Chapter 43 Jiangxi: Fake seals, broken machine guns, and the governor

Revolution, in a sense, can also be said to be a game of grabbing chairs.People with ideals are indifferent to fame and wealth, and revolution is only to realize their ideals.But in the course of the revolution, there were not many people with ideals after all.When the revolution started, a lot of official hats fell off the ground and were picked up by a group of newcomers.The official hat itself, symbolizing money, status, glory and even women, has always been amazingly attractive.As long as the revolution is successful, someone will grab the official title.In the Revolution of 1911, the most dazzling official hat was the governor, the governor of a province, with the highest gold content and the most fierce competition.In the late Qing Dynasty, Jiangxi was an insignificant province. The east was not as important as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the west was not as important as the two lakes, the south was not as important as Guangdong, and the north was not as important as Anhui and Henan.Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as the traditional provinces of imperial examinations, have a large number of candidates.And Hunan and Anhui, because of the Hunan-Huaihe Army, are also in the limelight, and there are more people in the court.Therefore, Jiangxi, as the jurisdiction of the governor of Liangjiang, has always been a vassal of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It is said that it is poor or rich, and it exists in a very low-key manner.In the late Qing Dynasty, the new army was organized and trained. Jiangxi did not train an association (brigade) until the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution.However, it is precisely in Jiangxi, where everyone is not optimistic, that the competition for the governor is the most intense.Within a few months, they changed their owners one after another.

The Jiangxi uprising started quite early. Less than half a month after the Wuchang uprising, the Jiujiang new army mobilized, and a governor, Jiujiang governor Ma Yubao, was born.Then the Nanchang New Army also revolted. In places like Jiangxi, it seems impossible to have strong local officials. The governor and the New Army Association did not resist, and the soldiers were bloodless.In view of the fact that Wu Jiezhang, the commander of the new military association, was an honest man, the new army of the uprising pushed him to be the governor.Theoretically speaking, the governor Wu Jiezhang, like Li Yuanhong in Hubei, was elected by the revolutionaries as a non-revolutionary party member.However, he was incomparable with Li Yuanhong.Li Yuanhong was the governor of the First Uprising, which had a symbolic significance. In addition, he made some contributions later, and was supported by the constitutionalists and a group of military officers, so his position was stable.He is different from the governors in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces who have constitutional party background. The constitutionalists in Jiangxi have no roots in the first place, and he has nothing to do with the constitutionalists. His power base is only a few new army soldiers who elected him. .After the revolution, many members of the Hongjiang Society were released from the prison and came down from the mountain. These people, it seems, were all revolutionaries who had participated in the Ping Liuli Uprising back then.On the other hand, all the overseas students who came back from outside also claimed to be old revolutionaries, with older qualifications and stronger tempers.People on both sides kept their mouths shut, saying that they were sent by Sun Wen, and stretched out their hands to control the governor and important officials. If they refused, they pulled out their pistols and slapped the table.What's even more frightening is that since Hong Jianghui went down the mountain, these heroes of the rivers and lakes have been running amok in Nanchang City.To ask for a title, they call themselves division commanders and brigade commanders. They gather in groups, carry big knives, and tie hero knots on their heads.In the face of chaos, Wu Jiezhang was helpless, and generally could not control it.

The governor who couldn't control his affairs soon became the coveted target of careerists.Soon an "official letter" came to the governor's desk. The "official letter" was an order with a bright red seal on it: "Sun Wenzhang", which means Sun Wen's seal.A few words were impressively written on it: "Peng Chengwan is hereby appointed as the governor of Jiangxi." There is also a letter to whom I don't know: "Sun Wen and Huang Xing have held a meeting overseas to publicly elect Peng Chengwan, Guixi County, Guangxin Prefecture. Cheng Wan served as the governor of the Jiangxi Army, fearing that the army and the people would not admit it, he has sent a death squad of 100 people into the city to prepare to release bombs." Obviously, this order was fake, so fake that it made people laugh.Because only on the arrest warrant of the Qing Dynasty, Sun Wen was slanderously written as Sun Wen, and three dots of water were added, which meant that Sun Wen was a gangster.The real Sun Wen, how could he call himself Sun Wen?The letter was even more false. No matter how unbearable Sun Wen was, he would not send someone to throw bombs as a threat to become the governor for someone.However, Wu Jiezhang, the governor at the time, didn't know what was going on. He was just an officer in the new army of the Qing Dynasty. He didn't know whether Sun Wen's name was Wen or Wen, and he didn't have the heart to distinguish the real from the fake.The puppet governor who was pushed up was actually not comfortable doing it, and there was the threat of a death squad bomb, so he just stepped down.So, he really recruited Peng Chengwan to be the governor, abdicated himself and left.

Of course, the person who wrote this extortion letter was not Peng Chengwan. They pushed Peng Chengwan just to put someone more cowardly on top so they could do whatever they wanted.Before the revolution, Peng Chengwan was just a supervisor of a small surveying and mapping school, neither famous nor courageous.As a governor, he trembled when he spoke in front of people.After less than a month, I couldn't do it anyway, and the successor was Ma Yubao, the governor of Jiujiang.In less than two months in Jiangxi, three governors have been changed.It's not over yet.Because this Ma Yubao was not a revolutionary party before the revolution, and of course he did not have the background of a constitutional party, so his position was not stable.At this time, a "true son", a veteran revolutionary Li Liejun, came.Li Liejun was a Japanese military cadet who joined the Tongmenghui when he was in Japan.After returning to China, he has been working as an instructor in the Yunnan Lecture Hall. Before the Wuchang Uprising, he was ordered to participate in the Yongping Autumn Exercise. Hearing about the revolution halfway, he changed his way to the south.He first served as chief of staff at Ma Yubao, and then went to Wuchang. When he came back, he brought three Maxim machine guns, one of which still couldn't fire.He used these three machine guns to form a machine gun battalion.At that time, machine guns were still a rare thing, and Jiangxi was very backward, and people had never seen this thing.With these three machine guns, Li Liejun became the governor, and also used machine guns to rectify order.Not long after he took office, he publicly arrested some leaders of the Hongjiang Society who were doing evil. He is a genuine revolutionary party. He is not afraid of these factions. After the public trial, he was executed with a machine gun. Learned the power of machine guns.Then put two machine guns at the gate of the Dudu Mansion, one is good, the other is not fired, but it is enough to bluff people.Those who wanted to fight for the position, even if they were not afraid of Li Liejun, were afraid of machine guns, and disappeared for a while.

In this way, Li Liejun, the governor, was firmly established, and no one dared to challenge his position again.The order in Jiangxi has also begun to restore, and the army has also been rectified.After Yuan Shikai came to power, Jiangxi was the province with the most stable position among the provinces where the revolutionaries became the governor.This is also why the second revolution later, only Jiangxi's resistance was decent.All of this, traced back to the source, was thanks to those broken machine guns.