Although Xuzhou has begun autumn in September, there are still autumn tigers, it is very hot at noon, and it is very cool in the second half of the night. But no matter how cool it is, it can't hide the murderous aura in the sky, Zhang Zongchang and his Zhilu coalition army are coming towards Xuzhou with the murderous aura that bursts out from time to time. The First Army of the Youth Army and the border guards were ordered not to take the initiative to attack, and Jiang Fangzhen, the new chief of staff of the former enemy headquarters in Xuzhou, came along with this order.

"Brother Baili, it's good that you're here, it's good that you're here, with you, the Dinghai Divine Needle, our army will win!" Xu Shuzheng originally served in the War Department, and he had a certain friendship with Jiang Fangzhen, who was the principal of Baoding.

"Brother Zheng laughed again, with you, Zhiduoxing here, it is actually superfluous for me to come here, but General Staff Bai said that he wanted to teach Fengjun a profound lesson, so I had to be cheeky" Jiang Fangzhen has become more and more decent after several years of experience.

"Brother Baili laughed, but I don't know what this lesson is?" The little unhappiness in Xu Shuzheng's heart made Jiang Fangzhen dissipate immediately as soon as he said this, and at the same time he became very interested in the content of Jiang Fangzhen's lesson.

Jiang Fangzhen nodded, and took a fortification map from the staff officer behind him: "Specifically, this is it, such a ......"

After listening to Jiang Fangzhen's explanation, Xu Shuzheng had to sigh: "The Germans are worthy of being experts in military affairs, and this kind of play can be thought of. Commander Tao, you should do this method according to Chief of Staff Chiang......"

On September 11, the Zhilu coalition army arrived at the front line of Xiaoliuquan and Qingshanquan Town, on this 4.7-kilometer-wide front, it was Tao Zhiyue's descendant who was ordered to fight the Zhilu coalition army here, the first division of the Youth Army, this unit can be regarded as a meritorious unit of the civil war, and more importantly, a group of officers who have been rotated back from Europe have just been replenished to this unit. As for the current division commander of this unit, Zhang Zizhong, commander of the Eighth Division of the Expeditionary Force, who is known for his good defense in the European battlefield, can be regarded as the division commander of Wang Zhenyu's starting unit, which can be regarded as the greatest praise and trust for Zhang Zizhong, who is not a descendant.

Throwing in peach in return, Zhang Zizhong naturally unceremoniously took down the task of guarding the first line of defense. Strictly speaking, it is very dangerous to face a frontal assault of nearly 200,000 enemy troops with only 25,000 troops on a 4,700-meter defensive line, including only 19,000 combatants.

So when the scouts of the Zhilu coalition army reported the results of this investigation, Zhang Zongchang touched his bare head in disbelief, and then piled up Shi Congbin and these army commanders and said: "Are these southern barbarians bold enough, or stupid enough?" Lao Tzu will never fight again, and he will not only send such a few people to fight, what is this not death? ”

After reading the report, Shi Congbin shook his head very puzzled and said: "Big brother, we don't understand what the truth is, it stands to reason that their youth army wouldn't be so stupid, otherwise how did such a large area in the south be defeated?" Could it be a fraud? ”

"What's the trick on this?" Zhang Zongchang walked briskly a few times with his hands behind his back and asked, "From the topography, as long as this place is taken down, what remains is the Yellow River that is not too sad, I really don't see any fraud at all." Moreover, according to the information provided by Japanese friends, the enemy troops in the entire Xuzhou have added up to less than 100,000 people, which is less than half of us. In the face of absolute strength, I don't believe it, what tricks can the Southern Barbarians play?"

Speaking to himself, naturally no one dared to come out to raise objections, Zhang Zongchang, who has always prided himself on being a famous general, patted his thigh and said: "Give me some people, I will let these Southern Barbarians who feel good about themselves see what a real war is, what is a real man!" Go and invite the Japanese advisers, and let the young army know what heavy artillery is first......"

THIS THING THAT WAS VALUED BY ZHANG ZONGCHANG WAS THE MEIJI 38-YEAR MEIJI 150MM FIELD HOWITZER SENT BY THE JAPANESE, AND THIS KIND OF CANNON CAN TELL HOW POWERFUL IT IS JUST BY LOOKING AT THE CALIBER. The shells alone weighed thirty-six kilograms and had a range of almost 6,000 meters. When I first test-fired it to Zhang Zongchang, it made Zhang Zongchang very happy for a while, and felt that Little Japan even took out such a kind of thing to give it to himself, and it was really a friend enough. However, Zhang Zongchang may not know that this kind of cannon is not good or bad, at least in the Japanese army, this thing has tended to be outdated, the reason is also very simple, the gun body is cumbersome and inconvenient to transport, not to mention that this firing range of less than six kilometers in the real cannon fire will definitely suffer a big loss. You think, people can just do it casually, and you can't hurt people even if you fight hard, how can you fight this battle? Therefore, this kind of artillery for suppressive shooting purposes was outdated by the time of the Second World War, and it had long been discontinued, and it belonged to the sequence of reserves, and only a few were organized in independent artillery units or infantry wings, and rarely appeared on the battlefield.

But it doesn't matter, first, the battlefield is now in the North China Plain, and transportation is by rail, and looking at the whole of China, the range of cannons of the same power is really rare than this, so the above two weaknesses have not been exposed. Zhang Zongchang naturally regarded this weapon as his trump card, and not only set up a separate heavy artillery brigade according to the requirements of the Japanese advisers, but also hired a large number of retired Japanese artillerymen to directly serve as gunners. After all, artillery is a technical weapon, not the kind of cannon fodder that can be used by issuing a gun to a set of military uniforms. And Zhang Zongchang, who was only a brigade commander in the Fengjun army two months ago, lacked the most time, so when he was busy squandering his power to marry the thirteenth aunt, the Japanese adviser who finally couldn't help it proposed to him the idea and method of building a heavy artillery brigade, and Zhang Zongchang naturally nodded and agreed. In his opinion, the Japanese are so hard to support themselves, they are closer than their own fathers, so what is there to worry about.

And Japan also made great efforts this time, and after being disappointed with the Beiyang warlords, the temple government authorized the Kwantung Prefecture Governor's Office to directly support Zhang Zuolin's Feng army to enter the customs. The performance of Fengjun obviously also made the Japanese very satisfied, and it actually swelled to 700,000 troops in just two months, and naturally opened the prelude to the southern expedition.

This is precisely what the Japanese are most satisfied with, and to be honest, the amazing performance of the South China army in Europe is false if it does not touch the nerves of the Japanese at all. It is said that the Japanese top brass held three successive imperial meetings in order to reassess the actual combat effectiveness of the Shina army, but in the end they were unable to reach an accurate conclusion. But then it is clear that the people of China will have to give full play to their national merits that are good at infighting, and no matter what the outcome is, it will be a weakening for the China as a whole.

However, the Japanese top brass hoped that in such a civil war, it would be better for South China to perish like the Southern Song Dynasty in history. So they invested a lot of money in Fengjun, and not only paid the balance of the unpaid Xiyuan loan to Zhang Zuolin. Even through the imperial army in Qingdao, enough arms to be armed with hundreds of thousands of arms were provided to Zhang Zongchang, the first tiger general of the Feng department who became famous in this war.

The Japanese have always been careful in their calculations, and supporting Zhang Zongchang was by no means in vain, because Zhang Zongchang was the vanguard of the attack on South China, and it was absolutely necessary to make it strong. Second, the evaluation of Zhang Zongchang is very good, ambitious, and very easy to control, such a person is definitely the biggest hidden danger on Zhang Zuolin's road to unifying China. In other words, the Japanese would never allow China to complete reunification, because it would affect the continental policy of the Great Japanese Empire and the future of the Empire. Their wishful thinking is very simple, first rely on Zhang Zuolin's wolf-like Feng army to eliminate the South China government, whose steel output is faintly greater than that of the Great Japanese Empire, and then divide Zhang Zuolin's power into three by supporting Zhang Zongchang and planning the Manchurian Movement, so that China will return to the Three Kingdoms era, and it will be much easier for Japan to encroach on such a China......

The Japanese over there are wishful thinking, and Zhang Zongchang here is also dreaming of entering Nanjing, but he has found out clearly, the south is now very rich, and any province occupied can be worth several Shandong. These messages further strengthened Zhang Zongchang's determination to go south, in his opinion, no matter how Sun Liechen, who attacked Henan, moved, he was going south to make a fortune, as for the future, he made a fortune in the south.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, Zhang Zongchang arranged for the cannon fodder on the first day, and the four infantry brigades plus two cavalry brigades were all in place. The 30,000 horses themselves were composed of soil and outlaws, and Zhang Zongchang also promised them that after breaking through the defense line, those who did not die would be rewarded with 30 pieces of ocean. This move immediately aroused the morale of these soldiers, and Zhang Zongchang was very satisfied with it. Originally, Zhang Zongchang planned to invest more attack troops, but the entire front was so fast, and no matter how many men and horses there were, there was only such a wide supply surface, so there was no need to swarm up and let people sweep around.

As an added point here, the Nao-Lu coalition's style of play looks simple, but in fact it is very ferocious and effective. The battles of this era are basically European-style, there is no way, everyone is a student taught by the Germans. Therefore, building a position to fight is a must for positional warfare, and Zhang Zongchang has found a good way to do this, that is, the infantry will attack first, concentrate on breaking through, no matter whether it succeeds or fails, it is inevitable to see the distribution of the enemy's firepower, and at this time it is the turn of the cavalry to go up and break through at high speed.

Therefore, Zhang Zongchang is just stupid on the outside, and his essence is a very scheming person, this style of play was successfully used in the war between Poland and the Soviet Union, and it was also used in history when the Ma Jiajun dealt with the Western Expeditionary Army, and it was proved to be very effective. The first enemy that Zhang Zongchang defeated with this trick was Wu Peifu, known as China's Ludendorff, in Qinghe and Shangqiu, this tactic was exerted with great power. So what about this time in Xuzhou, what will be the situation?