ON THIS DAY ·
Battle of Tingsi Bridge
26–27 Aug 1926 — South of Wuhan, the Ironsides Fourth Army storms Wu Peifu’s fortified rail bridge, opening the road to the Yangtze. Communist organizers have gone ahead of the columns and raised peasant associations. Artillery helps the expedition advance, but so does the organizing and propaganda that precede it.
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The moment in context
Sun Yat-sen wanted to build a government strong enough to reunite China. The warlords had armies, but their soldiers served military employers whose alliances could change. Sun’s movement in the blue south was developing a different instrument: a party-army, joining military command to a political organization, a doctrine and discipline.
From Northern Expedition and United Front, chapter 4 of China in Revolution, 1911–1949 (1926).
The place: Battle of Tingsi Bridge — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The Soviet package: party, army, mass line. Western powers had declined to support Sun, so he turned to Moscow. Soviet advisers brought money and rifles, but also a way to connect an army with…
- The turn — Whampoa, June 1924. At Tingsi Bridge the new army demonstrated its fighting power. Whampoa, founded in June 1924, helps explain how that force was formed: officers…
- What it changed — Two victors inside one victory. By spring 1927 the alliance had reached the Yangtze, but its victory contained two centers of power. Left Nationalists at Wuhan worked with the…
Then ask the room: Could the First United Front have survived, or did its founding make a rupture inevitable? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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