Anti-Fengtian War
Part of the Warlord Era

China prior to the Anti-Fengtian War
DateNovember 1925 – April 1926
Location
Northern China
Result Fengtian and Zhili victory
Belligerents
Guominjun
Supported by:
Soviet Union[1]		 Fengtian clique
Zhili clique
Supported by:
 Empire of Japan
Commanders and leaders
Feng Yuxiang

Zhang Zuolin
Wu Peifu

Li Jinglin
Units involved
Guominjun armies
Red Army advisors[1]

Fengtian Armies

Zhili forces

The Anti-Fengtian War (Chinese: 反奉战争; pinyin: Fan Feng Zhan Zheng) was the last major civil war within the Republic of China's northern Beiyang government prior to the Northern Expedition. It lasted from November 1925 to April 1926 and was waged by the Guominjun against the Fengtian clique and their Zhili clique allies. The war ended with the defeat of the Guominjun and the end of the provisional executive government. The war is also known as either Guominjun-Fengtian War (Guo Feng Zhan Zheng, 国奉战争), or the Third Zhili–Fengtian War (Di San Ci Zhi Feng Zhan Zheng, 第三次直奉战争).

Cause

The result of the Second Zhili–Fengtian War had led to the creation of a provisional executive government in Beijing in November 1924, where an informal triumvirate formed by Fengtian's Zhang Zuolin, the Guominjun's Feng Yuxiang and the Anhui clique's Duan Qirui had ruled. Duan's position as head of state was merely as a figurehead, however, as his clique had been almost destroyed. His small army of bodyguards operated solely within the capital he now figuratively ruled.

Zhang was the strongest of the three leaders and controlled the wealthy northeastern provinces. Feng's smaller army controlled the poorer northwest. As such, the power sharing arrangement between the two was destined to fail: Zhang was a monarchist backed by Japan, whereas Feng dabbled with radical politics, Christianity and revolutionary idealism all with Soviet support. Duan, lacking a power base of his own, played the two against each other in order to retain some control.

Throughout the summer of 1925 both Zhang and Feng began soliciting help from their former Zhili enemy, Wu Peifu. Seething at Feng's earlier betrayal during the Beijing Coup, Wu sealed an alliance with Zhang in November. This alliance would last until the defeat of both cliques under the Northern Expedition in 1928.

Course

Zhang Xueliang and Han Linchun inspected in Nankou

In October 1925 Guo Songling, a division commander of the Fengtian clique, defected to Feng's Guominjun clique. From November 22 he began to lay siege to Mukden, the capital city of his former Fengtian master. Chiang Kai-shek sought to convince Sun Chuanfang to also defect, though to the Kuomintang. Sun, who was affiliated with Wu Peifu's Zhili clique, was a popular target to woo; having recently fought against Zhang's armies, he was openly unhappy about his enforced alliance with the Fengtian clique. Sun, however, refused and executed Chiang's emissaries. Chiang retaliated in turn by executing Sun's envoys.

A power struggle was also taking place among the key figures in the KMT. Wang Jingwei, Chiang Kai-shek's rival for absolute control over the Nationalist Party, proposed sending Chiang to Feng's Guominjun as an adviser. Chiang saw this as an attempt to detach him from his Whampoa power base and declined.

On December 24, in a stunning reversal of fortune, Guo's siege of Mukden was lifted and he was killed. The Guominjun began hemorrhaging soldiers, both from fighting and desertion, as it tried to hold off the combined armies of Wu Peifu, Zhang Zuolin, Li Jinglin and Zhang Zongchang. In January Feng resigned as a warlord and moved to the Soviet Union to study. Japan supported Zhang's forces, directly providing air and naval support. During an artillery attack on Guominjun forces civilians were killed, leading to protests in Beiping and the March 18 Massacre. Though Duan expressed his remorse at the brutal suppression of the protests, the Guominjun removed him from office the next month.


In December of 1925 Feng Yuxiang of the Guominjun temporarily seized the city of Tianjin from Li Jinglin.[3]

In April of 1926, in order to appease the Zhili clique, the Guominjun released the deposed ex-president Cao Kun, who had been put under arrest by Feng in 1923. Wu did not respond. The Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, had his army occupy the capital, with Wu's troops arriving a little later. They sacked the capital, causing much chaos and leading to the collapse of much of the Beiyang government's bureaucracy. It would not fully recover until its occupation by the Nationalists in 1928.

Guominjun troops tried to flee through Shanxi, but the Shanxi clique led by Yan Xishan maintained a very strict neutrality policy and attacked any soldiers that encroached their borders. Yan, an ex-Tongmenghui member, was sympathetic with the Guominjun but did not want his province drawn into civil war. He would go on to side with Feng during the Northern Expedition and Central Plains War.

Aftermath

Events leading to World War II
  1. Treaty of Versailles 1919
  2. Polish–Soviet War 1919
  3. Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1919
  4. Treaty of Trianon 1920
  5. Treaty of Rapallo 1920
  6. Franco-Polish alliance 1921
  7. March on Rome 1922
  8. Corfu incident 1923
  9. Occupation of the Ruhr 1923–1925
  10. Mein Kampf 1925
  11. Second Italo-Senussi War 1923–1932
  12. Dawes Plan 1924
  13. Locarno Treaties 1925
  14. Young Plan 1929
  15. Great Depression 1929
  16. Japanese invasion of Manchuria 1931
  17. Pacification of Manchukuo 1931–1942
  18. January 28 incident 1932
  19. Geneva Conference 1932–1934
  20. Defense of the Great Wall 1933
  21. Battle of Rehe 1933
  22. Nazis' rise to power in Germany 1933
  23. Tanggu Truce 1933
  24. Italo-Soviet Pact 1933
  25. Inner Mongolian Campaign 1933–1936
  26. German–Polish declaration of non-aggression 1934
  27. Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance 1935
  28. Soviet–Czechoslovakia Treaty of Mutual Assistance 1935
  29. He–Umezu Agreement 1935
  30. Anglo-German Naval Agreement 1935
  31. December 9th Movement
  32. Second Italo-Ethiopian War 1935–1936
  33. Remilitarization of the Rhineland 1936
  34. Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
  35. Italo-German "Axis" protocol 1936
  36. Anti-Comintern Pact 1936
  37. Suiyuan campaign 1936
  38. Xi'an Incident 1936
  39. Second Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
  40. USS Panay incident 1937
  41. Anschluss Mar. 1938
  42. May Crisis May 1938
  43. Battle of Lake Khasan July–Aug. 1938
  44. Bled Agreement Aug. 1938
  45. Undeclared German–Czechoslovak War Sep. 1938
  46. Munich Agreement Sep. 1938
  47. First Vienna Award Nov. 1938
  48. German occupation of Czechoslovakia Mar. 1939
  49. Hungarian invasion of Carpatho-Ukraine Mar. 1939
  50. German ultimatum to Lithuania Mar. 1939
  51. Slovak–Hungarian War Mar. 1939
  52. Final offensive of the Spanish Civil War Mar.–Apr. 1939
  53. Danzig Crisis Mar.–Aug. 1939
  54. British guarantee to Poland Mar. 1939
  55. Italian invasion of Albania Apr. 1939
  56. Soviet–British–French Moscow negotiations Apr.–Aug. 1939
  57. Pact of Steel May 1939
  58. Battles of Khalkhin Gol May–Sep. 1939
  59. Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Aug. 1939
  60. Invasion of Poland Sep. 1939

Though jointly occupying Beiping, Zhang and Wu could not agree as to who should lead the new government. Wu wanted to restore Cao to the presidency, whereas Zhang hinted at restoring the last Manchu Emperor, Puyi. In the end they resorted to a string of short-lived and powerless interim cabinets; however, with the Zhili clique decimated, Zhang personally took charge of the government as a dictator. Militarily, the war had also caused the Zhili clique to shift their armies northward, leaving their southern flank and industrial base thinly defended against the underestimated armies of the KMT. This would prove crucial when, in July 1926, the KMT launched its Northern Expedition. The remainder of the Guominjun which held out northwest of Beiping would fold into the National Revolutionary Army when the KMT advanced.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kössler (1988), p. 118.
  2. ↑ Lenkoff & Raymond (1967), p. 24.
  3. ↑ Tang Degang : "From the Coup in Beijing Fengzhang and his son during their visit to " [Chinese edition] 唐德剛著、張學良口述. 唐德剛：〈從北京政變到皇姑屯期間的奉張父子〉，1991年7月29日，原載於《傳記文學》第五十九卷第三期，台北：傳記文學出版社. 《張學良口述歷史》 初版. 台北: 遠流出版. 2009-03-01 (July 29, 1991, originally published in " Biographical Literature " Volume 59, Issue 3, Taipei : Biographical Literature Publishing House. "Zhang Xueliang Oral History" First Edition. Taipei: Yuanliu Publishing . 2009-03-01. ed.).

Bibliography

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