the central authorities without reservation. As a result, the people in power were short-sighted, narrow-minded, and full of business experience, and even thought that bringing Guangxi under the rule was a loss-making business, and forced themselves to "take care of themselves", making Guangxi a semi-autonomous state. Once this example is opened, what should other provinces follow in the future?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="98" >7, businessman Song Ziwen</h1>
After Li Zongren arrived in Guangzhou in May 1926, he was still running for the reunification of the two provinces. He knew that the root cause of the obstruction of the reunification of the two provinces was finance, so he visited Finance Minister Song Ziwen several times and asked him to support reunification.
Song Ziwen
But Song Ziwen refused without even thinking about it, and he said bluntly: "Your taxes in Guangxi are too small, the army is too much, the revenue and expenditure cannot be offset, and the central government is unified." The Treasury is going to suffer. ”
Inside and outside the words, Guangxi is too poor, and if it is accepted, it will drag down Guangdong and make the already poor finances even worse.
Song Ziwen obviously said this from the perspective of an economist, but he forgot that his main identity is the finance minister of the National Government, and no matter what the big account and the small account are, they are no bigger than the political account.
As Li Zongren said to Song Ziwen, reunification is a century-old plan, and if the National Government does not unify the poor provinces, it will let it take care of itself; for the identity of the rich, what kind of system has become?
Moreover, at present, the Northern Expedition is imminent, and the identities that are about to be recovered are all rich provinces, if the locals cite this precedent from Guangxi and also demand self-care, what should they do then?
Song Ziwen did not answer Li Zongren's question, let alone accede to his request. Although he has been in politics for so long, he is still a businessman at heart.
The scourge of the Gui clan becoming an independent kingdom was also buried.