Chapter 102 101. The Courtyard Disagreement with Li Duan

Li Yuanhong's life was both luck and misfortune. He became a hero of the Republic of China during the 1911 Uprising, and after Yuan Shikai failed to proclaim himself emperor, he inexplicably became the president.When Yuan Shikai was the president of the Republic of China, he felt very uncomfortable doing it, so he gradually developed the wrong idea that the president is not as good as the emperor, and a mistake in one thought turned into a tragedy of "Hong Xian proclaiming the emperor".Li Yuanhong did not have a single day of comfort during his presidency, because Li and Duan were in conflict, which made it impossible to reconcile between the Presidential Palace and the State Council.

Li and Duan have new enmity, but also old enmity. The old enmity is that when Li served as the vice president and the governor of Hubei, Duan followed Yuan's secret order to come to Wuhan by kidnapping him and put him on the train, which ended Li's stay in Hubei. From then on, Li became Yuan Shikai's political prisoner in Beijing; the new enemy was that although Duan embraced Li as president, when Duan went to see Li after Yuan's death, he kept silent and had a cold face as if treating a strange political opponent. Zhang Zhenfang provoked again.Zhang Zhenfang was one of the four ministers who accepted Yuan's orders when Yuan died, but Duan Qirui looked down on Zhang the most. Because Zhang was Yuan's cousin. He is a "yellow belt" and "man of the shopkeeper".Zhang naturally also hated Duan to the bone.After Li succeeded to the presidency, Zhang set off a wildfire in front of Li's military think tank, Ha Hanzhang, saying: "When we discussed the issue of the presidency in front of Xiangcheng (Yuan)'s tomb, the old Duan opposed Huangpi (Li)'s succession, it was Donghai ( Xu Shichang) tried his best to make it happen." This sentence convinced Li, so Li hated Duan very much, but had a good impression of Xu Shichang.

As for Duan?I don’t look down on Li at all, because in the Qing Dynasty, Duan once served as a commander (equal to the status of division commander), military commander (equal to the status of army commander), and admiral, and acted as the governor of Huguang, but Li was just a co-union (equal to brigade commander) In the era of Yuan Shikai, Duan was the leading general of the Beiyang faction, and although Li was the vice president, in Duan's eyes, he would steal the fruits of the Revolution of 1911 and was only a political prisoner after Yuan's death. Duan single-handedly "promoted" Li's president. If Duan did not support Li, Li would not be able to ascend the throne of president at all.On the night of Yuan's death, he told Zhang Guogan, who was sent by Li to inquire about the news: "My surname Duan supports Li, just one word, and I will not let the surname Li fail."

Because Duan has these ideas, he doesn't take Li seriously at all, and Li sees Duan like a thorn in his back.Therefore, Li and Duan could not be harmonious. After Li took over as president, he changed from not asking questions to asking questions, and asked more questions instead of asking questions. He believed that small matters could not be asked, but major issues must be asked. This was intolerable to Duan.Duan was already troubled by the Congress, which made him unable to act arbitrarily, and Li Yuanhong always restrained him when encountering problems, which made him feel very unbearable.He sometimes complained to his cronies: "I want him to sign and seal, not to ask him to press on my head!"

Duan Yongli just asked him to stamp his seal as president, which can be confirmed from a sentence of Duan's Secretary-General Xu Shuzheng.One day Xu Shuzheng took three personnel orders and went to the Presidential Palace to ask Li to stamp his seal. When Li accidentally asked about the background and history of these three people, Xu Shuzheng said impatiently: "The president doesn't need to ask more questions. The prime minister has already studied it clearly. Hurry up and seal it, I'm still very busy with my affairs." Hearing this, Li was so angry that his head burst into flames, and he said to his subordinates with a blue face: "I didn't want to be such a president. Yes, and they openly ignore the President!"

After Li became President, Zhang Guogan was transferred to be the Secretary-General of the Presidential Palace (later Zhang resigned and was replaced by Ding Shiyi), with Lin Changmin, Jia Shoukun, Lei Yuzhao, Ouyang Baozhen, Liu Yuanju, Zhang Zechuan, Qu Ying, and Shi Taiqi as secretaries.Military staff include Ha Hanzhang, Jin Yongduo, Jiang Zuobin and so on. Military aides often suggest that Li must have military power. Their reason is: "A responsible cabinet system refers to politics. In terms of military affairs, since the president is the generalissimo of the country's army and navy, he cannot ignore the military. The generalissimo has no military power. What can the president do?" What is the value of that?” Li could hear these words very well. He compared his presidency with that of Yuan Shikai when he was president, and felt how majestic Yuan was at that time, and how pitiful he is today. If you want to specialize, you should hold the military power in your own hands.Li's intention was completely opposite to Duan's.Duan believed that Yuan Shikai's biggest mistake was to set up the "National Army Command Office" to centralize military power. Duan explained that he controlled the national power as the prime minister of the cabinet and the national military power as the chief of the army.Duan's status today is based on the military dictatorship. The reason why he can control the Beiyang faction is because he has military power. If the president is allowed to control the military power, wouldn't he be unarmed, and the president can replace him with a single order?So he is determined to fight to the death on this point.

When Chen Huan left Sichuan with a division of troops, Li's military staff sent a telegram to persuade Chen Huan to disband the army automatically, but Chen Huan actually followed the president's order without asking the cabinet for instructions.For this reason, Duan hated several of Li's military staff to the bone. He publicly referred to Ha Hanzhang, Jin Yongyan, Li Shu, and Jiang Zuobin as the four villains in the mansion.Duan thought that Li should actually intervene in the issue of the governor (Chen Huan supervised Xiang is Li's firm claim), and the disbanding of the Beiyang army, is tolerable or unbearable, so Duan has always dealt with Chen Huan, "killing chickens for monkeys to see."

In the first year of the Republic of China, the ideal that Song Jiaoren devoted himself to and lost his life because of it - the responsible cabinet system, was realized after Yuan's death when Duan Qirui formed the cabinet.Therefore, the power of the Presidential Palace and the State Council during this period was exactly the opposite of that of the Yuan era. Although Li could tolerate it, there were limits.Duan's strengths had already been shown in Yuan Shikai's late period. He dared to be angry with Yuan, not to mention that he had always looked down on Li Yuanhong. The situation of warlord separatism in the Beiyang era was gradually formed. In fact, Yuan did not want to see warlord separatism, and the tail would not be lost.However, after the soldiers occupied the territory, when Yuan's interests were consistent with theirs, they would follow orders, and if they were inconsistent, they could ignore them, so the situation of separatism was formed naturally.

In Yuan Shikai's era, he instructed Li Yuanhong to issue a telegram advocating the separation of the military and the people of the provinces, and the abolition of governors and disarmament. Yuan hoped to use this to test whether it would work in the provinces. The two positions of the chief were separated, and then the army was reduced. The governors of all provinces were all abolished, and the troops of all provinces were all directly under the central government.Of course, this plan does not have the support of the warlords of the provinces, but this is a positive trend, and wise people all over the country support the plan to abolish the governor and cut the army.Although this plan was not conceived, Li gained a false name because of it.

After Li himself became president, he naturally wanted to carry out this idea, so he tried his best to promote this plan. Although he is a president without real power, he is not willing to pretend that he has no real power. Resonance, the world has changed drastically after Yuan's death, and it may work to repeat the old tune at this time.On the point of disarmament, Duan Qirui is completely on Li's side. This is of course due to the same interests, not the same opinion.Therefore, after the abolition of the Military Affairs Council, the Beijing government immediately issued a call to "rein in the army", instructing the military authorities of the provinces to withdraw the troops that had previously been sent to fight back to their original defenses, and began to organize the deployment of local militias, as well as the newly-organized troops that have been expanded since the outbreak of the war. Military, Beijing requires that all military forces should be under the direct management of the Beijing government.

Although Li and Duan agreed on the issue of disarmament, their goals were clearly different.What Li meant was a general reduction of troops across the country, no matter whether the north or the south, one should not favor the other; Duan meant to reduce the southern army in large numbers, but he was unwilling to reduce the northern army that he could control, and on the contrary wanted to continue to expand.Li's purpose is: the president and the prime minister should separate powers and division of labor, the president manages the military as the generalissimo of the army and navy, and the prime minister is in charge of government affairs.Since the military power must be concentrated in the central government, the power of the president must be enhanced so that the president actually has the power to command the national army and appoint and dismiss the military chiefs of the whole country; , not the president. As for the abolition of governors, Duan believes that when Yuan's power was at its peak, he renamed all governors as generals.At the same time, it is planned to abolish provinces and divert routes to weaken the power of local warlords, but the plan to abolish provinces and divert routes is completely unfeasible.In view of this, Duan You came up with a more ingenious method than abolishing the provinces. He planned to reform the administrative regions of the country, shrink the provinces and divide the country into more provinces.According to Duan's special instructions, Beijing's Ministry of Internal Affairs has divided the country into 49 provinces and special administrative regions. Only the three eastern provinces will not be changed due to diplomatic relations.The plan to shrink the provinces was unanimously opposed by all the northern provinces, so it had to be shelved. During the period of protecting the country and overthrowing Yuan, due to the war, both the North and the South expanded their armies as much as possible. No one can count the number of armies in the whole country at that time, because if the number of investigations is to achieve the purpose of expansion, it is natural to exaggerate as much as possible.However, after Yuan's death, the whole country returned to peace, and the most urgent task was demobilization. Reducing the number of troops was the first step in demobilization, but this was an extremely difficult problem. Duan drew up a set of disarmament plans, which stipulated that the national army should be divided into 40 divisions, each with 10,000 people, and another 20 independent brigades, each with 5,000 people, totaling 500,000 people.In addition, the provinces can retain some irregular garrison teams, but the national garrison force shall not exceed 200 battalions, with 500 soldiers in each battalion, totaling 100,000 people.In this plan, the difference between the army and the garrison is that the army has a certain designation but no fixed defense area, which can be transferred around.The police force is responsible for maintaining local law and order, and its scope of mobilization does not go beyond the provincial border.This was no different from Yuan Zaishi's plan. Yuan divided the national army into the central army and the local army, and stipulated that the central army should be a regular army. The central army not only surpassed the local army in quantity, but also surpassed the local army in quality.At this time, most of the Beiyang Army had official designations, while the armies of the southwestern provinces were temporarily organized, and their designations were the XX Division of the Temporary Army of XX Province.Temporary reorganization means waiting for reorganization. After reorganization, it can be reorganized into the central army or local army.Since the Beiyang Army is a formal central army, it can naturally be transferred to the provinces to garrison at any time, but the local army cannot move freely.According to this principle, after Yuan's death, Duan Qirui still wanted to continue the established situation of the Beiyang Army stationed in the southwest, which caused an even more chaotic situation.Such as in Sichuan and Hunan provinces, especially Sichuan. Duan Qirui's request for disarmament in the southwestern provinces failed to achieve his goal, because at this time it was only a superficial peace and unity. In fact, the southwestern provinces still adopted a seemingly indifferent attitude towards Beijing, and continued to hold taxes and expand the army. Not only are the provinces unwilling to listen to the central government, but even the Progressive Party, which usually uses the pen as a weapon, wants to establish a private force in the Southwest. This ambition can be seen from Liang Qichao’s letter to his followers: “We call ourselves moderates, There used to be no basis for size, but Zhang Kongquan was used to shout for others, so it was always hijacked by others and used by others." The Progressive Party did not actually have any organization, but through the relationship between Liang Qichao and Cai E, He had some power in Sichuan and Guizhou, and later in Guangdong and Guangxi because of the relationship between Cen Chunxuan and Lu Rongting.Liang Qichao really wanted to turn Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan into the bases of the Progressive Party, establish a military base, and turn the Progressive Party into a party with strength and bases in order to strive for greater power in the central government. The situation of warlords and separatist regimes gradually formed out of these problems. The so-called freezing three feet did not happen overnight!