Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Who is Revolutionizing the Qing Dynasty

During the Wuchang Uprising, Ruicheng, who played the true nature of "letting the leaders go first", was obviously a big idiot. Fortunately, he did not go to the end. He still slightly fulfilled the political responsibility of a minister of the frontier, and "Wuchang fell into the hands of the revolutionary army." The news was notified to the court as quickly as possible. After the imperial court received the news of the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising, the senior leaders of the central government headed by the regent Zaifeng were extremely shocked and angry.After collectively greeting all the immediate family members of Comrade Zhang Zhidong who had worked in Wuhan, Hubei for a long time 800 times, everyone unanimously agreed to use the Central Army to suppress the Hubei Revolutionary Party. For them, the local new army could no longer be trusted.

On October 12, 1911, Zaifeng took out almost all of his family property, divided his troops into four groups, and directed his troops at Wuhan. The first route, with Beiyang Fourth Town as the main force, is led by Yinchang. Yin Chang, a man from Zhengbai Banner in Manchuria, was the Minister of War in the cabinet at the time. We mentioned him when we were training at the small station, Yuan Shikai's buddy.No matter from the point of view of blood—Manchurian, or identity—army commander, it makes sense for Yin Chang to be the commander of the first line. The second route, with Beiyang Fifth Town as the main force, is in command of Feng Guozhang.

The third route, with the imperial guards as the main force, is commanded by Zai Feng's seventh younger brother Zai Tao. The fourth route is the main force of the navy composed of more than a dozen warships. Zaifeng appointed Sa Zhenbing as the commander of the navy, and supervised the navy to take the Yangtze River waterway to cooperate in the battle.When he got promoted and got rich, Zaifeng couldn't think of Sa Zhenbing, but when he needed Sa Zhenbing, he remembered to push him into the fire pit.From this point of view, there are good reasons for the Qing Dynasty to perish at the hands of Zaifeng.

Zaifeng's original intention was that the elite of the Central Army would go out together, advance by land and sea, and annihilate the "rebels" in World War I.However, the performance of the Central Army really disappointed him. This upcoming war is called the Yangxia Defense War because the main battlefields are in Hanyang and Hankou (known as Jiangxia or Xiakou in ancient times). The eyes of the whole country are gathered in Wuhan, and the success of the revolution depends on this battle. If the revolutionary army was wiped out by the main force of the Qing army, the consequences would needless to say.

If the revolutionary army can withstand the counterattack of the main force of the Qing army that is several times larger than itself, dragging the main force of the Qing army under the city of Wuhan and being unable to move, then other forces that are waiting and watching may rise up to respond, and a spark of revolution may quickly form The trend of starting a prairie fire. Yinchang, who set off first and arrived first, really wanted to extinguish the spark of the revolution and make contributions, but unfortunately he was powerless.Although Yin Chang is the nominal commander-in-chief of this well-equipped and well-trained Beiyang force, he cannot command this army.

As mentioned earlier, Yuan Shikai was almost in charge of the Beiyang Army from conscription to training, and almost all the important officers were his staff.Except for Yuan Shikai or Yuan Shikai's instruction, no one can command this army.So the first passers did not work hard, they were just dealing with errands. Mr. Feng Guozhang in the second lane can indeed fight, and he is a titan.But he was powerless and didn't want to fight. On the way to lead the army to the south, Mr. Feng found time to go to a place——Henan Zhangdehuan. Boss Yuan's answer is very simple: go slowly, wait and see.

This slow down, until the end of October, the second road was ready for battle. As for the third army, which is dominated by banner people, it is Manchuria's last family property. Zaifeng wants to keep it in case the Han rebels, and will not let them be easily consumed on the battlefield. He has to wait for the first two armies to fight against the revolutionary army. When it's almost time, they stand up to pick the peaches and clean up the mess. If the performance of the army disappointed Zaifeng, then Sa Zhenbing's navy made Zaifeng despair. As early as October 18, the navy led by Naval Commander Sa Zhenbing had arrived at the Wuhan River.But then, the fierce battle scene where Zaifeng expected the warships to concentrate their firepower and fire all the cannons did not appear.

Most of the time, the navy only fired a few shells symbolically, and the shells did not know the fortifications of the revolutionary army, and most of them fell on the wilderness and on the water. why?It should be a very fierce battle, why is it fought so lovingly? The secret lies in the two key figures. The first person is Tang Xiangming, who is a representative of the young and strong faction of the navy and the chief of staff of the main force of the navy.In addition, he has another identity: the younger brother of Tang Hualong, a leading constitutionalist in Hubei. Tang Hualong was now the Minister of Political Affairs of the Hubei military government (in charge of administration, equivalent to the governor of the province). Whether in public or private, he had to pull his younger brother and the part of the navy controlled by his younger brother into his camp.Therefore, before Tang Xiangming arrived in Wuhan, he had already received a letter from his brother, asking him to "turn around as soon as possible to make great contributions".

Not to mention Tang Hualong's persuasion, let's just talk about Tang Xiangming himself. Although this person is somewhat utilitarian and not very noble in thought and morality, his experience of studying in France and England made him have a clear judgment on the democratic republic and the corruption of the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, under the influence of his elder brother, Tang Xiangming, who also considered his personal future and the future of the country, decided to take a risk and fight hard.Under his planning, some revolutionary naval officers and soldiers gradually surrounded him, fighting passively, and always ready to raise the banner of righteousness to rebel.

The second person is the supreme leader of this navy—Sa Zhenbing. Sa Zhenbing graduated from the Fujian Shipbuilding Academy and later studied in the UK. He is considered an open-minded person with advanced education. In addition, Zaifeng will not be able to reuse him. Naturally, he will not have much loyalty to the Qing Dynasty. Amidst the sparse sound of guns and guns, Sa Zhenbing received a letter from student Li Yuanhong "Li Yuanhong's Letter to Sa Zhenbing". The letter is about 1,300 words, sincere, friendly, and profound.In the letter, Li Yuanhong stated that the goal of the Wuchang Uprising was to reform the autocratic regime and establish the Republic of China, and persuaded the teacher to turn against the water from the perspective of the future of the country and the righteousness of the nation.

After reading the letter, Mr. Sa was very entangled in his heart. He neither wanted to rebel against the Qing Dynasty nor to be an enemy of the Revolutionary Party.So he racked his brains and came up with a good solution: making mud. Li Yuanhong, who was full of hope, finally waited for Teacher Sa's reply. In the letter, there were eight very eye-catching but disappointing characters: mutual understanding and fulfillment of duties. On the one hand, Chief of Staff Tang Xiangming has a clear attitude, he wants to take the lead in rebellion, and has no intention of fighting. On the other hand, the commander Sa Zhenbing has an ambiguous attitude, neither agreeing nor opposing the resentment of his employees and the behavior of not working hard. Therefore, this battle cannot be fought, and it will be hell if it is fought. The Navy does not fight the Revolutionary Army, but concentrates on honing foreign workers. Naturally, the Revolutionary Army will not take the initiative to attack the powerful Navy. Therefore, except for the first few days, the revolutionary army fought a few battles with Zhang Biao who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Wasted away in peaceful confrontation. However, they don't move, someone moves! Regardless of the fact that the Wuchang Shouyi was organized by the Gongjinhui and the Literary Society, there were no constitutionalists, alliances, or congregations. However, the Gongjinhui and the Literary Society were small regional parties after all, and did not have national influence.But the Constitutionalists, the Tongmenghui, and the Huidang were different. They had branches all over the country and had great influence. They saw the success of the Wuchang Uprising and the main force of the Qing army being dragged to Hubei, so they took advantage of the heat and took active actions across the country. At the same time, several time bombs buried inside the Qing army finally detonated! Back then, in order to consolidate the dominance of the Qing Dynasty, Cixi had no choice but to create a martial arts move of "killing one thousand enemies and harming eight hundred".The written name of this kung fu technique is "Compiling and Training the New Army". The power of the new army was indeed great, successively destroying the Boxers and the rebellious revolutionary party, but the side effects of the new army were also great. While consolidating the rule, it damaged the foundation of the Qing Dynasty itself.As for the reason, we have to study how Cixi practiced this trick. Back then, the imperial court was shy, and most of the money they saved was used for indemnities, supporting corrupt officials, and maintaining the luxurious life of the royal family. According to the standards at that time, all of them were trained into the thirty-six towns of the imperial court. It must be hundreds of millions of taels of silver, exceeding the country's annual fiscal revenue, which is naturally difficult to do. In a word, the imperial court did not have enough money to train troops. So Cixi had no choice but to tell the governors and admirals of various places: You know the difficulties of the imperial court. I can only support you from the staffing and other policies. As for the preparation and training funds, you mainly rely on your own preparations. Lafayette Cixi is very authoritative. Although the governor and admirals felt a little wronged, they still responded to the court's call and started self-recruitment and self-training. Since Cixi can't give money, it is difficult to control the personnel appointment power of the new army. Enlightened local officials such as Zhang Zhidong and others not only paid attention to recruiting cultural youths who had received a new type of education, but also paid more attention to recruiting foreign students who had received advanced military education as military officers, such as Cai E, Yan Xishan, Li Liejun, Lan Tianwei, Wu Luzhen, Tang Jiyao, Xu Chongzhi (Lu Xun's lover Xu Guangping is his cousin, Hong Kong actor Xu Shaoxiong is his nephew) and others all took the opportunity to join the new army. These people are not ordinary, capable, thoughtful, assertive, insightful, and dare to hold different political opinions. They are completely different from the old army officers and soldiers who were ignorant and loyal to the imperial power.More importantly, they are not satisfied with the current government.In short, they are time bombs buried inside the Qing army. The dominoes of the revolution began to collapse 12 days after the Wuchang Uprising. The frenzy of the Revolution of 1911 has arrived! On October 22, Hunan and Shaanxi became independent. On October 29, Shanxi became independent. On October 30, Yunnan became independent. On October 31, Jiangxi became independent. On November 3, Shanghai became independent. On November 4, Guizhou became independent. On November 5, Zhejiang became independent. On November 7, Guangxi became independent. On November 8, Anhui became independent. On November 9, Fujian and Guangdong became independent. On November 22, Chongqing became independent. On November 27, Sichuan became independent. ... Let's talk about a few interesting things that not only have important characters appearing on the stage. On October 22, Hunan became independent under the leadership of Jiao Dafeng, and Shaanxi also became independent under the leadership of Zhang Yunshan, the eldest brother of the Gelaohui. On October 29, the revolutionary soldiers under the leadership of Yan Xishan, the new military standard (regiment commander), killed their superiors, the governor of Shanxi and the Xietong (brigadier commander).Yan Xishan sat on the position of the governor of Shanxi, and thus created Comrade Yan's nearly 30-year career as the local emperor of Shanxi. A day later, Cai E, a supporter of the constitutional faction and the leader of the New Army Association, and Tang Jiyao, a member of the Tongmenghui, launched an uprising, and Yunnan was restored.It is worth mentioning that a platoon leader named Zhu Yujie was very heroic in this battle.He charged forward, fought bloody battles, and led the soldiers to capture the Governor's Palace.This Zhu Yujie was none other than Marshal Zhu De of the Republic. On November 3, when it was Shanghai's turn, Li Xie of the Restoration Association and Chen Qimei of the Tongmenghui met to revolt at the same time. This Chen Qimei may not be very famous, but his brother Chiang Kai-shek and his nephews Chen Lifu and Chen Guofu must be familiar to everyone.So Chen Qimei is an important person.A few more words here. Chen Qimei, courtesy name Yingshi, was born in Zhejiang in 1878. He studied in a private school for several years when he was a child, but when his family fell into poverty, he decided to sacrifice himself (perhaps because he had the worst grades)-dropping out of school and working as an apprentice in a pawnshop to earn money for his elder brother and third younger brother to study. In the next twelve years, the elder brother and the third younger brother returned from studying in Japan, but he encountered a bottleneck in his career development.Twelve years ago, Chen Qimei's apprentice ranked twelfth; twelve years later, he ranked third.That is to say, Brother Qimei has not become a full-time employee after working for twelve years, and is still doing odd jobs, and he is far away from becoming a middle-level management cadre (treasurer) of the pawnshop. Seeing that the current job has no future, and the burden on his body is gone, he has the idea of ​​going to the outside world to see. After that, although he worked as an assistant accountant in Shanghai for a period of time, he eventually went to Japan to study in the footsteps of his brothers. Due to her own poor conditions - low education, old age, and even lack of preparation, Chen Qimei failed to enter a regular military academy, and only spent a period of time in some pheasant universities - Tokyo Police Academy and private Dongbin Army Academy. Although he was a jerk, he didn't waste his life. In the winter of 1906, Chen Qimei joined the Tongmenghui in Japan.At this moment, he is a marginal figure, a younger brother. In 1908, Chen Qimei was sent back to China by the Tongmenghui to launch a revolution. In 1909, Chen Qimei set up an agency in Shanghai to manage Revolution.At this moment he is the main character, the boss. During these days of participating in the revolution, Comrade Chen Qimei actively used his talents and expertise, and embarked on a revolutionary road with Chen Qimei's characteristics. Feature 1: Use darkness to introduce light, and use dark violence to maintain the justice of light. Chen Qimei has been in the society for a long time, and has strong handling and communication skills. He is very popular in Shanghai. Therefore, he imitated the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen to break into the Green Gang and recruit members of the Green Gang for his own use. Theaters, teahouses, bathhouses, restaurants, and brothels have since become The office where Mr. Chen Qimei made a revolution. Feature 2: Five years of martial arts with countless soldiers. Chen Qimei sent his men to invite the hero Huo Yuanjia to establish the Jingwu Sports Club (Jingwumen), which is well known to women and children in modern China. His plan is to have fifty young people learn from Huo Yuanjia for half a year, and then each of them will train fifty disciples separately.By analogy, after five years, Chen Qimei's revolutionary brothers will reach tens of trillions, even if all the people on earth are assigned to Chen Qimei's training, it will not be enough. In other words, after five years, all human beings will be Chen Qimei's revolutionary brothers and sisters, the whole world will be directly unified, and the revolution will directly succeed! It's a pity that this great plan ran aground due to Huo Yuanjia's quick death. Although Chen Qimei's method is very distinctive, the effect is not very good, because he failed to withstand the test of practice and lost the battle. As mentioned earlier, Li Xie of the Restoration Society and Chen Qimei of the Tongmenghui made an appointment to revolt, but Chen Qimei did not revolt as promised, but attacked the Qing army one night in advance. As a result, his brothers were not effective in fighting, not only failed to win the Qing army, but also implicated Chen Qimei He was captured by the Qing army.It is said that the Qing army used a cruel trick to deal with this revolutionary, and tied him to a latrine for a night of intimate contact with excrement and urine. The reason why Comrade Chen Qimei abandoned Li Xie and Comrade Li Xie and went it alone was because of two reasons. Reason 1: The Tongmenghui and the Restoration Society are at odds.If the Restoration Society is allowed to take Shanghai, and Zhejiang, as the base camp of the Restoration Society, is likely to fall into the hands of the Restoration Society, this will be very detrimental to the League's struggle for leadership of the revolution.Therefore, the Tongmenghui hoped that Chen Qimei, one of his own people, would take down the extremely important Shanghai as the base camp of the revolution. Reason 2: Chen Qimei has his own political ideal - to be the governor of Shanghai, so he wants to take the lead in recovering Shanghai. If he has the first job, he has a greater hope of being the governor of Shanghai. Although Chen Qimei is relatively dark, but fortunately Li Xie is very generous.After Li Xiehe received the news of Chen Qimei's failure, he led the army to revolt overnight without saying a word.After a fierce battle overnight, the Qing army was defeated, Chen Qimei was rescued, and Shanghai was also restored under his leadership. Originally, according to the merits, Li Xiehe was the candidate for the governor, but things were far from that simple. In fact, there were three forces involved in the restoration of Shanghai—Li Xiehe’s Restoration Association, Chen Qimei’s Tongmenghui, and the armed forces of the local Shanghai gentleman businessmen group (constitutional faction)—the business group. Li Xiehe was from Hunan, so the Shanghai gentry and merchants resolutely opposed Li Xie and this outsider as the governor of Shanghai. The Shanghai gentry didn't intend to support Chen Qimei at first, after all, Chen Qimei is also a foreigner.But firstly, Chen Qimei has struggled in Shanghai for several years, and his archives, labor relations, and party organization relations are all in Shanghai, which is far closer than Li Xiehe's relationship with Shanghai; Efforts to lobby - intimidation and intimidation.So he had no choice but to agree to support Chen Qimei as the governor of Shanghai. The most important thing is that Chen Qimei himself and the Tongmenghui have already regarded the Shanghai governor as something in their pockets, so how could they give it up to others. Chen Qimei said on the surface that she would not run for the governor of Shanghai, but behind the scenes, she held the governor's election meeting in advance without notifying the Restoration Council and Li Xiehe.The voters are almost all his people, and almost all the ballots have Chen Qimei's name written on them.Chen Qimei was honorably "elected" the governor of Shanghai with an absolute majority of votes. This made Li Xie so angry that he was half dead. Fortunately, Li Xie and Gu Daji did not fight him desperately.Otherwise, the revolution has not yet succeeded, and the revolutionary party will tear itself apart for power and profit. With the restoration of Shanghai, Tang Shou, the constitutional leader of Zhejiang Province who was close at hand, became the governor of Zhejiang with the support of the Restoration Association. Shanghai and Zhejiang have been restored, and the rebel army is about to kill sooner or later. The neighbor, Jiangsu governor Cheng Dequan, is afraid. To say that this Cheng Dequan is more or less a celebrity, he is the one who wrote the words "Hanshan Ancient Temple" in Suzhou Hanshan Temple. This person is very interesting, and everyone will recover him as well.However, the process of his recovery was more interesting. He asked people to remove the signboard of the Governor's Yamen, and picked a tile from the corner of the main hall, and it smashed to the ground with a "bang", which means that the "revolution" has passed. This unique and bloodless "peaceful liberation" can be regarded as a contribution to the preservation of Jiangsu's souls. Except for the above-mentioned hero who follows the general trend, the brains of other government officials are not pig brains.Everyone can clearly see the sunset of the Qing Dynasty. At this time, seeing that the central government's army can't take down the three small towns of Wuhan, how can everyone have the intention to resist? Basically, as soon as the rebel army arrives, they will give up resistance with three tricks and two tactics. . What's more, the governors of Guangxi and Anhui directly declared independence, saying that I too had revolutionized.The Revolutionary Party said no, you are not allowed to revolutionize yourself, and I must revolutionize your life.The Revolutionary Party did what it said, and Guangxi and Anhui were restored by force. Amidst the frequent landing of the Great Qing Dragon Banner, the supporters of the imperial court became less and less, but they were not without resistance. Song Shou, the Governor of Fujian Bannerman, is ignorant of current affairs and vows to fight to the end. However, the flag soldiers under Songshou were not as tenacious as his rhetoric, and were quickly defeated by the rebel army led by Peng Shousong and Xu Chongzhi, members of the Tongmenghui.Seeing that the situation was over, Song Shou committed suicide by swallowing gold, becoming the first official to commit suicide and die for the Qing Dynasty.Fujian fell into the hands of the revolutionaries. Subsequently, the "China Assassination Regiment" of the Tongmenghui took action and killed the hapless Guangzhou General Fengshan just sent by the imperial court. With no one under his command who could lead troops to fight, Zhang Mingqi, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, knew that the situation was over, and the most important thing was to save his life.So after accepting the "peaceful independence" request of the constitutionalists, he fled to the concession. On November 9, Hu Hanmin of the Tongmenghui rushed back from Hong Kong and became the governor of Guangdong. After Hu Hanmin became the governor, revolutionaries from the Tongmenghui flocked to Guangzhou.Guangzhou has since become one of the base camps of the revolution. On November 11th, Mr. Sa saw that the building was about to collapse, and he could not support himself alone. Under the emotional offensive of another letter from Li Yuanhong, Mr. Sa handed over the navy to Tang Xiangming, left his picker, and went to Shanghai to "recover his illness". As soon as Teacher Sa left, Tang Xiangming joined the revolutionary army with his warship. Sichuan, which launched the banner of the "Road Protection Movement", was late in doing so, and only declared independence on November 27. On the same day, Duan Fang, the most enlightened and capable member of the royal family, died in a mutiny launched by the new Wuchang army entering Sichuan.The soul returns to the road of Shu, and the same sorrow through all ages!The reason why this group of people are eager to kill Duanfang, who is capable and of good character, is nothing more than eager to get rid of the relationship between the soldiers and civilians who went to Sichuan to suppress the road protection. They should not have much revolutionary intentions. As a result, the southern provinces had basically declared their independence before December of the Xinhai Year. To the imperial court's comfort, Zhang Renjun, governor of Liangjiang (nephew of Zhang Peilun, uncle of Zhang Ailing), general Tieliang, and "braided commander" Zhang Xun, governor of Jiangsu, were still loyal to the imperial court. Although Nanjing had few soldiers and the city was lonely, it was still besieged on all sides. Zhong stubbornly confronted the revolutionary army. However, the Jiangsu-Zhejiang coalition forces that attacked Nanjing were also indomitable. Commander-in-chief Xu Shaozhen led the revolutionary coalition forces of Zhenjiang, Zhejiang, and Shanghai to launch a fierce attack on Nanjing. Zhang Xun was quite capable, he supervised and led his braided army to confront the revolutionary army, and he didn't suffer at first, but in the end he really couldn't fight, so he had to take his men and horses to flee the city. As a result, Nanjing also fell into the hands of the Revolutionary Party twenty-four days after the Revolutionary Army uprising. Next, revolutionary armies from all directions gathered in Nanjing, numbering as high as 300,000.The number is scary, but the quality is uneven. There are regular soldiers, gangsters, green forest heroes, and ordinary people... All in all, the good and the bad are mixed, so that history books call it the "civilian army".However, in order to unify the style in this book, it is still called the Revolutionary Army. The situation in the north is also not optimistic for the Qing government. Sun Baoqi, governor of Shandong Province, the son and daughter of Prince Qing Yikuang, actually declared independence amidst the storm, which really chilled the court.Fortunately, Governor Sun found out with his conscience later, and announced the cancellation of independence, and a farce was staged. Qiong Yao's grandfather Chen Zhenrui didn't write romance novels, he was also a revolutionary. On March 11, 1912, this person followed the leader Huang Yue to declare independence in Qinzhou and established the Gansu Provisional Military Government. As a result, 23 administrative provinces in the country, 15 provinces declared independence, leaving only Taiwan (ceded to Japan), Henan, Shandong (independence first and then abolished), the three northeastern provinces, Zhili, and Xinjiang have not yet recovered , The decline of the Qing Empire has become unstoppable.