At the beginning of November, Zhu De and Chen Yi led a team to leave Dayu County, where the target was relatively obvious, and entered the mountainous area at the junction of Hunan, Guangdong, and Jiangxi provinces, and carried out activities in the areas of Chongyi and Shangyou. At this time, the new warlords of Hunan, Guangdong, and Jiangxi were busy fighting and defending their own hinterlands, and had no time to take care of the remnants of the rebel army. Zhu De seized this favorable opportunity and scattered to some villages in companies and platoons to raise grain on the one hand, and on the other hand to propagate the masses, help the masses to work, collect the arms of the landlords and bandits, and organize the masses to distribute grain and property. At this time, Mao Zedong did not have the idea of combining a combat team, a work team, and a propaganda team, but he had already begun to make valuable attempts.
In Shangbao, Chongyi County, the troops conducted another military training. During the whole training, a big class is held every day or two, and a small class is held every day to teach cadres and soldiers how to fight small battles and how to change from the front-line formation in the past to a "human" combat formation. Most of the officers of the rebel army were graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy, and they were accustomed to fighting regular warfare. This kind of training in "fighting small wars" is actually the beginning of the transformation from regular warfare to guerrilla warfare. Zhu De once said: "From then on, we began to turn to the right direction -- the direction of guerrilla warfare was not to adopt the method of occupying big cities in the past, but to seek truth from facts, integrate with the masses, launch mass uprisings, and create revolutionary base areas." Tactics have also changed, and battles that are sure of are fought, battles that are not certain are not fought, and 'swimming' if they are not fought. In the right direction, the revolutionary forces can exist and develop. ”
Tianxinwei and Xinfeng rectification, Dayu rectification, Shangbao rectification, this "three rectifications in southern Jiangxi" is not long, but it is of great significance. Compared with Mao Zedong's Sanwan reorganization on the eve of leading his troops to Jinggangshan, the two are similar in time and similar in practice, and both meet the actual needs of the changes in the objective situation after the defeat of the Great Revolution.
The troops have been active in the Chongyi Mountains for more than 20 days, and the weather is approaching the middle of winter, but the officers and men are still wearing single clothes. The situation is still very serious, with nowhere to replenish the guns and ammunition of the troops, and no shelter for the wounded.
One day, Zhu De unexpectedly saw a piece of news in the newspaper: Fan Shisheng's unit of the 16th Army of the National Revolutionary Army had moved from Shaoguan in Guangdong to Chenzhou and Rucheng in Hunan. Zhu De was happy in his heart: Chenzhou and Rucheng are on the edge of Chongyi, and he is also very familiar with this Fan Shisheng. As soon as Zhu De discussed with Chen Yi, he immediately wrote to Fan Shisheng and prepared to cooperate with him.
It turned out that Fan Shisheng was Zhu De's classmate in the Yunnan Army Martial Arts Hall more than ten years ago, and the two had become brothers, participated in the Xinhai Revolution together, and later worked together in the Yunnan Army for a long time, and they had a very good friendship with each other. When Sun Yat-sen was the generalissimo in Guangzhou, Fan Shisheng led several thousand Yunnan soldiers from Yunnan to Guangdong under the banner of "supporting Sun." However, the Cantonese army, the Gui army, and the Hunan army entrenched in Guangdong, as well as the emerging Chiang Kai-shek's Whampoa army, all looked down on Fan Shisheng and excluded him everywhere, making him quite unwilling. It was not until after the Northern Expedition that most of the crowded troops in Guangdong went out, and Fan Shisheng relied on Li Jishen to find a piece of territory on the border between Guangdong and Hunan Province. However, he also knows very well that a "lonely ghost" like himself without any background may be "eaten" by others at any time.
It is precisely because of this situation that Fan Shisheng expressed his closeness to the Communist Party when he was in Guangdong, hoped that Soviet Russian advisers would work in his troops, welcomed "CPs" to engage in political work, and also wanted to use this to get some benefits from aid. When the Kuomintang was anti-communist and "purging the party," Fan Shisheng superficially echoed it, but in fact he did not attack the secret communist organizations in the army. On the eve of the Nanchang Uprising, the former committee headed by Zhou Enlai also thought of contacting Fan Shisheng to open up the situation in Guangdong. For this reason, Zhou Enlai also opened a letter of introduction to Zhu De, asking him to prepare to use his old friendship to negotiate with Fan Shisheng. Unexpectedly, it was really used at this time.
More than ten days after Zhu De's letter to Fan Shisheng was sent, Fan Shisheng sent someone to send a reply:
Spring City farewell, hurried for several years. With the great ambition of saving the country and the people, the brother crossed the ocean to seek a way to rejuvenate the country and save the country. In one fell swoop, Nanchang attracted the attention of the world, and the younger brother admired it deeply. Although we are in adversity for the time being, it is still unknown who will kill the deer in the Central Plains and the rise of all parties. The points discussed in the letter are foolish and feasible, and the younger brother should do his best to help. If my brother starts again, the future in the future is immeasurable! The younger brother is now sending people under the fence, and he is not planning for a long time, and he wants to discuss good strategies with his brother in order to seek self-reliance and self-improvement. I hope to drive the city in vain, and I will only meet everywhere in the day. We look forward to it.
The "Yue Wei" mentioned in the letter was called Zeng Yuewei, the commander of the 47th Division of Fan Shisheng's 16th Army, and he led his troops to garrison the Rucheng area at that time. It seems that Fan Shisheng has already explained all matters to him.
On November 20, Zhu De, with his opinions after discussing with Chen Yi and the party organization, was escorted by several people from Shangbao in Chongyi to Rucheng for negotiations. While staying on the way, he was also attacked by bandits, but fortunately escaped.
After two days of negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement: Fan Shisheng agreed to Zhu De's principle that the organization and organization of the rebel army should remain unchanged and should be left at any time; Zhu De's department changed the name of the 140th Regiment of the 47th Division of the 16th Army, and Zhu De, under the pseudonym Wang Kai, served as the deputy commander of the 47th Division and the commander of the 140th Regiment (soon, Fan Shisheng appointed Zhu De as the General Staff of the 16th Army); According to the composition of a regiment, the rebels were paid one month's salary in advance, and ammunition and clothing were immediately distributed.
Fan Shisheng agreed to such generous conditions, although it contains a little bit of personal friendship, but the most fundamental reason is for personal interests. To put it bluntly, Fan Shisheng also wanted to enlist Soviet arms assistance in the same way as when Huangpu was founded to strengthen his own strength by accommodating the Chinese Communists (one of the conditions he put forward was for Zhu De to lead his troops to the Leizhou Peninsula to be responsible for opening up the connection to the sea and receiving weapons assistance from the Soviet Union). But in any case, this step he took still helped the Communists a lot.
Zhu De and his entourage returned to the unit safely, and the guards who accompanied him were still carrying the boxes of bullets they had just received. Everyone was very happy when they saw it. The troops then marched to Zixing, north of Rucheng, where they received another 5,600,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as cotton military uniforms and blankets. On the occasion of this cold weather, the troops who are short of clothes and ammunition get these things, which is really a charcoal in the snow!
At this time, there was still a struggle between the new warlords of the Kuomintang outside. When Bai Chongxi's Guangxi army troops came to attack the warlord troops in southern Hunan, Fan Shisheng did not dare to fight them, and retreated to Shaoguan in northern Guangdong in a panic, and at the same time notified Zhu De to lead his troops to act as a rear guard cover. Zhu De led his troops to withdraw from southern Jiangxi to the border of Guangdong, and the troops first arrived in Renhua County, near the important town of Shaoguan.
Although he achieved temporary peace by "reluctantly taking refuge in the tiger's den" method, Zhu De still sent people to actively look for the party organization. In early December, the troops got in touch with the CPC's Guangdong Beijiang Special Committee and learned of the news that the Guangzhou riot was about to be carried out. Therefore, Zhu De immediately led his troops from Renhua to outside Shaoguan City, and stationed in Xiheba in the southwestern suburbs, preparing to participate in the Guangzhou Uprising. But not long after, he heard the news that disappointed him very much—the Canton Uprising had failed! Although everyone was very disappointed, fortunately, they had experienced the severe test of the failure of the Nanchang Uprising, and they had a strong psychological endurance for the failure of the uprising again.
When stationed in Xiheba, dozens of comrades who had escaped after the failure of the Guangzhou uprising found Zhu De's troops, and Zhu De gradually understood the situation about the failure of the Guangzhou uprising. The frustration of this urban uprising once again profoundly educated the leaders of the rebel army, and Zhu De, Chen Yi and others also clearly realized that the only way out for the Chinese revolution was to go to the countryside.
In order to avoid friction with Fan Shisheng's troops, the rebel army could not stay at Xiheba on the outskirts of Shaoguan for a long time. Zhu De led his troops to move again, reaching Liputou, 20 kilometers northwest of Shaoguan.
Plough shop head is an inconspicuous small village and town in the northwest of Shaoguan. After the troops were stationed in Liputou, Zhu De decided to take advantage of this rare opportunity to recuperate and set up a teaching brigade with most of the officers of each company and the squad leaders and soldiers who were relatively promising for development.
Zhu De called Li Qizhong, the captain of the teaching brigade, and said to him: "Judging from the current situation, we do not have many opportunities for such stability, and the enemy will always fight us, and we will always fight." However, we do not know what kind of war will be fought in the future and how it will be fought. We must seize every opportunity to train our troops so that they can learn new combat knowledge on a regular basis. ”
When it comes to military education, Zhu De can be described as an old qualification. Before the Xinhai Revolution, he was admitted to the Yunnan Army Lecture Hall run by Cai Ge, a military academy with the highest quality of military education in southern China. Zhu De was a well-known outstanding student at school, and for a time he was ranked alongside Zhu Peide as the "second Zhu," and was well-known throughout the school and even in the military circles of Yunnan. However, at that time, all I learned was the tactics of regular warfare. Later, when Zhu De was the commander of the Defending Army, the Yunnan Army sent a regular army to suppress bandits and suffered defeats. In this way, Zhu De became a general who was not only good at fighting regular warfare, but also good at guerrilla activities, which was rare in Chinese military circles at that time. Zhu De later talked about this period of history with a United States female writer in Yan'an: "The tactic I used to attack the enemy and win the vast majority of victories was mobile guerrilla tactics, which I gained from the experience of fighting against barbarians (old names) and bandits when I was stationed on the border between China and France (referring to French India Shina, that is, today's Viet Nam), and it was a particularly valuable tactic, and I combined this guerrilla experience with the knowledge I had gained from books and school." In the 20s of the 20th century, Zhu De went to Germany and the Soviet Union to study military affairs, and on the one hand, he mastered the strengths there, and on the other hand, he also paid attention to maintaining his own characteristics. When he was studying with Ye Ting and Xiong Xiong in the Soviet Union, the instructor asked him how he would fight the war after returning to China, and Zhu De replied: "If you can win the war, you will fight, and if you can't win, you will leave," and "if necessary, drag the team up the mountain." At that time, the Soviet instructors were very dissatisfied, believing that this was unruly. Zhu De later said: "Actually, this is the idea of guerrilla warfare. So, at this point, I took the lead a little bit. ”
Over the past few months, through leading the Nanchang uprising contingent, Zhu De has personally felt that although this unit has the brave and tenacious fighting tradition of the "Iron Army" during the Northern Expedition, it has always been accustomed to fighting regular battles and fighting hard. In the face of the great disparity between the forces of the enemy and us after the defeat of the Great Revolution, such a method of fighting would inevitably exhaust the rebel army's own strength. Ever since the breakthrough of Sanheba, Zhu De has wanted to change his tactics, and he raised the issue of adopting guerrilla tactics during the training at Shangbao, and he also asked the troops to practice changing the front-line formation of regular warfare in the past to a "man" shape and scattered formation. However, because they were always adrift, there was no opportunity to systematically train the troops. This time there was a relatively stable environment, and Zhu De decided to seize this opportunity to first train the company, platoon commander, and squad leader with the new tactics, so that the entire unit could be effectively mobilized.
In order to do a good job in teaching, Zhu De asked Chief of Staff Wang Erzhuo to organize a group to be responsible for compiling military teaching materials. Zhu De first dictated what he had learned at the Germany Army University and the Soviet Army, combined with his own experience in fighting in the Sichuan-Yunnan Mountains, and after recording it, Wang Erzhuo was responsible for sorting it out, and the group compiled it into a teaching material, which was printed and distributed to more than 100 people participating in the training. This thin textbook is divided into two parts: one is the infantry drill code, and the other is the service in the battle. It can be said that this is the earliest self-compiled military textbook of the army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
At the beginning of the first coach of the teaching team, Zhu De asked everyone to form a "U" formation, and he himself stood in the middle and made a serious speech:
"In the past, when I was the head of Zhu Peide's Third Army Officer Education Corps in Nanchang, I was supposed to be in charge of military education, but I did not do much in military education, let alone envisage teaching new military science, but only taught revolutionary principles to the cadets and rarely talked about military technology. Because these trainees were cadres of the Kuomintang reactionary army, and after learning military technology, they would open fire on the revolutionary cause, so they could not be taught new skills, lest their apprentices beat their masters. Now we should use these things to educate our own revolutionary army, first of all, we will teach you, the basic cadres of the revolutionary ranks, and I hope that you will conscientiously study and study hard. First of all, you learn well, and then you can better teach the troops. ”
Then, Zhu De explained:
"In order to meet the requirements of the new military struggle, we must study new military science and conduct new military education. The purpose of our war is to destroy the enemy and save ourselves. How can we effectively destroy the enemy and save ourselves? It is to defeat the majority of the enemy's forces with a small number of our forces. Therefore, the organization of the army must be flexible and have parts and combinations. But when to divide and when to combine, it depends on the change of the situation. In the past, I fought bandits in Yunnan, and I had such an experience. ”
"In the past, the Kuomintang Whampoa Military Academy said that the troops should be equipped in a line-up formation, and this would be dense and prone to casualties. Now we should open up the formation and move forward in echelons. The enemy's shells can only hit one point, but it is impossible to hit one side, so that they can effectively save themselves. Now it is necessary to carry out straggler education, and during battle, they will form an arc-shaped scattering group to form a crossfire network and kill and injure a large number of enemies. ”
After that, every morning Zhu De came to class, and in the afternoon the students practiced on their own, and Zhu De personally inspected it beside him, and asked the troops to show him one by one, row by row, and praised the good ones on the spot, and he personally demonstrated and corrected those who did not meet the requirements. Everyone was deeply attracted by this fresh learning content, and there was a lot of interest and a rapid improvement. Li Qizhong, the commander of the brigade, recalled: "We did not learn these things in the old drill code or even when we were studying at the Whampoa Military Academy. As far as the electro-optical (echelon configuration) sparse formation is concerned, its superiority is very obvious. Because we were based on Comrade Zhu De's lectures, we quickly conducted the teaching in the army and were successfully proven in many subsequent battles. However, until 1930, the Kuomintang reactionary army continued to use the old-style one-word skirmish. ”
The training of the plough shop head is not long, but it is of great significance. Facts have proved that at the critical juncture of the failure of the Guangzhou uprising and the immediate need to plunge into the new struggle of the southern Hunan uprising, this training played an important role in the formation of the Red Army's guerrilla tactics later.
Although the troops were temporarily training at the head of the plough, Zhu De, Chen Yi, Wang Erzhuo, and others all understood that it was impossible for them to hide in Fan Shisheng's troops for a long time, and they had to find a way out as soon as possible. But where exactly it went, there was a lot of discussion for a while.
At this moment, Li Mingke, a representative sent by the Provisional Central Committee of the CPC and a graduate of the fourth phase of the Huangpu Military Academy, finally found Zhu De's unit at Liputou after searching in various ways, and this was also the first time that a representative of the Provisional Central Committee of the CPC sent instructions since the defeat in Chaoshan. The letter of instruction, issued on December 21 to "all comrades in the transfer of Brother De and to the army," is still unclear about the location of Zhu Debu's department, but it says:
…… According to the report of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, when you entered Hunan, you had contact with Fan Shisheng for a time, and if this matter is true, it is very doubtful whether Fan Shisheng will not be able to resolve this matter after the failure of the Guangzhou uprising. Therefore, the central authorities specially sent Comrade Li Mingke to Hunan through Jiangxi to connect with you......
As for the direction of development of the troops, the letter stresses the following:
As far as we know, in the north of Guidong, Chaling, Youxian, and Lianhua in Jiangxi, there are peasant troops led by Comrade Mao Zedong stationed there. The peasant armies of the various parts of the country had also made the mistake of not mobilizing the masses to carry out heroic insurrections from one county to another in their place, and if they were stationed in these places, you should make sure contact and jointly plan to mobilize the masses to create a situation of insurrection by these forces and to establish a meeting of workers' and peasants' and soldiers' representatives, the Soviet power.
The Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was worried that Fan Shisheng would "settle" Zhu Debu after the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising. The teaching regiment in the hands of the Communists was hidden in Zhang Fakui's ranks, and suddenly staged a riot in Guangzhou, which greatly shocked all factions of the Kuomintang. After the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising, it was indeed impossible for Zhu Debu to try to hide again.
This fear soon became a reality.
On 2 January 1928, the military headquarters of the 16th Army in Shaoguan sent people to invite "Commander Wang Kai" to the military headquarters for a banquet. At this time, the Guangzhou uprising failed, the Gui army was stationed in Guangzhou, and Li Jishen had resumed his rule in Guangdong. Despite some persuasions, Zhu De resolutely set off for Shaoguan. After arriving at the military headquarters of the 16th Army, he learned that Fan Shisheng had been called to Guangzhou by Li Jishen, chairman of the Kuomintang Guangdong Provincial Government, so Zhu De stayed to entertain with the officers.
Shortly after Zhu De's departure, at around 7 a.m. on 3 January, a man suddenly appeared at the headquarters of the 140th Regiment at the head of the plough shop and handed over an urgent secret letter asking "Commander Wang Kai" to personally open it. Chen Yi and Wang Erzhuo immediately opened the letter, only to see only a few words inside:
Please ask Brother Yujie to leave Lishi City quickly and find his own way out.
Chen Yi and Wang Erzhuo immediately sent people to Shaoguan and secretly informed Zhu De that he should rush back immediately. On the night of January 3, Zhu De hurried back from the starry night of Shaoguan and rushed back to the troops in the early morning of the next day.
It turned out that Chiang Kai-shek had discovered that the remnants of the Nanchang rebel army were hiding in Fan Shisheng's troops, and ordered the rebel army to be disarmed and Zhu De arrested. Fan Shisheng, Zhu De's best friend, couldn't bear to start, so he immediately wrote a letter and sent his secretary Yang Changling to the plough shop, asking Zhu De to leave quickly, and also sent 10,000 yuan. Decades later, Zhu De still remembered that Fan Shisheng said three points in his letter: Who can be one? Those who do not love to kill can do one; In order to avoid losses to your troops, you still have to take the big road instead of the small road; In the end, the victory is yours, and now I can't help it.
Fan Shisheng was far-sighted, and in that situation he foresaw that the Communist Party would surely win victory in the future, so he wanted to leave a way for himself. A few months later, under the orders of the Kuomintang authorities, he also led his troops to take part in the north-south attack on the communist rebel army that rebelled in southern Hunan. The Kuomintang authorities, who had long wanted to annex him, seized on these reasons, and in connection with his "colluding" behavior, they reduced his unit to a division in 1929. Five years later, Fan Shisheng resigned from the military and became a senator of the Senate of the Nanjing Nationalist Government. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he returned to his hometown in Yunnan with the money he had saved from commanding the army and selling opium, and went into business under the protection of his old connections in the Yunnan army, and practiced medicine under the pretense of medicine. In March 1939, this person, who had long since retired from politics and the military, was suddenly assassinated in Kunming, and who did it has always been a mystery. That's for another time.
On January 4, 1928, Zhu De led his troops to quietly leave the plough shop and move in the direction of Renhua in the name of exercises. As a result of the contact established with the Renhua underground county party committee of the CPC in advance, as soon as the troops arrived, more than 500 peasants immediately revolted in response and occupied the county seat of Renhua on 5 July. At this time, some people advocated advancing to Hailufeng, but the next day they found that a large group of Kuomintang troops appeared in the southeast of the county, and according to reconnaissance, it was a division of Fang Dingying that was advancing towards Nanxiong. Obviously, if the troops advance in the direction of Hailufeng, there will inevitably be a battle with them.
At this time, Gong Chu, a representative of the CPC's Beijiang Special Committee, who had led the Guangdong peasant army to participate in the Nanchang uprising, advocated an immediate march to the north. This person was the leader of the peasant movement in northern Guangdong, and after the counterrevolutionary coup d'état of "15 April," he led the peasant army of Guangdong to the north. Zhu De immediately made a decision to go north to southern Hunan.
In this way, under the leadership of Zhu De and Chen Yi, this unit was transferred to southern Hunan, opening a new chapter in the combination of the revolutionary army and the rural uprising.