Chapter 47 46. ​​The Rivers and Lakes of Scholars: The Rise of "Marshal Wu"

Just when Lao Duan, Xiao Xu and others were complacent, a new generation of Zhili warlords posed a strong challenge to them. This was Wu Peifu, the commander of the Third Division. Wu Peifu, courtesy name Ziyu, was born in 1874 in Penglai, Dengzhou, Shandong. He was nicknamed "Wu Xiaogui" because he was clever and talkative since he was a child, and because he was a scholar at the age of 23. Two scholars from the north and the south".Wu Xiucai was very active and playful since he was a child. Once a certain official's house called for a play. He and a few friends had never met him before, but they insisted on coming to play. However, they were not allowed to enter. There was a martial arts show outside.

Since the official was not an ordinary person, a letter was sent to the magistrate in Wu Peifu's hometown, and the magistrate sent a policeman to arrest him. The scholar turned back to Wu Peifu... The reputation of the scholar was revoked by the local Xuezheng. After Wu Peifu escaped, he first went to Tianjin, and then to Beijing. Because he had no food and clothing, he had to set up a table on the street, help people write letters and do fortune-telling part-time.Due to the poor income from writing and fortune-telling, Wu Peifu later defected to two of his elder brothers who were soldiers in the former Wuwei army under Nie Shicheng's department, and also wanted to join the army and make a living.However, his two elder brothers thought that he was a scholar with a bright future, and they began to disagree with his enlistment. They didn't know that Wu Peifu's scholar had actually been dismissed long ago.

Under Wu Peifu's repeated requests, his elder brother agreed to recommend him to Wang Huaiqing, the commander of the army.Wang Huaiqing heard that Wu Xiucai imitated the ancient story of throwing a pen into the army, and of course he welcomed it very much. As a result, Wu Peifu not only became a soldier, but was also recommended to study in the Kaiping Armed Forces Academy. After the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded China in the Gengzi Year, Nie Shicheng was killed in a vigorous battle, and the former Wuwei Army was also maimed. Wu Peifu graduated from the Kaiping Armed Forces Academy in a few months, but he did not get his graduation certificate, and fell into a situation where he was out of school and unemployed.Wu Peifu, who was pushed into the society again, was living in Beijing and Tianjin, so he had to return to his old job again and continued to help people write and tell fortunes.

At this time, Wu Peifu's luck came.After the Gengzi year, Yuan Shikai succeeded Li Hongzhang as the governor of Zhili and began to implement the New Deal, one of which was to run the police on a trial basis, so Wu Peifu successfully found a job under Duan Zhigui, a policeman in Tianjin.Not only that, but there happened to be a teacher named Guo Chaodong in the new unit. He saw that Wu Xiaogui was both a fellow and a scholar, so he looked at him differently and supported him a lot.Soon, Wu Peifu entered the Army Surveying and Mapping School run by Yuan Shikai under the recommendation of Master Guo, and was escorted by Tianjin Patrol Road, and Duan Qirui was the supervisor of the Surveying and Mapping School.

You see, this little ghost Wu has a predestined relationship with Duan Xiaoduan, right?We have to continue dealing with each other later! After graduation, Wu Peifu was assigned to the third town of Beiyang as a team officer. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, it was necessary to recruit military personnel to go to the Northeast to collect intelligence and survey the situation. Wu Peifu's major met the requirements, so he became one of them. member.In this mission, Wu Peifu performed well. He sometimes pretended to be a fortune teller in his old business, and sometimes pretended to be a traveling businessman. He was very thorough, and when he came back, he was rewarded and promoted to a management leader.

After the Wuchang Uprising, the third town quickly entered the customs and stationed in Shijiazhuang to guard against the revolutionary party in Shanxi.Later, the third town was ordered to attack Niangziguan, and the first battalion of the eleventh standard led by Wu Peifu attacked first. On the one hand, he reported to Lu Yongxiang, the commander of the association, and on the other hand, he sent someone to send a letter to Cao Kun, the commander of the town, reporting the course of the battle. .Lu Yongxiang was very angry when he knew that Wu Peifu had leapfrogged to report, so he found an excuse to reprimand Wu Peifu severely, and the two felt bad.

When beating Niangziguan, the First Battalion seized three boxes of Shanxi banknotes. Wu Peifu proposed to divide them equally among the eleven bids, but his immediate superior, Wang Zhiguo, did not agree, and Wu Peifu was very angry.The soldiers of the first battalion also complained after learning about it, thinking that Wang Zhiguo wanted to embezzle the money for himself.Since he was not rewarded for his meritorious service and did not get any money after robbing him, Wu Peifu thought that Biaotong and Xietong were doing things unfairly, so he asked for leave in a fit of anger, and wanted to go to Beijing to complain to Cao Kun and Cao Tongzhi.

Unfortunately, after Wu Peifu asked for leave from Biaotong Wang Zhiguo, Wang Zhiguo did not report to Xietong Lu Yongxiang. As a result, the soldiers of the first battalion mutinied and robbed some local businesses on the night Wu Peifu left.After this incident, Lu Yongxiang was furious, and he telegraphed Cao Kun, saying that Wu Peifu had left his post without authorization and should be dismissed.After Cao Kun received the telegram, he approved the word "Zhun". After Wu Peifu learned that he had been dismissed, he was so angry that he rushed to Beijing to report to Cao Kun the grievance that Wang Zhiguo and Lu Yongxiang oppressed his subordinates because of his meritorious service in combat.Because Wu Peifu's eloquence was really good, Cao Kun felt that what he said was reasonable after hearing about it, so he kept Wu Peifu by his side as his adjutant.

At this time, Wu Peifu's good luck came again.When Cai Yuanpei’s special envoy asked Yuan Shikai to go south to become the president, whether it was instigated or voluntary, the soldiers of the third town suddenly mutinied one night, and the rebels looted and looted Beijing for a whole night.In this incident, Liu Xuexin, the commander of the artillery team, was too excited for a while. During the mutiny, he fired a few shots at Chaoyang Gate into the city. And promoted Wu Peifu to become the artillery standard.Afterwards, Wu Peifu said triumphantly: "Lu Yongxiang won't let me be the leader, I will be the leader! Even if Lu Yongxiang is partial and Wang Zhiguo is greedy, but he is born with virtue, what can Lu and Wang do?"

Therefore, behind every successful person, a little bit of good luck is always needed, because this is destiny.However, people also need to fear the destiny at the same time. Those who are self-righteous and arrogant and do not respect the destiny will eventually be abandoned by the destiny... People must learn to be humble! After the "Second Revolution" broke out, Wu Peifu was ordered to lead the artillery regiment to the south to help in the war. Because Brother Xiucai couldn't get rid of his rhetoric and often showed off Cao Kun's airs, he was very unpopular among his colleagues. At that time, some people satirized him like this "Hee, hee, hee, the language is boring; ha, ha, ha, the appearance is hideous." Once Wu Peifu invited his colleagues to dinner, only Liu Guoqing, the chief of the military medical department, and Xiao Yaonan, then the head of the Ninth Regiment, came. Faced with this cold reception, Wu Peifu said indifferently: "It's better not to come; we can eat more and talk more." This shows that his popularity is indeed not good.

However, although Wu Peifu's eloquence and literary talent were unpopular in front of his colleagues, they played a role at critical times.Once Tang Xiangming, the governor of Hunan, invited Cao Kun to a banquet. Before the banquet, Tang Xiangming praised Cao Kun in his welcome speech.According to the rules at the time, the host gave a welcome speech, and the guests should also give a thank you speech, but Cao Kun was not good at words, so he pretended that he had a cold and asked his adjutant Wu Peifu to give a speech on his behalf. Now Wu Peifu has seized the opportunity. In his speech, he praised Hunan's human history, moral articles, and the great achievements of Governor Tang.Afterwards, Tang Xiangming said to Cao Kun: "Oh, your army is really full of talents! Look at your deputy commander, he is really versatile in both civil and military affairs, an elite among men!" After finishing speaking, Tang Xiangming meant to keep Wu Peifu to help him, and planned to appoint him as brigade commander.Cao Kun originally thought that although Wu Peifu's ability was not bad, but his mouth was always croaking and croaking all day long, but he didn't expect that Governor Tang would praise him so much. He thought that Wu Peifu might really be a talent. What do you use? When Cao Kun returned to Yuezhou, he called Wu Peifu and said, "You are really good, no wonder Governor Tang thought highly of you yesterday. You said you are so small, with yellow hair, yellow beard, and piercing eyes. Could it be that Jin Xing came down to help me? If you follow me, you will have a bright future in the future!" Coincidentally, Zhang Hongkui, the brigade commander of the sixth brigade of the third division, suddenly fell ill and passed away. The regimental commander Wang Chengbin should have replaced him. Brigadier... This is really called "talented and lucky, a smooth flush everywhere", so Wu Peifu has become Cao Kun's hardcore confidant, and has emerged among the Beiyang soldiers. After introducing Wu Peifu's experience, he wants to talk about the Hunan-Hubei War in 1918. At that time, Wu Peifu was ordered by Cao Kun to lead the third division to go south into Hunan. After defeating the Southern Army, he successively conquered Yueyang and Changsha, and then stationed in Hengyang.Not long after entering Hunan, Wu Peifu was officially promoted to the commander of the third division because of his outstanding performance, thus becoming the number two figure in Cao Kun's army. Time passed quickly, and two years passed in a flash, and Wu Peifu's army was impatient to stay in Hengyang.As a matter of fact, as early as July 1918, Wu Peifu sent a telegram asking to withdraw from the defense and return to the north. The reason was simple. The governor at the time was Zhang Jingyao of the Anhui Department, and the third division stationed in southern Shonan was actually guarding his home. How did this happen?Besides, most of the officers and soldiers of the third division are from the north, and they are certainly not happy to live in the humid and hot south for a long time. However, since the war situation had just stabilized at that time, and then the end of World War I, the peace talks between the North and the South, and the student riots after the Paris Peace Conference, there were a lot of international and domestic affairs.Waiting until 1920, Wu Peifu couldn't wait any longer. This time, regardless of whether the Beijing government approved it or not, he would lead his troops to withdraw northward. After Zhang Jingyao heard that Wu Peifu was going to withdraw northward, he was very anxious now, because he knew that during the two years of peaceful life in Hunan, he relied entirely on Wu Peifu's third division to guard the mountain gate and block the south. Army, otherwise, relying on his weak and incompetent Seventh Division would not be able to cope with the situation at all.During Zhang Jingyao's supervision of Hunan, due to his high-pressure policy and search for bad records, it once triggered the Hunan people's "expelling Zhang movement". At that time, Mao Zedong went to Beijing to petition President Xu Shichang as a representative of "expelling Zhang". Duan Qirui was very angry after receiving a telegram from Wu Peifu requesting to "disarm and return to the north". He took out the airs of the old principal, called Wu Peifu himself and reprimanded him for "contempt for the central government and not observing military discipline."Unexpectedly, Wu Peifu held his breath for a long time. Instead, he sent a telegram to refute Duan Qirui's "military aggression and harm to the country", and said that the decision to withdraw to the north had been made and could not be changed. Cao Kun, the backstage boss, was in Baoding on April 8. Held a meeting of the provincial alliances directly under the direct affiliation to discuss ways to deal with Duan Qirui and the Anhui clique. On May 20, under the instruction of Cao Kun, Wu Peifu led the troops to withdraw from the defense line without waiting for the order from the central government.Before withdrawing his troops, Wu Peifu made careful preparations, and withdrew from Hengyang to Changsha at a distance of 30 miles per brigade, both by land and water.Along the way, the officers and soldiers of the third division sang the poem "Return to Defense" written by Wu Peifu: The military appearance is neat, the military songs are loud and clear, Wu Peifu's military training is very good, the scholar is not from Baizhong, this poem is really well written. After Wu Peifu's third division and Wang Chengbin, Xiao Yaonan and other troops under Cao Kun withdrew northward, the other Beiyang troops in Hunan were in chaos.Since Wu Peifu had reached an agreement with the Southern Army before his withdrawal, as soon as Wu Army left, Zhao Hengti's troops of the Hunan Army went north to take over the defense. Within a week, Hengyang, Laiyang, Qiyang, Baoqing and other places fell into the hands of the Hunan Army, and Zhang Jingyao's subordinates Wu Xintian's Department of the First Temporary Division of Hunan Province and Tian Shuxun's Division of the Second Temporary Division quickly fled, and their troops were defeated like a mountain. As for the other Beiyang troops, they saw that Wu Peifu's troops had left, and they were powerless to resist the southern army, and then they also retreated northward. For example, Fan Guozhang's 20th Division originally stationed in Xiangtan and Li Kuiyuan's 11th Division stationed in Changsha all followed Wu's army northward. Withdrew; Feng Yuxiang's 16th Mixed Brigade, originally stationed in Changde, Hunan, also withdrew north to Jinshi, and then to Wuhan; and Zhang Zongchang, who was stationed in eastern Hunan temporarily organized the First Army Division, was even more miserable. He had no news at the time , When he knew it, he couldn't withdraw to the north, so he had to enter Chen Guangyuan's Jiangxi territory. In the end, Chen Guangyuan used a small plan and disarmed the whole army. Zhang Zongchang finally fled to Beijing with a few cronies. When the direct Beiyang Army retreated northward one after another, Zhang Jingyao could only call Duan Qirui urgently to ask for assistance.At that time, Duan Qirui had no troops to transfer, so he could only order Wu Guangxin, the commander-in-chief of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and his brother-in-law stationed in northern Hubei, to be transferred to Dongting Lake and Yuezhou to prepare to intercept Wu's army with Zhang Jingyao's troops to prevent him from continuing to retreat northward and threatening To the status of Beijing and Tianjin. However, this brother-in-law of Lao Duan, Wu Guangxin, is really not up to the mark. Although he was sent to Japan by Lao Duan to study at the Japanese Non-commissioned Officer Academy, the troops he led did not have much combat effectiveness.Moreover, Wu Guangxin has a very bad temper, and his subordinates fear and hate him, how can he do it well? After receiving Duan Qirui's order, Wu Guangxin led his troops eastward, but Hubei Governor Wang Zhanyuan didn't know his intention and thought he was going to attack Wuhan, so he blocked it for a while, delaying Wu Guangxin's plan to join forces with Zhang Jingyao.As for Zhang Jingyao, his troops did not dare to provoke Wu Peifu's army. When Wu's army passed through Changsha in battle order, they could only watch helplessly as the third division retreated northward calmly.When Wu Peifu's unit was passing through Wuhan, Wang Zhanyuan also donated 600,000 yuan in silver to show his support. As for Wu Guangxin, he had just arrived in Hankou when Wu Jun had crossed Dongting Lake.Soon, Wang Zhanyuan invited Wu Guangxin to the banquet. Wu's subordinates advised him not to go, but Wu Guangxin didn't care. He smiled and said, "Why are you so timid!" Then he took a dozen people to the banquet.After arriving, Wang Zhanyuan set up a Hongmen Banquet. Wu Guangxin was detained, and his troops were either incorporated or dismissed. Wu Guangxin was not released until the Zhiwan War ended. With the general situation gone, what Zhang Jingyao could do was to quickly transport the money he had collected in the past two years to the north, and then he abandoned Changsha and withdrew to Yuezhou.Before withdrawing from Changsha, Zhang Jingyao also ordered the general's arsenal to be set on fire in order to avoid capitalizing on the enemy. As a result, the city of Changsha was ablaze. Yuezhou, which has always been a battleground for military strategists, did not hold it this time.After the defeat, Zhang Jingyao sent a telegram accusing Fan Guozhang and other ministries of sitting idly by and fleeing without fighting in order to shirk their responsibilities. Unfortunately, the Beijing government had already lost confidence in him at this time, and immediately ordered Zhang Jingyao to be dismissed for investigation. Wu Guangxin took over as Governor of Hunan (Wu Guangxin had not yet been placed under house arrest by Wang Zhanyuan at the time). After Zhang Jingyao fled to Hankou, Wu Guangxin asked him to hand over the two seals of the governor of Hunan and the governor of Hunan. Zhang Jingyao didn't believe it at first, so Wu Guangxin took out a telegram to him. After reading it, Zhang Jingyao angrily demanded that Wu Guangxin take 2 million oceans as exchange print conditions.Wu Guangxin didn't care about this, so he ordered the guards to take away Zhang Jingyao's seal on the spot. On July 1, Zhang Jingyao, who was panicked like a bereaved dog, ran to Wuchang to look for Wang Zhanyuan, the governor of Hubei. Hunan, continue to be his warlord.Wang Zhanyuan has been in Hubei for seven or eight years, and he is already an old fox in the officialdom. How could he believe Zhang Jingyao's nonsense, so he refused politely on the spot. After being rejected, Zhang Jingyao still wanted to get angry. Wang Zhanyuan chuckled, and took out another telegram to show him. Zhang Jingyao saw it, butt on the chair and didn't get up for a long time: The telegram clearly stated that Wu Xintian was to act as the agent of the Seventh Division. Master and take in the remnants of Zhang Jingyao! The warlord is gone, and the military power is gone. Zhang Jingyao is completely defeated this time.This 40-year-old man who made great contributions to "suppressing white wolves" in the early years of the Republic of China couldn't help crying loudly under the double blow.Back then, Zhang Jingyao was also a brave general in the Beiyang faction. He didn't expect to be corrupted as a warlord in Hunan for two years, and he turned into the bear he is now.Zhang Jingyao's younger brother, Zhang Jingtang, also committed all kinds of crimes before, and finally died in the defeat of the army. From then on, Zhang Jingyao fell into a slump. Although he once defected to Zhang Zongchang and Zhang Zuolin in an attempt to make a comeback, his luck was bad and he was just an insignificant pawn. When the puppet "Manchukuo" was established in 1932, Zhang Jingyao served as the commander-in-chief of the Pingjin Second Army, and he was a shameful traitor. He was stabbed to death a year later at the age of 53. After all the Beiyang troops withdrew or were driven out of Hunan, the former warlord Tan Yankai once wanted to make a comeback, but Tan was only a literati, and was soon kicked out by Zhao Hengti, who had a heavy army in his hands.As a result, Hunan has also entered the era of Zhao Hengti... Hunan people governing Hunan was a popular slogan at that time.