Historically, there has been a confrontation between the north and the south, and the northern regime's conquest of the south is often more effective with less effort, while the southern regime's attack on the north is often difficult and often ends in failure. However, there are two exceptions, one is the Northern Expedition of Zhu Yuanzhang at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and the other is the Northern Expedition of Chiang Kai-shek during the ** period. Zhu Yuanzhang's deeds speak for themselves, he was a rare heroic figure, and he established the glorious Ming Empire with his majesty. As for Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, there are different opinions on the effect, so what is the actual situation?
First of all, from a military point of view, Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition did not achieve the unification of military forces. The warlords continued to act independently, only nominally attached to the Chiang dynasty. Yan Xishan in Shanxi, Feng Yuxiang in the Central Plains, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi in the Gui lineage, and Li Jishen in Guangdong still retained military power to a considerable extent and did not obey Chiang Kai-shek's orders. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek was more likely to bribe some of his generals than to defeat them militarily. The only exception was Zhang Xueliang in the Northeast, but after the "918 Incident", Chiang Kai-shek lost control of the Northeast.
Secondly, from a political point of view, halfway through the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek, for the sake of his own power and reactionary ideas, launched a large-scale purge of the party, eradicating dissidents and communists. However, he ignored the Communists who were the most capable of military ability and the will to fight in the Northern Expedition. At the same time as the Communists, he adopted the principle of "preferring to kill mistakes rather than letting them go", eliminated the Kuomintang leftists, and directly extended the butcher's knife to the grassroots level, as a result, the Kuomintang organizational structure at the grassroots level was completely eliminated. This had a huge impact on the outcome of the Northern Expedition, from the invincibility in the early stage to the difficulty in facing some ordinary warlords in the later stage.
Therefore, based on the above two observations, the Northern Expedition neither solved the warlord problem, nor did it achieve Chiang Kai-shek's initial expectations politically and militarily. The north did not allow Chiang Kai-shek to completely exterminate the warlords, nor did he let him win all the way to pacify the country. Politically and militarily, the Northern Expedition did not meet Chiang Kai-shek's initial expectations, so the final result of the Northern Expedition could hardly be called a victory.