Everyone's impression of The Beiyang general Xu Shuzheng is stuck in the outstanding martial arts of sending troops to the north to recover Outer Mongolia, and not much is known about Xu Shuzheng's later experience. As a confidant of Duan Qirui, the leader of the Anhui warlords, Xu Shuzheng took great pains to run around for the Anhui warlords, contacting powerful figures from all walks of life, and trying to protect the situation in which the Anhui clan was in power. Although Xu Shuzheng was born in the military and served as the army deputy chief of the Beiyang government, he actually attended the feast of the Republic of China as a politician on the stage of history. Because of his high level of political ability, the people of the time called his Republic of China tycoons Xu Shichang and Xu Shuzheng "Da Xu" and "Xiao Xu". With the fall of the Anhui warlords, Xu Shuzheng's own loneliness is also a reasonable thing, but the stage of the Republic of China is chaotic, today you go to the stage, tomorrow I step down. Why was Xu Shuzheng himself liquidated by other warlords and killed in Huangquan? This has to mention the famous incidents that Xu Shuzheng himself did that offended his peers.
Duan Qirui
Xu Shuzheng was a talent in the early years, and in 1901, he went from his hometown to Shandong to join Yuan Shikai and began his military career. From 1905 to 1910, he traveled to Japan to study military affairs. He was Duan Qirui's confidant, assisting Duan Qirui in the Xinhai Revolution, the Hongxian Imperial System, and Zhang Xun's restoration, and in the struggle against Feng Guozhang, he also led Zhang Zuolin to the army to enter the customs in order to consolidate the power of the Anhui clan and preside over the "unification of force". He also founded the Anfu Club, manipulated the parliamentary elections, and was active in the political arena of the Early Ming Dynasty. Later, due to the defeat of the Southern Expedition and the discord between the warlords, Xu Shuzheng turned to the northwest. Backed by force, he forced Outer Mongolia to unconditionally revoke its autonomy in November 1919, return to the direct jurisdiction of the Chinese central government, and operate in Outer Mongolia as a northwestern border envoy. In the summer of 1920, he returned to Beijing and participated in the Zhiwan War, but fled to Japan after his defeat. Later, he tried to support Duan Qirui's comeback, contacted Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Zuolin to form an anti-direct triangular alliance, once invaded Fujian, and organized the founding of the country to establish a military and political system to set up a government, but soon failed. After 1924, he traveled abroad, and returned to China in the winter of 1925, wanting to unite with Sun Chuanfang and Zhang Zuolin against Feng Yuxiang. Because Xu Shuzheng had assassinated Feng Yuxiang's uncle Lu Jianzhang, Feng Yuxiang was even more hostile to him, and ordered Zhang Zhijiang to kidnap and shoot Xu Shuzheng when he left Beijing via Langfang by train on December 30, 1925.
Feng Yuxiang
On June 14, 1918, Xu Shuzheng suddenly shot Lu Jianzhang in Tianjin.
Lu Jianzhang arrived in Tianjin from Shanghai on June 13, he is a master and faction behind the scenes, and has some direct and indirect relations with the Beiyang warlords in various provinces, Feng Yuxiang's main peace is related to him, and the Anhui clan has long regarded him as a dangerous person.
This time, the Overseers were meeting in Tianjin again, and this meeting had a tendency to be unfavorable to the main war faction, so Feng Guozhang secretly instructed Lu Jianzhang's eldest son Lu Chengwu to summon his father to Tianjin, the purpose of which was to use Lu Jianzhang to persuade Cao Kun to return to his immediate lineage and cooperate with Li Chun to turn the Meeting of the Overseers into a situation that favored Feng and not Duan.
After Lu Jianzhang arrived in Tianjin, Xu Shuzheng wrote a letter inviting him to talk at the headquarters of the Fengjun Army stationed in Tianjin. Lu Jianzhang considered himself the current general and an old predecessor of the Beiyang Sect, and there was absolutely no doubt that someone would poison him. He went as promised, and Xu Shuzheng graciously invited him to the garden chamber to talk, and when he entered the garden, a guard shot him from behind.
Lu Jianzhang himself only mediated between the two clans of Zhiwan and Anhui, and was actually directly shot and killed by Xu Shuzheng, a descendant of Beiyang, which almost offended the entire Beiyang group, and directly triggered the subsequent Feng Yuxiang to shoot Xu Shuzheng to avenge Lu Jianzhang.
Lu Jianzhang
After the famous Qinhuangdao robbery incident, Zhang Zuolin entered the customs according to the agreement and used force to support the Anhui central government and the Duan cabinet. The central government of the Anhui dynasty also repaid the favor by successively appointing Zhang Zuolin as the overseer of Fengtian and the inspector of the three eastern provinces, which lifted the shackles of Zhang Zuolin's domination of the northeast. The strength of the two armies of Zhiwan and Anhui is roughly the same, and the Fengzhi warlords with military strength and geographical advantages are the objects of contending for both sides of Zhiwan. From Xu Shuzheng's successful efforts to win Feng Jun into the customs through the hand of his classmate Yang Yuting, it can be seen that Xiao Xu's vision and ability are very good. But Xiao Xu has two fatal shortcomings, one is that he is clever, and the other is that he has no one in sight. Zhang Zuolin appointed Xu Shuzheng as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Fengjun army because of the good relations between the Fengjun and the Anhui army. Xu Shuzheng used this incident to shoot and kill Lu Jianzhang, the elder of beiyang under the guise of Feng Jun, which greatly annoyed Zhang Zuolin. Xu Shuzheng also secretly colluded with Yang Yuting, chief of staff of the Fengjun Army, to fraudulently lead the Fengjun military expenditure of 5.15 million silver yuan, leaving only 1.8 million silver yuan for the Fengjun, and misappropriated the rest of the military expenses that belonged to the Fengjun to the Anhui Army to expand the military expenditure, and openly drank the blood of the Fengjun Army. Xu Shuzheng also calculated that in the name of Zhang Zuolin, commander-in-chief of the Feng army, he would dispatch seven mixed brigades of the Feng army to draw Jin Chun and Wu Junsheng south to Hunan to engage Wu Peifu, with the intention of seizing the territory of the two armies at the same time when the two armies were exhausted. As a direct result, Zhang Zuolin was relieved of Xu Shuzheng's post as deputy commander-in-chief of the Fengjun Army and Yang Yuting was arrested and imprisoned. Later, after Duan Qirui came forward to mediate, the matter was put to rest. However, Zhang Zuolin led his troops out of the border and returned to the northeast of the division, no longer standing for the Anhui warlords. The departure of the Feng army directly led to the rapid collapse of the Anhui regime from the central to the local level, at the same time, the Feng clan led the direct line, the two armies joined hands to attack into Beijing, and the Anhui government fell.
Zhang Zuolin
After the defeat of the Anhui regime, Xu Shuzheng first fled to Japan, and then returned to China to take up some posts in the War Department, and like other warlords who were defeated in the wilderness, he was assigned by the government to Western countries to investigate the military when Xu Shuzheng returned to China, the country was in a state of extreme chaos. Feng Yuxiang's nationalist army and Zhang Zuolin's Feng army competed with each other for territory, and Sun Chuanfang of Zhejiang rose up against the Feng army and went south. After his comeback, Duan Qirui became Feng Yuxiang's puppet, changing from "Duan Ligong" to "Duan Laigong". Xu Shuzheng was bent on pushing Duan Qirui to the presidency and regaining power, intending to persuade Zhang and Sun to stop the army and jointly deal with Feng Yuxiang, who was suspected of "redwashing.". When Feng Yuxiang got this information, he naturally felt that Mang was stabbed in the back, coupled with the hatred that Xu Shuzheng killed his uncle Lu Jianzhang seven years ago, so he had a murderous heart for Xu Shuzheng. On December 19, 1925, Xu Shuzheng entered Beijing by steamship from Shanghai, landed in Tianjin on December 23, arrived in Beijing by car on the same day, and on December 27, he wore a large dress full of medals to see Duan Qirui, indicating that his mission was completed. At this time, the situation in Beijing was becoming increasingly dangerous, Feng Yuxiang defeated Li Jinglin of the Feng clan, Zhang Zuolin executed the rebel general Guo Songling, and Feng and Zhang were bound to have a vicious fight, so Duan Qirui persuaded Xu Shuzheng to leave Beijing early. When Xu Shuzheng set off, someone put a note on Duan Qirui's desk, which read: "Zheng Zheng must not go south, he will die" Ten words, Duan Qirui hurriedly sent someone to hand the note to Xu Shuzheng, Xu Shuzheng did not mind after reading it, and smiled: "Whoever stopped me, do I believe this rumor?" ”
On the afternoon of December 29, 1925, Xu Shuzheng left Beijing by train for Tianjin after being bid farewell by everyone. Feng Yuxiang's confidant, Lu Zhonglin, commander of the Gyeonggi Garrison, informed Feng Yuxiang in Zhangjiakou of the situation and asked for instructions on what to do. Feng Yuxiang's new hatred for Xu Shuzheng came to his heart for a while, and instructed Lu Zhonglin to arrest Xu Shuzheng and shoot him. Lu Zhonglin conveyed to Feng Yuxiang Zhang Zhijiang, commander of the Fifth Division of the Nationalist Army, that he intercepted Xu Shuzheng's train at 2:00 a.m. in Langfang on December 30, and Xu Shuzheng, who was wearing pajamas, was "invited" out of the train and taken into Zhangying, and was immediately shot and killed. meanwhile
Xu Shuzheng's tomb Feng Yuxiang took Lu Chengwu, the son of Lu Jianzhang, to Langfang and asked him to appear in front of Xu Shuzheng's entourage, claiming that the incident was his revenge for his father, but afterwards the major newspapers disclosed the truth about Feng Yuxiang's killing of Xu Shuzheng. Although Duan Qirui was distraught about Xu Shuzheng's murder, he exclaimed, "Break my humerus!" Break my humerus! However, because he was under Feng Yuxiang's control and could not do anything, Xu Shuzheng's death was not pursued. In April of the following year, Duan Qirui resigned due to the March 18 massacre and lived in seclusion in Tianjin, and the Anhui warlords completely withdrew from the stage of history.
After Xu Shuzheng's death, the body was found by his student Duan Dahong, and then transported to Beijing by Xu Shuzheng's bodyguard Zhang Zhensheng in a mule truck, where Duan Qirui provided the coffin and personally wrote a Shinto monument to bury Xu Shuzheng in the plains of Fengjia mountain in Xiao County. In 1945, Xu Daolin, the son of Xu Shuzheng, indicted Feng Yuxiang and Zhang Zhijiang for homicide, but the authorities refused to accept them on the grounds that they were overdue.
Tomb of Xu Shuzheng
All in all, Xu Shuzheng, like many modern figures, the world's comments on his merits and demerits are mixed and polarized, and his evaluation changes with the changes of the times, and he is a figure with a complex and controversial image, just as the scholar Wang Yanmin, who wrote for Xu Shuzheng, said, Xu Shuzheng "has a patriotic heart, but also has mistakes in the country", "Xu Shuzheng's life has been ruined, and the destroyers have said that his crimes are extremely evil, so that he can kill them quickly; the honorists say that he is patriotic to the extreme, and he is afraid that those who succeed him are matchless."