"Isn't their eighth division in Henan? When did it appear in Jiangxi? Zhang Guotai is also the core high-level general in the Anhui army, and some of the troops of the Feng army are there, especially several troops stationed in a certain place still know, as far as he knows, the eighth division of the Central Army in the Feng army was reorganized according to the remnants after the Zhengzhou Campaign in 1907, after the defeat of Wang Ruxian in the Zhengzhou Campaign, the remnants of the eighth division of its main force surrendered, Zhao Dongyun did not directly revoke the number of the eighth division, but transferred a large number of officers and recruits to rebuild, and continued to use the number of the eighth division of the Central Army.

After the rebuilding of the department, it has been stationed in Henan and under the command of the Third Army of the Feng Army, which has been the case until the spring and summer of this year, but at this time, the Eighth Division appeared in Jiangxi.

After the Battle of Jiangnan, the Feng army carried out a series of large-scale movements, although other warlords such as the Anhui family also tried their best to collect the relevant movements of the Feng army, but in June and July of 1908, the scale of the transfer of the Feng army was too large, and in addition to the continuous expansion of the Feng army, it was very difficult to fully control the movement of each unit of the Feng army, which had reached hundreds of thousands.

Not to mention that in this era of backward information collection and transmission, even in the modern society of later generations, it is impossible to control all the military movements of a country.

In the first two months, the military intelligence collection of other warlords, especially the Anhui army, was mainly concentrated in the Jiangnan region, while the focus of attention was on Meng Enyuan's Fourth Army in southern Anhui, Xu Bangjie's Second Army in southern Zhejiang, and Lu Yongxiang's First Army.

In this case, Zhang Guotai naturally did not know that Zhao Dongyun had already transferred the Eighth Division to the south and joined the combat sequence of the First Army.

But it doesn't matter if you don't know in advance, now Zhang Guotai already knows that the eighth division of the Feng army has appeared south of Peng Ze, and looking at its movements, it is obvious that he wants to bypass Peng Ze and go straight to the mouth of the lake.

For this situation, Zhang Guotai can be regarded as already prepared, and the troops under his command are not only one Liangjiang Sixth Division, but also the Liangjiang Third Division and two independent regiments.

Due to the limitations of Jiujiang's terrain, it is impossible for Zhang Guotai to say that all the troops are directly deployed in Jiujiang City, in fact, this battle called the Battle of Jiujiang, the main battle is not in Jiujiang, but in the Pengze and Hukou areas in the east of Jiujiang, as long as these two areas are held, then Jiujiang can sit back and relax, and if these two areas are lost, then the siege of Jiujiang has actually lost its meaning.

It is no longer the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and a castle fortress alone can hold out for many years under the siege of dozens of times the army, and for the war of this era, no matter how strong the fortress is, once it is surrounded by the enemy, once the ammunition is exhausted, it is basically a dead word.

Although the terrain of Jiujiang is very conducive to defense, it is also very easy for the enemy to surround it, and it is impossible for Duan Qirui to build Jiujiang into a fortress like Lushun and Qingdao, so based on a variety of circumstances, it is impossible for Zhang Guotai to retreat the main forces to Jiujiang.

And in this way, the importance of Pengze and Hukou is even more highlighted.

Zhang Guotai deployed the main force of the Liangjiang Sixth Division in Pengze, and at the same time deployed the Liangjiang Third Division at Hukou, an independent infantry regiment was deployed to defend Jiujiang, and the other independent regiment was deployed as a reserve force.

When he learned that the Eighth Division of the Feng Army was coming towards Hukou, Zhang Guotai immediately named the Third Division of Liangjiang to march eastward, and he wanted to stop the Eighth Division of Liangjiang.

With the first and eighth divisions of the First Army of the Feng Army successively entering the battlefield, the more the Sixth Division and the Third Division of the Anhui Army fought and resisted one after another, it also announced that since the Battle of Dangtu and the Battle of Jinling, the two armies of Feng and Anhui once again broke out in a large-scale battle with tens of thousands of participants.

For the ongoing Jiujiang Campaign, which was in full swing, although Zhao Dongyun maintained limited attention, his main energy was not invested in Jiujiang, because from the perspective of the entire southward strategy, Jiujiang was actually just a secondary battlefield, and the real main direction of the Feng army was not Jiujiang, but the hinterland of southern Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

The First Army of Feng Army Lu Yongxiang launched the Jiujiang Campaign, so it is said that it is to take Jiujiang, and it is better to contain the Anhui army in the direction of Jiujiang, so as to ensure the flank security of the Fourth Army of the Feng Army in the hinterland of Jiangxi in the south.

Therefore, when Lu Yongxiang's First Army launched the Jiujiang Campaign, Meng Enyuan's Fourth Army did not stop at all, and after they conquered Jingdezhen, an important town in the northeastern region of Jiangxi, its forward Third Division set off for the south again after a short rest for two days.

Their immediate goal is Raozhou, and after taking Raozhou, the Fourth Army will continue to move south, marching into a series of important towns in the hinterland of Jiangxi, such as Nanchang Mansion, Hengzhou Mansion, Guangxin Mansion, Fuzhou Mansion, etc., and then connect with Xu Bangjie's Second Army in southern Zhejiang to cover the flank security of the Second Army of the Feng Army that is fighting in southern Zhejiang.

At present, Xu Bangjie's Second Army in southern Zhejiang has successively taken Yanzhou Mansion, Shaoxing Mansion, and Ningbo Mansion, and is currently fighting with the Anhui army in Jinhua and Taizhou.

Because it had already entered the mountainous and hilly areas of southern Zhejiang, Xu Bangjie's Second Army also encountered the problem of the Anhui army's southward march to Zhejiang last year, that is, the hilly and mountainous areas of southern Zhejiang brought great trouble to the troops' mobility and logistical transportation.

Of course, this is also related to the desperate resistance of the fourth division of the Anhui army.

The fourth division of the Central Army of the Anhui army is like the unbeatable Xiaoqiang, and the Feng army's previous operations, this fourth division brought a large number of casualties to the Feng army at the same time, it was also a heavy loss, in Jinling to lose the supplementary brigade, in the follow-up in Huzhou, Hangzhou in a series of small-scale battles, the fourth division as the most capable of fighting in the hands of Duan Qirui, many times as a broken heavy task, successfully covered the Anhui army tens of thousands of troops to withdraw to southern Zhejiang, in the process, the fourth division has lost thousands of people.

It's not that Duan Qirui wants to use his main main force Fourth Division as a broken force, but that other troops are really unusable, and they have to put those provincial army troops on top, and the result is either annihilated and captured, or they turn around and run.

This situation has happened many times, the first division, the second division, the ninth division, and the tenth division of Liangjiang are all so absent, and the fourth division of Liangjiang is more of a model of turning around and leaving, this fourth division of Liangjiang fled all the way south from Shanghai, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, and Ningbo, and was chased by the Feng army all the way.

Since these provincial army units are unreliable, Duan Qirui does not intend to count on them, if they are sent up and annihilated, it is better to retreat and regroup first, hoping to recover a certain combat effectiveness in the follow-up battle.

Due to the terrain restrictions in southern Zhejiang, and the stubborn resistance of the Fourth Division of the Feng Army, the offensive of the Feng Army suddenly became slow after entering the Jinhua area.

Since it was impossible to see the possibility of a quick victory, the operations department of the Feng Army Command also became cautious when formulating the follow-up battle plan, and began to deliberately let the flanks of the Fourth Army and the Second Army cover each other to avoid the lone army from penetrating deeply.

However, although the follow-up strategy has become more cautious, it still cannot stop the overall southward offensive of the Feng army.

On July 23, after a long-distance attack by Gu Lanyu's 3rd Division, the Feng army finally arrived in Nanchang, an important political, military, and economic town in the hinterland of Jiangxi.

Subsequently, with the cooperation of the 18th Brigade of the 9th Division, another unit of the Fourth Army, a large-scale attack on Nanchang was officially launched.

In order to defend Wuchang and Guangxinfu and other places, Duan Qirui gathered all the troops he could take out, including the four old units of the Second Mixed Brigade of the Central Army, the Liangjiang Eighth Division, the Liangjiang Eleventh Division, and the Liangjiang Twelfth Division, as well as the Liangjiang Thirteenth Division.

Judging from the number of troops alone, the troops deployed by the Anhui army on the front line of Wuchang and Guangxin have exceeded one mixed brigade and four Liangjiang infantry divisions, but the state of these troops is very bad.

After the Second Mixed Brigade of the Central Army experienced the two battles of Tu and Jinling, it lost more than half, and although Duan Qirui tried his best to replenish and try to restore the combat effectiveness of the Second Mixed Brigade, it only restored the scale of 10,000 people, and more importantly, half of these 10,000 people were recruits, and the recruits were all obvious to all, whether they were in the Feng army or the Anhui army.

Although the Eighth Liangjiang Division was formed in the first half of last year and had fought many battles with the Southern Federation, its combat effectiveness still could not be compared with the main forces of the Feng Army and the Anhui Army, and the Eighth Division had more than 13,000 troops, but its artillery was only two battalions.

The Eighth Division, which is a relatively high-numbered unit, is like this, and the other 11th, 12th, and 13th divisions of Liangjiang know that they are units that have not been formed long ago.

Among them, the 11th Liangjiang Division was organized in Nanchang, formerly known as the Jiangxi Provincial Army, and its soldiers included newly recruited soldiers and defected soldiers of the Southern Federation; when Duan Qirui reformed the military system last year, it was organized into this division, but its combat effectiveness was quite limited, the strength was not more than 10,000 people, and the artillery was only a small mountain artillery battalion.

The predecessor of the 12th Division of Liangjiang was the Guangdong Mixed Brigade, and all the soldiers were surrendered from the Southern Federation, and not only the soldiers, but even the officers below the middle level were like this, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has always been a Southern Union army, and the strength of this unit is only more than 8,000 people, and there is a battalion of artillery, and it is estimated that a regiment of the Fourth Division of the Anhui Army can chase them when they fight.

The 13th Division of Liangjiang is an emergency new unit, and the soldiers are all from good families, and it is very similar to the style of the 7th Division of Liangjiang at the beginning, but this formation time is only two months, it can be said that even the most basic training has not been completed, and the equipment and weapons are also extremely scarce, the guns are the 88-type rifle guns produced by the Guangdong Arsenal, and the artillery is more than 20 artillery pieces pieced together, and how this combat effectiveness can be imagined.