After the fall of the Qing government, warlords of all walks of life were active in the land of China.
There was Zhang Zuolin of the Feng clan who was in the three northeastern provinces, Yan Xishan of the Jin clan who occupied Shanxi, Li Zongren of the Gui clan who was staying in Guangxi, and Feng Yuxiang, who controlled the vast northwest region.
The main military and political leader of China after the Northern Expedition
Among them, Feng Yuxiang's Northwest Army is the strongest: the Northwest Army has more than 400,000 male soldiers, and the soldiers benefit from family-style management, and the cohesion is quite strong. During the Central Plains War, the Northwest Army was still the head of all anti-Chiang Kai-shek allies.
However, such a northwest army with 400,000 troops and a flourishing moment was the first among the warlords to disintegrate. So, why did the Feng Yuxiang warlord, whose strength was second only to Jiang Jun's, become the first warlord to collapse? After the Central Plains War, Yan Xishan Li Zongren made a comeback, why did Feng Yuxiang lose everything?
Who is Feng Yuxiang?
Feng Yuxiang was born in Baoding in the eighth year of Guangxu (1882) under the command of Liu Chuanming of the Huai Army. The Huai army pays attention to the inheritance of the father's business, and Feng Yuxiang naturally became a member of the Huai army. After the Gengzi Incident, the Huai army collapsed, so Feng Yuxiang switched to Yuan Shikai's Wuwei Right Army, which was later the "Beiyang New Army". In the Beiyang Army, Feng Yuxiang relied on his own efforts to promote all the way, and soon sat in the position of the battalion pipe belt (battalion commander).
In 1911, the Wuchang Uprising broke out, and Feng Yuxiang participated in the Luanzhou Uprising against the Qing government. The Luanzhou uprising ended in failure, but Feng Yuxiang was not eliminated, and he also fell in love with the nobles. Yuan Shikai's confidant Lu Jianzhang saved Feng Yuxiang's life and also betrothed his niece Xu to Feng Yuxiang, who was promoted again under lu Jianzhang's protection.
In 1914, Feng Yuxiang was appointed brigade commander of the 14th Brigade of the 7th Army Division (later renamed the brigade commander of the 16th Mixed Brigade), and was ordered to suppress the uprising against Yuan Shikai in Shaanxi and Henan. Feng Yuxiang actively developed his own forces in the army, coupled with the lack of influence of the central government, gradually this mixed brigade became Feng Yuxiang's private soldiers, which was the capital for Feng Yuxiang to form the Northwest Army.
In 1921, in the war between the direct and Anhui families, Feng Yuxiang performed well, and the troops were expanded into the 11th Division. Soon, the Shaanxi overseer Yan Xiangwen committed suicide, and Feng Yuxiang, through a series of operations, replaced Yan Xiangwen as the shaanxi overseer and officially entered the ranks of warlords.
In 1924, war broke out within the Beiyang warlords, and the direct and feng clans were mixed together for the second zhifeng war. The anti-direct alliance formed by Sun Yat-sen, Zhang Zuolin, and Lu Yongxiang actively co-opted Feng Yuxiang within the warlords of the direct lineage. In October, taking advantage of the fierce battle between Zhi and Feng at Shanhaiguan, Feng Yuxiang, commander-in-chief of the Third Army, launched a coup d'état in Beijing and directly raided the hometown of his immediate family. Feng Yuxiang imprisoned President Cao Kun and expelled Puyi from the city of Beijing. Because of Feng Yuxiang's defection, the direct army was almost completely destroyed.
In order to express his "support for Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles", Feng Yuxiang renamed the unit "National Army of the Republic of China" and served as commander-in-chief and commander of the 1st Army. In January 1925, Duan Qirui appointed Feng Yuxiang as the Northwest Frontier Inspector and asked him to reorganize the troops into 150,000 people. Duan Qirui also delineated the sphere of influence of the Nationalist Army and the Feng Army, and Yu Province and the northwest were the main areas of activity of the Nationalist Army, and the world began to call Feng Yuxiang's troops the "Northwest Army".
Subsequently, the Northwest Army and the Feng Army each expanded their power. Feng Yuxiang wantonly harvested the territory of the direct lineage, collected the direct army, and increased his strength dramatically. Moreover, compared with the Fengzhi, the opponents encountered by the Northwest Army were all relatively weak Beiyang warlord marginal troops, and it was easier to expand. By October 1925, the Northwest Army's forces had spread throughout Gansu, Shaanxi, Henan, Sui and other regions, with a strength of 420,000 troops, the highest among Chinese warlords.
At the same time, Feng Yuxiang also relied on geographical advantages to receive assistance from the Soviet Union. Feng Yuxiang first turned against the enemy, and then invited rebellion and expansion of power, which attracted the envy of other warlords. At the end of 1925, the north formed a situation in which the combined forces of the Feng, Direct, and Zhilu jointly strangled the Northwest Army. Subsequently, the Guofeng War broke out, the Northwest (Nationalist) Army was defeated, Feng Yuxiang had to leave the Soviet Union, and the forces of the Northwest Army were also absorbed by all sides.
But just a month later, Feng Yuxiang returned from the Soviet Union. He gathered the old department, and all the places responded, and people kept regrouping around Feng Yuxiang. Feng Yuxiang took an oath in Suiyuan Wuyuan, announced that he would respond to the Northern Expedition and join the Kuomintang, strongly supporting and cooperating with the Guangdong National Revolutionary Army. Then, the revolutionary army marched all the way to eliminate Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang's clique, and the Northwest Army also fought from Gansu and Shaanxi to the Central Plains, and the momentum was greatly enhanced, and the Beiyang warlords were overthrown in the revolution that spread throughout the country.
With the fall of the Beiyang warlords, five new warlord groups formed on the land of China: Lao Jiang, Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, Li Zongren, and Zhang Xueliang.
New warlords mean new entanglements of interests, and new wars are bound to break out. The Central Plains War of 1930 was a showdown between the new warlords. During the Great War of the Central Plains, Wang Jingwei, a leftist faction of the Kuomintang, united with Warlords such as Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Li Zongren to oppose Chiang's Nanjing Nationalist Government, but the result of the war was that Lao Chiang won a victory.
Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Li Zongren, who had failed miserably, were electrified and sent down to the field. The difference was that Yan Xishan's Jin Sui army quickly returned to his command, and Yan Xishan made a comeback in Shanxi; Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi of the Gui clan also firmly controlled the Guangxi base camp, and although they lost the possibility of competing for the whole country, they were still princes of one side. Only Feng Yuxiang lost his army and territory and was defeated.
The Northwest Army, the strongest of the anti-Chiang Kai-shek forces, also collapsed after the war. So, what caused this result?
Feng Yuxiang, Chiang Kai-shek, Yan Xishan
First of all, Feng Yuxiang does not know how to "preserve strength".
Feng Yuxiang's territory includes the vast northwest and the central plains, and the northwest is Feng Yuxiang's basic disk. When the war was about to start, Feng Yuxiang rejected the proposal of his subordinate Sun Lianzhong to "leave a retreat for the Northwest Army" and transferred all the troops stationed in the rear. At the same time, in order to express his "broken cauldron and sink the boat", Feng Yuxiang mentioned in the telegram, "If you win, you will organize a government in Jiangnan, and if you lose, you will not hesitate to die together."
Yan Xishan and Li Zongren, on the other hand, knew better how to save themselves in the war, rather than fighting the enemy to the death. They all left their own backhands before the war, and they were able to return to their hometown after defeat.
Therefore, in the later stages of the Central Plains War, when the situation was very unfavorable to the anti-Chiang coalition forces, Yang Hucheng, a miscellaneous army, directly defected to Lao Jiang and blocked the way for the Northwest Army to return to the base area, and the Northwest Army did not have enough strength to meet Feng Yuxiang, and the Northwest Army fell into a desperate situation.
Secondly, there were many contradictions within the Northwest Army, and everyone seemed to support Feng Yuxiang, but in fact they were pregnant with ghosts.
If Feng Yuxiang's subordinates could be like Yan Xishan and Li Zongren's subordinates, the commander shook his arm and shouted, and everyone gathered to respond, Feng Yuxiang would also have the opportunity to overturn. As a result, the senior generals of the Northwest Army no longer chose to be loyal to Feng Yuxiang. Among them, Han Fuyu, Zhang Weixi, Yang Hucheng, and others surrendered to Jiang, and Song Zheyuan, Ma Hongkui, Shi Yousan, and others supported the army and respected themselves, divided one side, and turned a blind eye to Feng Yuxiang. Many people superficially expressed their respect for the old chief, but in fact adopted an attitude of "respecting ghosts and gods and staying away" towards Feng Yuxiang.
In 1926, Feng Yuxiang returned from the Soviet Union and was sincerely welcomed by his old subordinates, and the scene of vitality and competition for all things was still in front of him.
So, why did the old general of the Northwest Army invariably choose to "betray" Feng Yuxiang in just 4 years?
First, economic reasons: although the Northwest Army is powerful, its equipment and treatment are the worst among the warlords. Of course, this is necessarily related to the barrenness of the Northwest.
From 1928 to 1930, a severe drought broke out in Henan, Shaanxi and Gansu, which in turn caused a great famine. Natural disasters were rampant, starvation was rampant, people were cannibalizing, and the population in the base areas of the Northwest Army was drastically reduced. According to statistics, at that time, 3 million people starved to death in Henan, and almost all of the more than 35 million people in the province became disaster victims; the total population of Shaanxi was 12 million, and the number of people who starved to death and fled the famine reached 4.5 million; more than 6.6 million people in Gansu Province, starving to death more than 2 million. The Northwest Lands were no longer able to sustain the Northwest Army's war expenses.
Feng Yuxiang did not care, in order to raise military expenses, he began to forcibly collect grain and materials. Like bandits, the Northwest Army closed the town and went door to door to loot property. As a battlefield, the western Henan region was repeatedly exploited by the Northwest Army. Later, there was really no material to raise, Feng Yuxiang even withheld the relief materials, and the hungry Northwest Army also extended its hand to the grain seeds for the next year.
Feng Yuxiang fished as hard as he could, squeezing out his own territory, making the northwest lose its value as a base area. Without the foundation of its existence, the Northwest Army would naturally fall apart. After the Battle of the Central Plains, many generals began to find another way out, unwilling to return to the Great Northwest with Feng Yuxiang.
But even with such looting, the money obtained was still not enough to sustain the war expenses of hundreds of thousands of troops. The vast number of officers and men of the Northwest Army had a difficult life, and even the basic coarse grain and light food could not be guaranteed, and they often ate up and down, and their clothing and salaries were often not paid for several months. The lack of clothing and food caused the Northwest Army to be exhausted and scattered, which gave the enemy the opportunity to disintegrate its own side.
Old Chiang Kai-shek's Central Army was well treated, and they waved their clanging money bags and shouted to the Northwest Army, "Come to our side, we are well fed and warmly dressed, and there are 10 yuan of military salaries a month in the current ocean."
The soldiers of the Northwest Army, who could not even guarantee the food expenses of the 2 oceans, could not bear this temptation. In the later stages of the Central Plains War, many soldiers of the Northwest Army were drawn away by Chiang Kai-shek's army. This not only affected the results of the anti-Chiang Kai-shek war, but also caused the officers and men of the Northwest Army after the war to turn to the rich old Chiang Kai-shek, thus accelerating the disintegration of the Northwest Army.
The second is Feng Yuxiang's attitude toward senior generals: generals like Han Fuyu and Shi Yousan were all hand-pulled by Feng Yuxiang from the grassroots, and Feng Yuxiang was like their feudal parent or big brother. Feng Yuxiang is very good at training soldiers, he cares about the well-being of soldiers, attaches importance to the ideological transformation of soldiers, and many people in the Northwest Army regard him as a spiritual mentor, which is also the reason why the Northwest Army initially responded to every response and was extremely cohesive.
Over time, many generals became high-ranking, powerful, and influential figures. However, Feng Yuxiang still treated them in the same way as before, often beating and scolding, punishing kneeling, rewarding military sticks, and lacking basic respect. Perhaps in Feng Yuxiang's view, this was no different from the elders admonishing the younger generations, but whether the generals thought the same way was not within Feng Yuxiang's control.
The more Feng Yuxiang scolded the generals, the more dissatisfied these senior generals became, which eventually led to the Northwest Army encountering adversity, and many generals chose to take the olive branch thrown by the enemy and stay away from Feng Yuxiang, the "feudal patriarch".
For example, after the Battle of the Central Plains, Han Fuyu proposed to abandon the northwest and capture the two lakes, which was severely reprimanded by Feng Yuxiang, and he was punished for kneeling and slapping his mouth. Old Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, tried his best to woo Han Fuyu, one party-state pillar after another, and one changsheng general, not only promising the chairman of Shandong Province, but also sending 5 million oceans. If you are Han Fuyu, how will you choose?
Han Fuyu
After the defeat of the Northwest Army, most of the generals pondered: Instead of following the "parent" Feng Yuxiang back to the barren land, it would be better to take advantage of the fact that there were soldiers in hand and turn to the more promising old Chiang Kai-shek. As for betrayal or non-betrayal, Feng Yuxiang has defected 9 times in his life, as his subordinate, the psychological pressure will definitely be much less, just like learning.
At the same time, there are also many contradictions between the generals and generals within the Northwest Army. Most of the generals of the Northwest Army were soldiers, and they accumulated certain strength in Feng Yuxiang's promotion and his long-term hard work, forming their own groups, such as the Henan faction headed by Li Mingzhong and the Hebei faction headed by Zhang Zhijiang.
In addition to listening to Feng Yuxiang, the generals did not obey each other, Song Zheyuan and Sun Liangcheng and Liu Yufen were at odds, Ji Hongchang and Sun Liangcheng were at odds, and there were also many discords between the old and young generals, and the Interior of the Northwest Army could be described as a mess.
Liang Guanying, the general of Feng Yuxiang's army, predicted that when Feng Yuxiang's group encountered another war, it would inevitably disintegrate, but the officers and men of our Northwest Army would have no place to stand in the future.
The final outcome of the Northwest Army also confirmed what Liang Guanying said. It can be said that under the blessing of various conditions, the collapse of the Northwest Army is an inevitable trend.