On November 27th, Yuan Shih Kai, the premier-dictator at Peking, had poured out the treasures of the Manchu empress dowager’s private chest, and well paid and well armed troops were rushed to Hankau. Generals Feng and Wong Chou Yuen had 30,000 modern drilled and equipped men, and the divisions were heavily supplied with precise artillery. Hankau City and Hanyang arsenal across the river were bombarded mercilessly, and the imperialists of Wong’s bloody third division, under cover of this artillery practise, crossed the Han River thirty miles up and flanked the left wing of the rebels, whose old Armstrong artillery, using percussion shells, was no match for the modern three and four-inch guns of the imperialists, who had the arsenals of the north and the Germans at Kiaochou to draw on. Neither was the rebel infantry equal, as half of their regiments had been drawn back to Nanking, 400 miles away, by river. The best the rebels could do was to oppose 15,000 men, with weak artillery, to 30,000 excellently equipped imperialists. The result was that the all-important Hanyang arsenal and world-wide known iron works were lost, and Generals Li and Hwang Hing had to retreat to Wuchang, the rebel capital across the Yangtze River, which is a difficult place to defend, as its flanks and rear are vulnerable. The result of this great reverse was that the lukewarm viceroys in the northern provinces, who had gone over to the rebels’ cause in the first flush of success, began to declare again for the Manchus. Shangtung province went back, and Yuan Shih Kai by the telegraph on this day got his own province of Honan to return to the imperial fold. Both of these are northern provinces. Premier Yuan now began rushing reinforcements down the Grand Canal and railway to Yangchow and Pukow, nearly opposite Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of the revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the rebellion in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign men, money and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring and enthusiasm favored the rebels, whose American-trained students recited the dictum of Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when governed by tyrants, were superior in war to none of their neighbors, but when freed from tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows that as long as they were oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as laboring for a master, but when they were free every man was zealous to labor for the State.”
There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what would they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their leaders, Doctor Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent satisfaction with the rule of a native president and congress over twenty-one provincial presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty task,—the greatest the world has known,—and few of the old viceroys and Manchuized Chinese literati of the Hanlin were at heart prepared for its radical solution. True, the rebels could staff the twenty-one provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu province men, but that was not republican home rule.
The aim and difficulty of the rebels was to maintain the new ideas against reverses in the provinces, which had developed few modern thinkers among the officials, who, like the troops, were looking for salary first and country afterward. Yuan, the premier-dictator, who had weighed it all up in Honan, said to himself, according to some southern critics: “Give me money enough for 100,000 splendid, modern-drilled northern men, and give me trunk railways. I’ll find men who will fight for whichever side pays their wages; we must have order, which is civilization’s first law.” Yuan was a believer in that truism that the radical reformers do all the work, and bear all the risk of reform, and that the “standpatters”, the moderate progressives and reactionaries, enjoy all the fruit and political offices. Differently from Sun, Yuan wanted office first and influence afterward. He was now active in soliciting foreign loans, securing $1,000,000 from Russia and Belgium, and the promise of $30,000,000 from Russia, Belgium and Japan, these being the pro-Manchu powers, while America and Britain represented pro-Chinese sympathies. The rebels were just as active in soliciting private subscriptions in America and the Straits Settlements, and 70 per cent. of the Chinese abroad sent a quarter of their fortunes to Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai for the republican cause.
However, it must be admitted that when the Manchus recruited Yuan Shih Kai, the Honanese, they secured a tower of strength, another Li Hung Chang, to a large degree a dictator, a believer in money, troops, quick trial by drumhead, and decapitation, a good servant of any master who would steadily employ him; a believer in dynasties more than peoples, a modern progressive but not an idealist or natural republican, a man who hated the words “turbulent liberty”, but who loved the word “order”; a statesman more like Diaz, Bismarck or Richelieu than like Washington or Lincoln. He had never traveled abroad like thousands of other Chinese officials. He could not speak or read English, and so knew little of the great documents of liberty and idealism in their first fire of the original. He knew that he was smashing rapid progress for the second time, just as he had gone against the reform Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and the palace reformers from Canton: Kang Yu Wei, Liang Chi Choa, etc., in 1898, and joined the reactionary “Boxer” dowager empress, Tse Hsi. He feared the rebel sympathizers might assassinate him, and he rode as dictator about Peking with a cavalry escort. His headquarters were in the modern Wai Wu Pu Building, which is fitted with steam heat, elevators, electric light, etc. There he gave regular interviews to the foreign press representatives, in emulation of the methods long practised by Sunyacius and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai. He made the Manchus weak, too, for he matched their troops at Peking with his old Shangtung and Honan territorial troops, man for man. He also sent the turbulent, stubborn twentieth division, shorn of its commander, Chang, far to the eastward. The majority of the National Assembly had fled, and the Manchu princes would not come out of their bedrooms. If the rebels were to win now, they must produce even a stronger man than Yuan. Who was that man; where was he in the making?
It is quite orthodox not to despair ever of immemorial China, and to expect a great man to arise when politics is at its worst, for Confucius arose from the rivalry of sixteen states, and he formulated his political philosophy when he was a persecuted exile from his own state of Lu. When the republicans were most dejected, that great republican, the American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, in season and out of season, unofficially beseeched them to quit themselves like men. So large-hearted a man could not stand by and see men who were fighting for liberty droop at their guns. He cheered them; he talked to their students; he gave megaphone interviews to the world press and supported the discouraged propaganda, fearing naught the criticism which arose. He was a missionary, but more than that, he was a man, and an American. Some British missionaries, too, came in for criticism because they could not refrain from whispering in the ear of liberty the Cromwellian encouragement: “Be of good cheer.”
By November 29th the lack of money was thinning the lines of the rebel forces, and Dictator Yuan, at Peking, was growing in strength with small foreign loans and arms from Russia, Japan and Germany. The rebels, at Wu Ting Fang’s suggestion, in desperation, threatened to boycott the commerce of any nation making loans to the Manchu government, and a German compradore was shot down at Hankau as he was in the act of delivering arms over to the imperialists. The Manchu Tsai princes sold their art treasures for arms. The rebels melted the idols of the nation to make coin. In accord with the protocol of 1901, America now formally offered the Peking government 2,500 troops to assist in keeping the railway from Peking to Tientsin open to the sea. The Japanese had already landed their quota of this foreign force. Naturally the rebels looked on this landing of foreign troops in the Manchu section of the country as, to a degree, foreign aid to the Manchus, as it increased their prestige and sources of advice in the north. More subtle forces than those of arms began to work now on some of the rebel leaders, and the cause lapsed into darker days because of the lack of money. Dictator Yuan, in Peking, was exultant, and said to one member of the legations: “I give the rebellion eight more days to live; I expect to have 100,000 modern troops and a railway.” Professor E. H. Parker, the eminent sinologue, now of Manchester University, England, when a British consul in Korea, wrote of “Yuan’s Machiavellian character” in his book, John Chinaman. Even some of the Manchus agreed in the cry of the rebels: “Yuan is making himself dictator; he may seek the throne; he may split off Northern China; Peking is too near Russian Siberia.” He had sent the Manchu troops away from Peking, and gathered his old divisions (like Cæsar with his Thirteenth Legion) of Shangtung and Honan troops around him.
Yuan appealed to the provinces to send delegates to Peking to discuss a constitution, but the rebel provinces replied: “No National Assembly can discuss constitutional government with freedom while your troops, pounding their rifle stocks, stand at the door; remember the Parliaments of King Charles.” The rebels cried: “If Yuan and the Manchus win now, it is foreign money that does it. Why can’t we get foreign money; we’re the overwhelming majority of the people.” Some of the foreign governments replied: “We are only interested in trade and order; we can’t wait for you to fight this out, and possibly kill some of our missionaries; you must win quickly or we’ll stand by the powers that be.” The rebels replied: “Cromwell and Washington, Thiers and Grant didn’t win quickly, and if you let us lose now, we’ll fight it out again. You can’t withstand the constitutional rights of 400 million people for the sake of a dynasty of raiders, who seized and entrenched their throne with five million subsidized cavalrymen, who have now grown effete by subsidy. We are opposed to entrenched privilege just as much as you are. In Roosevelt’s words: ‘The land has got to be as good for all of us as it is for some of us.’ These minority Manchus must cease to usurp office, pensions, privileges and concession granting. We of the south are taxed without representation. If America could go to war with this as a cause, why can’t we?”
Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart of the southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for throwing his modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from Peking to Hankau had won him the present turn in the tide of affairs by enabling him to flank the long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some cried, for an emperor warrior of the real Chinese, a descendant of the Mings; a descendant of the house of Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a Washington-like president of a Chinese republic, who could get foreign loans. This was the cry that was arising against the return of the Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a dictator. However, something had been won. The agitation and the battles had taught the sweet themes of deathless liberty and a new Chinese nationalism to thousands who had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in their despair. It was recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a Hupeh governor, who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of execution: “Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the first martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and rises again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her victory in 1898, conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so with her successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was laid by some foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican government was not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one Kung, an American Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would be backed for the throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock to his banner.
On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they had weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The Canton bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing this new hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit:
“Freedom will work on this earth,
Great as a giant rising to the skies,
Come, Liberty, because of the black hell of our slavery,
Come enlighten us with a ray of thy sun.