Wild dogs don't bite and poop, and masters don't give gifts.

- Mongolian proverb

The desert is lonely, and the sun sets over the long river.

This is a poem written by the ancients that has been handed down to this day to describe the magnificent scenery of the great northwest. It not only describes the majesty, majesty and grandeur of the desert and the long river, but also points out the lonely smoke, a communication tool for reporting the military emergency at the border pass.

Since ancient times, the Great Northwest has been a battlefield where war horses neigh, swords and swords and shadows, and it is the only place for the Central Plains people to march westward and open up.

In the Great Northwest in 1949, the scenery was another tragic and gorgeous.

The Nationalist regime was defeated again and again on the battlefields of all parts of the country, like a sunset about to fall, and some desolate colors appeared in the blood red.

One day in May, Althea saw the staff of the Xining Telegraph Office hurriedly come to the Han Mansion in Xiaoqiao, and suddenly sent a letter of appointment to Han Gong, who was already indifferent to politics and had been living for a long time. This is the appointment letter from Ma Fang, the military and political governor of the Northwest, to Han Gong.

We have to start from the beginning.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army destroyed the withering and decaying and destroyed a large number of effective forces of the national power and liberated vast areas of northeast and north China in the three major battles launched by the Northeast Campaign, the Pingjin Campaign, and the Huaihai Campaign.

On April 21, the million-strong division of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) crossed the Yangtze River south to prepare for the liberation of all of China. At that time, the Nationalist regime also had a total force of 2.04 million and controlled 58% of the country's population, 63% of its cities, and 73% of its land. However, not long after a long time, among their remaining armies, only Baixi in the southwest and Ma Fang and Ma Kui in the northwest still had relatively tenacious combat effectiveness.

The national power is walking on thin ice, as if it is on the edge of an abyss, burning its eyebrows, and it is in danger.

Zhang Zhong went to Beiping to negotiate as the chief representative of the peace talks on the Nationalist side, and the post of military and political governor of the northwest that he left behind became the target of fierce competition between Ma Kui and Ma Fang.

In the minds of Erma, the position of the military and political governor of the Northwest is like the mighty king of the Northwest, and it is the throne they dream of. Although the Jiang dynasty was already in decline and was about to fall apart, Erma still refused to let go of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Ma Kui, whose name is Shaoyun, was born in 1892 in Washan Village, Hanjiaji, Hezhou, Gansu Province, and is the grandson of Ma Qianling and the eldest son of Ma Fuxiang.

When Ma Qianling rebelled in Shaanxi, Gansu and Gansu during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, he was called Lianghui by Lord Zuo because he persuaded his niece and son-in-law Ma Zhanao of the same clan to surrender to the Qing Dynasty. This is also the reason why Ma Kui later praised the Ma family as "not a rebellion".

In the early years of Guangxu, Ma Qianling's second son Ma Fulu, that is, Ma Bin's father, was among the Wuju people and Wujinshi. He died in the battle against the Eight-Nation Alliance, and assigned his younger brother Ma Fuxiang, that is, Ma Kui's father, to inherit his position and troops.

Ma Kui was influenced and influenced by the family's heavy education and martial arts since he was a child, he liked to read and practice martial arts, and when he was 18 years old, he entered the Gansu Army Academy to study, during which he participated in anti-Qing activities, secretly joined the League, and was soon arrested and imprisoned by the Qing army on the charge of "rebellion".

After his father Ma Fuxiang's many efforts, Ma Kui was released from prison on bail.

Ma Fuxiang ordered him not to participate in politics from now on, and served as an instructor of the Zhaowu Army and a commander of the cavalry battalion and the commander of the Ningxia New Army.

From 1914 to 1917, Ma Kui entered Beijing and successively served as the military attache of President Yuan Kai and Li Hong. In 1919, after Duan Qi came to power, Ma Kui was promoted to brigade commander of the 5th Mixed Brigade.

In September 1926, Feng Xiang swore an oath in Wuyuan in response to the call of the Southern Revolutionaries for the Northern Expedition. Ma Kui immediately threw himself at Feng Xiang. Three years later, he turned to the more powerful Lao Chiang and became the commander-in-chief of the 15th Route Army of the rebel army.

In November 1929, Ma Kui took charge of Ningxia. At the first provincial congress, he announced that clearing the acres of land, sorting out finances, establishing armor protection, and encircling and suppressing the Red Army were the four major policies for peace and order.

Ma Kui paid attention to the establishment of local education during the period of Zhuning, in accordance with his father's will, with Ma Fuxiang's legacy to build the Ningxia Sino-Arab School, in his hometown founded the Yunting Middle School named after Ma Fuxiang, funded and sponsored students to study abroad, organized the army to build more than 130 miles long, more than 200,000 acres of irrigated land Yunting Canal, requiring soldiers and generals to learn 3,000 Chinese characters, it can be said that there are still some political achievements.

In January 1931, Ma Kui was transferred to Henan on the order of Lao Jiang to participate in the attack on the Hubei-Henan-Anhui revolutionary base area.

In August of the following year, he was appointed head of Ningxia Province by Lao Chiang. However, he hoped to serve as the head of Henan Province, so he stayed in the Central Plains for a long time. The provincial government of Ningxia is handled by others.

Lao Jiang originally intended to give Ma Kui this piece of land in Henan Province, but later changed his mind because someone reported that he had delayed the military plane, not only did not announce his new position, but instead borrowed others to suppress Ma Kui.

Ma Kui was in an embarrassing situation for a while, because Ma Fuxiang, a backer, died, and there was no way to call for help.

There is no endless road. It was at this time that the political situation in Gansu and Ningxia was in turmoil.

Lao Jiang needed someone to clean up the mess, so he asked Ma Kui to return to Ningxia to take up his post. He was relieved and hurried back to the Great Northwest.

When leaving Henan, Ma Kui received an order from Lao Jiang: Ma Kui's troops in Henan were basically immovable, and Ma Bin came to take over; Ma Bin's troops in Ningxia were placed under the jurisdiction of Ma Kui; The armies of the two sides exchanged numbers.

Both Ma Kui and Ma Bin knew in their hearts that this was a clever move by Lao Jiang, so as to break the barriers and divisions that they had carefully woven for decades, divide and rule, and break each one.

Ma Kui took advantage of Lao Jiang's permission to lead his direct troops back to Ningxia, selected the elite personnel in the army overnight, secretly hid excellent weapons, and transported the troops to Baotou in Suixi Province in the cold weather of midwinter, and then walked south from Baotou and entered Ningxia under the stars. The team that remained in Henan was just some old, weak, sick and disabled.

Ma Bin also excused himself to stay in Ningxia.

One mountain dwells two tigers, and the struggle is endless. Since then, there have been many contradictions between the two horses for the sake of interests and military salaries.

Immediately after Ma Kui took up the post of head of the Ningxia Provincial Government, he put on a posture of making great efforts to make the country prosperous, put forward the two major administrative goals of "practicing the Three People's Principles" and "eliminating tobacco, poison, and bandits," formulated eight requirements for a "code of conduct" for civil servants, and even made clear regulations on the dress code of officials and staff.

Ma Kui's true creed is a sentence he often says: "If there are soldiers, there is power, and if there is power, there is money." ”

All his activities were carried out for the purpose of "grasping soldiers," "seizing power," and "scraping money."

At that time, Ningxia had backward transportation, extremely underdeveloped production, and remote location, so Lao Jiang felt that there was no need to control it too strictly, so he decided that the members of the Ningxia Provincial Government, the director of the department, the director of the division, and other officials except the director of the Department of Education should be nominated and sponsored by Ma Kui himself. Despite this, in order to control the local government alone, Ma Kui installed his cronies everywhere, drove out five education ministers sent by the national government in a row, and finally sponsored his cronies to take office.

Ma Kui manages the government with the military and the party with the government. The Kuomintang Ningxia Provincial Party Headquarters and the county party headquarters were all under his control.

Ma Kui has long been in Ningxia for the so-called co-office. Personnel from the General Headquarters and the provincial departments had to wait outside his office every morning for an appointment. The former goes out, the latter goes in, greetings, reports and requests for instructions in turn, the traffic is busy, bustling, and it is not lively.

He sat high on the Taishi's chair and gave orders according to his likes and dislikes. There are no chairs and stools in front of his desk, and those who are summoned can only stand to answer his questions, like children in a private school reciting texts to their teachers.

When Ma Kui went out for something, the military and political affairs were handled by the second son Ma Jing. Ma Jing entered and exited the provincial government office in an uproar every time, picked up a pen and randomly approved official documents. Officials at all levels respectfully obeyed orders, just like facing Ma Kui himself.

Before and after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Ma Hongkui served as the deputy commander of the 8th Theater and the commander-in-chief of the 17th Group Army, the deputy commander of the Northwest Military Administration, and the deputy director of the Northwest Xingyuan.

After Zhang Zhong resigned, Guo Qiao, head of the Gansu Provincial Government, temporarily assumed the post of acting military and political chief in the name of deputy governor.

Ma Kui believed that if he wanted to obtain the post of military and political governor of the northwest, he must personally go to Lanzhou to carry out activities, and at the same time, he had to do everything possible to squeeze out Guo Qiao.

In late April, Ma Kui came to Lanzhou from Ningxia under the pretext of recuperating from illness, and every day he held a banquet in a restaurant, feasting all the dignitaries in the northwest, and using them to create public opinion for himself to come to power. He also invited Ma Fang and Ma Bin to come to Lanzhou to discuss major events in the northwest, as if he was the king of the northwest.

Ma Fang and Ma Bin didn't buy his account, and both called to decline the invitation.

Ma Kui seized on Guo Qiao's preparation to issue 3 million yuan of public bonds, and exposed and accused Guo Qiao through newspapers and broadcasts, which made Guo Qiao embarrassed and had no intention of fighting.

Just when Ma Kui triumphantly thought that he had done a great job, he was suddenly shocked by the news from the provisional regime in Guangzhou: the provisional supreme governor planned to appoint Ma Fang as the military and political governor of the northwest.

It turned out that when Ma Kui was vigorously active in Lanzhou, Ma Fang relied on the large amount of gold in his hands to perform attractive gold diplomacy, quietly walked the upper route, and easily opened the door to the central government.

The provisional supreme governor believes that Ma Fang is an unruly wild horse. Ma Kui is a cunning old slippery horse. At the critical juncture of the country's turmoil, only by using that fierce wild horse can we turn the tide and save the community.

Gold played a big role. The strength of Ma Fang's army was superior to that of Ma Kui. These are also two other important reasons for the central government's appointment of Ma Fang.

Ma Kui is 11 years older than Ma Fang, he is Ma Fang's elder, and his military rank and position are higher than Ma Fang. Now that he was defeated by the junior Ma Fang, Ma Kui felt very angry and humiliated in his heart.

In early May, Ma Kui invited Ma Fang to meet at the famous Xiangtang in the northeast of Minhe County, known as the gateway to Qinghai. After bargaining, the two sides finally reached a gentleman's agreement: Ma Kui promoted Ma Fang as the military and political governor of the northwest, and Ma Fang promoted Ma Kui as the head of the Gansu Provincial Government, and agreed to send Ma Kui's Ningxia Corps to eastern Gansu to fight jointly with the Qinghai Corps led by Ma Fang's son Ma Yuan, to prevent the People's Liberation Army's westward advance and defend the three provinces of Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai.

The two horses drank gaiwan tea in Xiangtang with their hearts, tasted the mutton grasped by the Hui people, and then cherished each other, shook hands and said goodbye.

After Ma Kui returned to Ningxia, he immediately fulfilled his promise, and while telegraphing the Kuomintang Central Committee to appoint Ma Fang as the military and political chief of the northwest, he also telegraphed Lu Liang, commander of the 128th Army of the Ningxia National Revolutionary Army, to send troops to eastern Gansu and form the Ningxia United Corps with the Qinghai Corps of Ma Yuan and Niu Zhanhai to jointly attack the People's Liberation Army at the junction of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

Soon, the Nationalist regime publicly appointed Ma Fang as the acting military and political governor of the northwest.

Ma Fang immediately led his original team in Qinghai and rushed from Xining to Lanzhou to take up his post. He almost completely replaced the important members of the original Governor's Office, leaving only the personnel belonging to the Gui family Baixi. He also deliberately left Guo Qiao, the head of the Gansu Provincial Government, and used him to hold Ma Kui hostage, and then forced him to step down and give way when the time was ripe.

At the same time, Ma Fang arranged for his subordinates to privately mobilize officials from all over the country, sent representatives of all ethnic groups and all walks of life to come to Lanzhou to congratulate, and lavishly presented horses and flags to create momentum for his ascension, completely throwing Ma Kui and Zaixiangtang's promise to others to the back of his head.

On the front line in eastern Gansu, the childish Ma Yuan heard that his father had been promoted to the military and political chief of the northwest, and he was so excited that he told Niu Zhanhaidao: "It seems that the central government still favors me Ada." Do a good job, and Gansu, Qinghai and even Ningxia will be our world in the future. ”

Ma Yuan looks white and clean, and the jade tree is in the wind, more like a scholar. His pale skin turned pink from the excitement.

Ma Kui waited left and right in Lanzhou, but did not see Ma Fang fulfill his previous promise to promote himself as the head of the Gansu Provincial Government, and in a fit of anger, he ordered the Ningxia Corps to retreat from the border between Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

At this time, Ma Yuan and Niu Zhanhai commanded nearly 100,000 people of the Ningxia Combined Corps, and were attacking the People's Liberation Army at the junction of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Due to the discord between Ma Kui and Ma Fang, the Ningxia Corps and the Qinghai Corps could not act together.

Ma Yuan wholeheartedly obeyed his father Ma Fang's arrangement, and deliberately sent the Ningxia Corps to the front line of the battle when attacking the People's Liberation Army to serve as cannon fodder for the People's Liberation Army.

The Ningxia Corps only obeyed Ma Kui's orders alone, and ignored and ignored the orders of Ma Fang and Ma Yuan's father and son.

Soon, the Ningxia Combined Corps suffered a defeat at the junction of Shaanxi and Gansu. The two corps scrambled to retreat. The Qinghai Corps retreated first, intending to intercept the retreat of the Ningxia Corps. After a night of onslaught, the Ningxia Corps finally broke through the cordon set up by Ma Yuan and Niu Zhanhai.

The family is poor and thinks of a good wife, and the country is in trouble and thinks of a good general.

After Ma Fang served as the military and political governor of the northwest, he knew very well that in order to sit firmly in this official position, he needed a group of loyal people who carried the sedan chair, especially the military generals who were in urgent need of outstanding talents. He remembered one of his fierce generals, Han Gong, and immediately appointed Han Gong as the lieutenant general commander of the newly formed cavalry army, and asked him to lead an army to Gansu to block the People's Liberation Army advancing into the northwest.

In the face of the overwhelming army of the People's Liberation Army, Ma Fang was obsessed, confused, and unable to measure his strength, intending to continue to resist stubbornly. Han Gong, who was in a daze, couldn't get rid of the charm and temptation of Guanlu, and couldn't help but be overjoyed when he saw the letter of appointment, and he was ready to move.

Ma Kui was calculated by Ma Fang and did not become the head of the Gansu Provincial Government, so he felt very angry, but he had no way to vent.

His favorite fourth aunt gave him an idea: "Why don't you take advantage of Ma Fang's temporary return to Xining to go to Guangzhou to meet the provisional supreme governor?" With the sword of the supreme commander, I see who dares not to put you in the eyes! ”

Ma Kui came to Guangzhou according to the advice of the fourth aunt and met the provisional supreme governor.

However, the interim supreme governor did not intend to support him.

He planned to fly to Taiwan to meet Lao Chiang and seek the support of the real power. However, the Interim Supreme Governor did not approve it. Ma Kui had no choice but to continue to telegraph and order the Ningxia Corps to retreat from the front lines in Shaanxi and Gansu.

As a result, the Ningxia Corps soon lost Changwu in northwest Shaanxi and Jingchuan and Pingliang in eastern Gansu, which it had occupied in the early stage, and the area under its control was further compressed by the PLA.

With the Ningxia Corps already retreating, Ma Yuan and Niu Zhanhai, stationed in eastern Gansu, could no longer hide behind the Ningxia Corps and had to face the fierce offensive Chinese People's Liberation Army.

What awaits them?