The Scholar Liang Chi-chao, sometime Minister of Justice, and the foremost "Brain" in China.
It was evident from the beginning that pride prevented Yuan Shih-kai from retreating from the false position he had taken up. Under his instructions the State Department sent a stream of powerful telegraphic messages to Yunnan attempting to dissuade the Republican leaders from revolt. But the die had been cast and very gravely the standard of rebellion was raised in the capital city of Yunnan and the people exhorted to shed their blood. Everything pointed to the fact that this rising was to be very different from the abortive July outbreak of 1913. There was a soberness and a deliberation about it all which impressed close observers with a sense of the ominous end which was now in sight.
Still Peking remained purblind. During the month of January the splendour of the dream empire, which was already dissolving into thin air, filled the newspapers. It was reported that an Imperial Edict printed on Yellow Paper announcing the enthronement was ready for universal distribution: that twelve new Imperial Seals in jade or gold were being manufactured: that a golden chair and a magnificent State Coach in the style of Louis XV were almost ready. Homage to the portrait of Yuan Shih-kai by all officials throughout the country was soon to be ordered; sycophantic scholars were busily preparing a volume poetically entitled "The Golden Mirror of the Empire," in which the virtues of the new sovereign were extolled in high-sounding language. A recondite significance, it was said, was to be given to the old ceremonial dress, which was to be revived, from the fact that every official would carry a Hu or Ivory Tablet to be held against the breast. The very mention of this was sufficient to make the local price of ivory leap skywards! In the privacy of drawing-rooms the story went the rounds that Yuan Shih-kai, now completely deluded into believing in the success of his great scheme, had held a full dress rehearsal of a ceremony which would be the first one at his new Court when he would invest the numerous ladies of his establishment with royal rank. Seated on his Throne he had been engaged in instructing these interested females, already robed in magnificent costumes, in the parts they were to play, when he had noticed the absence of the Korean Lady—a consort he had won, it is said, in his Seoul days in competition against the Japanese Envoy accredited to Korea, thereby precipitating the war of 1894-95.[[19]] The Korean Lady had refused to enter the Throne-room, he was told, because she was dissatisfied with the rank he proposed to confer on her. Sternly he sent for her and told her to take her place in the circle. But no sooner had she arrived than hysterically she screamed, "You told me when you wedded me that no wife would be my superior: now I am counted only a secondary consort." With that she hurled herself at the eldest wife who was occupying the post of honour and assailed her bitterly. Amidst the general confusion the would-be-Emperor hastily descended from his Throne and vainly intervened, but the women were not to be parted until their robes were in tatters.
In such childishnesses did Peking indulge when a great disaster was preparing. To explain what had occurred in Yunnan it is necessary to go back and tell the story of a remarkable young Chinese—General Tsao-ao, the soul of the new revolt.
In the revolution of 1911 each province had acted on the assumption that it possessed inherent autonomous rights and could assume sovereignty as soon as local arrangements had allowed the organization of a complete provisional government. Yunnan had been one of the earliest provinces to follow the lead of the Wuchang rebels and had virtually erected itself into a separate republic, which attracted much attention because of the iron discipline which was preserved. Possessing a fairly well-organized military system, largely owing to the proximity of the French frontier and the efforts which a succession of Viceroys had made to provide adequate frontier defence, it was amply able to guarantee its newly won autonomy. General Tsao-ao, then in command of a division of troops had been elected Generalissimo of the province; and bending himself to his task in very few weeks he had driven into exile all officials who adhered to the Imperialist cause and made all local institutions completely self-supporting. Even in 1911 it had been reported that this young man dreamed of founding a dynasty for himself in the mountains of South China—an ambition by no means impossible of realization since he had received a first-class military education in the Tokio Military Schools and was thoroughly up-to-date and conversant with modern theories of government.
These reports had at the time greatly concerned Yuan Shih-kai who heard it stated by all who knew him that the Yunnan leader was a genius in his own way. In conformity with his policy of bringing to Peking all who might challenge his authority, he had induced General Tsao-ao, since the latter had played no part in the rebellion of 1913, to lay down his office of Yunnan Governor-General and join him in the capital at the beginning of 1914—another high provincial appointment being held out to him as a bait.
Once in Peking, however, General Tsao-ao had been merely placed in charge of an office concerned with the reorganization of the land-tax, nominally a very important piece of work long advocated by foreign critics. But as there were no funds available, and as the purpose was plainly merely to keep him under observation, he fretted at the restraint, and became engaged in secret political correspondence with men who had been exiled abroad. As he was soon an open suspect, in order to avoid arrest he had taken the bold step at the very inception of the monarchy movement of heading the list of Generals in residence in Peking who petitioned the Senate to institute a Monarchy, this act securing him against summary treatment. But owing to his secret connection with the scholar Liang Chi-chao, who had thrown up his post of Minister of Justice and left the capital in order to oppose the new movement, he was watched more and more carefully—his death being even hinted at.
He was clever enough to meet this ugly development with a masterly piece of trickery conceived in the Eastern vein. One day a carefully arranged dispute took place between him and his wife, and the police were angrily called in to see that his family and all their belongings were taken away to Tientsin as he refused any longer to share the same roof with them. Being now alone in the capital, he apparently abandoned himself to a life of shameless debauch, going nightly to the haunts of pleasure and becoming a notorious figure in the great district in the Outer City of Peking which is filled with adventure and adventuresses and which is the locality from which Haroun al-Raschid obtained through the medium of Arab travellers his great story of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp." When governmental suspicions were thoroughly lulled, he arranged with a singing-girl to let him out by the backdoor of her house at dawn from whence he escaped to the railway-station, rapidly reaching Tientsin entirely unobserved.
The morning was well-advanced before the detectives who nightly watched his movements became suspicious. Then finding that his whereabouts were unknown to the coachman dozing on the box of his carriage, they roughly entered the house where he had passed the night only to find that the bird had flown. Hasty telegrams were dispatched in every direction, particularly to Tientsin—the great centre for political refugees—and his summary arrest ordered. But fortune favoured him. A bare quarter-of-an-hour before the police began their search he had embarked with his family on a Japanese steamer lying in the Tientsin river and could snap his fingers at Yuan Shih-kai.
Once in Japan he lost no time in assembling his revolutionary friends and in a body they embarked for South China. As rapidly as possible he reached Yunnan province from Hongkong, travelling by way of the French Tonkin railway. Entering the province early in December he found everything fairly ready for revolt, though there was a deficiency in arms and munitions which had to be made good. Yuan Shih-kai, furious at this evasion, had telegraphed to confidential agents in Yunnan to kill him at sight, but fortunately he was warned and spared to perform his important work. Had a fortnight of grâce been vouchsafed him, he would have probably made the most brilliant modern campaign that has been witnessed in China, for he was an excellent soldier. Acting from the natural fortress of Yunnan it was his plan to descend suddenly on the Yangtsze Valley by way of Chungking and to capture the upper river in one victorious march thus closing the vast province of Szechuan to the Northern troops. But circumstances had made it imperative for him and his friends to telegraph the Yunnan ultimatum a fortnight sooner than it should have been dispatched, and the warning thus conveyed to the Central Government largely crippled the Yunnan offensive.