This shijie always becomes full of coincidences and accidents for one reason or another.

On March 28, the decisive battle between the Youth Army and the Beiyang Army, which had been repeatedly postponed for various reasons, finally began.

The fact that the battle took place in four places at the same time is indeed extremely surprising in an era when the popularization and use of radio has not yet become widespread. This made later generations of military scientists who studied this war feel very content, but after digging deeply, they realized that it was indeed a coincidence and accident, and they had to sigh that history is so full of charm.

The famous Battle of the Southeast was fought simultaneously on four battlefields, in the order in which the battles were fought, namely:

The Chaohu battlefield on the first line of Caohe and Xuwanzi, the Hexian battlefield on the first line of Xie Village and Chenxia, the Tongling battlefield on the first line of Guanhushan and Tiehuzui, and the Nanling battlefield on the first line of Yaoduntou and Yijiang.

The Youth Army invested in the Tao Zhiyue Division of the First Division, the Li Pinxian Division of the Third Division, the Liao Lei Division of the Fourth Division, the Bai Chongxi Division of the Seventh Division, the Cheng Qian Division of the Ninth Division, and the Lu Diping Division of the Eleventh Division, a total of six main field divisions, as well as 30,000 security forces including He Wenchang and Long Yunfei, two cavalry detachments, totaling 160,000 troops.

The Beiyang Army invested four main field divisions, including Wang Zhanyuan of the Second Division, Yang Shande of the Fourth Division, Zhang Huaizhi of the Fifth Division, and Lu Yongxiang of the Tenth Division, as well as Zhang Xun's Dingwu Army of 20,000 people, Ni Sichong's Anwu Army of 10,000 people, and the First Division, the Second Division of the Jiangsu Army and a division of the Zhejiang Army with a total of 190,000 troops.

The difference in strength between the two sides is not big, it can be said that they are equal, and now the comparison is who is more ruthless and who is more fierce!

Wars are always full of surprises, but some accidents are man-made. For example, the start of the Chaohu battlefield was a man-made accident, and this accident fully reflected the character of Cheng Qian and Cheng Songyun.

Just when Bai Chongxi took Cheng Qian aside and only asked him to monitor Zhang Huaizhi's Fifth Division, Cheng Qian, who was very dissatisfied with this, began to plan. So on the day of March 28, Cheng Qian naturally did something that made Bai Chongxi extremely angry, and he actually launched an attack on Zhang Huaizhi's Beiyang Fifth Division before Bai Chongxi launched a general attack on Hexian. Moreover, without going through him, the commander-in-chief of the Left Route Army, he directly reported the battle situation to the headquarters of the Southeast Front Army in Tongling and the General Staff Headquarters in Anjiang. When Bai Chongxi learned about it, he scolded angrily: "Cheng Songyun, you'd better plant nothing in my hands, otherwise you will look good." ”

Cheng Qian is not a good boy, let alone Bai Chongxi, even if Wang Zhenyu himself came, Cheng Qian would not take it too seriously. Since you didn't give it to Bai Chongxi, he went to get it himself.

The Ninth Division can now be said to be the largest division among the eleven field armies of the entire Youth Army. There are 30,000 troops alone, and the Hunan People's Army and part of the Jiangxi People's Army during the Xinhai Revolution were included in the ranks of the Ninth Division, and the Ninth Division is different from other troops, and the regiment is under the Ninth Division, and the Ninth Division is Tang Shengzhi, Song Hegeng, Zhang Xiaozhun (without waiting for the Military Intelligence Bureau to arrest him in Shanghai, he went ashore from Guangzhou and defected to Cheng Qian) Ye Kaixin's four brigades. Relying on the superior strength of the four brigades and ten regiments in his hand, plus the timely allocation of materials and military salaries from the Anjiang side, especially the equipment of an artillery regiment in place, although skilled gunners are not easy to train, these big guys who eat people and don't spit out bones make Cheng Qian feel that his waist is much thicker now.

So Zhang Huaizhi, who has only more than 20,000 troops, really didn't pay attention to it, and he was more confident than anyone else in this battle. And judging by the course of the battle, his self-confidence is not completely unreasonable.

With the cannon in his hand, Tang Shengzhi naturally wanted to use it, and it was a random bombardment against Zhang Huaizhi's position. As is customary, the shelling was followed by an infantry charge. Zhang Huaizhi hurriedly roared and drove the troops to the position to resist, but what was the result? Another bombardment, Zhang Huaizhi's Fifth Division lost several hundred people at once. This was repeated several times, and the Beiyang officers drove the soldiers to the battlefield again, but these soldiers were unwilling.

And at this time, Tang Shengzhi led the first independent brigade to rush to the position, and easily broke through Zhang Huaizhi's first-line position, Zhang Huaizhi was so angry that he vomited blood, and scolded Cheng Qian shamelessly and indecently in front of all the officers of the division headquarters, and did not play cards according to the rules.

Next, Zhang Huaizhi gathered two regiments to go all out to counter-assault, and with the support of artillery fire, launched an attack on the lost position.

Tang Shengzhi withdrew all of them with a slight resistance, and before the Beiyang Army had time to rejoice, it was another bombardment.

As a result, Zhang Huaizhi's casualties directly broke 3,000 in one day, while Cheng Qian's Ninth Division lost only three or four hundred people. With such a deficit, the entire Beiyang Fifth Division became demoralized as a result......

Compared with Cheng Qian's scheming, Bai Chongxi's side fought very unsmoothly on the battlefield with the county. The combat effectiveness of Zhang Xun's Dingwu Army was obviously much underestimated, because up to now, in a full morning, the Youth Army had paid the price of more than 700 people, and had not been able to occupy a few positions. The two sides come and go, and every inch of land will be contested, so naturally the fight will be difficult to solve. Often, as soon as the youth army of a position was taken, the Dingwu army on that side organized a death squad to take it back, but the result of more than 100 dead and wounded on both sides was to return to the original point, which made the warring parties feel discouraged when they thought about it.

However, Bai Chongxi was not in a hurry, because he did not want the Fourth Division to launch such an attack to fight with Zhang Xun, that was not his style. The reason why he disregarded the lives of his soldiers was because he had a rule to achieve the greatest victory at the lowest cost, so as to avoid greater casualties and attrition. And in order to achieve this goal, the minimum cost is negligible in his eyes. Therefore, Bai Chongxi didn't plan to penetrate Zhang Xun's position at all, but just wanted to attract the attention of the other party. After this day's bloody battle, before Zhang Xun had time to praise his subordinates, he found that Bai Chongxi had moved the Seventh Division to his flank, and he and the Dingwu Army under his command were surrounded by the Youth Army with three divisions. Bai Chongxi did not attack overnight, but sent a liaison officer to persuade Zhang Xun to surrender.

As a result, Zhang Xun, the monster, not only refused to surrender, but also tied up the liaison officer and prepared to shoot him. However, after a period of fierce persuasion, several subordinate generals violently beat up the liaison officer and sent him out.

Bai Chongxi's mood has been really bad recently, he has been seriously deprived of sleep, and he is only in his twenties, and his head has begun to lose hair. And Zhang Xun's behavior broke the bottom line of Bai Chongxi's patience, so a crazy Jihua came out.

"From 4 o'clock tomorrow morning, we will launch an attack on all fronts and annihilate Zhang Xun's headquarters as quickly as possible." Then Bai Chongxi left a room of stunned officers and walked away......

On the right, it was Nanling that started first.

The commander of the 10th Beiyang Division, Lu Yongxiang, is different from Zhang Huaizhi, Zhang Huaizhi is Duan Qirui's person, and he, Lu Yongxiang, is only half of Duan Qirui's person at best, otherwise Feng Guozhang would not have acquiesced to him Lu Yongxiang as the commander of the newly formed 10th Division and concurrently served as the military affairs supervisor of Zhejiang.

At the beginning of the war, under the instruction of Duan Qirui, Lu Yongxiang and Zhang Huaizhi were both passive and slacking off. As a result, Feng Guozhang's layout was delayed, and the ensuing situation made the shrewd Lu Yongxiang realize that he could not go on like this. Because the Youth Army is obviously not a disease of scabies as General Duan said, but a big problem for his henchmen. Grandma's, do you have scabies with more troops than our Beiyang? And Lu Yongxiang's ambition is to control the rich place of Zhejiang, but if he doesn't help Feng Guozhang defeat the Youth Army, then what eggs are there under this nest? Only by defeating the Youth Army can he return to Zhejiang with his team and repel the attack of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary coalition army on Zhejiang. So Lu Yongxiang finally chose to stand on the side of light and justice (light and justice?). ）。

As a result, the attacking troops with the 10th Beiyang Division and the 1st Patrol Division of the Zhejiang Army as the main body did not hesitate to press down on the 11th Division of Lu Diping's Youth Army.

Compared with the Ninth Division, the 11th Division is almost the weakest unit of the Youth Army, first of all, from officers to soldiers, it is a patchwork of things, including the original Hunan Mine Police Corps, the 39th Brigade of Beiyang and its own old unit. The supplies have not been completely replenished, and the officers have not been retrained, and even the political work cadres have not been completely sent down (the political work cadres are also out of stock!). ）。

But in this way, under the onslaught of the 10th Division of Beiyang and the 1st Division of the Zhejiang Army, the 11th Division was all resisting desperately.

The first battalion of the 111th Regiment commanded by Zhang Zizhong was at the heart of the entire offensive storm at this moment - Doujia Village, and the Beiyang Army crossed the river again and again to attack, and then was beaten down by Zhang Zizhong and them again and again......

And where is the key point of the whole battle? In Tao Zhiyue, in Tongling, this is the key point that determines the entire battle.

Is it life or death, victory or defeat, glory or shame? Everything fell on Tao Zhiyue's shoulders and on the heads of the entire First Division.

The performance of the officers and men of the First Division at this moment is absolutely worthy of their shining numbers, their beautiful uniforms, their generous treatment, and their excellent equipment.

The Beiyang Second Division, which was responsible for the attack, could be said to be the trump card of Beiyang, but when the attack was launched, they knew how stupid it was to attack such an opponent, the opponent's combat level was far higher than their own by more than one grade, and the mutual cover of the defensive positions caused huge unbearable casualties on their side. And after frantically attacking several times, the middle- and lower-ranking officers and men of the Second Division said that they would not attack anything, and this battle was not fought like this. Wang Zhanyuan was so angry that Zuihou had to order the bonus to be increased to 100,000 yuan, and he was paid fifteen yuan for the ocean attack first.