Chapter 8 second quarter

Let's first look at the background of Shi Zaifeng.Under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen and the Tongmenghui, by the winter of 1908, the anti-Qing revolutionaries had launched eight uprisings, namely the Guangzhou Uprising in 1895, the Sanzhoutian Uprising in Huizhou in 1900, the Chaozhou Huanggang Uprising in May 1907, and the June 1907 Uprising. The Qinvhu Uprising in Huizhou, the Fangcheng Uprising in Qinzhou in September 1907, the Zhennanguan Uprising in Guangxi in December 1907, the Qinzhou and Lianzhou Uprisings in Guangdong in March 1908, and the Hekou Uprising in Yunnan in April 1908.

The tide of the new era rushed towards the decadent Qing Dynasty wave after wave. However, centipedes are dead but not stiff.The dying Qing Dynasty could not improve people's livelihood, and could not resist foreign aggression, but its officers and soldiers all over the country still had the power to suppress the people's resistance.These eight uprisings all failed, and a large number of people with lofty ideals fell in a pool of blood. Can the Qing Dynasty be overthrown?After eight consecutive defeats, people at home and abroad were discouraged and suspicious. The winter of 1908 was extremely cold, and the leaders of the Tongmenghui fell into an extremely unfavorable situation of public opinion.

Wang Jingwei, who was twenty-five years old at the time, was an important leader of the Tongmenghui. He had served as the head of one of the first three departments of the Tongmenghui (the executive department, the appraisal department, and the justice department) for three years. This unfavorable public opinion is that when the revolution suffered heavy losses and morale was extremely low, the reformists who opposed the revolution lost no time in sneering.The most influential and lethal article is the article of Liang Qichao, who has great social prestige. Liang Qichao opposed violent revolution.Seeing the repeated defeats and repeated defeats of the revolutionaries, he wrote an article in the "Xinmin Congbao" to criticize the leaders of the revolutionary party: "You cheat people to death, and you enjoy high-rise luxury houses, but 'remote revolutionaries ' That's all".

The phrase "remote revolutionaries" immediately became the "symbol" of the leaders of the Tongmenghui: using revolutionary rhetoric as a call, inciting other people's children to die, you leaders are still alive and well abroad, so many uprisings, why don't you yourself go to the battlefield ?So many people died, why are you all fine?This accusation is really terrible. Following Liang Qichao's attack, there was a wave of criticism of the leaders of the Revolutionary Party among overseas Chinese. The leak in the house happened to meet with continuous rain, just when the Tongmenghui was in a difficult situation.There was another big conflict inside-some people accused Sun Yat-sen of corruption!

Sun Yat-sen is the supreme leader of the revolutionary camp. His enthusiasm, talent, thought, and character have great appeal both at home and abroad. The Revolutionary Fund of the Tongmenghui basically relies on his prestige to raise donations among overseas Chinese. raise.Why was this number one revolutionary being splashed with such a basin of sewage? This time the perpetrator was Zhang Binglin, editor-in-chief of Minbao, the official newspaper of the Tongmenghui. In 1907, according to the strong request of the Qing government, the Japanese government expelled Sun Yat-sen who was engaged in revolutionary activities in Japan.When he left, Sun Yat-sen publicly gave Sun Yat-sen more than 20,000 yen in donations (at that time, the monthly salary of ordinary Japanese wage earners was only 20 to 30 yen), while Sun Yat-sen only left 2,000 yuan for Min Pao, and the rest Take them all away.

"Minbao" has always had financial difficulties, and the editor-in-chief Zhang, who suffered from no money, went into a rage. He said that the money was given to the Revolutionary Party, not to you, Sun, and you use public funds for private purposes, which damages the prestige of the League , Japanese friends who also called donations looked down on me--this editor-in-chief, I quit, bye!In this way, Zhang Binglin's Zhejiang faction openly opposed Sun Yat-sen, announced that they would break away from the Tongmenghui and restore their previous "Recovery Society". Because Sun Yat-sen did not disclose the income and expenditure of funds, and money is the most sensitive matter, he fell into a passive state and rumors abounded.There was a "frenzy against Sun" within the Tongmenghui, and there was an embarrassing voice that "revolution must first revolutionize the life of the revolutionaries".

Under the double blow of criticism from "distant revolutionaries" and the "frenzy against grandchildren", the moral advantages of the Tongmenghui declined sharply, and a large number of people who were discouraged and suspicious of the revolution appeared, and the revolution was on the verge of failure for a while. How to survive this crisis?Sun Yat-sen's business was easy to handle. He was dumbfounded when he heard the accusations against him, and immediately wrote down a long material, listing the income and expenditure of the funds in detail. , He personally did not spend a penny from the public.What he didn't say was that, on the contrary, his brother Sun Mei had donated time and time again to the revolution, and almost all the profits from running the farm in Hawaii were squeezed away by this brother like milking.

So, how to counter the sarcasm of the "distant revolutionaries" with practical actions and restore the situation of public opinion?Worried, Wang Jingwei supported Sun Yat-sen unconditionally, and at the same time he came up with a solution: he would go to Beijing to assassinate senior officials of the Qing court, to show the society that the revolutionary leader is not a covetous person who fears death, and to restore the confidence of doubters. Who to assassinate?Wang Jingwei was determined to do something big, so that he would have a huge impact.The emperor at the time was three-year-old Xuantong, and he targeted several giants of Puyi's father's generation.

It was out of such a critical situation that Wang Jingwei, the Minister of Review of the League Committee, decided to carry out the assassination himself. Party members felt that it was uneconomical for a key leader to become an assassin. Wang Jingwei's friend Hu Hanmin and others strongly opposed it, and Sun Yat-sen did not support it at all. Sun Yat-sen has always believed that revolution is aboveboard, and assassination is the worst policy. He criticized the popular assassination behavior in the late Qing Dynasty: "The enemy's power has not been broken, and its evildoers are no more than the replacement of individuals A and B. I fight with the goodness of party members. The price is not worth it." When he knew Wang Jingwei's intentions, he immediately ordered Feng Ziyou to detain Wang Jingwei in Hong Kong.

And Wang Jingwei has made up his mind, and the arrow is on the string.Feng Ziyou only completed half of this task: when Wang Jingwei passed through Hong Kong on a French cruise ship, he stopped Wang Jingwei in Hong Kong for a period of time, but then Wang Jingwei slipped away quietly and went to Japan to organize an assassination group with like-minded people.