Long March (Little) - Withdrawal of Liberated Troops

Withdrawal of Liberated Troops

Facing a counter-attack from Right-Guomindang (Jiang Kaishek-affiliated Nationalist) regiments moving up from Jiujiang, the Revolutionary Committee—basically Zhou Enlai, Li Lisan and their ComIntern military advisor Kunanin—decided to evacuate the city and make for the southern port of Shantou, Guangdong, in the hope of receiving a Soviet arms shipment. Once supplied they would attempt a return to the provincial capital Guangzhou and thence a new and proper dissemination of Left-Guomindang/Communist influence throughout the province from which most of the insurrection's soldiery had come. He Long strongly opposed this idea: he pointed out that marching such a great distance and over such terrain in the heat of summer would put a severe strain on the troops. He also pointed out that the popular support for the communists in Guangdong was merely a fraction of what they enjoyed among the peasantry in Hunan, the province where he had thrived by brigandage since 1913. Resupply and local enlistment were assured. Why should the new base not be established somewhere in its vast border regions?

He Long's suggestion was vetoed—Guangzhou, springboard of the Northern Expedition, was the target set by the ComIntern. Accordingly on August 5 the 25,000 Left-Guomindang troops began the 600 km march to the South China Seacoast. The Communists would pay a hefty price for their obeisance two months later in the rout known as the Battle of Shantou.

By the 8th, only three days out, a third of the Uprising troops had deserted. On the 19th, the column entered Ruijin. Reconnaissance had found Right-Guomindang forces at Huichang, the next county town to the south. On the following morning the Battle of Huichang pitted brother officers, graduates of the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy, against one another in close combat. Ye Ting's 11th Army arrived late and He Long's 20th bore the brunt. The Nanchang Mutineers took nearly a thousand casualties, half of them dead. The Right-Guomindang evacuated the town under cover of night. The Left would not pursue them; their route lay east, over the divide into Fujian.

In the aftermath of battle, He Long swore allegiance to the Communist Party of China, witnessed by Zhou Enlai, Li Lisan and Zhang Guotao. At the other end of Asia, Pravda hailed the advent of a new, partisan, Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. For Joseph Stalin this was ample proof that the ComIntern's line was being correct, and Leon Trotsky thus incorrect to be questioning it.