Any war has a purpose, not to say that the war will be waged on a whim, the most fundamental purpose of the war between Zhifeng is that Zhao Dongyun wants to enter the customs, and Zhao Dongyun wants to enter the customs and wants to occupy Zhili, so an irreconcilable contradiction has been formed with Wang Yingkai.

This is also why when the Feng army first made a change in Shanhaiguan, Wang Yingkai was like a great enemy, and even without waiting for a formal declaration of war and other forms, he directly mobilized troops to directly attack Tangshan in the name of taking over Tangshan's defense, and his purpose was very obvious, that is, he hoped to conquer Tangshan before Zhao Dongyun's main force of Feng's army entered the customs.

Why conquer Tangshan? In addition to being the main stronghold of the Feng army in the Guannai and the bridgehead for the Feng army to march into Beijing, this Tangshan is mainly because Tangshan has the arsenal of Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

As the largest arsenal in China, the production capacity of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory has even exceeded the sum of the other two major arsenals in China, the Hanyang Arsenal and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and not only has the ability to mass-produce rifles and bullets, but also can mass-produce light and heavy machine guns, pistols, and sabers, and more importantly, the factory also has the ability to mass-produce 75-millimeter barreled mountain guns and mortars of various calibers.

Rifles are good to say, the domestic Hanyang and Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and even the Guangdong Manufacturing Bureau, Sichuan Manufacturing Bureau, Jinling Manufacturing Bureau and many other southern arsenals have been able to produce Type 88 rifles, but in addition to the Hanyang and Jiangnan factories, the performance of the Type 88 rifles produced by the factories is slightly poor, and the price is also very expensive, and the more important thing is that the production capacity is very low, often only one or two dozen per day, otherwise the Southern Federation will not be forced to import rifles from foreign countries on a large scale. The combined output of Type 88 rifles of all other factories in China is actually inferior to that of a Fuyuan machine factory.

In addition, the Guangdong Manufacturing Bureau also began to imitate the Madsen light machine gun, but the output was unsightly.

In terms of artillery, not to mention the old artillery, in terms of the new tube retreat, at present, in addition to the Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory, only the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau can produce the German-style 75 mm tube retreat gun, but they have successfully imitated it for less than two years, and now they have just entered the stage of trial production, and the output is extremely limited. As for the 57 mm mountain fast gun produced by the Hanyang Arsenal, the output of this gun is relatively large, but although the gun is called a 'fast gun', it is still a retreat gun in essence, and the firing range and rate of fire are far inferior to the new artillery.

These several times all the arsenals in China, then you can find the important position of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory in the domestic military industry, it can be said that a Fuyuan Machinery Factory occupies half of all the military products in the country.

Who doesn't want to control such an arsenal in their hands, but last year, Zhao Dongyun did not hesitate to put on a decisive battle in order to keep Tangshan and the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and at that time, the Southern Federation was extremely vigorous, shouting for the Northern Expedition every day, and Wang Yingkai was forced to give up Tangshan.

Now that Zhao Dongyun has entered the customs again, the two armies of Zhifeng have directly torn their faces, Wang Yingkai of course has no scruples, hoping to seize Tangshan as soon as possible and control the Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

Taking control of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, uprooting the bridgehead of the Feng army's advance in the Guannai, and blocking the Feng army in the area east of Tangshan were the direct reasons why Wang Yingkai ordered his troops to attack Tangshan.

However, Lu Yongxiang, commander of the First Division, who was in charge of the specific command of the operation, stormed Tangshan for a day, and found that Tangshan's tight defense system was far from being able to be broken in one or two days, and more importantly, the main force of the Feng army could reach Tangshan at any time, and there would be no hope of conquering Tangshan at that time.

At this time, what Lu Yongxiang should have considered was not how to conquer Tangshan, but how to block the Feng army from the Beijing Division, and to stop the follow-up attack of the Feng army, then the first thing to consider was how to stop the Third Division.

Just as everyone knows that this first division is the main ace of the descendants under Wang Yingkai, the warlords in China and even the ordinary people know that Zhao Dongyun started with the third division, and this third division is the trump card army under his command Zhao Dongyun.

Seeing that the Third Division was about to arrive in Tangshan, Lu Yongxiang didn't want to be attacked by the Third Division when he was sleepy because of the attack on Tangshan, he needed to withdraw his troops from the front line, and then rest and prepare for the big battle with the Third Division!

Lu Yongxiang's determination is resolute, on the morning of the thirteenth, the front line of the direct army began to gradually withdraw from the front line, in the process of retreat, although Li Chun of the seventh mixed brigade found that the front line strength of the direct army gradually decreased, but on the one hand, he did not think that Lu Yongxiang would make such a big determination to withdraw the army directly, on the other hand, after yesterday's battle, the troops under his command suffered relatively large losses, and there were not many troops, this rash pursuit of a bad ambush or was beaten back to the horse pistol will be a tragedy, More importantly, his task is not to pursue the direct army or something, but to hold Tangshan, if Tangshan is destroyed, then he will not be able to escape the dismissal of the entire Lu Yongxiang First Division.

Therefore, during the whole day on the 13th, Li Chun was extremely cautious, except for launching two small counterattacks on a battalion-scale scale, there were no other large-scale pursuits, and these two battalion-scale counterattacks were not very smooth.

In fact, the withdrawal process of the First Division and the First Mixed Brigade was quite orderly, and a large number of troops were also arranged.

This state of withdrawal and small-scale counterattack lasted until the arrival of the rest of the main forces of the Third Division in the evening, and not only the commanders of the Third Division at all levels this year, but also the personnel of the headquarters of the First Army arrived in Tangshan in the evening under the leadership of Meng Enyuan.

"At present, according to the intelligence information that our army has learned before, it can already be determined that the main forces of the First Division and the First Mixed Brigade under the direct army are currently staying on the line of Huanxizhuang, Zhaojiakou, and Dazhuangzi, which is about 3,000 to 5,000 meters away from our army's forward positions. And it has already been learned that the direct army has already begun to dig fortifications on the front line, to build preliminary civil fortifications! ”

Xue Yiping, chief of staff of the Seventh Mixed Brigade, is doing what only operational staff officers usually do, that is, to report on the military situation at a military meeting; after all, all the generals attending today's military meeting are high-ranking generals, including Lieutenant General Meng Enyuan, commander of the First Army, Lieutenant General Chen Guangyuan, commander of the Third Division, Major General Kong Guanbei, commander of the Fifth Brigade, Major General Gu Lanyu, commander of the Sixth Brigade, Major General Li Chun, commander of the Seventh Mixed Brigade, Major General Lu Chengtong, commander of the First Cavalry Brigade, and Major General Yang Shande, chief of staff of the First Army.

In addition to the chief officers and generals of these units, there were also some colonels, including Colonel Qin Zhiyun, chief of staff of the Third Division, Lieutenant Colonel Xue Yiping, chief of staff of the Seventh Mixed Brigade, three chiefs of staff of the Fifth Brigade, Sixth Brigade, and First Cavalry Brigade, as well as commanders of various departments in the military headquarters of the First Army.

The more than ten people present are all the high-level commanders of the First Army of the Feng Army, and among the people here, Xue Yiping's military rank is the lowest-ranking lieutenant colonel, plus he is the chief of staff of the Seventh Mixed Brigade, and he knows more about the various military situations in the past day than other staff officers, so he will explain the military intelligence report before this meeting.

"It seems that this Lu Yongxiang is a little timid, he didn't turn around and ran away when he saw our third division coming!" Meng Enyuan laughed, trying to make the officers present relax, don't always keep a straight face, but at the moment of the big enemy, including Chen Guangyuan and Li Chun, what else is there to joke about, hearing Meng Enyuan's laughter, they only echoed a few words.

Xue Yiping continued: "And the intelligence department has already sent news that the 22nd Brigade of the 11th Division of the Feng Army has left the Beijing Division and is heading eastward, and the current movement is unknown, and the headquarters of the 12th Division is still staying in the Beijing Division, and there is no trace of transfer!" ”

"As far as I know, these two new divisions of the direct army have not yet become an army, right?" Chen Guangyuan asked.

Xue Yiping said: "It is true that it has not yet been fully formed, according to the information of the Intelligence Section, these two divisions only officially began to be organized and trained after the Spring Festival, and the 11th Division was formed a little faster, and it has now become a brigade." However, it is worth noting that the expansion method of the direct army is different from that of our Feng army, and their recruits are not assigned in the same arrangement, that is to say, the two divisions have actually recruited a different number of recruits in the near future, but these recruits are still in the training period and have not officially formed an army, if the situation is tense, it is also possible for Wang Yingkai to use the troops composed of those recruits who have not completed training. ”

At the end of last year and the beginning of the year, Wang Yingkai was busy replenishing personnel and weapons to the First Mixed Brigade and the Seventh Division, and Zhao Dongyun was also busy making plans for the three divisions and five brigades; after the beginning of the year, Wang Yingkai came up with a plan for the formation of two new divisions; Zhao Dongyun also first launched a plan to expand one division, then added a plan to expand two mixed brigades, and finally used the plan of one division and two mixed brigades to deal with Wang Yingkai's plan for the expansion of two divisions.

The scale of the expansion of these two is actually roughly the same, and the time is about the same, Zhao Dongyun's plan of one division and two mixed brigades has just begun, and Wang Yingkai's plan of two divisions is naturally not much better, as of now, Zhao Dongyun's one division and two mixed brigades are no more than two infantry regiments, and Wang Yingkai's two divisions plan is only one brigade.

However, the difference between the two is that Zhao Dongyun's one division and two mixed brigades are not organized means that there are no personnel and equipment, only an empty shelf, because a large number of recruits are still waiting to be trained in the recruit camp, but as long as the recruits in the recruit camp complete the training, and then assign to the troops and equip them with weapons, then the combat effectiveness can be formed after two months of emergency running-in, and the new troops formed in this way are relatively average in combat effectiveness, and there will not be a huge gap due to the different training capabilities of officers in various units.

There is no such system as a recruit camp on the side of the direct army, and the recruits recruited by the army need to be trained by themselves, so they may be able to reach full personnel soon, but to form combat effectiveness, they often need a lot of training in the army itself, and the time required for training and what level the soldiers can reach after completing the training depends on the personal ability of the commander in charge of the unit. This also caused the combat effectiveness of the troops led by different generals in other warlord troops in Beiyang, including the direct army, to be completely different.

"The 11th Division and the 12th Division are not to be worried, what we have to consider now is how to deal with the 1st Division and the 1st Mixed Brigade, these two troops are hard bones, and they are not easy to fight!" Meng Enyuan said: "And we also need to pay attention to the fact that Wang Zhanyuan's Seventh Division has urgently gone north, and it won't be long before this Seventh Division can reach the area around the Beijing Division, and we must defeat Lu Yongxiang's troops before the Seventh Division arrives!" ”