At this time, the total strength of the Northwest Army totaled more than 260,000 people, and Feng Yuxiang, who had worked hard to promote Yan Xishan's opposition to Chiang, naturally would not hide his personal interests, and Feng Yuxiang decided to mobilize all the Northwest Army to the front. Sun Lianzhong, then chairman of Gansu Province, suggested that Feng Yuxiang should keep appropriate troops in Shaanxi, Gansu, Qingdao, and Ningbo, and that if the war did not go well, the Northwest Army could retreat to the northwest with the whole army, and then wait for the opportunity.

However, Feng Yuxiang believed that this was the last battle with Chiang Kai-shek, "if you win, you will form a political axe in Nanjing, and if you lose, you will end up together", and he completely had a broken posture, so he insisted that Sun Lianzhong's whole army go to Henan. Sun Lianzhong, who was very helpless, hesitated again and again, and finally decided to ignore Feng Yuxiang's order, gritted his teeth and left Lei Zhongtian's division in Gansu, and led the rest of the troops to Henan on foot.

It's just that he, a division of thousands of people, managed to control the western region of Guangrou, and from then on, Qinghai was Ma Bufang's world.

Yan Xishan led the Third Front Army by himself, divided into four routes, and Xu Yongchang commanded the first and third routes to Yangwu, Zhongmu, Yanjin, and Kaifeng through the Pinghan Road to Lanfeng and Guide, and the specific operations were under the command of Feng Yuxiang. Fu Zuoyi commanded the second route to go south on Jinpu Road, intending to join forces with Shi Yousan to take Jinan first.

Zhang Yinwu's fourth road target is the Jiaoji line. Among them, Yan Xishan personally supervised the 150,000 troops of Zhang Yinwu and Fu Zuoyi.

Shi Yousan led the Fourth Front Army, about 50,000 people, and the forward had already crossed the river, entered the vicinity of Dongming and Linpu, and tried to attack Cao County and Jining.

Wan Xuancai, Sun Dianying, Liu Guitang, Fan Zhongxiu, Ren Yingqi, Wang Tai and other departments, about more than 100,000 people, are divided into Guide, Bozhou, Fugou, Xuchang and other places. Lu Xingbang and Gao Guizi mutinied, and they were based in Fuzhou and Linyi, echoing the anti-Chiang coalition forces.

Song Zhewu reported to Yan Xishan that his troops had just undergone a large-scale reorganization and that it would take at least two months to form a strong combat force, so he first led the cavalry brigade directly under his deputy headquarters to Zhengzhou and joined Zhang Tao's 13th Army to form his general reserve headquarters.

At this point, the relationship between Yan Xishan and Chiang Kai-shek could no longer be bridged, and Chiang Kai-shek first held a military conference in Xuzhou on April 4 to make military arrangements, and then formally appointed Han Fuyu as chairman of the Shandong Provincial Political Axe and commander-in-chief of the First Army.

The next day, Chiang Kai-shek issued a dismissal and arrest warrant for Yan Xishan in the name of the national political axe:

"Yan is cunning in the past. The Xinhai Revolution, when encountered, stole a province and made no achievements, which was not tolerated by the Yuan family, and the prime minister still supported him to make his position. Yuan's treason, the rebellion turned out to be greedy and vengeful, and first announced his separation from the Kuomintang, and then asked for the dissolution of the Kuomintang in order to accept Yuan. ”

"Until the Yuan family was called the emperor, the rebellion took the lead in persuading, and asked for the establishment of the constitutional empire, which was rewarded by the Yuan family, so at that time there was a false seal of the marquis. It should be adversarial, and it has no shame, and it has not been allowed to be toilet for a long time in the people of the Republic of China. and the dissolution of the National Assembly, the rebellion of the Overseer, and the restoration of Zhang Xun, the rebellion was all contrary to the meantime, and those who thought that they could submit to Hongxian were not unavoidable to Emperor Puyi. ”

At this time, the prime minister raised the army to fight the thief, and all those who returned the mission to the Jin land were refused, so in the end of the prime minister's life, he did not hear that he should help against the revolution, and he was discouraged. The divisions of our National Revolutionary Army should be bound back against the beginning. The political axe contains a great magnanimity, sacrificing the guilt and responsibility, and wants to use its eagle and dog talents, minions can be appointed, so far it has been awarded to the provinces of Jin, Hebei, Chacha and Sui, not only has nothing to build, but also reinvigorates and asks for insatiable. ”

"Last year, the rebellion between Li, Bai, Feng, and Tang was mostly instigated by the rebels, one side secretly asked the political axe to condemn Feng, and the other side secretly paid Feng to hijack the political axe. All the insidious and cunning are gathered in this contrarian body, and all kinds of counter-revolutionary soldiers and politicians are gathered in order to get away with it. The political axe is the legacy of the prime minister, the construction of the political discipline and the promotion of the training of the government, and the party should go against the party discipline and build the country's difficulties, and then tolerate and obey the thieves of the time, how can it be the party? What is the country? Yan Xishan should be immediately dismissed from his or her own duties, and the political axes of all provinces and armies inside and outside Beijing should be brought to justice and interrogated as a whole, so as to set an example against the culprits and uphold law and discipline. This order. ”

Yan Xishan, who received the telegram, was secretly happy in his heart, and took this telegram to hype up: Ask the people of the country to see the true face of Chiang Kai-shek's military read.

Chiang Kai-shek no longer had the heart to fight with Yan Xishan, he had already prepared for this war, and successively mobilized about 700,000 people to form four army corps, which were assembled in Yucheng, Xuzhou, Dangshan, Suxian (now Suzhou), Luohe, Wuhan, Pingxiang, Hengyang, Guangzhou and other places. Attempted to take the defensive position first along the Jinpu Railway and Pinghan Road with a part of the army, concentrate the main force along the Longhai Railway, strike first, seize the strategic transportation points of Guide and Kaifeng that connect the battlefields, and then fight a decisive battle with the main forces of Yan and Feng's armies; At the same time, the troops under the command of He Yingqin, the commander of the Wuhan camp, surrounded and annihilated the troops of Li Zongren and Zhang Fakui.

The specific deployment is: Liu Zhi's Second Army Corps marched west from Longhai to occupy the areas of Guide and Kaifeng; He Chengjun's Third Army attacked from the Pinghan side at the same time, and when the time was ripe, they jointly captured Zhengzhou and Luoyang. In addition to sending the 26th Army to sweep away Shiyou 31 who crossed the river in Luxi, the rest of the troops temporarily took a feint posture on the northern section of the Jinpu Road and along the south bank of the Yellow River, and successively expelled the anti-Chiang coalition forces in northern Lubei. After defeating the main force of the anti-Chiang coalition army in Henan, he will march together with various corps to clear the rebel forces of Hebei, Shaanxi, Gansu, Jin, Chacha, and Sui; With Chen Tiaoyuan as the commander-in-chief of the General Reserve Corps, he and Ma Hongkui's troops were deployed in Luxi, Jining, and Caozhou, and the three divisions of Shiyou were refused. In addition, Yang Hucheng was used to guard the Nanyang area, and Fan Shisheng was stationed in the Xiangfan area.

With Chen Jitang's Eighth Route Army, Zhu Shaoliang's Division, the Sixth Army's He Jian's Division, and Liu Heding's and Zhang Zhen's Second Divisions, they respectively solved the Guizhou and Fujian routs and appeased the rear. He Yingqin presided over the Wuhan camp and dealt with the military in Wuhan nearby. Navy Commander Chen Shaokuan commanded the fleet to maintain the traffic of the Yangtze River, and on April 5, Chiang issued an order to fight against Yan. Chiang Kai-shek, in the name of the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, put aside Li Zongren and Song Zhewu, and issued a "Letter to the Soldiers for the Crusade against Yan and Feng Liang", which enumerated Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang as "having a feudal mentality and the accumulated habits of warlords", and demanded that "all soldiers should know that this battle is the last struggle of the feudal warlords, that is, the last scene of the revolutionary war." They are loyal and courageous, extinguish this dynasty, and build the country on the basis of eternal solidity with the full merit of the revolution".

On May 1, Chiang Kai-shek issued the "Speech on the Oath of Yan" in Nanjing, and the two sides geared up and began to enter military operations, and the Central Plains War officially broke out.

And just when the two sides were about to break out, Song Zhewu, who had already formed the headquarters of the General Reserve in Zhengzhou, suddenly made a move that shocked both Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang. That is, Song Zhewu did not greet anyone, and suddenly sent a telegram in Zhengzhou announcing that Shao Lizi, the vice chairman sent to Outer Mongolia by Nanjing, and all the officials sent by the central government to Kulun, were expelled, and Chu Feng, deputy director of the Taihang Administration, was appointed as the vice chairman of Outer Mongolia; At the same time, it was announced that he himself was the chairman of Henan Province, with Zhengzhou as the seat of the provincial political axe, and that institutions at all levels in Henan must obey the leadership of the Zhengzhou provincial government, otherwise he would not hesitate to solve the problem by force.

Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang both understood Song Zhewu's expulsion of Shao Lizi and his own appointment of Chu Feng as vice chairman of Outer Mongolia, and Song Zhewu had long been very dissatisfied with Chiang Kai-shek's appointment of Shao Lizi as the vice chairman with real power, and naturally there was no reason to let Shao Lizi be the vice chairman at this time. However, Song Zhewu had already appointed Wan Xuancai as the chairman of Henan Province in Yan Xishan, and Wan Xuancai had already taken office in Kaifeng, so he suddenly declared that he was obviously dissatisfied with Yan Xishan as the chairman of Henan Province.

Yan Xishan was very angry about Song Zhewu's approach, which was obviously contempt for him! However, he also felt that this matter was very tricky, although Song Zhewu's troops were used as reserves, and it was not certain whether they would come in handy in the end, but after all, Song Zhewu had more than 400,000 troops behind him as backers, and Song Zhewu's every move was enough to affect the anti-Chiang situation, and even enough to determine the success or failure of the anti-Chiang movement.

In particular, Zhang Xueliang now has an ambiguous attitude and does not talk about the anti-Chiang matter, and he sent Jia Jingde, who sent him to Shenyang to persuade Zhang Xueliang to take up the post of deputy commander-in-chief of the anti-Chiang coalition forces. According to Jia Jingde's report, Chiang Kai-shek had sent Wu Tiecheng to Shenyang, where he was also doing Zhang Xueliang's work.

Yan Xishan knew that this was Zhang Xueliang waiting for the price to sell, just to wait for a better price and exchange it for the greatest benefit for him at the smallest price.

There is also Han Fuyu, Yan Xishan also has a headache for this cunning and greedy guy, Han Fuyu has reversed his word, has already withdrawn his representative, and has already telegraphed to express his support for Chiang Kai-shek, and has accepted Chiang Kai-shek's appointment as chairman of Shandong Province. These two people alone reduced the strength of his anti-Chiang coalition army by nearly 500,000 at once. There is also Liu Chunrong, who has not yet expressed his position on which side he supports.

Moreover, Liu Wenhui called and said that Liu Xiang had contacted the warlords in Sichuan and was ready to take advantage of his exit from Sichuan to copy his back road, and his troops could not take a single step out of Sichuan now. This has already made a great change in the strength of the two sides that he had calculated before, and at this time, Song Zhewu must not go wrong again.

However, Yan Xishan must not obediently remove Wan Xuancai's provincial chairman because of Song Zhewu's move, although he handed over Henan to Wan Xuancai just to temporarily entrap him, but just handed over Henan to Song Zhewu, which will make him, a famous man of the hour, very faceless, and even have a very bad impact on the return of these small warlords, these people have to be pulled over by Feng Yuxiang. And if this matter is not resolved, it will definitely not work, which will affect Song Zhewu's loyalty to him.

Moreover, before Yan Xishan was appointed, he sent a telegram to Song Zhewu to explain this matter in advance, and promised that Henan would be handed over to Song Zhewu after the war, but Song Zhewu did not understand, which made the angry Yan Xishan helpless for a while.

(To be continued)