In the first half of the last century, there were many warlords in China, and Wu Peifu was one of them. After the 1920s, he became a pivotal figure in the Beiyang warlord group and a rising star. So how many troops does Wu Peifu, who tried to reunify the country by force, have?
In 1898, the 24-year-old Wu Peifu, with the funding of his cousin Wu Liangfu, took refuge in the name of Nie Shicheng, which is regarded as the official start of a decades-long military career. In early 1901, he was admitted to the infantry class of Kaiping Wubei School to learn professional military skills. In September, because the school moved to Baoding, he gave up studying and went to the Tianjin Army Police Corps to serve as a head. In 1906, he defected to Cao Kun, who was then the commander of the third town of the Qing army. Wu Peifu was born as a scholar, coupled with his wit and agility, courage and strategy in combat, and gradually gained the appreciation and reuse of Cao Kun.
After the Revolution of 1911, Wu Peifu was already the head of the regiment. In 1915, Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor and he was promoted to major general of the Sixth Brigade. With the rise of military rank, he has more and more troops, and gradually formed a military group with Cao Kun, which later became a direct warlord. Not only is Wu Peifu himself one of the most adept generals among the Beiyang warlords, he is known as the "General Victory", and he is good at running the army. His soldiers are strictly disciplined and trained hard, which is unmatched by other armies. The greater the military power in his hand, the greater his ambitions.
In 1920, the Zhili warlord and Duan Qirui's Anhui war broke out in the Zhiwan War, which ended in the victory of the Zhili warlord. Subsequently, Wu Peifu and Cao Kun entered Beijing. During this period, he proposed to convene a National Assembly to solve domestic problems, but was strongly opposed by Cao Kun and other warlords, and had to lead his troops back to Luoyang. However, he was not idle in Luoyang either. He recruited talents, raised money for training, and expanded his military strength. He set up the military command center in Yuan Shikai’s palace, built more than 50 houses on the east and west sides for the generals of the General Staff Headquarters; repaired 1,000 porous cave dwellings as student soldiers’ dormitories; built an airfield, purchased aircraft, and created Luoyang Airlines is a pioneer.
During the first Zhifeng war, Cao Kun gave the full command of the Zhili to Wu Peifu. He led the army to Zhang Zuolin's Fengjun outside the pass, which made him famous and became the chief figure in the direct line. Around 1924 was the peak period of Wu Peifu's life. He occupies Luoyang, has hundreds of thousands of troops, and has 5 divisions and a mixed brigade of more than 100,000 men directly under his command. He is in charge of Zhili, Shaanxi, Hubei and other regions. When Wu Peifu passed his 50th birthday, dignitaries from all over the country, envoys of various countries in China, and celebrities in society all came to Luoyang to wish him his birthday, because he was the most powerful warlord in the north at that time, and Luoyang naturally became the political and military center of the north. Cao Kun once said: "As long as Luoyang sneezes, it will rain in Beijing and Tianjin!". On September 8, 1924, Wu Peifu appeared on the cover of the American "Time" magazine as "The Strongest in China", becoming the first Chinese to appear on the cover of the magazine. From this title, we can see how powerful Wu Peifu's military strength is.
However, at this time Wu Peifu and Cao Kun had a disagreement. The former advocates the unification of the country by force, while the latter wants to be president and advocates first ascending to the top and then reunification. Persuasion to no avail, Wu Peifu had to return to Luoyang and concentrate on running his base camp. In 1926, he and Zhang Zuolin met in Beijing and jointly formed the Beijing government. One attacked Guangdong in the south and the National Army attacked the north in an attempt to divide the world. In the end, their plan failed, Wu Peifu lost his military power, and Zhang Zuolin was killed by the Japanese. After
, Wu Peifu settled in Beiping and was favored by Zhang Xueliang. His anti-Japanese stance was firm, and he participated in anti-Japanese activities many times after the September 18th Incident. The Japanese attempted to use his reputation to ask him to become a puppet and assume a pseudo-post, but Wu Peifu sternly rejected him, so he preserved his reputation. In early December 1939, Wu Peifu injured his gums with bone chips while eating dumplings and went to a Japanese hospital for treatment. Unexpectedly, Doihara Xianji ordered the dentist to kill Wu Peifu, who was 65 years old. Who would have thought that a generation of warlords would be killed by a dentist.
