Engagement Archive · Crossing of the Chishui River

Thirty thousand Red Army troops were blocked by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist forces in the mountains along the borders of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan; in four months they crossed the same Chishui River four times, traced a wide arc, and walked out of the encirclement -- exhausted, badly reduced, but out.

Engagement Data

Belligerents

Terrain and Conditions

(For the larger situation -- the failure of the Fifth Counter-"Encirclement" Campaign, the strategic background of the Long March, and the Zunyi Conference -- see *Agrarian Revolutionary War · Overview*; this article covers only the Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan borderlands.)

Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan borderlands: The Chishui River runs through folded mountains on the northern edge of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The mountains on both banks are high, the valleys deep, roads few, and ferry crossings the lifelines. Zunyi and Maotai were both market towns in northern Guizhou; Maotai was famous for its liquor. In this region, warlord power overlapped: Wang Jialie's Guizhou army was weak, Liu Xiang's main Sichuan army blocked entry into Sichuan, and Long Yun's Yunnan army guarded the gateway to Yunnan. Several regional armies each guarded their own defense zones and each had their own calculations; coordination was unstable from the start.

Social conditions: Northern Guizhou was long known as poor. A popular saying held that there was "no three li of level ground, no three days without rain, no person with three fen of silver" (period of circulation of the saying unverified). When the Red Army entered, its discipline was stricter than that of the government armies, and its propaganda about striking local tyrants and distributing floating wealth won support among some poor people; at the same time, a large army passing through and requisitioning grain remained a heavy burden on local villages (see "Casualties and Losses" ※).

Why It Was Fought

Seven days on the Xiang River left more than thirty thousand of the original 86,000 (see *Battle of the Xiang River*). The tuition paid in blood bought two things: jars and pots were buried locally, and the column was lightened from then on; the original direction, north toward western Hunan to join the Second and Sixth Red Army Corps, was acknowledged as a dead end -- Chiang Kai-shek was already waiting there with a net. In 1934.12, the two meetings at Tongdao and Liping redirected the march to Guizhou (for the meetings, see *Agrarian Revolutionary War · Overview*). At the end of the year the Red Army forced the Wu River, and on January 7, 1935, it took Zunyi by surprise. In mid-January, the Zunyi Conference reorganized military command.

The commanders had changed; the predicament had not. About thirty thousand men, no rear area, ammunition dependent on capture, grain and fodder gathered along the road, and on every side pursuing and blocking armies totaling around 400,000 (deployment figures vary by account). To stop was to be encircled; the only way to live was to find gaps while moving. The gaps did exist, lodged in the seams between the opponents' own calculations: the Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan borderlands were the junction of warlord defense zones. Liu Xiang's Sichuan main force was guarding against the Red Army entering Sichuan; Long Yun's Yunnan army guarded the gate to Yunnan; Wang Jialie's Guizhou army was the weakest. Several forces each held their own defense zone and each had their own calculations; coordination was unstable from the start, and the roads the Red Army could take lay where those calculations contradicted one another.

After the Zunyi Conference the intended direction was originally clear: cross the Yangtze River northward and join the Fourth Front Army. Chiang's objective was also clear: encircle and annihilate these thirty thousand men on the Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan border. Neither plan was realized -- this was where the Crossing of the Chishui River came from. It was not a predesigned "masterstroke," but a series of maneuvers forced by the defeat at Tucheng and the frustration of the plan to enter Sichuan: crossing once, then again, changing direction while on the move. In hindsight it looks like drawing the enemy about; at the time it was taking one step and then seeing the next. This section does not evade that.

Neither side had complete intelligence. The Red Army could see the calculations of the regional military systems: the Sichuan army guarded Sichuan, the Yunnan army guarded Yunnan, and the Guizhou army looked to itself, with defense zones taking priority over encirclement. It could not see the true strength of the Sichuan army: at Tucheng, Guo Xunqi's force was assessed as four regiments, but what it ran into was a hard opponent of more than six regiments (misassessment bases vary by account), and the plan to cross the Yangtze northward was canceled on the spot. Chiang could see the map: thirty thousand men, no rear area, and roughly 400,000 pursuing and blocking troops around them. He could not see where those thirty thousand men would go next -- between the four crossings the Red Army repeatedly changed direction, and every change forced the pursuing and blocking armies to reorder their deployment; in the mountains, one such reordering meant several days. The material account was equally harsh for both sides: the Red Army had no rear, grain came by requisition, ammunition by capture, river crossings by commandeered door planks and wooden boats, and in four months of marching several dozen li a day, more men fell out than were killed in battle; the pursuing and blocking armies had railways and roads, but the battlefield was in the mountains, heavy equipment could not deploy, and regional forces were unwilling to lend their defense zones to others.

Dissent also left a record. After the second crossing of the Chishui and the recapture of Zunyi, at the mid-March Gouba meeting, the majority favored attacking Daguxinchang, while Mao Zedong alone opposed it and his view was rejected; that night he went to persuade Zhou Enlai, and the next day's meeting rescinded the order (meeting date and voting details unverified). After this, military command was handled by a three-man group of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and Wang Jiaxiang (time and occasion of its establishment vary by account). The troops' complaints were equally real: "too much marching, too little fighting" -- several months later, before the Huili meeting, Lin Biao wrote a letter demanding a change in military command (see *Agrarian Revolutionary War · Overview*), speaking to the same account.

On January 19, the Red Army left Zunyi and moved north, toward the Yangtze River.

Course of the Engagement

Casualties and Losses

• Red Army combat casualties in this stage were relatively limited, but non-combat attrition was extremely heavy: four consecutive months of high-intensity mountain marching, with straggling, sickness, and desertion causing continuous losses. Around the Zunyi Conference the force numbered about 30,000; before the Dadu River it was already below 20,000 (figures vary by account; see *Jinsha River and Dadu River*).
• Participants and later studies alike point out that the troops were extremely exhausted in this stage, and that the complaint "too much marching, too little fighting" genuinely existed inside the Party and the army (Lin Biao's letter before the Huili meeting demanding a change in military command is discussed in *Agrarian Revolutionary War · Overview*; details unrecorded) -- the inspired stroke of maneuver and the physical price paid by the troops existed at the same time.
• ※ Civilian cost (Red Army side): a force of thirty thousand had no rear area, and grain and fodder depended on requisition along the route -- striking local tyrants, requisitioning or borrowing, and purchasing all existed side by side. Records of comparatively good discipline coexist with records of forced grain collection and press-ganging laborers and guides (local gazetteers of the counties along the route each contain accounts; systematic comparison unverified).
• ※ Civilian cost (pursuing and blocking side and regional military systems): the Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan armies also burned, killed, imposed levies, and pressed laborers within their defense zones (specific areas and scale unrecorded). The people of northern Guizhou bore a double burden between the passage of the two armies. Both sides took from them; this article records both.

Aftermath

• After entering Yunnan, the Red Army moved directly to Jiaopingdu on the Jinsha River (1935.5), broke out of the encirclement by hundreds of thousands of pursuing and blocking troops, and passed the most dangerous blocking stage of the Long March (see *Jinsha River and Dadu River*).
• KMT side: Chiang Kai-shek's plan to encircle and annihilate the Red Army in Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan failed, and Xue Yue and other forces gained nothing after months of pursuit. The centrifugal tendency among regional military systems -- "pursue but do not block; defense zones first" -- was fully exposed in this blocking campaign.
• The Crossing of the Chishui River later became a classic paradigm of "mobile warfare" in CPC military history. In his later years Mao Zedong called it the "proudest stroke" of his life (seen in records of conversations with Montgomery; original wording unverified).

Accounts of Those Present

• The misassessment at Tucheng: the Qinggangpo positions faced each other until afternoon before the Red Army realized that the enemy opposite them kept growing in number -- intelligence had judged one Sichuan army brigade as a regiment-level force (misassessment details unrecorded). This battle was the starting point of the "Crossing of the Chishui River": not the opening of a clever plan, but the close of a defeat.
• The liquor at Maotai: the third crossing's ferry point was at Maotai, and the claim that troops used liquor to rub their feet and treat injuries while passing through the town is widely circulated; participants' recollections and later embellishments differ in degree (level of detail unverified).
• Command on a stretcher: Mao Zedong had only recently recovered from malaria at the time (physical condition unverified), and many key decisions were made on the march; Zhou Enlai was the person who made the final decisions in actual military command (wording of the Zunyi Conference resolution unverified).
• The people who walked: during continuous night marches, soldiers slept while walking by pulling on the pack straps of the person in front of them (participant recollection, source unverified); no statistic exists for the exact number who fell behind.
• Local support: examples of ganren (poor people) in northern Guizhou guiding the Red Army, carrying messages, and sheltering the wounded and sick are scattered through local gazetteers and oral histories; specific cases unverified.

The Ground

• The Chishui River itself: a deeply cut river valley, with several dozen li of mountain roads often lying between ferry points. To control a ferry point was to control the direction of maneuver; Taipingdu, Erlangtan, Maotai, and Tucheng each had distinct terrain.
• Loushan Pass: the first dangerous pass of northern Guizhou. Two mountains enclose one valley; it is the northern gate of Zunyi -- one pass determined possession of a city.
• Qinggangpo: a gourd-shaped valley east of Tucheng. The Sichuan army held the high ground, while the Red Army attacked uphill -- terrain disadvantage was one of the technical reasons for the failure at Tucheng.
• Space of mountain night marches: no roads, many small paths. At night, a large force stretched into a line several dozen li long on mountain tracks, with head and tail unable to look after one another.
• Maotai ferry point: the river surface was relatively wide and the current gentle, making it the most unhurried of the four river crossings -- the ferry conditions matched the intent to feint.

How Each Side Records It

• Communist canonical narrative (Long March narrative): the Crossing of the Chishui River is the representative work of Mao Zedong's military command, a classic case of "winning by surprise" and "using troops like a god"; the Zunyi Conference established Mao Zedong's military leadership position, and this engagement is direct proof that it "saved the Red Army."
• KMT "pursuit and suppression" narrative: official military histories describe this engagement as the Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan blocking of the "Zhu-Mao bandit remnants," acknowledge that the interception failed, and attribute it to poor coordination among regional armies and obstruction by terrain (specific military-history wording unverified); Chiang's diaries and telegrams contain repeated reviews of the failed blocking effort (original texts unverified).
• Later and scholarly reconsiderations:
• Demystifying and restoring the phrase "Mao Zedong used troops truly like a god": studies point out that the four crossings were not a predesigned maneuver, and that passive elements such as the defeat at Tucheng and the blocked entry into Sichuan really existed. The command's exceptional quality lay in "when wrong, change; change quickly," not in foreknowledge (evidentiary level: scholarly characterization; specific literature unverified).
• The intelligence misassessment in the Battle of Tucheng and the basis for reporting results in the Zunyi victory have both been rechecked (level: academic debate with historical basis, each item awaiting verification).
• The reconsiderations above belong to differences at the level of interpretation.

Disputes and Sensitivities

• "Proudest stroke" and "forced maneuver": both interpretations have grounds, and the gap between canon and textual verification is recorded as part of the matter.
• Nature of the losses: Red Army losses in this stage came mainly from exhaustion and falling behind rather than death in battle. The gap between the radiance of the "four crossings" in canonical narrative and the actual consumption borne by the troops is a sensitive point in balancing the narrative.
• Role of the Sichuan army: Guo Xunqi's Sichuan army force fought stubbornly at Tucheng, and also had a record in the War of Resistance Against Japan (he later held a New Fourth Army theater post, and his relations with the CPC were complex; full course unverified) -- figures in regional military systems were not one-dimensional.
• The defeat at Tucheng must be distinguished: the key to the "four crossings" lay in fighting by walking and winning by correcting mistakes, not in "uncanny calculation."

Sources and Open Questions

Known main sources:

• *Record of the Red Army's Long March* (collection of participant writings)
• Memoirs of Nie Rongzhen, Yang Chengwu, and other First Front Army generals (individual volumes unverified)
• KMT side: detailed combat reports on Xue Yue's pursuit-and-suppression forces, Chiang Kai-shek diaries and telegrams (held by Academia Historica in Taiwan, unverified)
• Relevant volumes of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan local gazetteers (figure disputed)

Open questions: the date and voting details of the Gouba meeting; the time and occasion when the three-man military group was established; the specific dates of each ferry crossing in the forced crossing of the Wu River; the actual strength of the Sichuan army at Tucheng and the details of the misassessment; whether Zhu De personally went to the Tucheng front; the basis for reporting enemy losses in the Zunyi victory; the dating of "Yi Qin'e · Loushan Pass"; the source of the statement "so long as we can draw the Yunnan army out, that is victory"; the original wording of Mao Zedong's conversation with Montgomery about his "proudest stroke"; the basis for Red Army strength figures at each stage; local-gazetteer records of grain requisition and pressed laborers along the route; the original text of Lin Biao's Huili letter; the full course of Guo Xunqi's life.