now in charge of defending Nanjing against the Japanese attack. In a press release to foreign reporters, he announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death. He gathered about 100,000 soldiers, mostly untrained and including a few defeated troops from the Shanghai battlefield, to defend the capital. He also placed the 35th and 72nd divisions at the port to prevent people from fleeing Nanjing, as instructed by Chiang Kai-shek's general headquarters at Wuhan. The defense force blocked roads, ruined boats and burned nearby villages, preventing many citizens from evacuating. Battle of Nanjing By early December, Japanese troops had reached the outskirts of Nanking. As events played out, the defense of Nanjing was not at all according to the plan formulated by Chiang and Tang. The defense plan fell apart from the very beginning because the defenders were overwhelmed by Chinese troops fleeing from battles in the area surrounding Nanking. They just wanted to escape to safer ground and, in their panic, discipline had broken down to the point that units were refusing to obey any orders. In some cases, regimental commanders of units defending the capital were shot and killed by the company commanders of units in flight simply because the regimental commanders refused to move out of the way so that the fleeing units would have a more direct route to escape from the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek, who had already left for Wuhan, granted Tang the right to shoot anyone who disobeyed his order on the spot, but Tang could not carry out the order because there were hundreds of thousands of troops in open flight. To carry out Chiang's directive, Tang would have had to have the Nanking Garrison wage battle against the fleeing Nationalist troops before facing the Japanese assault on the city. As it became obvious that the plan was falling apart because of the total collapse of discipline among the troops in flight, Tang realized the city could not be defended. Given the grim circumstances, Chiang's staff and even Chiang himself had resigned themselves to this reality. However, Chiang was extremely reluctant to give up the capital without a fight, and nobody else would dare to make such a decision and face the angry Chinese public. At the same time, Chiang was also extremely grateful to Tang for assuming command of the Nanking Garrison and thus allowing Chiang to avoid the