Chapter 3 2. Yuan Shikai in his early years

The Beiyang era was created by Yuan Shikai, so let's introduce Yuan Shikai first. Yuan was born in Xiangcheng County, Chenzhou Prefecture, Henan Province. His name was Shikai, his style name was Weiting, and his nickname was Rong'an.He was born on August 20, the ninth year of Xianfeng in Qing Dynasty (1859).The place of birth is Zhangying in the north of Xiangcheng County.Because of the Nian army, the Yuan family moved to the east of Zhangying for 20 miles and built a village called Yuanzhai.The Yuan family is an aristocratic family in Chenzhou Prefecture. His father, Yuan Baozhong (named Shouchen), was a local gentry. Uncle Yuan Jiasan, who has always followed Shikai.Yuan Jiasan was the most meritorious general in the Huai army who suppressed the Nian army, and he was finally appointed as the governor.Yuan Baoqing followed Yuan Jiasan to fight in Anhui and Henan provinces, and made great achievements.

Yuan Shikai ranked third. His father adopted Yuan Shikai to Yuan Baoqing as his adopted son because his brother Yuan Baoqing was in the field and had no sons at the age of forty, but he had many children. After Yuan Shikai adopted into his uncle's house, he was quite favored.He is intelligent, strong, and decisive by nature. He was enlightened at the age of six, and his enlightenment teacher was also surnamed Yuan.Although Yuan has a high understanding of reading and writing, he does not work hard. In the fifth year of Tongzhi (1867), Yuan Baoqing was a Taoist in Shandong. Yuan Shi was eight years old and went to Shandong with his adoptive father. Yuan Baoqing invited a teacher Wang Zhiqing to read for him.Two years later, Yuan Baoqing was transferred from Shandong to Jiangsu, and Yuan accompanied him.In the eighth year of Tongzhi (1870), Yuan Baoqing was transferred from Yangzhou to Jiangning (that is, Nanjing). At this time, Yuan Shikai's biological father, Yuan Baozhong and his wife, his elder brother Shi Dun (named Houfu), and his second brother Shilian (named Qingquan) all moved to Nanjing. live together.The two brothers Baozhong and Baoqing doted on Yuan very much, so although he was studying with his two brothers, he did not study hard and often played truant. He was only twelve or thirteen years old at the time, and he was good at riding a hummer.The teacher Quzhao was quite good at martial arts, and he taught boxing, so Yuan took pleasure in riding a horse and testing his sword.In May of the twelfth year of Tongzhi (1874), Yuan Baoqing died in Jiangnan Yanxun Road. His former friends Liu Mingchuan and Wu Changqing came to attend his funeral and sent Yuan back to his hometown of Xiangcheng.

A year later, Yuan's cousin Yuan Baoheng came home and saw Yuan was idle and had nothing to do, so he ordered him and his second elder brother Shilian to go to Beijing together to be employed by his cousin Yuan Baoling.In August of the first year of Guangxu (1875), Yuan Baoheng's biological father passed away. At this time, Yuan Baoheng served as the left servant of the household department, and Yuan Baoheng's discipline was stricter.In the autumn of the second year, Yuan returned to Xiangcheng and failed the township examination. His biological mother Liu and stepmother Zhu married him a young lady from the family. Yuan was 18 years old this year.After marriage, he went to Beijing and followed Yuan Baoheng's cousin to Henan for disaster relief. Because of his stepmother Zhu's serious illness, he rushed back to Xiangcheng, and Yuan Baoheng died of illness during his tenure in Kaifeng.In December of the fourth year of Guangxu (1878), Yuan's wife Yu Shi gave birth to the eldest son Keding in Chenzhou.

Yuan Xi Zhiyi didn't stick to Shengmo. He liked to read Zhou Dushan's prose, but he didn't want to finish reading.I don't know much about citing scriptures.Therefore, the stereotyped essays he wrote seem to be able to imitate Zhou Wen's superficial superficiality, but they are outrageous and unreasonable, but they do not lose the wild and unruly nature of Yuan himself.His teacher Wang Yanchen once asked him to write an eight-part essay on the topic "Under the whole world, is it the king's land, and the shore of the land is the king's minister".And when it is submitted to the volume, most of the essays written cannot be read in sentences, but there are two small paragraphs of wonderful sentences in it, which can be appreciated together with extraordinary essays.The sentence goes: "East and West, Europe and Asia, holding it with one hand is not important. I will lift up the land of the world and sweep it under my seat. Those who are hairless will still go deep. Yao and Shun pretended to be benevolent, Tang Wu pretended to be righteous, This heart is too thin to do nothing; I will strengthen the people of the world, worship Ji Shou under the gate, and those who do not follow will be killed without mercy"!Teacher Wang was speechless after reading this article.

Yuan Yi likes to compose poems, but he doesn't know how to write poems, and he doesn't talk about confrontation.Taste one of the seven unique poems about sentimental things: "The dragon and the tiger can't fight in front of me, and the murderous aura goes straight up to Qian Yunken; I want to open my mouth to the sky and swallow Hu Tianjiao in one gulp!" ": "I am alone on the Yuhua Terrace, and the eternal hero pays the ashes; it is said that Sun Ce broke Liu Chu, and it is said that Meiguo stationed troops. Hong mourns".Poetry expresses ambition, and you can see his embrace.

Yuan was a big talker since he was a child. When he was back home, he would read military books in his free time. Although he couldn't understand the meaning, he talked about military affairs with guests without any emotion.He once said to an old friend: "In the past, I was very brave, but now I have learned how to be the enemy of ten thousand people, so I know that it is really useless to be brave and fierce. The three armies can't win the commander. If I can command a hundred thousand elite soldiers , you can run rampant in the world." His study is full of Six Secrets and Three Strategies, Yin Talismans, old and new editions of Military Classics, and he has collected a lot.At that time, in the same county, there was a young man named Quchi, the son of Tang Shilang, who was addicted to Zhou Lang. He collected all the songs from the Song and Yuan Dynasties extensively, and he was prepared for everything.Therefore, the villagers called these two famous young masters "Tang Quchi" and "Yuan Shudai", which are homophones, for the purpose of ridicule.

When Xu Shichang was not an official, he worked as a school teacher and handled copywriting in Luoyang, Anyang, Fugou, Huaining and other counties.In the fifth year of Guangxu (1877), the museum was located in the Li family of Chenzhou (the administration of Huaining County Li Jinhou. Huaining is now Huaiyang, the capital of Chenzhou in the Qing Dynasty), and Yuan Dingwen, Yuan Nineteen, Xu Twenty Fifth, the two are inseparable, and the time has passed.Xu wanted to go to Beijing to take the exam, but Ruan was too shy to start the journey. Yuan Su despised wealth and was a chivalrous man, and claimed to be a moral friend with Xu, so he tried to raise a sum of money for him to strengthen his character.Xu Jinjing, sure enough, try and get paid.After Yuan returned to his hometown, he gradually lost touch with him.A few years later, Xu Tan found out that Yuan Zhi lived in his hometown, so he wrote a letter to persuade him to go out to seek employment for the sake of personal gain.After Yuan Jing's old friend's advice, he was so moved that he raised funds from Sichuan and took the only soft antiques at home to go to Shanghai.At this time, there was a prostitute named Lu Shangying in a brothel in Shanghai. She had married a wealthy businessman three years ago, but because she could not be tolerated by a big woman, she went down to resume her old business.Although she is close to Huaxin, she is still beautiful.Shi Kai accidentally met him on the seat, and he was shocked.Shang Ying was good at playing the pipa, and Yuan Yi was good at this skill. He became a close friend and became a guest in the curtain.He gave Shang Ying a pair of couplets saying, "A business woman is wandering, and a pipa has few confidants; a hero is down and down, and a hundred years of time has many feelings."Before long, all the travel expenses he brought were used as head-scratchers, and the plight of his difficult journey to Jinling in the past has reappeared now. However, this time is different from the last time. It can be urgently needed.So he found two snuff bottles, which were the relics of his uncle Yuan Jiasan.The pots are three inches long, half an inch in diameter, made of agate, very bright in color, with dragon and phoenix patterns in the middle, and are worth more than 2,000 gold. I asked a prostitute friend to transfer this pair of Ma Rui snuff bottles to Shanghai Lu Xundao for 500 gold.It happened that Lu Xundao was a relative of Wang Yanchen, so Lu showed Wang Yanchen the pair of snuff bottles.When Wang saw it, he recognized that it was a treasure of the Yuan family, and asked why it fell into Lu's hands.Lu Jiang told Wang about the experience. Wang Shi knew that Yuan had been in Shanghai for more than a month. He avoided seeing him because he lingered in Pingkang. Add blame.Yuan was scolded by Teacher Wang's stern words, and he couldn't help crying, complaining about himself, and describing the difficulties and embarrassments. Wang knew that this student had more talent than virtue, so he stimulated him in his words and urged him to reflect.Allowing him to stay temporarily, Yuan felt lucky to find a place to live in distress.From now on, I worked hard, closed my door to study, and learned to write regular script and calligraphy every day. It lasted two months without leaving home.Every time Wang Yanchen went in and out, he tried to spy on Yuan's activities secretly. Seeing that he was studying hard, he had washed away his old bad habits, and after reading his pen notes, he became more fluent and expressive, so he happily donated money to redeem the two agate pots for Yuan.

Chen Shou wrote "Three Kingdoms", which described Cao Cao's childhood life and hobbies, delicate and vivid. Later, Luo Guanzhong took advantage of this to make Cao Mengde the most outstanding villain in history through the ages.The story is that when Cao Cao was a child, he asked Xu Shao, who had the skill of knowing people and was good at judging people, about his future. .It can be seen that Cao Cao promised himself as a traitor when he was a child.The same is true for Yuan Shikai. When he was 19 years old, he went to a very famous fortune-telling gentleman in front of the Chenghuang Temple in Chenzhou Prefecture. This charlatan is about 70 years old, and his sign is called "Qu Ran Shocking God".The gentleman looked at Yuan Duan for a long time, and said in an extremely serious tone: "My son has a vast heaven. He comes from a wealthy family. He is young and outstanding. He is a public official in his middle age. He has a slight setback at the age of 50, but he is advancing through retreat Misfortunes turn into blessings, and there will be seven years of unspeakable fortune." After Yuan Ci came out, Qu Ran looked at his back in shock and said, "This son is different from ordinary people. He is a hero in troubled times." There is Duan Qingchuan, a Hanlin scholar in Chenzhou, who knows people and talks about the world.With a unique insight, all those who have passed his testimonials will have a reputation.Yuan also went to pay homage, Duan Xueshi believed that Yuan's achievements would surpass that of his uncle Yuan Jiasan, but he had more talent than craftsmanship.

Yuan didn't have much time in his hometown, so he never studied hard. His hobbies were drinking and riding horses.At that time, Wu Chongxi, the prefect of Chenzhou Mansion, was also Yuan's father-in-law. He often advised Yuan, but Yuan did not accept it. In his early years, Yuan Shikai was supervised by his uncle Yuan Baoheng the most, and Yuan also had the most awe of Yuan Baoheng, so during the three years he studied with Yuan Baoheng in Beijing, he was the most docile and read a lot of books.Yuan Baoheng believed that Yuan thought too much, took too many precautions, and had to act decisively when encountering major events.These reminders had a great influence on Yuan Shikai's decision to take office later.Because, as far as Yuan is concerned, his biological father was too close to him, and his stepfather loved him too much. The one who taught him deeply was to take care of his hall after both his biological father and stepfather passed away. Uncle Yuan Baoheng.

Yuan Baoheng died of illness while serving in Kaifeng, Henan. In the second year, the Qing court transferred Yuan Baoheng's donation to Yuan Shikai.Donating officials was popular in the Qing Dynasty. Yuan Shikai failed the provincial examination because he was not good at making arts.He didn't take this donate official seriously, but he himself was a failed scholar, his uncle was dead, and no one supervised him. At this time, he burned all his poems and books with a fire, and he was right He said to himself: "A man with ambitions in all directions, how can he be trapped between pens and inkstones for a long time to waste time?"

His "four directions" did not come to fruition. In the winter of the sixth year of Guangxu (1880), Wu Changqing, the commander of the Qing army, supervised the coastal defense of Shandong. Wang Yanchen recommended Yuan Shikai to Wu, and Wu Changqing transferred him to the Shandong military camp.