The battle was for Ji’an. It had already been fought eight times; this was the ninth. On October 4, 1930, while the moon had not yet set, our forces moved into position. Fighting broke out on Zhenzhu Mountain, in the northwest corner of the city. Shortly thereafter, fighting erupted on Mule Mountain in the northern sector, and our Fourth Army deployed along these two fronts. Contact was also established at Chenggang Mountain, in the southern and southwestern parts of the city, where our Third Army was engaged. We had encircled Ji’an. At dawn, when the red flags that had been invisible through the night became visible under the rising sun, it was as if a vast expanse of crimson banners had suddenly unfurled. The deafening roar of rifles, machine guns, and mortars drowned out even the noise of New Year’s firecrackers. Countless red flags appeared along the front lines—billions of Red Guards and Young Pioneers lay flat on the ground, for enemy shells were raining down overhead. Suddenly, a low hum filled the sky. Within a minute, enemy aircraft with red tails were spotted. Several heavy bombs fell near our headquarters position, though no one was injured. Fierce combat raged for control of Zhenzhu Mountain. A detachment from Mule Mountain managed to break through the enemy’s weak point and enter the city, only to be driven back—a consequence of the enemy redeploying reserves from its southwestern positions to launch a counterattack against us. The fighting continued throughout the day. Our Eleventh Army arrived just in time to reinforce the western defenses. As darkness fell, the intensity of the battle began to ebb.

Among the enemy commanders was one named Deng Ying. When our Third Army failed in its eighth assault on Ji’an, the Nanjing puppet government issued an order commending him for achieving “first merit” in the “bandit suppression” campaign. This accolade inflated his pride, leading him to believe that he, Deng, stood head and shoulders above such leaders as Yang Chisheng, Yang Ruxuan, Li Wenbin, and even Zhu Peide. Indeed, he fancied himself twice—or perhaps even more—so formidable as commander-in-chief of the “bandit suppression” force as Zhang Huizhan, the stout general based in Nanchang. How he reveled in drink! How he flaunted his authority before local landlords, rich peasants, capitalists, pastors, and priests, slapping his chest and proclaiming himself a true hero! And these very men—landlords, rich peasants, capitalists, pastors, and priests—actually swallowed his boasts. They reasoned that, with Deng’s brash rhetoric bolstering their courage, coupled with the apparent impregnability of Ji’an’s defenses—fortifications, trenches, and barbed wire—the bulwarks that seemed so effective against the Red Army—they might yet survive for a few more days. Little did they realize that the Red Army would mount such a massive encirclement and all-out assault.

By the fourth day, the gall of every warlord, capitalist, landlord, rich peasant, pastor, and priest had been utterly shattered. People ran helter-skelter through the streets: now one cry went up that the southern gate was under attack, and everyone fled north; then another alarm sounded from the north, and all rushed south. When a contingent of Red Army troops actually breached Mule Mountain and entered the city, the entire populace rose in revolt. Yet within the city, the working masses experienced a different kind of excitement that day. Many clenched their fists, waiting only for the signal to strike back at the reactionaries. Deng had issued an order forbidding anyone—landlords, rich peasants, capitalists, pastors, and priests alike—to approach the riverbank. Troops armed to the teeth stood guard along the shore, and every boat on the river was herded together at the wharf. Even if a wealthy landowner had fallen to his knees before Deng, begging for passage to escape, it would have been refused. It seemed that the little warlord Deng intended to die with Ji’an.

That night, the Red Army launched a fresh assault, breaking into the city from Zhenzhu Mountain. Meanwhile, Deng himself led part of his force across the river and slipped away; others who tried to flee were captured and disarmed. Not a single landlord, rich peasant, capitalist, or clergyman managed to escape. From that moment on, Ji’an fell into the hands of the Red Army and the Soviet authorities. The next morning, a great throng of people bearing red flags marched into the city. Party organs and local Soviet institutions followed, and the workers and countless poor residents poured into the streets to warmly welcome the Red Army. Thereafter began a relentless series of mass rallies: recruitment drives to swell the ranks of the Red Army, workers’ congresses, Soviet assemblies, Party meetings. People from all surrounding counties flocked to see the “red” Ji’an. The uproar was deafening, as the old city of Ji’an gave way to a new world.

According to Red Army officials, the lesson of capturing Ji’an lay in rejecting the Li Sanshi line—which opposed attacking Ji’an in favor of Jiujiang, arguing that taking Ji’an first and then Jiujiang would doom the Chinese revolutionary high tide. This successful capture of Ji’an carried immense political significance: it not only exerted a profound influence nationwide but also played a direct role in later efforts to quell the Futian Incident, a rebellion by the AB Group, and in securing victory in the First Revolutionary Civil War. For by seizing Ji’an, we delivered a decisive political blow to the AB Group; moreover, our forty-day occupation inflicted severe moral and material losses upon the enemy. That said, the military operation itself was not without flaws. Forces were committed to the attack before they were fully concentrated: only the Fourth and Eleventh Armies were in place, while the Third Army had not yet caught up, and the Eleventh still had a day’s march remaining. Had the assault been delayed by a single day until the entire First Corps was assembled, we could have executed a simultaneous encirclement and coordinated assault, rather than allowing the enemy to redeploy troops from the west and counterattack, driving out our advancing units and preventing us from capturing Deng Ying entirely during the daylight hours of the fourth. Furthermore, the nighttime assault planned for the third proved ill-advised. Given the nature of positional warfare, with the enemy entrenched behind robust fortifications and our own troops unfamiliar with the terrain, a proper advance and reconnaissance phase should have preceded any deployment of forces and selection of attack points. Instead, our units were thrown directly into unfavorable positions, only to discover the unsuitability of their assignments and lack the means to adjust before resuming operations that evening. This, too, contributed to our failure to eliminate Deng Ying completely during the daytime. Another shortcoming was the decision to station the Third Corps not in Jishui or Xiajiang, regions closer to Ji’an, but far away in Qingjiang, thereby enabling Deng to slip away by boat. These tactical errors and miscalculations stemmed from an underestimation of the enemy—that he commanded merely four regiments and posed little real threat to us. It was precisely this erroneous assessment that allowed most of the enemy to escape. Such is a valuable lesson.