Zhuang Jihua retreated to "cultivate", and the outside world was still turbulent.

Nanchang and Wuchang were restored, and the Northern Expeditionary Army shook the whole country, and all walks of life in China looked at this brave and warlike army with complicated eyes, this national political axe that held high the banner of overthrowing the warlords and overthrowing imperialism.

Zhang Zuolin, who had not yet directly fought with the Northern Expeditionary Army, also felt deeply threatened, and at the end of 1926, shortly after the capture of Wuchang, Zhang Zuolin entered the customs from the northeast and arrived in Tianjin.

Sun Chuanfang suffered heavy losses in the battle of Jiangxi, and the elite of his department was completely lost, and he considered that he repeatedly felt that he was powerless to stop the attack of the Northern Expeditionary Army, so he boarded the northbound train alone in mid-December and went to Tianjin to meet Zhang Zuolin.

The two former enemies turned hostility into jade silk, Sun Chuanfang put down his body and married Zhang Xueliang as brothers with different surnames, worshiped Zhang Zuolin as his godfather, participated in Zhang Zuolin's formation of An [***], and became the deputy commander. Zhang Zuolin was also very atmospheric, and decided to send the Zhilu coalition army south to assist Sun Chuanfang in guarding Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

On the other hand, it was decided that Zhang Xueliang would lead the main force of the Feng army south to Henan and cooperate with Wu Peifu to counterattack Wuhan. But it was Wu Peifu who was a little troublesome along the way.

Zhang Zuolin's abacus is very loud, but Wu Peifu is not a fool, what he is most afraid of now is that others will enter his sphere of influence, and he is now only left with the territory of Henan, so he resolutely rejected Zhang Zuolin's kindness, and only hoped that he would provide weapons, ammunition and funds. This time it was Zhang Zuolin's turn to quit, but in order to show the unity of the Beiyang departments, it was not good for him to wave his troops to attack Henan directly, although the latter was very weak and simply vulnerable, and the two sides were at a stalemate.

Chiang Kai-shek felt that he could not confront Wuhan with Jiangxi alone, so soon after Wuhan returned to Nanchang, he launched the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Campaign, hoping to take Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and control Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.

Chiang Kai-shek's plan was to divide the campaign into two phases, the first of which was an offensive by the Eastern Route Army in Zhejiang. The East Road consisted of two parts, and the divisions of Zhengzhong, Chen Jiji, and Jiang Dingwen led by He Yingqin of Fujian attacked along the line of Wenzhou and Lishui to the Linhai of Taizhou; On the other hand, with Bai Chongxi as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy, he led four divisions of Gu Zhutong, Wei Lihuang, Xu Yuanquan, and Liu Zhi, as well as Zhou Fengqi's 26th Route Army, from Shangrao to Quzhou and Longyou, and launched an attack on Hangzhou.

Chiang Kai-shek's aim was to use the attack of the Eastern Route Army to attract and cover the assembly and attack of the Central Route Army, once the Eastern Route Army succeeded in the attack, Sun Chuanfang transferred troops from Jiangsu on the Central Route to Zhejiang, and the Second, Third, and Seventh Armies assembled on the border between Jiangxi and Suzhou, as well as Wang Tianpei and other troops in Jiangbei, launched an attack on Nanjing and Anhui with overwhelming momentum.

But Chiang Kai-shek underestimated Sun Chuanfang, in his opinion, Sun Chuanfang's elite was lost in the Jiangxi Campaign, and only Meng Zhaoyue's department was relatively complete in the entire Zhejiang, and the rest of the troops were the remnants of Zhou Yinren and Xie Wenshan, who had retreated from Jiangxi and Fujian, and the Northern Expeditionary Army also had Chen Yi's department, which had accepted the number of the 19th Army of the Northern Expeditionary Army. Therefore, the two-way attack will be like a plough court sweeping the holes, sweeping the entire Zhejiang. Chiang Kai-shek's deployment should be fine, but the specific implementation is different.

Zhou Fengqi and Xu Yuanquan, who were the vanguards, launched the offensive without waiting for the follow-up troops to complete the assembly, and the beginning was very smooth, Lianke Quzhou, Longyou, Lanxi and other cities, quickly approached Hangzhou, and the follow-up Liu Zhi, Wei Lihuang, and Gu Zhutong were still on the border of Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

It was at this time that Meng Zhaoyue was waiting, when he concentrated the main forces, including the Zhilu coalition army that had come from reinforcements, and defeated Zhou Fengqi and Xu Yuanquan in Fuyang and Tonglu successively. Under the persecution of Meng Zhaoyue, Zhou Fengqi and Xu Yuanquan could not stand on their feet, and successively abandoned Jiande, Lanxi, and Longyou, and retreated to Quzhou, and the military situation in western Zhejiang deteriorated.

At this time, Bai Chongxi led his troops to the front line of the Eastern Route Army, and his military talent was perfectly performed, saving the situation in western Zhejiang in one fell swoop.

In the face of Meng Zhaoyue, who was known as a crowd of 100,000, Bai Chongxi, who only had 60,000 troops, decided to attack and resolutely attack.

Bai Chongxi used Zhou Fengqi's troops to attract Meng Zhaoyue's main force near Longyou, and he personally led Liu Zhi, Wei Lihuang, and Li Mingyang's troops to detour through Anhui, defeated Xie Bingwen, Chen Xiujue and other remnants of the Guangdong army near Huizhou, and then turned to the Yanzhou area (that is, the present-day Chun'an and Jiande areas) to cut off the retreat of the main force of the Sun army in the Longyou and Lanxi areas, and then the troops moved south from the Yanzhou area and outflanked Longyou Lanxi from the rear.

Just when the dawn of the war situation in Zhejiang was revealed, the Northern Expeditionary Army made new contributions to the rebellion, and secretly accepted the adaptation of the national political axe in the 6th Division of Chen Tiaoyuan in Anhui, which eliminated the threat of Bai Chongxi's flank and enabled him to attack Meng Zhaoyue with all his might.

Bai Chongxi, who was exempted from the flank threat, launched a decisive battle with Meng Zhaoyue in the Longyou area. Both sides went all out in this battle, and Zhang Feng to the east of Mengzhaoyuehu Town established the main position, using the local flood control levee to build fortifications.

Bai Chongxi's troops were divided into three ways and launched an attack on Sun's army by encircling three queyi. In this battle, Wei Lihuang stood out, he led his troops to fight Zhang Feng, broke through Meng Zhaoyue's defense line from the center, and forced Sun's army to retreat on all fronts.

Longyou victory, completely reversed the situation of the war in western Zhejiang, the morale of the Northern Expeditionary Army was greatly boosted, and they pursued overnight, such as entering a no-man's land, defeated Meng Zhaoyue again in Tonglu, and then went straight to Hangzhou.

The good news from the front has been passed one after another, and the battle for moving the capital to the rear has also come to an end.

In view of the fact that the opinions of Nanchang and Wuhan have not been unified, the Wuhan side resolutely demanded that the capital be moved to Wuhan and a joint conference should be set up to exercise the supreme decision-making power; Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, turned fire on Borodin and demanded that Borodin be expelled; Borodin, on the other hand, was careful to use the left wing of the Kuomintang to convene a joint conference, and on the other hand, he tried to avoid an open break with Chiang Kai-shek.

In order to reconcile the contradictions between the two sides, and also to ascertain Chiang Kai-shek's attitude, the Comintern sent Vyshinsky to Jiujiang for an interview with Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek explicitly told Vyshinsky that the Nationalist Axe could move to Wuhan, but Borodin had to leave.

At the Central Political Conference held in Nanchang in early February, a decision was made to move the Nationalist Political Axe and the Central Party Headquarters to Wuhan, and at the same time a telegram was sent to the Comintern in the hope that it would take the initiative to recall Borodin.

It is clear that this was a political bargain, and Chiang Kai-shek agreed to move the capital to Wuhan in exchange for the delegates agreeing to remove Borodin.

Chiang Kai-shek's power made Xu Qian, Sun Ke, Deng Yanda and others even more uneasy, and in order to change this situation, they jointly proposed to convene the Third Plenum as soon as possible.

As early as the end of last year, at the beginning of the intensity of the dispute, Xu Qian and others proposed to convene the Third Plenum to resolve the dispute between the two places, but Chiang Kai-shek rejected it at that time, and now the old matter was brought up again, and was supported by the majority of the deputies, so the political meeting passed the motion to convene the Third Plenum in Wuhan in early March.

At the end of February, delegates from various localities attending the meeting arrived in Wuhan one after another, but the delegates from Nanchang did not move, and Chiang Kai-shek, Tan Yankai, Zhang Jingjiang, Chen Lifu, Chen Guofu, and others stayed in Nanchang without any movement. The rift within the Kuomintang has widened.

Deng Yanda, Dong Bwu, and others published a series of articles in the newspapers exposing Chiang Kai-shek's attempt to override the party's power with military power and demanding that all power be returned to the central authorities. At the end of February, the scope of the attack was further expanded to include Zhang Jingjiang, and at the Kuomintang congress held in Wuhan, Xu Qian further proposed that [***] be integrated into the Kuomintang Central Committee and demanded Zhang Jingjiang's resignation, a move supported by the party members attending the meeting.

On 7 March, Tan Yankai, He Xiangning, Chen Guofu, Li Liejun, and other representatives of Nanchang came to Wuhan one after another, but Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Jingjiang did not arrive, and Chiang Kai-shek hoped that the Third Plenary Session would be postponed until the 12th, but this demand was resolutely opposed by Deng Yanda, Xu Qian, Sun Ke, Yun Daiying, Mao Zdong, and others at the preparatory meeting, so the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee was formally convened on 10 March, and Li Liejun protested on the spot, believing that it was abnormal and unacceptable for such an important meeting without the participation of the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army. After finishing speaking, Li Liejun left the venue on the spot; The next day, Chen Guofu also left Wuhan and said goodbye.

After Li Liejun returned to Nanchang, he reported the situation to Chiang Kai-shek, who was furious. He concluded that the Wuhan side had completely fallen into the hands of Borodin, into the hands of [***].

While the Third Plenum was still being held, Chiang Kai-shek began to take action, Chen Zanxian, chairman of the Ganzhou Federation of Trade Unions, was shot dead, the Nanchang City Party headquarters inclined to Wuhan was destroyed by the army, and then the Jiujiang Party headquarters was also smashed by the Kuomintang who supported Chiang Kai-shek, and the Kuomintang who supported Chiang Kai-shek seized power in various parts of Jiangxi.

However, Chiang Kai-shek still did not openly purge the party at the moment, because he was not sure about the attitude of the army, his descendant of the First Army had been educated by the cooperation of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party for a long time, and the influence of the Communist Party in the army always existed, and the attitudes of Li Zongren, Zhu Peide and others were also obscure. Therefore, he still said in public that he obeyed Wuhan's orders and said that the army remained neutral.

Wuhan was not deceived by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Third Plenum dismissed Chiang Kai-shek from all other posts except as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army. However, the consequences of Chiang Kai-shek's failure to attend the meeting affected many people, and Chen Mingshu also agreed with Li Liejun's attitude, and as the commander of the Wuhan garrison, he was very dissatisfied with the labor movement in Wuhan, and he tried to persuade Tan Yankai to oppose Wuhan, but was refused.

Tan Yankai originally supported Chiang Kai-shek, but he changed his attitude during the meeting. Tan Yankai not only refused, but also secretly transferred He Jianbu of the 35th Army to return to Wuhan in order to prevent him from taking drastic actions.

Of course, Chen Mingshu's mobilization of the 35th Army could not be concealed, and he immediately handed over the troops to Jiang Guangnai, the deputy commander of the army, but he himself went to Nanchang and openly sided with Chiang Kai-shek.

Subsequently, Li Zongren also publicly expressed his position in Wuhan, but he was very slippery, neither openly opposing Chiang nor openly opposing Wuhan, but only repeatedly emphasized the unity of the Kuomintang, and should not repeat the mistakes of the Taiping Army, but should be dealt with in a peaceful way, and reiterated that Chiang Kai-shek was meritorious and made great contributions to the national revolution, so he did not agree to remove him from the post of commander-in-chief, but suggested that Wuhan take a step back. But what he didn't know was that the Wuhan side had decided to arrest Chiang Kai-shek if necessary, and the order was handed over to Cheng Qian in the form of a secret order, and he was on camera to carry it out.

Of course, no one was so naïve as to think that Chiang Kai-shek could be relieved of his post as commander-in-chief with a single order, and that in order to remove him from office, it was necessary to divide his troops, first and foremost the First Army.

Zhuang Jihua tried everything to dodge things, but with the arrival of Deng Yanda, he had to face it head-on.

(To be continued)