China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War

by Edwin John Dingle

In the deepening half-light the flashes brilliantly lit up the deck, and as the bursting shells dropped they lit up the yellow of the water with a peculiar grotesqueness. Over the head of the cruiser came shells from Kinshan, and with the Hai Yung shelling as fast as she could discharge her guns, with the Imperial three-inchers working as hard as the men could work them, and the Revolutionary battery over across sending shells from four guns, and each party fired with that spirit which in war makes men work with superhuman activity, it may well be imagined that the triple bombardment was something that had never been seen in the Yangtze Valley before. Chinese were jumping with excitement the whole way along the Bund, and the Sabbath peace was broken by a scene which will long remain vividly in the memories of those fortunate enough to be on the spot at the time. As for myself, my position on the coalheap was as good as it was possible to get. I was anxious to get down to Kilometre Ten to see what damage had been done, but I was informed that on no consideration whatever would any foreigner be allowed outside the barrier. Another engagement was expected that night, the guard told me, and so I came away. Meantime the Hai Yung had dropped down-river out of the range of the Imperialist guns, where she still pounded away with shells that fell in the vicinity of the station. The reason that she had been allowed to come up-river unmolested was because the Imperialists had not recognised her flag, mistaking her for a foreign man-of-war. When the darkness came on and the flashlights from the warships lit up the Concessions and the surrounding neighbourhood, it was slowly borne in upon one that the Chinese War of the Revolution was by no means overpast. Fighting in the land lines continued all night.

* * * * *

During these days Li Yuan Hung remained at Wuchang; here drilling was going on feverishly. There was organising and preparing for the great effort which was to strike at the central stronghold of the Imperialists. But in Li's heart there was the hope still that Yuan would show a more reasonable front. I was in close touch with Li about this time. Every one who saw him daily, looked upon a man, definite to a degree in aim and purpose, free from self-aggrandisement and selfishness in any form. His aim first and last was to uplift his country, to win the throne for the Han people, and to work with all his might for the downfall of Manchu rule, for by that alone, he believed, could China forge ahead as such a mighty nation deserved and as her brightest sons desired that she should. And now, although others declared that in the new Republican party there would be dissension and strife when the Government were brought down to a concrete basis, General Li Yuan Hung declared that he had sufficient faith in the cause to believe that all his political associates, far from desiring personal benefit, would readily concede the highest positions to the men best fitted to fill them. That was the keynote of Li Yuan Hung's popularity; he believed in the cause, and he had faith in his supporters. When at the start he refused to take the lead, and, essentially Chinese, tried all sorts of schemes to test the safety of his position, he nobly declared what his policy whilst in office would be. He declared that he would set out to work, at all costs and no matter what the personal consequences, for a course that would be straight and true for China and the Chinese.

He declared his ambition would first be concentrated in the overthrowing of the Manchus; what subsequently would be his course was to be decided mainly by the trend of resulting circumstances. At the gathering of the officers of the Revolutionary party, who were anxious to make him their leader, I do not think there was a single man present, even Liu King, who, looking into the future as far as he then could see, thought that in less than a month this Japanese-trained officer of the Hupeh Army, with nothing about him to strike one that he was a born leader of men, would have come to the very forefront of the platform of the political world. Liu King certainly did not believe Li Yuan Hung had so much in him.

It was believed—was there one foreigner in the three cities here who thought otherwise at the very start of the outbreak?—that the Revolution would break out, that the Imperial Army would come down in great force and massacre every manjack in the Revolutionary Army, and that that would be the end of it all. At the start there were so many thousands, not only in this centre but throughout the Empire, who were merely neutral, who were sitting on the fence, prepared to dive down either side at the moment it paid them to take the dive. But the men of the Revolutionary Army were confident. The units of the army knew that they had Li at the head, they knew that Li had always had the name of being the best man in the Hupeh Model Army, although he was not in supreme command, and they were content to fight under him. There was in all circles, however, except the military circle, a good deal of scepticism. Every one was on the look-out for sensations. No one knew what would happen, and no one cared to guess. But behind it all stood Li, looking on and seeing all. He had sworn allegiance to his party, and he expected his party to stand by him. He was the man who believed in the scheme he was prepared to pull through, and he believed in the men who were pulling with him. Yuan Shih K'ai doubted him, his ability, his political party, and thought them a set of upstarts. Therefore was it that he would not listen to their talk, and took their pleading with him to join their party as a sign of weakness. But Yuan, though he had made few political mistakes himself, never committed a bigger blunder than this. For the time he was prepared to hold aloof, and to fight on still, rather than take the cue of his adversary in battle and give up fighting for a lost cause.

The situation as it concerned foreigners in the Concessions was now most acute. Everybody was abusing the Consuls. Around the Concessions, mad with rage and neither side entertaining any bewildering affection for foreigners, were sixty thousand troops. The French community, tired of talking, so it seemed, took the bull by the horns and wired to the French Government over the head of their Consul, and that the same spirit actuated the greater part of the international population here will be judged from what comes hereafter. The French residents telegraphed from Hankow to Paris as follows:—

"French colony and others under the jurisdiction of the French consulate request me to ask you to communicate the following to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: We consider that we are now in a critical situation. In consequence of the departure of cruisers, the international landing force is reduced to five hundred marines. We are surrounded by sixty thousand belligerents. All is to be feared from the Imperialist troops if abandoned to themselves, or undisciplined Revolutionary troops. We are at the mercy of every anti-foreign movement. Insist on immediate dispatch of troops from Tientsin or Tonking."

A week previous a message was sent from Hankow by a high British authority—to be fair to the British Acting Consul-General, he did not know that the message was sent away—telling the world that with us all was well, and the next week the French people here wired to their Government, ignoring the representative here of the French nation, asking that troops be sent forthwith. Throughout the war up to the present time the Concessions had been sufficiently manned with troops to prevent an onslaught by either army. When the first big battle started there seemed to be excellent defence as the situation then was, but, whilst the scene of action was moving constantly down at the back of the Concessions towards the native city and danger each day becoming greater, no one believed it possible that the Consular Body were taking no steps to ensure efficient protection of foreign subjects and their interests here. When the Loyalist big guns were at the back of the Concession (British as they continued up to the taking of Hanyang) not until the local Press drew forceful attention to the fact that the British Acting Consul-General owed it to the British community to get the guns removed, and thus save the returning fire of the enemy being drawn into the Concession, was there any action taken. Again and again was indignation shown at the "face" the British were losing with the Chinese over the matter; but it seemed not to disturb consular authorities. Protest was made—once only, I believe—and the promise then was given that the guns should be shifted. But the promise was broken, and for weeks one heard the constant boom of the biggest gun the Imperialists had with them pounding away not three hundred yards from the British Concession border, in precisely the same position as the Loyalist officers promised King George's representative it should be shifted from. And in addition to that, on November 17th they again took up their old position with a battery at Tachimen, from which position they were also asked to remove, thus having wilfully ignored all British requests.

A study of the map of the field will show immediately that the position of the Concessions was, to say the least, eminently dangerous. The main battery behind the Concessions had guns pointing towards Wuchang, naturally drawing the Wuchang fire, shells from which dropped more often in the Concession than out of it when the aim was taken for Coffin Hill battery; it also had guns pointing to Hanyang, drawing that return fire, which had the gravest probability of falling over the Concession border. I should think that a mild estimate of shells dropped in the Concessions during that week would be one hundred. But there was another danger: in their flanking movement the Revolutionists were endeavouring to shell the Coffin Hill battery, meaning at once that their shells were fired, not by the sides of the Concessions but bang into them. There was another danger still: the Imperialists, if they were driven back, would undoubtedly make for the Concessions, and flee through them. "It's not human nature," as the British Acting-Consul said a day or two before to a British subject, "to expect the Revolutionists not to chase them."

It may easily be left to the reader to answer for himself whether a complement of five hundred troops—the maximum of a defence force that could be mustered from the gunboats that moment in the port—could hold the port against this grave possibility. It was surely not too much for international subjects to ask of their Consuls that troops be sent for and that a fair defence scheme be inaugurated forthwith for the protection of their lives and their property. Again, however, I should like to say that I am not writing in any carping spirit. I am among those who, far from anathematising or criticising, and remembering that it is the easiest thing in the world to ridicule, realise that at such times of crisis in China each Consul should be supported by every loyal subject. But it certainly seemed to me that the consular body—not one individual only, but the whole body—by its continued inaction rendered foreigners in Hankow a bad account of what they were there for. One could easily write up what the soldiery might have done if they once had run riot in the Concession, and such an eventuality to those who know their China is not without the range of what easily could have transpired; but it would be sensational and probably useless.