Unlike Wang Zhanyuan in Hubei, who was bent on running, Li Chun from Jiangxi showed a rare fighting spirit and took active action. Such an attitude brought great trouble to the youth army's march in the Jiangxi region.

Compared with Wang Zhanyuan, who is greedy for life and afraid of death, Li Chun can definitely be regarded as a capable official, and in the more than two years of supervising Jiangxi, close to a brigade of his descendants, Li Chun stabilized the situation in the province very easily. Not to mention the organization of the Jiangxi army into three divisions, it also actively organized and trained local militias. Jiangxi is almost the most serious area of rural contradictions in the southern region, because here the feudal clan power has developed to its peak, and the landlords are no longer simple landowners, but they have openly embarked on the road of mafia in order to expand their own interests. Abandon all moral and legal standards, emphasize the principle of the supremacy of the strong, or turn the will of the individual into the so-called rules. Under such circumstances, Jiangxi's rural social order is very bad, and all people will inevitably be oppressed and humiliated, and there is no way to file a lawsuit, even since the end of the Qing Dynasty, and the contradictions will naturally accumulate deeper and deeper. The local officials have always pretended to be deaf and dumb about this, and the attitude adopted by both the yamen of the former Qing Dynasty and the later revolutionaries towards these landlords who had been escalated to bullies was that they could not be provoked.

At the beginning of Li Chun's reign, he once had the idea of cracking down on these lawless bullies who were rampant in the township. But as time passed, his policies shifted from repression to pacification. After all, the revolutionary party is the number one enemy of Beiyang, and as long as these landlords and gentry are willing to obey themselves, then they can let their evil deeds go unchecked.

Of course, there is a reward for the effort, Li Chun's kindness to these clan bullies is in exchange for their loyalty, and there is no better overseer than Li Chun. Therefore, as soon as the youth army entered Jiangxi, it was not resisted by the Jiangxi army, but was repeatedly and frantically harassed by the militia forces of these landlords and bullies, and the progress was very slow. By the standards of later generations, the Youth Army is now caught in the sea of the people's war and cannot extricate itself.

You must know that these Jiangxi landlord militia forces are not fighting on their own, Hu Hansan, the big landlord in Ji'an, is Li Chun's sworn brother, and this time it is this person who mobilized all the landlord militia to unite against the youth army.

This Hu Hansan does have some real skills, and Li Chun's support for him is not small, a full 5 million oceans, 6,000 rifles, plus the title of commander of the 4th Independent Division of Jiangxi, has made Hu Hansan pull up a team of more than 40,000 people. Hu Hansan was not polite, the team was divided into two, and along the two lines of Ganzhou and Xiushui, constantly harassing the youth army, now it seems that the results are not bad. From February 16 to February 19, nearly 700 young officers and soldiers were injured or killed in the attack (not including minor injuries), and Tao Zhiyue, commander of the Third Assault Group, and Cheng Qian, commander of the Fourth Assault Group, were both furious.

Among them, Cheng Qian slapped the table angrily and said: "Turn around, let's go to fight Ji'an, Lao Tzu won't believe it, these guys who don't dare to show their faces, but only dare to have a yin behind their backs won't even want the old nest." ”

If you really want to solve all the complicated things on shijie, you will find that the solution is actually very simple. Cheng Qian is obviously right, no matter how cunning Hu Hansan is, no matter how ruthless he is, he is still a landlord in essence, he can not care about anything, but he will definitely not care about the land and ancestral property of his hometown. So he personally gathered 30,000 people and rushed to Ji'an, and decided that no matter how great the losses were, the youth army would never be allowed to step into Ji'an.

As a result, the eyes of the entire Jiangxi Province surrendered to the small county town located in the middle of Jiangxi, Ji'an.

The 10th Division commanded by Tao Zhiyue, Zeng Jiwu, had successfully taken Jiujiang, and the 2nd Division of the Jiangxi Army guarding Jiujiang was on the verge of defection, which Li Chun did not care, because before this, Ouyang Wu, who was guarding Ganzhou, had already announced that the 1st Division of the Gan Army had joined the Protector Army. All Li Chun could do now was to delay, he lost the defense of Nanchang to the Third Division of the Jiangxi Army, and moved to Jingdezhen with a brigade of Beiyang soldiers and looted wealth. On the one hand, it is to see what Ji'an can do in the end, and on the other hand, it can spend one more day in Jiangxi, which is good to keep up with the boss.

All the writings of later generations on this war of national protection have a very obvious tendency for the war, that is, they can exaggerate the bloody battle in the Sichuan area, and the battle of the youth army is basically avoided except for the decisive battle in the Nanjing area. The reason is very simple, compared with Sichuan, Beiyang's war preparations in Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi are a mess.

A large number of troops were thrown into the Sichuan battlefield to crush Cai Yi, who was the first bird, and in Hunan, although 60,000 troops were invested, the composition was complex, they were different from each other, and many of them were committed.

So the Youth Army naturally had no chance to fight with the Beiyang Army like the Protector Army, and more often, the Youth Army was more like a marching mission. And occasionally there are those who resist without opening their eyes, or the burlesque of Jingzhou, so that the Zhujiaqiao Resistance Battle Zuihou was put in the newspaper as a key battle, and there is really nothing to write about.

The Battle of Ji'an was the first large-scale decisive battle that broke out in the Jiangxi region, and unfortunately, it turned out to be a zuihou as well.

On the way south, Hu Hansan was again received by Li Chun, who was preparing to flee eastward, and Li Chun rewarded Hu Hansan with the entire Nanchang arsenal in one go, and drew another million yuan to boost morale. What's more important is that all the mountain guns and heavy machine guns of his personal guard brigade and some officers were assigned to Hu Hansan, so that Li Chun could at least last a few more days. As for the possibility of Hu Hansan defeating the Youth Army, Li Chun didn't think about it at all, but he still cheered Hu Hansan in front of him.

"Brother Li, don't cheer up, rest assured, I, Hu Hansan, am fighting at home this time, the right time, place and people are all occupied, and with these officers and equipment of yours, big brother, what can the youth army do to me?" After saying that, Hu Hansan got up, and at that moment, Hu Hansan felt that he was born to be a general, and he was destined to go down in history.

It was in this state of mind that was almost self-paralyzed and self-absorbed that Hu Hansan arrived in Ji'an.

Don't look at the fact that people have not studied in a regular military school, but there is still no shortage of basic understanding, Hu Hansan actually decided to defend the city instead of field battles. This decision made him lightly relieved that the regiment commanders who were still in their normal minds were relieved, after all, no matter how bad the youth army was, it was still a regular army, and no matter how strong these people were, they were still a bunch of peasants in essence!

Not only do these regiment commanders who have just become battalion commanders know each other like this, but in fact, Cheng Qian also sees this so-called Fourth Division of the Jiangxi Army in this way.

Although these people are all armed peasants, it does not mean that their combat effectiveness is not good. In fact, most of the people who can be dogs for landlords and bullies are brave and ruthless, and their long-term dog-legged careers have also created them with rich practical experience. In the rural areas of Jiangxi in this era, it was not uncommon to get into fights and even draw guns to shoot at each other. Jiangxi Lao Biao's good fighting degree is no less than that of his Hunan cousin, and Cheng Qian didn't consider this, so he suffered a big loss.

The 9th Division of the Youth Army, formed by the merger of the 1st Division of the Hunan Army and the Southern Hunan Protector Army, was only a little more than a month until 21 February, during which they cooperated with Li Zongren's Third Army to capture Shaoguan. However, after all, the army has only been formed for a short period of time, there is a lack of standardized training, and the officers are basically retained, and the so-called Ninth Division is actually just a sign, and its real strength simply cannot meet the requirements of the integrated division of the Youth Army.

However, it is precisely because of this that Cheng Qian, as the division commander, is eager to gain combat merits through the war, and then he can integrate more into the system of the Youth Army.

The attack was launched at 1 p.m. on 21 February, and the officers and men of the 9th Division, in accordance with the orders of the division commander, launched wave after wave attack on the position constructed by Hu Hansan. As a result, Hu Hansan unceremoniously took out the things of the housekeeper, and all the various types of cannons were lit up, and then personally set up a supervision team to urge his subordinates to fight to the death.

Pieces of officers and men of the Ninth Division fell on the road of the charge, and occasionally rushed into the enemy's position several times and were forced out by the fierce Jiangxi people with broadswords. Lu Diping couldn't stand it anymore, he turned to Cheng Qian and asked: "Commander, should we wait for the Fourth Division to come up and attack again, if we continue to fight like this, our Ninth Division will suffer a lot of losses." ”

Cheng Qian didn't expect such a little bully as Hu Hansan to be so capable of fighting, and after hesitating for a moment, he still shook his head and said: "Tell the brothers below that if you sell your strength, you have to rely on your own life to fight for your face." ”

When Lu Diping heard this, he naturally knew what Cheng Qian's idea was, so he could only sigh and personally organize the team to charge.

Next, the attack intensity of the Ninth Division increased significantly, and Hu Hansan took a lot of effort to barely stabilize the entire front without collapsing.

The battle lasted until five o'clock in the afternoon, and both warring sides were tired, when Liao Lei's division of the 4th Division of the Youth Army came up.

Although he was not very interested in Cheng Qian, Liao Lei still gave Cheng Qian a military salute in a proper manner. Cheng Qian has already obtained the latest casualty report, more than 3,000 people fell on the way to attack, and if the fight continues, the soldiers below are estimated to be unwilling to give their lives.

"Division Commander Liao, our Ninth Division is a newly formed team, this battle is a joke for you, and now it's up to you to see the Fourth Division, but after dark, I mean to launch an attack tomorrow morning, what do you think?"

Liao Lei took a look at the battlefield and said: "Commander Cheng, in fact, the brothers of the Ninth Division fought well, but there are some problems with this fighting style, and you don't have heavy equipment for attacking and fighting." In this way, tonight you will let the brothers of the 9th Division penetrate behind enemy lines from the second flank, and tomorrow at dawn our 4th Division will attack, and our big guys will wait to capture the prisoners, what do you think? ”

Cheng Qian is also a smart person, and immediately understood what Liao Lei meant, and stroked his palm: "So good, so good!" ”