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

by Edwin John Dingle

But leaving for the moment the fighting, we come to the Bund, in the afternoon, to watch the Red Cross Association conducting its errands of mercy. Out on the Bund—some shot through the head, through the limbs, through the body, all showing up in ghastly significance the horror of this war—we see ten, twenty, thirty, forty of the dead laid out for burial. Foreigners and Chinese all lend a hand to tie the bodies in matting, others heave them into the carts, the pavements are littered with the discarded coats and implements of war which the dead still held as evidence of this civil butchery; on a little way farther one finds a group of wounded on the grass plots waiting for the stretcher-bearers to return to take them to the hospitals. One was a mother with a little baby, the baby dying, the mother mortally wounded; others were civilians who had shown no fight; others were trained soldiers; others were recruits who had run at the sound of the machine-guns, shot in the back. Then there is the rumble of the wheels as cartload after cartload of the covered dead are conveyed out of sight, and the police set to work to pick up the blood-stained uniforms, the money-pouches, the little knick-knacks of the Chinese soldier's paraphernalia. All is so sad, so significant.

Meantime over across the way the shells were falling into the capital of Wuchang. The air was rent again and again by the sharp booming of the Imperial big guns on Coffin Hill. Men came and went, looked down at the pools of human blood that were swelling the rivers of blood through which China has yet to pass before this Revolution ends. The river was deserted. If a sampan ventured out into the stream rifles were set to work, and a hasty retreat was made. The people were downcast.

And this young Chinese, sent specially from General Li, who called upon me before I was dressed, had come asking whether I could not send a message from Li Yuan Hung to the world. "We don't want to fight any more!" he excitedly exclaimed. "General Li is genuinely anxious that peace should be declared, that slaughter on this wholesale scale should be stopped forthwith. Although this reverse has overcome the Revolutionary Army, our cause on the field is not by any means lost. Even if we have lost Hanyang, it does not follow that our fighting strength is gone, and if it becomes necessary General Li will alter the base of fighting operations, a scheme which the Imperialists had under consideration before their victory yesterday. None were more surprised than the Imperialists themselves when they were able to march up Hanyang Hill without having to fire a shot. But the fact that they are in possession of Hanyang does not necessarily mean that the military conquest is entirely won, for if needs be we shall be able continually to augment our army from other provinces until such time as in the very nature of things the Imperial Army will have been weeded out, man for man, or two to one, or three, or four if necessary."

I was sorry I was unable to help him.

I learned subsequently that, just an hour or so before Hanyang actually changed hands, Yuan Shih K'ai wired from Peking to the British Acting Consul-General here, asking him to inform General Li that he was anxious to hear what terms he proposed that peace might be established. This was just at the moment that Hanyang was passing.

What was to be the outcome of this Hunan dissension any one who knew the Hunanese would not be inclined to say offhand, but the fact that there has always been some little contempt mutually between the Hupehese and the Hunanese probably magnified the dissension in the military that occurred. One of the first arts of warfare is to cut off the pursuers. Now, when the Hunan men were in the city of Hanyang the Friday previous there was a little teashop squabble between a couple of dozen men, the Hupeh men being accused of flinching the hard graft of the front line. To this squabble is traced directly the capture of Hanyang by the enemy.

"We are always sent to the front," said the Hunanese; "we are getting less pay, doing more work, suffering heavier losses in our ranks."

Then one word brought forth another, the party offered to have a fight on the spot, some picked up their rifles and discharged a few shots, and one or two men were wounded. After that the Hupeh men were placed on the front line.

On the Saturday during a sharp engagement, in which the Revolutionists got the worst of it, a retreat at the double was made; the Revolutionary gunners opened with their three-inchers and endeavoured to cut off the pursuers, but instead dropped their shells among the first lines of their own men as they retreated. Upon this the Hunan men swore vengeance as they saw their comrades falling thickly around them. When they got under cover they refused to fight any more. They almost at once commenced to go back to Wuchang, where they declared they were going to talk terms with General Li, and so they lost one of the most impregnable positions in the whole of China—a veritable Chinese Gibraltar. And when the Imperialists were able to march upon Hanyang they never had such a delightful surprise in their lives. In conversation with an Imperial officer, who was leading the first regiment to get into the city, I was told that they had almost given up all idea of ever capturing Hanyang. Had the Revolutionary men been kept under better control while off duty this never would have happened. The Imperialists stood a far greater risk of having dissension creeping in among their men, but they took great care that no such loophole should be offered to them. In Wuchang the people, essentially Chinese, talked so wildly about this Revolutionary reverse that it was found necessary to remove the heads of several, and war talk became absolutely taboo on the streets.