The prevalence of banditry in the green forest was a prominent feature of the Beiyang warlord period. From a nationwide perspective at the time,"
There is no province in the whole country that has no bandits, no county in a province that does not have bandits, and no township in a county that does not have bandits
”。 During the Beiyang government, how many green forests were there in the country? At present, it is impossible to verify, in addition to the objective reasons for the poverty and weakness of the old society, but also because these bandits will never take the initiative to participate in the census and statistics.
In the mid-1920s, there were 200,000-300,000 green forest armed forces at the junction of Shandong, Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces alone; in 1927, the total number of green forests in Shandong Province was also more than 200,000. The seriousness of the bandit epidemic also made the people at that time miserable, and they claimed:
The state does not
resemble
countries,
piece
brigand
world
。
Bandits were so rampant that it was supposed that the state should send regular troops to suppress bandits everywhere, but unfortunately, at that time, the governors of the governors of various provinces and provinces were busy dividing up territory and fighting with each other, and there was no time to take care of them. From the beginning of Yuan Shikai's restoration to the end of depression, the great Beiyang warlord clique split into three main factions: the Anhui clan, the direct clan, and the Feng clan. In addition, in Shanxi, there are also the Jin clan of Yan Xishan; in the southwest region, there are many small and medium-sized forces such as Lu Rongting of the old Gui clan and Tang Jiyao of the Dian clan.
In order to compete for power and profit, there were constant wars between various factions within the Beiyang warlords, between factions within the southwest warlords, and between the Beiyang warlords and the southwest warlords. Within the Beiyang Clique alone, three large-scale wars broke out in succession, such as the Zhiwan War and the two Zhifeng Wars, and the smaller wars were even more numerous. According to statistics, in the early years of the Republic of China, there were more than 400 wars between warlords of various factions in Sichuan alone.
Considering that although these bandit armed forces lack restraints, they generally have rich combat experience and are often able to bring their own weapons and equipment, so the warlords who are busy expanding their strength regard bandits of different sizes as an important supplement to the source of troops. During the Beiyang government, almost every warlord army had soldiers from the green forest. In the northeast, Zhang Zuolin, who was in power, and many of his brothers were themselves bandits, and many of his cavalry brigades were adapted from the former bandit horse brigades.
For example, the Suiyuan green forest giant Lu Zhankui was incorporated into the cavalry melee brigade by the Feng Army in February 1923; The "White Three Yan King" Bai Fengxiang of Rehe was incorporated into the 6th Cavalry Brigade of the Northeast Army in 1928; Zhang Chengde, the largest bandit in Chahar, first submitted to the Shun Feng Army and then defected to the Jin Army, and in March 1927 was appointed by Yan Xishan as the brigade commander of the 7th Cavalry Brigade of the Jin Army.
In Shandong, the most famous green forest good man, Sun Meiyao, a bandit who had caused the carjacking of Lincheng, was incorporated into the Shandong New Brigade by the Beiyang government in June 1923. In Henan, the overseer Zhao Qian presided over the formation of the provincial defense army from 1916 and appointed his third brother Zhao Jie as commander, but this Zhao commander was not high in prestige and lacked ability, so the provincial defense army was incorporated."
Originally, it was formed by recruiting bandits
。 ”