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

by Edwin John Dingle

Steep was the descent and quick was the pace. As had been the Ming Dynasty five centuries ago, so had become their so promising succeeding race. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." There had been that irritating intercourse with the outside world, and the war—disastrous to China—consequent upon the proud Empire's attempt to treat all foreign peoples as vassals of the Son of Heaven. But it was hoped that with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking wiser councils would prevail, and that the Chinese had learned to respect the foreigners, or at least the thunder of their guns. But "such was the gross ignorance of the educated and leading men of China in regard to foreign nations, it was believed that they were utterly beneath the contempt of China." The war had taught them no lesson. China's officials were as arrogant as ever. The civil administration was equally incapable of dealing with and directing the affairs of State.

In fact, there was a parallel between the Empire at the time under review and the conditions that obtained when the storm of Revolution burst on Wuchang last tenth of October, as will have been seen in former parts of this volume.

Everywhere there had existed secret societies, or numbers of men banded together by oath to destroy the "Manchu usurpers," and ever and again some malcontent or another would set up the banner of insurrection, and to him would flock all the discontents and bandits of the neighbourhood. This is the opportunity of the secret society men. The cry of "China for the Chinese" is raised, patriotic feelings are appealed to, and save for the fact that the secret is always betrayed at headquarters long before the would-be revolutionaries are ready, any year of the past century might have seen a repetition of the scenes which are briefly referred to here. Ten years after the Treaty of Nanking news came that one Hung Siu-Chuen, amongst the mountain fastnesses of the south, with a small band of men known as the Society of Worshippers of God, had placed himself at the head of the discontented people—driven to rebellion by official persecution—and was defeating the Imperial troops everywhere. He claimed the Throne, called himself the Tien-wang ("celestial or heavenly king"), and styled his new Dynasty the Taiping ("Great Peace"). To usher in the Golden Age was the work to which he dedicated himself. Threefold was his desire for freedom. The people groaned under the tyranny of an alien power, and so desired civil liberty; they were cursed by the superstition and idolatry to which they had given themselves, and so desired religious liberty; they saw the craving of opium blighting the lives of their best, and so were fighting for moral liberty for the nation. All Manchus were ruthlessly put to the sword, all temples and idols were utterly destroyed, and all traffic in or smoking of opium was sternly prohibited. In the early stages of the movement the moral forces of Christianity, the religious opinions that seemed to hold sway in the minds of the Taipings, and the high aims of the leaders of the movement made missionaries and Christians at home think that China was to arise from the ashes of her destroyed paganism, clothed in the fair garments of Christianity. Reports to the Dragon Throne informed the Emperor that the rebels were in full flight. As a matter of fact, they were carrying everything before them. They swept triumphantly through the provinces of Kwangsi and Hunan, then on to the busy mart of Hankow in Hupeh; there, freighting a thousand junks with their spoils, they swept on down the Yangtze to the ancient capital of the Ming Dynasty—Nanking. This city fell after a brief siege, and with its fall the initial work in preparing the way for a new kingdom was come. If—and in the "if" is perhaps the reason of the collapse of the movement—if the new-made king had known how to construct after he had done the work of destruction, there would have been a lasting revolution instead of an almost forgotten rebellion. One authority, who was in China at the time, says that the very success of the movement seems to have not only affected for the worse the principles of its leaders and the morals of the Taipings, but also to have attracted a great many of the baser sort to it. Dr. Martin, in his "A Cycle of Cathay," says: "He, the Tien-wang, sanctioned robbery and violence, and himself set the example of polygamy, an example eagerly followed by his subordinates, who had no scruple in filling their harems with the wives and daughters of their enemies." The opinion of the outside Powers concerning the insurgents was not improved by the atrocities of a horde of secret-society men, who belonged to the Triad Society, and were sometimes called Redheads. These were regarded as being part of the Taiping Army, though having really no connection with it or with the aims of its leaders. Their awful cruelty and bloodshed in capturing Shanghai not only induced the French to expel them, but alienated the sympathies of the foreign Powers from the Taipings themselves. One other fact should be mentioned. The foreign merchants were also prejudiced against the rebels. This is easily understandable. Trade was at a standstill throughout one-third of the Empire, and that the part most easily accessible; and at the same time the stringent laws against the use of opium caused the sympathies of some to be against the movement. First, an American, General Ward, organised a force of foreigners and natives and showed the Chinese Government what a trained soldiery could do. Then, General Gordon was lent to the Imperialists by the British Government. One by one the cities were retaken, until at last, with the fall of Nanking, after a protracted siege and the suicide of the Tien-wang, the rebellion came to an end.

At this juncture of the present Revolution, when so many are clamouring for foreign intervention, and when individual foreigners are taking it upon themselves to address the leaders of the parties in the interests of an early peace, it is well to pause and give due weight to the arguments of the other side. From the very beginning of this struggle the foreign Powers have been firmly but respectfully asked to keep their hands off. This is a domestic matter. The Chinese wish to be allowed to fight the thing out. A premature patching up of so great an upheaval would be far more disastrous than a peace deferred. The movement is a people's movement. The nation knows its own mind on the matter, and is intent on seeing its will carried into effect. That will may be guided into right and safe channels; but to thwart it by interference from without would be like attempting to dam up the Yangtze—an operation fraught with dire disaster to all concerned.

The suppression of a revolution ab extra always reverses the wheels of progress, and in this instance who can tell by how many centuries it has postponed the adoption of Christianity by the Chinese? ... Looking back at this distance of time, with all the light of subsequent history upon the events, we are still inclined to ask whether a different policy might not have been better for China. Had foreign Powers promptly recognised the Taiping chief on the outbreak of the second war, might it not have shortened a chapter of horrors that dragged on for fifteen more years, ending in the Nien-fei and Mohammedan rebellions and causing the loss of fifty millions of human lives.... More than once, when the insurgents were on the verge of success, the prejudice of short-sighted diplomats decided against them, and an opportunity was lost such as does not occur once in a thousand years."[[2]] Other witnesses of these times and events speak in a similar strain. On the other hand, it has to be remembered that there was no little failure on the part of the Taiping Wang to realise the need for reconstruction of a new kingdom, and seeming lack of ability to use the fruits of his victories. The suppression of the Taipings took fourteen years (1850-64). The outside world has forgotten, if it ever knew, the extent and horrors of that terrible time. Not so the Chinese people. Small wonder is it that when Li Yuan Hung's army began their terrible slaughter of the Manchus in Wuchang, young and old, rich and poor, taking only such clothes as they wore or such goods as they could carry, quietly and in a sort of unorganised order started, eight hundred thousand of them, on their flight from doomed Hankow. For there were many who still remembered the coming of the dreaded Taipings, and still shuddered at the thought of that "tomb of the seventy thousand" outside Wuchang city, and still remembered the similar flight of fifty years ago. They knew, too, of the Taiping rebellion, that nine provinces had been desolated by it. Towns and cities had been left mere heaps of ruins (like unto Hankow at this present time), and in them wild beasts had their dens, while some twenty millions of people had been sacrificed in that terrible struggle of a nation at war with itself.

Almost concurrently with the Taiping movement came the great Mohammedan rebellion, under the leadership of Yakub Beg. About this time there was more than one attempt on the part of Islam to avenge the insults of the arrogant Chinese, a by no means insignificant rising, occurring in Yunnan, where the Panthays, taking advantage of the Taiping troubles, captured the western half of Yunnan, and made Talifu their capital, under Sultan Sulieman. But by far the greatest rising, both in duration and effect, was that of the north-west, which originated in eastern Turkestan, swept over the Tien-Shan Mountains, into Ili, on through Kansu, and into the province of Shensi.

If ever a time seemed favourable to the Revolutionary cause, surely this was the time. The Taiping rebellion was not yet quelled, China was embroiled with England, and the rebel chief was able without serious opposition to hold on his triumphant way. Yakub Beg was so brilliantly successful in his "holy war" that he was styled the "Champion Father" by the Mohammedan world. At last had arisen the man who would, under Allah's blessing, purge away the stain of insult from the "Faithfuls'" escutcheon. It did really seem as if a permanent kingdom had been founded in this north-western section of the Flowery Land, and that a new leader was to be the first of a long line of Mohammedan kings. Then one of those unanticipated changes occurred—that is, unanticipated by the casual observer of things Chinese. In little more than a decade from the first raising of the standard of rebellion, Yakub Beg died, a broken and a beaten man, away in far distant Korla. For the army which had been trained in the hard school of experience of fighting the Taipings was, under the excellent leadership of General Tso, practically invincible when the undisciplined fanatic hordes hurled themselves against it. City after city was retaken, until in 1878 the rebellion was at an end, and the times that had been were only a horrible nightmare in the memories of those who had endured, suffered, and fortunately escaped with lives.

The last of these great political movements, which must be briefly referred to here was generally known as the Boxer uprising. This, like the Taiping rebellion, had as its origin that spirit of enmity that has ever been manifested between the north and the south. Never was this struggle so manifestly obvious as during this great movement that is still taking place in China. The very names of "Northern Army" and "Southern Army," used by the Hankow populace in everyday parlance when speaking of the opposing forces under Yuan Shih K'ai and Li Yuan Hung respectively, vouches for evidence of the truth of the statement. In that valuable contribution towards the history of the inwardness of the Boxer movement, "China Under the Empress-Dowager,"[[3]] this eternal quarrel between the north and the south is well worked out. We need do no other than refer the reader to it in passing. In fact, the cause of the Reform movement of 1898 was that the versatile scholars of the south had captivated the mind of the young Emperor, and had led him to issue his celebrated Reform Edict. On the other hand, jealous of their southern opponents, the wily men of the north used their influence with Jung-Lu and the Empress-Dowager to bring about the coup d'état that practically dethroned the Emperor and was the first of a series of retrogressive steps culminating in the enlisting of the Patriotic Harmony Train-bands (Boxers), to Rid China of the Accursed Presence of the Foreigners.

Since the time of the Taipings a new element of contention had crept into State politics—the foreigner. Whether as missionary or merchant, as financier or diplomat, the "foreigner" was now a force to be reckoned with, and after this brief review we shall note how all these factors paved the way for perhaps the greatest movement of all, the Revolution of 1911-12. Away in the Kwan district of Shantung there existed a secret society rejoicing in the euphemistic title of Plum Blossom Fists. The late Tuan Fang, when issuing his famous proclamation that all missionaries should be protected in his province, compared these Boxers to the White Lily Society[[4]] which had done so much to bring about the downfall of the Yuan Dynasty in the fourteenth century.

But in these Plum Blossom Fists there was something more than the usual spirit animating the secret-society men. There was the newly awakened "patriotism"—a word and an idea just taking hold of the student throughout the country. The utter defeat of China in her short, sharp conflict with the Japanese, that hitherto despised "nation of dwarfs," caused a thrill of indignation throughout the Empire. "What are you going to do now?" I asked a young student, just through his college course. The answer came pat. "I am going to Japan to study military tactics, and so help save my country," a reply pregnant with meaning. But the Plum Blossom Fists had much to learn before they could come under the spell of that young student's idea. They were the ones to save China. Themselves invulnerable, their mission from Heaven itself, their cause righteous, there could be only victory for them and salvation for their country!