The Survival Wisdom of the Beiyang Era (196): Self-deception, deception, and deception.
After the Hongxian Imperial System, Yuan Shikai can be said to have never paid attention to the southwest warlords, and what he was most worried about was the infighting among his own people. Duan Qirui such a senator, in the Beiyang Army seniority and prestige second only to Yuan Shikai, but the grand duke Yuan Keding plotted to get rid of it quickly, although Duan Qirui was absent from the enthronement ceremony and almost fell out with Yuan's father and son, but after all, it was decades of robes and his own people, at this time Duan Qirui was still Yuan Shikai's son-in-law. He summoned Yuan Keding and reprimanded: "Although your brother-in-law has an opinion on the imperial system, he is only talking with his mouth, I heard that you are going to be unfavorable to him, you must stop immediately, he is our closest relative, now things have not yet been settled, the internal fight will start, do you dare to imagine in the future?" "I really don't dare to think about it in the future, because something happened in the southwest." The patriotic war initiated by Tang Jiyao, the overseer of Yunnan, cai yi carried the banner, and his own feng guozhang secretly promoted the patriotic war, completely burying Yuan Shikai in the quagmire of desire.
However, at the beginning, Yuan Shikai did not take this war in his eyes, and he was also dismissive of the strength of the warlords in the southwest, and Yuan Shikai had long been aware of the undercurrent of the southwest half of the wall, Yunnan was harmless, the Dian army was known for being good at war and war, but there were only three soldiers and horses, Yuan Shikai thought that it would not take time to be leveled, and the general Chen Mi who sat in Sichuan was enough to stand alone. As everyone knows, the Sichuan army did not buy Chen Mi's account at all, and among the three brigades that it brought, Feng Yuxiang clamored to retreat and wait and see, one brigade was Cai Yi's old department, and the only brigade strength was naturally difficult to face the soldiers and horses under Cai Yi's command, and the most important thing was the military morale and morale, and the Beiyang Army lost all morality in the Hongxian imperial system, so its combat effectiveness was dismal. Along the way, the Dian army took full advantage of morality, successively plotting against the Sichuan armies in Yibin and Luzhou, but the space also bought time for Yuan Shikai, with Cao Kun as the main general and more than 30,000 people of the Beiyang Army under Wu Peifu sitting in the south, and had already assembled in southern Sichuan.
Subsequently, the Beiyang Army counterattacked Luzhou, which was unstoppable, which was also the reason why Yuan Shikai did not take the southwest warlords in his eyes. Because of the unprecedented disparity in strength and pressure, the Dian warlords who were thrifty in clothing and food were still unable to supply the needs of the front line, and the defending army of "no clothes and no food" could not be supported, and retreated to Naxi to confront the Beiyang Army across the river. Yuan Shikai was overjoyed to reward the three armies, but Liu Xianshi, the overseer of Guizhou, turned against him after defrauding more than 200,000 bounties, and Lu Rongting, the overseer of Guangxi, followed suit, and the situation in the southwest took a sharp turn for the worse. Since the Japanese army sent agents to escort Cai Yi back to Yunnan, it has been actively supporting yuan, and there is no position for the Japanese army to speak of, the only constant position is to weaken the strong neighbors, first giving Sun Wen more than one million yuan of activity funds, as well as funding the return of the old man in the late Qing Dynasty, and then recognizing the southwest warlords as supporting the warring groups.
In the end, faster than the dominoes, the Gonggong Zhugong, who had once "supported Yuan", turned into a "yuan" volunteer, and the wall-riding faction's verbal criticism of Yuan Shikai could be tolerated, but there were two people who turned against Yuan Shikai, which made Yuan Shikai really unacceptable. One is Feng Guozhang, the dog of the Beiyang, and the other is Zhang Xun, the braided marshal. He planned to send more braided troops to recruit Dian, but he did not expect Zhang Xun to preemptively request the recruitment of ten battalions in the name of the unstable situation. What Yuan Shikai could not accept the most was the "five generals secret telegram" within the Beiyang warlords, the leading initiator was no one else, it was feng Guozhang, who was loyal and generous, he really could not imagine that the two of them would sing together like this, this farce had no chance of winning, the angry and corrupt Yuan Shikai almost fainted, he said sadly to Xia Shoutian next to him: "Everything is over, I saw a superstar fall in the sky yesterday, this is the second time I have seen in my life, the last time was when Wen Zhonggong died, this time it is also my turn!" "This strongman who has been stubborn all his life is still obsessed with the so-called fate at this time, and this fate is not the imprisonment he created single-handedly."