時報
- Two Accounts from Jiangxi: Peace or War
- How the Wuchang Peace Terms Were Negotiated
- Wuchang After Its Occupation by the Revolutionary Army
Shibao's page of 13 October 1926 followed the Northern Expedition at the moment Wuchang fell and the war with Sun Chuanfang in Jiangxi hung in the balance. A Jiangxi report said the Southern army had moved on the Nanchang front on Double Tenth, that Sun meant to direct the decisive battle himself, and, quoting prisoners, that Chiang Kai-shek's main force had suffered repeated losses. A Hankou correspondence traced how the Wuchang garrison's peace overtures were rebuffed while hunger and looting spread inside the city and Liu Yuchun had looters beheaded. A third report described the first days of occupation: captured weapons shipped to Hankou, Chen Mingshu taking up a Wuhan post, and a charitable relief committee beginning burials.
This edition translates three excerpts from a partly legible Shibao page of 13 October 1926. The page edges are cut off and darkened, small print in the advertisements and troop tables is blurred, and the machine-read text was out of order with many character errors, so the excerpts were transcribed from the page image. Illegible spots are marked [?]. The opening of the second excerpt appears to run together fragments from neighbouring columns and reads only in broken pieces, and some character forms, such as 決/决, remain uncertain.
Translation
Two Accounts from Jiangxi: Peace or War
◎ Two Accounts from Jiangxi: Peace or War ◎ The Southern army appears to have turned [?] yesterday, on the Double Tenth festival, and the Nanchang front has suddenly grown tense. Sun Chuanfang intends to go to the front in person to direct the fighting, and the decisive battle between the main forces of the two armies [?] within these few days. (Jiujiang, the 11th, Dong [?] ◎ According to [?] from Jiujiang dated the 11th, received by a certain quarter here, Southern army prisoners sent to Nanchang say that Chiang Kai-shek has newly taken charge of the fighting, that his main force suffered losses several times and was [?], but that the allied army did not pursue them to the end, so they were able to reorganize their remaining units, and most [?]
How the Wuchang Peace Terms Were Negotiated
[?] shipped to Jiangxi province; the director of the cotton uniform bureau of the Second Division who had been sent, because the military situation at the front was urgent, [?] first had a portion sent through Jiangxi to Jiujiang. Urgent; Sun Chuanfang has already separately come to Jiangxi and is arranging the rear. The school, having no choice, could only; routed soldiers slipped in, but most were the Shen company garrisoned in the city; the said secret court bought military rice and loaded heavy guns onto lighters, intending to sail down the lower Yangtze, but they were seen by the Hanyang Arsenal, which immediately opened fire, and Wuchang city also returned fire. [?] city plan, because of this; later, while the mediators were again busy negotiating, at four o'clock this morning the Northern troops in the city, the city, to welcome the Southern army.
◉ The Course of the Wuchang Peace Negotiations. Hankou correspondence: The Northern army in Wuchang's requests for peace had already gone back and forth several times, and the Party army was aware of it. Therefore, after the representatives of Chen Jiamo and Liu Yuchun crossed the river a second time, the Party army knew they were by no means sincere, and that they wanted to use the crossing to observe conditions on all sides and to delay the attack. So when someone occasionally raised the question of reorganization, Deng [?], director of the field headquarters of the Revolutionary Army General Headquarters, General Commander Tang Shengzhi and Fifteenth Army commander Liu Zuolong all firmly refused it. On the [?] 7th, 8th and 9th, Chen and Liu asked two men, Li Kaishen and Luo Zhizao, to negotiate with the Party army, but Deng and Tang refused. At that time Liu and the others still believed that Sun's armies downstream would come to their relief and were not at all anxious. A day later, they knew the relief could no longer be relied on; the grain inside was also exhausted, and the units of Sun Jianye and Song Dapei again demanded food from them. Having nothing to give, they turned to looting. When the looting was at its height, Liu ordered it stopped, but at the time [?] could not hold. According to a certain gentleman who escaped from the city, Liu personally led a broadsword squad, came forward and beheaded several looters. After he returned to camp, the officers of every unit demanded food from Liu
Wuchang After Its Occupation by the Revolutionary Army
in the 5th Division and 9th Brigade, the result of going into battle: dead and wounded four, wounded five thousand, others routed about a thousand; wounded over a thousand, routed four thousand; defending Nanchang; Deng was in touch with the Southern army; [?] acting division commander Yue Siyin was in touch with the Southern army; unit, utterly routed; there is also Yanghu, in touch with the Southern army. Afterward, the General Command was set up in the Provincial Assembly; each [?] on the (11th) and again on the (12th) moved to Wuchang; [?] division commander Chen Chong and brigade commander Yu Xinchen were both [?] assembly. It is said that Chen Jiamo has disguised himself and gone into hiding. [?] in; the rifles and guns surrendered by the Northern troops have mostly been shipped to Hankou (Hankou, afternoon of the 11th) inside and outside. ◎ Chiang Kai-shek has appointed Chen Mingshu as Wuhan [?]; Chen took office at the provincial government office on the Zhen (11th) day and has sent troops to patrol inside and outside the city. (Hankou, afternoon of the 11th [?]) ◎ Tang Shengzhi and Deng Yanda are both in Wuchang handling the aftermath and have posted notices to reassure the people. The Wuchang Relief Committee, formed by the various charitable public bodies, carried out burials and relief on the Zhen (12th) day.
Context
How the month-long siege of Wuchang ended on 10 October
The fighting described in the Hankou correspondence grew out of a decision the Nationalists took in August 1926 to make a direct assault on Wu Peifu's stronghold of Wuchang and bypass Sun Chuanfang's Nanchang. Wu and most of his army fled north to Henan, but the troops he left inside the walled city held out for more than a month. They surrendered on 10 October, completing the Nationalist conquest of Hubei; that same day the Canton–Hong Kong strike, which had hampered Chiang Kai-shek's supplies, was called off, and it was also the Double Tenth holiday that the Jiangxi report mentions. The Shibao correspondence supplies the garrison's last days as the paper heard them: grain ran out, the units of Sun Jianye and Song Dapei demanded food, looting followed, and Liu Yuchun is said to have led a broadsword squad to behead looters. The surrender itself is firmly recorded, while the beheading story rests on the word of a single unnamed man who escaped from the city.
Were the garrison's reorganization terms refused or agreed?
The Hankou correspondence stresses Nationalist firmness: Deng, Tang Shengzhi and the Fifteenth Army commander Liu Zuolong flatly refused any talk of reorganizing the Northern garrison, and envoys sent on the 7th to 9th were turned away. An American diplomatic report from the same days records a settlement. On 9 October the U.S. consul general at Hankou telegraphed that terms for the surrender of Wuchang had been agreed between the Northern and Southern commanders, with only the removal and disposition of small guns still in dispute. Those terms contemplated incorporating the armed Northerners into the Southern army under General Liu Tso-lung, that is, Liu Zuolong, with guarantees for their pay. The two accounts need not contradict each other, since the paper describes refusals in earlier rounds and the consul reports where talks stood on the afternoon of the 9th. The readable text breaks off before any final settlement, although its opening fragment mentions mediators negotiating again just before the Northern troops in the city welcomed the Southern army.
Sun Chuanfang's Jiangxi front and the talk of peace
The 'allied army' in the Jiangxi report is Sun Chuanfang's coalition: from 1925 Sun extended his rule over Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi, and at his height he commanded more than 200,000 men. Guangzhou had offered him a non-aggression pact, but he would not subordinate his administration to Nationalist rule, so Chiang Kai-shek attacked into Jiangxi in September. Jiujiang and Nanchang fell to the Nationalists by 19 September, helped by the defection of Sun's general Lai Shih-huang, but Sun arrived from Nanjing with reinforcements on 21 September and drove them back. That reverse is the likely background to the prisoners' claim, relayed second-hand in the report, that Chiang's main force had suffered repeated losses. The U.S. consul's telegram of 9 October found the situation at Jiujiang unchanged, with no troops withdrawn and Sun himself still aboard a boat in the harbour, which fits the paper's report that he was only now preparing to go to the front. The fragmentary troop list in the third excerpt, which mentions Nanchang and repeatedly notes commanders 'in touch with the Southern army', reflects the same pattern of defection. The peace side of the headline came to nothing: by the end of October Sun's forces were again retreating across Jiangxi and Fujian.
Who took charge of Wuchang after the surrender
The third excerpt reports that Chiang Kai-shek appointed Chen Mingshu to a Wuhan post whose title is illegible on the page, that Chen took office at the provincial government office on the 11th and sent troops to patrol the city, and that Tang Shengzhi and Deng Yanda were handling the aftermath while a relief committee formed by charitable bodies began burials and relief. Chen was a Hakka from Hepu in Guangxi, a graduate of the Baoding Military Academy and a participant in the Northern Expedition; he later rose far enough to serve briefly as premier after Chiang stepped down in December 1931. The article therefore shows Nationalist control in Wuchang beginning in the hands of the expedition's field commanders, with order kept by army patrols and the burial of the dead left to civilian charities. Chen's appointment and the work of the relief committee are attested here only by the paper's own report.
Original
贛方和戰兩說
◎ 贛方和戰兩說 ◎ 南軍於昨日雙十節似已轉 [?] 南昌戰線、 遽形緊張、 孫傳芳擬親赴前線督戰、 兩軍主力之決戰 [?] 在此數日內、 （九江十一日東 [?] ◎ 據本地某處所接九江十一日發 [?] 送往南昌之南軍被俘者言、 蔣介石新督戰、 其主力軍數次受損失、 被 [?] 然聯軍未事窮追、 遂得整理餘部、 最 [?]
武昌和約商洽之經過
[?] 運赴贛省、 分發來之第二師棉軍服局局長、 以前方軍事緊急、 [?] 先派一部份過贛運往九江、 緊、 孫傳芳已分別源來贛、 籌設後方、 該校無奈、 祗得的、 潰兵竄入、 惟多係市駐屯沈連、 該密院、 採辦軍米以及重砲運上駁船、 擬開往長江下游、 但爲漢陽兵工廠所見、 立即開砲、 武昌城中亦還擊、 [?] 城計劃、 因以、 後調人方再忙於接洽時、 今晨四時、 城中北軍、 城以迎南軍、 ◉ 武昌和約商洽之經過漢口通信、 武昌北軍請和、 業經迭次反覆、 爲黨軍所悉、 故自陳嘉謨劉玉春代表二次渡江之後、 黨軍知其絕非誠意、 並欲藉此渡江視各方情形、 延緩攻擊、 故偶有人言及改編問題、 革軍總司令部行營主任鄧 [?] 總指揮唐生智、 十五軍長劉佐龍均嚴拒之、 當上 [?] 七八九日陳劉曾請李開侁羅之藻二人向黨軍接洽、 經鄧唐拒絕、 劉等當時、 尚以爲下游孫諸軍、 來援、 並不着急、 迨至一日以後、 知援軍已不可恃、 中糧又盡、 孫建業宋大霈各部復向之索食、 無以應乃行搶刼、 當搶刼盛時、 劉曾下令禁止、 但當時 [?] 不住、 據城中逃出之某君云、 劉曾親率大刀隊出面、 斬決搶刼者數人、 回營後、 各軍軍官皆向劉索食
革軍佔領後之武昌
中五師九旅、 出動戰之結果、 死傷四傷五千、 其他潰走千左右、 狀傷一千以上、 潰走四千、 守南昌、 鄧與南軍通、 [?] 岳思寅代理師長與南軍通、 隊、 完全潰敗、 尙有陽湖、 與南軍通、 後、 總指揮部設省議會、 各 [?] （十一） 日又 （十二） 日移武昌、 [?] 師長陳冲、 旅長于信臣、 均被 [?] 會、 聞陳嘉謨改裝潛匿、 [?] 中、 北兵所繳槍砲、 多運漢口 （漢口十一日下午） 內外、 ◎ 蔣介石任陳銘樞爲武漢 [?]、 陳眞 （十一） 日在省署就職、 派兵巡城內外、 （漢口十一日下午 [?]） ◎ 唐生智鄧演達均在武昌辦理善後、 出示安民、 各善公團所組之武昌善後委員會、 眞 （十二） 日實行掩埋接濟事宜、