The river is more than 100 meters wide and the water depth in the center of the river is 20 meters. The Dadu River is a fast-flowing river with countless mountains and tidal flats on its banks. During the flood season, the water flow is extremely dangerous.

Dadu River is a fast-flowing river with countless mountains and tidal flats on its shores. During the flood season, the water flow is extremely dangerous. What's more, there were enemy troops defending secretly not far away.

It was in such a difficult and dangerous area that the Red Army successfully crossed the Dadu River, escaped the encirclement and suppression of hundreds of thousands of Kuomintang troops, and successfully rendezvoused with the Red Quartet Army after experiencing numerous strategic shifts.

After a difficult night of fighting, in the early morning of the 25th, the Red Army advance team safely crossed the river. On the 29th, the warriors of the Fourth Regiment of the First Army of the Red Army seized the Luding Bridge in Chongqing and then captured the Chongqing City in Luding County.

html On June 2, all the Central Red Army crossed the Dadu River, breaking through the natural dangers of the Dadu River that the Red Army thought was difficult to fly, opening a channel for the Central Red Army to go north, and writing a glorious page in the history of China's revolutionary war.

However, behind this success, it requires considerable decision-making and deployment. So what allowed the Red Army to cross such a dangerous bridge.

Shi Dakai Defeat at the Dadu River

1863 May 4th Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Wing King Shi Da Under the pursuit of the Qing army, Kai led his army to cross the Dadu River. Shi Dakai, who had been on the battlefield for a long time, had made preparations beforehand and was stationed in Chengdu and western Sichuan. However, he was besieged by floods when he arrived. At this time, his troops were out of food and food. They were besieged and the entire army was annihilated. Finally, he had no choice but to surrender to the Qing Dynasty.

In fact, Shi Dakai's army had already arrived at Zidadi on April 27, and the Dadu River flood season was in early May, so there was ample preparation time.

Anshunchang is an important ferry with many boats and rafts. Shi Dakai spent three days collecting ships and making sufficient preparations for crossing the river.

html On May 17, the Qing army from the other side arrived, and Shi Dakai was forced to cross the river, but failed. On the 21st, Shi Da selected an elite team to cross the river, but a sudden flood occurred and all 5,000 elite troops were wiped out. Therefore, an important reason for Shidakai's failure was that the Dadu River rose in advance.

Of course, another point is that half of Shi Dakai's army had crossed the Dadu River at that time, and then it was getting late, so Shi Dakai immediately asked the troops that had crossed the river to return to join the main army.

This decision may seem absurd, but in fact it is closely related to the nature of Chinese society at that time and the nature of the Taiping Rebellion.

At that time, China was in a semi-colonial semi-feudal society, and the management of the army was also feudal. In order to prevent rebellion, feudal management does not allow a large number of troops to break away from the control of the general.

However, there was another fatal reason for the defeat of Shi Dakai's army. It was Shi Dakai's army who arrived at Anshun Field to celebrate the birth of the princess for three days, causing the army to disperse.

Chairman Mao led the Red Army to encounter the problem of crossing the river

The Battle of Dadu River was a thrilling battle during the Red Army's Long March and a life-and-death battle in the history of the People's Army.

This battle mainly included two parts: the forced crossing of the Dadu River at Anshun Field and the battle to capture the Luding Bridge. They were both key battles in the Red Army's Long March.

In May 1935, after the Red Army crossed the Jinsha River, Chairman Mao decided to lead the Red Army to forcefully cross the Dadu River in order to completely smash Chiang Kai-shek 's attempt to annihilate the Central Red Army by relying on the Dadu River.

However, it was too difficult for the army team to cross the Dadu River. The attacker must use various means to fully understand the local river hydrology, geology, humanities and the enemy's fortification situation.

What's more, decades ago, the God of War Shi Dakai failed at the Dadu River and finally surrendered to the Qing Dynasty .

Chiang Kai-shek even threatened that the Central Red Army would become the "second Shi Dakai".

In fact, compared to Shi Dakai's army seventy-two years ago, the Red Army encountered a much more difficult situation when encountering the Dadu River.

The equipment of the Red Army is completely different from that of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army, not to mention that Chiang Kai-shek had already made a sophisticated plan to bury the Red Army under the Dadu River.

Chairman Mao, who was well versed in history, also knew very well that Shi Dakai, as an excellent general who was undefeated in a hundred battles, failed here.

In this regard, when the Red Army passed by the Yi District, they explored the local people's conditions, asked local residents about the situation of the Dadu River, and gained a preliminary understanding of the Dadu River. And won strong support from the local people.

However, the danger of the Dadu River still made all military strategists change their minds. In order to ensure the flawlessness of the action, Chairman Mao thought day and night, not even thinking about food and drinks, thinking about how to conduct this battle.

Expert advice Chairman Mao suddenly opened his mind

On the evening of May 25, when Chairman Mao was at a loss to solve the problem of crossing the river, Li Fuchun, director of the Political Department, excitedly came to the chairman and provided a key piece of information:

A local resident had an old scholar who was well-educated, experienced and familiar with the local terrain. The most important thing was that he had witnessed the surrender of Shi Dakai's army.

When Chairman Mao heard this, he immediately decided to visit this old scholar. Liu Bei had visited the thatched cottage three times before, but this time Chairman Mao only passed by once and knocked on the old man's door.

After chatting, it turned out that this gentleman was named Song Dashun. When he was young, he did witness Shi Dakai's defeat at the Dadu River.

The old man said that the key point of Shi Dakai's defeat was that he missed an important opportunity. After Shi Dakai arrived at the Dadu River, he did not cross the river immediately. At this time, the Dadu River was in a stable period, which was the best time to cross the river.

When Shi Dakai was forced to cross by the pursuers, it happened to be the continuous rainy season. The water in the Dadu River swelled, and the waves were rough and dangerous. The Dadu River at that time was certainly not conducive to forced crossing.

If Shi Dakai draws on the advice of the local people and grasps the critical period of crossing the river, then even if crossing the river becomes the last resort, he can still escape the pursuit of the Qing army by surrounding the mountains.

The old man finally provided substantive suggestions for the Red Army to cross the canal:

First of all, when choosing a ship, you must select or manufacture a ship with a tilted bow. This design of ship can keep the ship upright in big waves.

Secondly, the selection of boatmen should also be based on experienced local residents.

Chairman Mao was enlightened after hearing this. After thanking him repeatedly, he returned to the military camp to formulate a careful plan.

Forced to cross the Dadu River, flew to capture the Luding Bridge

On May 24, 1935, the Red Army's advance troops arrived at Ma'anshan. Facing the undercurrent of the river, with enemy troops in front and pursuers behind them, building a bridge was like climbing to the sky. Boats that want to ferry need to go upstream first, and use the current and rowing to buffer them to the end of the bridge on the opposite side.

In order to encircle and suppress the Red Army, the Kuomintang had set up a strict defense at the bridge, confiscated all the supplies, and not a single ship was left behind. This made the already difficult crossing plan even worse.

The defenders were captured that night and a ferry was obtained. On the evening of the 24th, a suicide squad composed of battalion commander Sun Jixian and 17 warriors used a small boat to cross the Dadu River under the cover of heavy machine gun .

The ferry trudged forward in the fierce wind and rain. The hail of bullets and the pouring rain blended into one.

In order to reach the other side of the river as soon as possible and reduce the casualties of teammates, the soldiers could only bend their bodies and paddle, not daring to slack off. The enemy's bullets shot into the river, playing music to the warriors' rapid advance.

Finally, in the early morning of the 25th, the Red Army successfully defeated the enemy on the opposite side and captured the lower Dadu Bridge, allowing the advance team to successfully cross the river.

After successfully crossing the river, two damaged boats were seized. After repairs by local boatmen, they were able to carry passengers smoothly. As a result, the Red Army could only place all its hopes on these few ships for cross-strait ferrying.

After seven days and seven nights of non-stop ferry crossing, more than 7,000 Red Army troops led by Liu Bocheng and Nie Rongzhen successfully crossed this dangerous river known as "natural danger".

Liu Bocheng will lead the army to Luding Bridge hundreds of kilometers away. At this time, the soldiers who have just experienced the all-night battle are exhausted. If they don't hurry up as soon as possible, the Sichuan army behind them will also be encircling them, and they will inevitably be defeated. At this moment, time is life.

The only thing the soldiers could do was to rush to Luding Bridge with all their strength to buy more time.

The long battle has brought each soldier's physical fitness close to the limit. However, everyone did not hold back and finally arrived at Luding Bridge on the 29th.

What stunned the Red Army was that there were only a few iron cables supporting the wooden planks left on Luding Bridge to connect the two sides. The enemy removed all the wooden planks to stop the Red Army's advance. No one believed that the Red Army could cross the Dadu River on these iron cables.

The river is still as turbulent as ever, but the rolling river makes the soldiers' determination to fight the enemy only increase.

As the charge horn sounded loudly, the soldiers moved forward bravely without any fear.

Comments on the reasons for Shi Dakai’s defeat and the success of the Red Army

. Restrictions of social nature.

During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Shi Dakai's army was a team spontaneously formed by the peasant class to oppose the oppression of feudalism.

Compared with the local peasant uprisings in some places, the ideology is slightly higher, but it cannot escape the limitations of the peasant class. At that time, people's subjective consciousness had not yet formed a systematic political opinion.

The Communist Party of China is a team of workers and peasants formed under the combined effects of the intensification of China's land problems, the gradual intensification of class contradictions, imperialist aggression, and bureaucratic oppression.

There are many advanced intellectuals among them, who have experienced the baptism of Marxist thought and have relatively systematic main ideological leadership.

. The social situation of internal and external troubles.

In the 1930s, Japan's ambition to invade China was clearly revealed. However, under the pressure of Chiang Kai-shek's "Anti-foreign forces must first settle the internal affairs," the Chinese Red Army had no choice but to carry out the Long March.

From the outbreak of the "September 18th" Incident in 1931 to 1935, the three northeastern provinces were completely occupied, and the Japanese army had already marched into northern China.

Domestic calls for all-out resistance to Japan are getting louder and louder. At the Wayaobao Conference on August 1, the CCP put forward the "August 1st Declaration" and proposed an all-out war of resistance.

All strata decided unanimously that the contradiction between the Chinese nation and the Japanese invading army was the main contradiction at that time, and it was urgent to establish a comprehensive anti-war army. The CCP has won broad mass support.

. Formulation of strategic deployment.

The strategy of the Long March of the Red Army of the Communist Party of China is to transfer the base area and then join up with the fraternal armies of all parties to establish a new base area.

The Zunyi Conference proposed heading north to western Sichuan. Chiang Kai-shek had learned of this news and immediately decided to completely eliminate the Red Army forces. They even launched aircraft and artillery in an attempt to annihilate the Red Army.

Shi Dakai has traveled through several provinces since the Tianjing Incident, but has never captured a big city, nor has he been able to establish a base of his own. This is extremely unfavorable for later army expansion.

Trapped by the limitations of his strategic thinking, Shi Da's plan to enter and exit western Sichuan had long been predicted in advance by the experienced Qing army, who had established defensive forces in the upper reaches early, just waiting to invite you to enter the urn.

Moreover, Shi Dakai's army only relied on large numbers of teams to cross the river in one fell swoop. There was no strategic idea of ​​a Red Army detachment exploring the way, a death squad taking the lead, and a backup team covering it. This resulted in the entire group being wiped out in one fell swoop.

. The excellent qualities of commanders.

Compared with the simple peasant uprising of the Taiping Rebellion, the Long March Red Army was more professional. The entire team, from top to bottom, was full of intellectuals, returnees from overseas studies, and proposers of advanced ideas.

They uphold the pursuit of national justice rather than the realization of self-interest, and use what they have learned throughout their lives to work hard for the national rejuvenation .

Most of the generals of the Taiping Rebellion relied on experience and recklessness as their main combat ideas. Although Shi Dakai himself had a certain strategy, most of his generals were farmers and lacked combat talent and wisdom.

Great revolutionary patriotism

In the Battle of the Dadu River, the Red Army soldiers, with their unswerving loyalty to the righteousness of the Chinese nation and their heroic, unafraid of sacrifice and fearless revolutionary spirit, bravely moved forward in the rushing river, raced against time on the dangerous mountain road, and completed the army's crossing of the bridge on several iron cables. They fought against difficulties and obstacles and ran against time.

The Red 4 Regiment traveled 240 kilometers in a few days. The selfless dedication of the 17 daredevils who forcibly crossed the Dadu River at the critical moment wrote a glorious page in the annals of Chinese history.

The Red Army is not afraid of the difficulties of the expedition, and can only take it easy.
The five ridges are meandering and the waves are flowing, and the Wumeng is majestic and muddy.
The clouds and cliffs are warm when the golden sand water is photographed, and the iron cables across the Dadu Bridge are cold.
is even more happy about the thousands of miles of snow in Minshan Mountain, and the three armies are all happy after the passing.

Chairman Mao's "Seven Laws of the Long March" for the Red Army's Long March perfectly demonstrated the fearless sacrifices of countless generals and the Chinese nation's spirit of refusing to admit defeat against difficulties.