Chapter 139 what is true unity

In the second direct Anhui war, Duan Qirui did play a pivotal role.Although Lu Yongxiang's battle in Zhejiang detonated the overall situation, Feng Yuxiang's defection was also directly related to him.In order to urge Feng to defect, Duan Qirui sent his cronies to meet Feng with his own letter in advance, saying that he "does not approve of civil war, and hopes that Feng will deal with bribery."In addition to the personal letter, he also managed to raise 100,000 oceans and forwarded it to Feng Yuxiang as a price for temporary defection. However, Feng Yuxiang's attitude was once more subtle when it came to the issue of supporting grandchildren or supporting Duan.It is said that Feng Yuxiang had read the books on the Three Principles of the People at that time, and he was very interested. He also expressed his admiration for Sun Yat-sen more than once. In the Beiyang Department, Feng Yuxiang basically belonged to the "heterogeneous" in thinking, dealing with Duan Qirui and Zhang Zuolin. Sometimes I can't help but feel lonely. If Sun Yat-sen can echo and support each other, it will naturally be beneficial to him.

Since Feng Yuxiang might have a grandson, it was reported that Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang had sent a telegram to Guangdong, asking Sun Yat-sen to go to Beijing to preside over everything. However, this news soon proved to be purely misinformation. After Feng Yuxiang defected, the regency cabinet backed by him was just a transition.Feng Yuxiang was good at military training, but politics was his biggest shortcoming. People at the time commented that he made the political situation in Beijing after the coup "revolutionary but not revolutionary, and lawful but not lawful."At the same time, he was regarded as a traitor by the Zhili lineage, and all the provinces of the Zhili lineage along the Yangtze River were sent to suppress him by electricity.Faced with this grim situation, Feng Yuxiang and others jointly supported Duan as the "Generalissimo of the National Army", hoping to use his reputation to reduce the pressure on themselves.

After living in seclusion for four years, he is finally about to leave the mountain.This was what Duan Qirui had been looking forward to all along, but when the door of fate was about to open to him, he couldn't help hesitating.The main worry is that I don’t know what the attitudes of the provinces are towards him—a few years ago, when he resigned as the supervisor and stepped down, people cheered. , where can this old face be put? Duan Qirui then neither accepted nor declined the support of Feng Yuxiang and others. He neither said he would come to Beijing nor said he would not come. As soon as the battle was settled, Duan Qirui sent a telegram to Feng Yuxiang, asking him to come to Tianjin to discuss the state affairs.On the second day after Feng Yuxiang arrived in Tianjin, Zhang Zuolin also arrived in Tianjin, and the two divisions of the Feng army were stationed in Tianjin first.

After Feng Yuxiang arrived in Tianjin, he immediately discovered that both Duan and Zhang had no intention of supporting Sun at all, and that Feng Jun was aggressive, and even some of the troops he had recruited from Wu Peifu were disarmed by Feng Jun. Thoughts, and was forced to be submissive to Zhang Zuolin, pretending to be unprejudiced. When Zhang Zuolin defeated Wu Peifu in the war, his momentum was the same as that of Wu Peifu before, and he wished he could sweep the world down immediately.At the Tianjin meeting, he even advocated continuing to send troops to the south, so as to wipe out the strength of the direct line in the Yangtze River Basin in one fell swoop.Feng Yuxiang also wanted to take the opportunity to seize territory in the south, so he agreed.

Reunification by force used to be Duan Qirui's consistent political concept. If it was in the past, he would have urged Feng and Feng's armies to go south day and night, but now he himself has doubted and wavered in this concept. One person who once criticized Duan Qirui's policy of unification by force was Zhang Shizhao, a famous political activist.Zhang Shizhao believes that unification by force is "a desire to use one faction to eliminate other factions" and "doesn't know the way of the fundamental organization of the country."In his view, there must be various forces in a society, with different interests, different emotions, and naturally different opinions and hopes.What the country has to do is to reconcile and accommodate these forces and "make them live in peace." If they are forcibly eliminated by force to achieve the so-called unification, it is a false unification and is doomed to failure.

So what is true unity?Zhang Shizhao advised Duan Qirui: "The true unity lies in the unity of the will of the country and not in the monopoly of a single husband." Before retiring to Tianjin, Duan Qirui either didn't notice Zhang Shizhao's criticism, or he took it as a scholar's opinion and didn't take it to heart at all.He really felt that these criticisms were justified after he retreated to reflect on the failures he had experienced. In the third year of Xiying, Duan Qirui said with emotion: "Cao (Cao Kun), Zhang (Zhang Zuolin), Wu (Wu Peifu) were all promoted by me. I helped them grow up, but later they all broke up. Here I am. I am committed to the policy of force, as a result, and now I am enlightened."

Duan Qirui finally understood that if the unification is purely by force, if a group of old powerful military leaders are eliminated, a new group of powerful military leaders will be cultivated, and it will inevitably be nothing in the end. Because of this new understanding, Duan Qirui disagreed with Zhang and Feng's idea of ​​using troops.He believes that Cao and Wu are still very powerful in the provinces along the Yangtze River, and the trapped beasts cannot be chased after them. Duan Qirui proposed that as long as the provinces on the Yangtze River can "wholeheartedly support the unification" and at the same time no longer support Cao and Wu, they should not continue to use troops.After hearing this, Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang felt that the situation of "combined efforts to the death" of the Yangtze River provinces might not happen, so they had to agree with Duan Qirui's opinion in principle.