On February 19, 1896, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, the 19th Integrated Division of the Seris Army was stationed

"Division commander, this Ma Anliang is cunning enough, and when the 22nd Division entered Xinjiang to quell the rebellion, he actually went to Hezhou to rebel again! Damn, it's quite crazy, a former Qing governor of Gansu dares to call himself the 'Son of Heaven in the Northwest'! ”

Miao Lekang glanced at his chief of staff, Li Chengan, and said jokingly, "It's just right that he rebelled, and an order has been issued from above to let the troops completely wipe out the independent forces in various regions." Hey! It's an excuse they handed over themselves, and we don't have to be soft when we do it. This Ma family is also a major force in the northwest...... Ma Anliang didn't want to be his Gansu councilor, but ran to rebel, tsk, the Ma family seems to be bleeding! ”

"Yes, there are many ethnic minorities in that area of Hezhou, and there were often rebellions in the pre-Qing era, and the troops are going to kill again." Li Chengan was a little worried.

"Hehe, what should have been said has already been said, the government has promised freedom of religious belief of all ethnic groups, and if anyone rebels, it is not a religious issue, they find it themselves! Don't be soft-hearted......"

……

Hezhou, known as Caohan during the Qin and Han dynasties, has been renamed Hezhou since the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties of China. Its area is bounded by Xiaojishi Mountain and Qinghai in the west, and the Yellow River rolls from Qinghai and flows through the northern area of Hezhou through Jishi Pass. In the south, Taizi Mountain is adjacent to the Tibetan settlement area in southern Gansu, and there are Lao Ya Pass, Tumu Pass, and Huaishu Pass. It faces each other across the Tao River in the east and Lintao City. The Daxia River runs through its hinterland from south to north and flows into the Yellow River, and Li Daoyuan called it Lishui in his "Notes on the Book of Water" to describe its turbulent current.

The terrain of the whole territory is dangerous, the mountains are undulating, and the rivers and plateaus are intertwined, and since ancient times, it has been an area where various northwest ethnic groups interact and compete with each other. There are many ethnic groups living here, such as Han, Dongxiang, Baoan, Sala, Tu, Tibetan, etc., and the total population of various ethnic minorities here has exceeded half, of which the proportion of ** is particularly prosperous. ** And Dongxiang, Baoan, Salar and other ethnic groups have been believing in Islam since they moved here in the Tang and Song dynasties, due to the variety of Islamic sects, there are constantly sectarian disputes in the local area, and this is often used by reactionary careerists, and the Northwest Ma family is one of the best.

Hezhou City, Majiatun Fort

"Oops! ~ Second brother, second brother, you have caused a big disaster for you!! ”

Ma Anliang walked back and forth in the house in a hurry, while teaching his younger brother a lesson.

Ma Ancheng sneered nonchalantly, "Big brother! You're scared of a ball! These Han people are all as timid as rats, if they don't send an army over, it's fine, if they send people, see if I don't take my sons and daughters to cut off their heads one by one!! ”

"Then you can't rebel in the name of me, the former governor of Gansu, you're making a big fuss now! Do you know how many ** rebellions there will be in Gansu now?! You want to let my northwest return to death be wiped out, are you willing, aren't you?!! ”

Ma Anliang almost pointed at his second brother's nose and scolded, but he became more and more anxious in his heart.

"Whew! Big brother, I see that you have become more and more timid in the past few years, and you are afraid of it! What else do they Han people have besides having a lot of people?! The original Aixin Jueluo let my Ma family be the governor of Gansu, and now the ** government wants to take a Raush egg parliamentarian and sent our Ma family!! Big brother, you can swallow this breath too?! If you can swallow it, you won't have eggs!! ”

"You...... You know all the! It's not sharper than anyone else these days, and now people are using foreign guns and cannons, what do you know?!! Yes?!! Ma Anliang was very angry by his brother's words.

"Foreign guns, foreign cannons? Laugh at! We have that too! Besides, that thing is bluffing, cannons, let it go off during the New Year, it's just a good luck. If you really want to fight, you still have to rely on the sabre in the hands of our cavalry, big brother, the swords we came back have long been very thirsty!! Besides, it's nothing if you really want to beat it, we have been back to the capital for hundreds of years, and their Han court can't stand us very much?! In the end, maybe you have to send someone to recruit you! Afraid of balls!! ”

"That's it! I think eldest brother, you are really frightened by the Han court, and when the Han people come, you can just rest at home when the eldest brother comes, and see how your younger brother and his sons will pick up the head of the Han general for you!! ”

As soon as Ma Ancheng finished speaking, he left impatiently.

"It's over...... It's over, my Ma family is all over now......"

Only Ma Anliang, the former governor of Gansu, was left in the house, watching his younger brother go away......

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Ma Anliang was right, it didn't take long for his own brother to regret it, but it was too late for him to regret it.

In March 1896, the 19th Division of the Seris Army, after joining the troops of the three new divisions in the rear, under the leadership of the new commander of the Seventh Army, Miao Lekang, instantly captured all the rebel counties in Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and other places, including Hezhou, where Majia is located in the northwest. In this battle, all the Ma family, young and old, were completely killed by the Seris army, and thousands of returned forts in the entire northwest were reduced to rubble under the iron hooves of the army of the Republic. Afterwards, there were people in the Seris House in the rear who launched an impeachment against Miao Lekang's "cruel" behavior, but they were directly suppressed by Chen Zeyu. Chen Zeyu doesn't want this kind of independent incident to always appear in the frontier in the future, rather than having a long pain in the future, it is better to have a short pain today, and a bloodbath may not be a bad thing.

Almost at the same time, the same thing was happening in the Xinjiang province of the Republic......

In view of the vast terrain of the Xinjiang battlefield and the necessity of sufficient troops and logistics, the Army Command under the Ministry of National Defense specially set up a Fourth Group Army unit with a total of nearly 120,000 troops in five divisions, including the 12th Division, for the Xinjiang battlefield. At that time, the commander of the Fourth Group Army in Xinjiang was Su Guanghe, the former commander of the 12th Integrated Division of the Serisian Army.

Since Su Guanghe took up the post of commander of the group army and led his troops into Xinjiang in July last year, he has led the army through the Hexi Corridor, across the Sea of Death, to the top of Kunlun, over the desert oasis, and to the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountains. In view of Xinjiang's remoteness from the interior, its sparse population, and its small grain production, the Fourth Group Army has always adopted the strategy of "slow advance and rapid warfare" along the way to the army, and every time the army conquers a city on the way, it will set up a corresponding civil affairs department to deal with the aftermath and establish a military government.

After the bloodbath of the rebel forces in Kuqa, Kashgar, Hotan and other rebel forces in southern Xinjiang, by the beginning of this year, when Su Guanghe led the army to arrive in the Tianshan Mountains, it coincided with the outbreak of large-scale independent rebellion in the nine cities of Ili in Xinjiang!

Su Guanghe led the Fourth Army to the north, and the army broke through Huiyuan, Huining, Suiding, Guangren, Ningyuan, Zhande, Gongchen, Talqi and other rebel cities along the way. In some places where the activities of the rebel forces were particularly rampant, Su Guanghe simply and coldly ordered the troops to slaughter the city......

In early April, Su Guanghe's army once again broke through the northern border city of Altay and established a local border army, and then crossed Karamay again, and Dihua returned to the garrison of Hami City.

Under the command of Su Guanghe, the entire Xinjiang counterinsurgency campaign lasted more than nine months, and the government of the Republic spent a total of 11.39 million yuan to support the campaign. That's one-sixth of last year's annual military budget for Seris, and that's just what the Republic spent on the battlefield. At the end of last year, when the government budget for the second year was calculated, some government departments and many legislators openly criticized Su Guanghe and other army units for delaying their operations for a long time and wasting state property, and some people even talked about the "bloody combat methods" of several counterinsurgency units, but in the end they were all fooled by Chen Zeyu.

At that time, the Ministry of National Defense, which was dumbfounded on the spot after calculating the military expenditure at the end of the year, in order not to drag down the development of the navy, which was correspondingly squeezed in the second year, specially requested the Republic House to approve a bill to issue a special war bond of 50 million Chinese dollars (i.e., the Seris 1895 Unification War Bond, with an annual interest rate of 3.25 percent) at the Central Bank.

After the bill was passed, Chen Zeyu, the head of the republic, immediately took the lead in subscribing for 5 million yuan of war bonds in his personal name. When the news broke, people from all walks of life across the country enthusiastically subscribed. As a result, the total amount of 50 million bonds was sold out in the central bank in less than a week, leaving the managers of foreign banks in China, who were still quite hesitant.

With a sufficient budget, Seris gave the local counterinsurgency troops a lot more time, and the Ministry of Defense began to revise the battle plan in a big way, and many border borders that had not been planned for the time being were once again included in the operational scope of the Republic Army.

As of May 11, 1896, which was the first anniversary of the defeat of the Qing Dynasty in Beijing, the army of the Republic of Seris had successively recovered the northeast, Outer Mongolia, Tangnu Wulianghai, Xinjiang, Tibet, and southern Sichuan, Yunnan-Guizhou and other regions located in the border of the Republic. Together with Jeju Island and Ryukyu, which the navy had recovered at the end of last year, the territory under the actual control of the Republic at this time had reached the entire territory of the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century.