early summer of 1645. Then Dodo's army captured the city. The seismic activity of the Tancheng earthquake in 1688 was also involved Xuzhou. "More than half the houses of the city were ruined" and "led to enormous deaths", according to the gazetteer. In the 1850s, the Yellow River shifted its course from the southern to the northern side of the Shandong peninsula, the process caused serious floods and famine in Xuzhou, and almost made the waterway system within the prefecture defunct. Modern China Zhang Xun and his remaining army fled to Xuzhou after the Revolution of 1911. They entered the city on 5 December. The Nanking Government sent three armies to attack Xuzhou. In the middle of February 1912, Zhang evacuated the city and moved north after he was defeated. Since the Second Revolution began, Xuzhou became a front-line city. The Revolutionary Army fared badly as it advanced from there towards the north, and a rout ensued. Then the Beiyang Army captured the city on 24 July. Thereafter, Zhang Xun made Xuzhou his base. he convened four meetings of the Beiyang leadership. Involved the stalemate among Li Yuanhong and Duan Qirui in 1917, he marched on Beijing with a troop in June. His failure spread and caused a terrible wave of theft and arson committed by his garrisons later in Xuzhou in July. The Zhili clique dominated Xuzhou by 1924. In the autumn of this year, the Second Zhili–Fengtian War broke out, Zhang Zongchang who supported the Fengtian clique seized the city with his thirty thousand soldiers. Sun Chuanfang led a coalition of forces to sortie the Fengtian Army in October 1925. They occupied the city on 8 November. As the leader of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Xuzhou on 17 June 1927. He conferred with Feng Yuxiang and other Kuomintang officers on 20 June, Feng was courted by Nanjing. Then Sun Chuanfang and Zhang Zongchang began to fight in unison against the Nationalist government. They captured the city on 24 June. The fall of Xuzhou aroused public outrage, Chiang 's first resignation ensued. On 16 December, Nanjing force took the area again. The area was the main site both of the Battle of Xuzhou in 1938 against the Japanese Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War and of the battle in the Chinese Civil War, the Huaihai Campaign in 1948–49. On 19 May 1938, Chiang gave the order