"The War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression has been unswerving, that is, the enemy army will not retreat to China for a day, and the Sichuan army will not return to its hometown for a day!" This is the last words left by Liu Xiang, the commander of the Sichuan Army, before his death, and the words are full of patriotism between him and the Sichuan Army. During the warlord melee, he and his uncle Liu Wenhui, commonly known as "Liu Shupa", fought a civil war, and finally Liu Xiang successfully defeated his uncle and became the main ruler of Sichuan.
They all say "father and son soldiers", why do their uncles and nephews want infighting? The answer is simple, political claims differ as well as for the sake of rights.
In 1928, the "Eight-Part Alliance" led by Yang Sen jointly attacked Liu Xiang in Chongqing, and the "Battle of Xiachuandong" broke out. In the face of foreign enemies, Liu Wenhui and Liu Xiang can still agree with the outside world, plus the relationship between the two is not bad before, Liu Wenhui reached out to help. In order to get his uncle's help, Liu Xiang entrusted the areas of Zizhong, Neijiang, Longchang, and Rongchang to him, and asked him to restrain Li Jiayu. He concentrated his forces to defeat Yang Sen and Luo Zezhou and unify the eastern part of Xiachuan.
Since then, Sichuan has basically formed a situation in which Liu Xiang, Liu Wenhui, Deng Xihou and Tian Songyao were divided, and people at that time called them the "Four Giants". In the same year, the Nationalist government in Nanjing appointed Liu Xiang as chairman of the Chuankang Redundancy Army and Liu Wenhui as the chairman of Sichuan Province, and they became the main rulers of Sichuan. After that, Liu Wenhui's ambitions grew bigger and bigger, remembering that the fifth brother Liu Wencai once said: "With your current military strength, you may not be able to be the governor of Sichuan." Therefore, he founded the Guozheng School in Chengdu to cultivate talents for the Liu military group.
Later, Liu Wenhui was not willing to develop only in Sichuan, so he and Liu Xiang discussed that one of the two would go out to fight, and the other would stay in Sichuan as a backup. But Liu Xiang neither wanted to take the soldiers out himself, nor did he want his uncle to go out. In addition, the main generals under Liu Wenhui's command were all from the Baoding department, while Liu Xiang was a graduate of the Sichuan Army Accelerated School, and the two had different political views, and Liu Xiang was relatively conservative. Their relationship with Jiang was also different, Liu Xiang proposed to "support Jiang and unify Sichuan", but Liu Wenhui did not want to rely on the strength of outsiders to rule Sichuan, and the contradiction between the two deepened.
Both Liu Wenhui and Liu Xiang were squeezing and attacking each other with all their hearts and minds, aiming to weaken, disintegrate, and collapse each other's forces in order to achieve their own goal of controlling Sichuan. The trigger for the two men's war was in 1931, when Liu Wenhui spent a huge amount of money to buy advanced weapons and aircraft parts from foreign countries, and Liu Xiang withheld this batch of equipment in Wanxian Port. Liu Wenhui had to go to Chongqing to negotiate peace with his nephew, but Liu Xiang refused to return it. In May, Liu Wenhui came to Chongqing again in the name of mourning Liu Xiang's mother, and bribed Two division commanders, Fan Shaozeng and Chen Lanting, under Liu Xiang, for 300,000 yuan and 150,000 yuan respectively. As a result, Fan Shaozeng told Liu Xiang about this matter, and he rewarded Fan Shaozeng with bribes on the spot and dealt with Chen Lanting.
Liu Wenhui, who lost 450,000 yuan in vain, was very unwilling, did not show anything on his face, and asked the fifth brother to send a killer named Hu Wenpeng to assassinate Liu Xiang behind his back. Hu Wenpeng is a person who does not know how to be flexible, and he is forced to observe Liu Xiang in the tree, looking for an opportunity to attack, and as a result, he falls from the tree hungry, which is ridiculous. The assassination was naturally revealed, and Liu Wenhui immediately asked the troops stationed in Jiangjin to cut off the grain supply in Chongqing, and the contradiction between the two was imminent.
On October 1, 1932, led by Luo Zezhou, who was victorious in Wusheng, he first attacked Liu Wenhui's Lin Yungen, who was stationed in Nanchong, firing the first shot and opening the prelude to the "Second Liu War". Liu Wenhui immediately ordered his subordinates to resist vigorously, and at first they were in a favorable position to recover Fushun and Luzhou.
Not to be outdone, Liu Xiang immediately took three urgent measures: to ask Liu Wenhui for peace; to call deng and Tian to send troops; and to divide and win over Liu Wenhui's generals. His measures soon worked, and at the same time, Liu Wenhui's troops suffered a series of major losses of secrets, so that Liu Wenhui's military superiority could not be brought into play, and the situation was unfavorable to himself. Under the compulsion, Liu Wenhui could only agree to talk to Liu Xiang and make an armistice. On the 21st, the two sides signed a truce at Laojuntai.
Liu Wenhui then returned to the army to deal with the armies of Deng and Tian. After the two battles of Luzhou and Rongwei, many defensive areas in northern Sichuan, eastern Shangchuan, and southern Sichuan were lost, and the fifth generals such as Tian Guanwu also defected to Liu Xiang. Liu Wenhui blamed all this on Deng Xihou, resented his lack of faithfulness, and decided to fight with him at all costs to relieve the hatred in his heart.
In May 1933, Liu Wenhui planned to set up a banquet to "entertain" Deng Xihou, intending to detain him and then solve Deng Bu in one fell swoop. As a result, Deng Xihou knew his plan in advance and ordered his subordinates to step up their combat readiness. Later, due to the favorable position of Deng Xihou's troops and the internal division of Liu Wenhui, Liu Xiang sent reinforcements to Deng Xihou, and Liu Wenhui had to retreat to Xinjin.
At the end of May 1933, Liu Xiang, Deng Xihou and others held a meeting in Lezhi to form the Anchuan Army, which aimed to jointly eliminate Liu Wenhui. In the end, Liu Wenhui, who was unable to support himself, was defeated, and on the one hand, he asked his eldest brother Liu Wenyuan to persuade Liu Xiang not to "fry the beans", and on the other hand, he admitted his mistake to Liu Xiang and supported him in unifying Sichuan. Liu Xiang agreed to his uncle's request, but most of his troops were annexed.
At the same time, Liu Xiang was worried that after Deng Xihou and other forces grew, they would also become rivals for hegemony, so he decided to let Liu Wenhui have a way to live. He found Liu Wenhui's good friend Leng Yindong and said, "If my father's waist is hard, there will be an accident, and I am not trying to bring him down, mainly to dispel his arrogance." He could not write two Liu characters in one stroke, but after all, he was a family, or let him keep part of the army, so that he would be the chairman of the province when Xikang jian province was established. At this point, the civil war of "Erliu Zhengchuan" ended.
On the second day of the "Lugou Bridge Incident," Liu Xiang sent a telegram to the whole country, calling on the whole country to unanimously resist Japan. On October 15, 1937, Liu Xiang served as the commander-in-chief of the Seventh Theater and the commander-in-chief of the Group Army, and led the Sichuan Army to the anti-Japanese front with illness. He vomited blood on the front line and died in Hankou on January 20, 1938.