The Army and the people will understand this intention, and let all above and below with one mind labour for improvement. Then will the country be fortunate and the people enjoy felicity without limit. "Let this Edict, together with the Edict of the 14th [Nov. 4th] be printed on yellow paper and posted, so that all may be informed. Respect this." {92} CHAPTER IX THE STRONGHOLD OF WUCHANG It was to Wuchang that the country was now looking. The Revolutionists knew it. Urged on by cleverly fashioned proclamations, they fought as men have rarely fought. The Imperialists knew it, and they, too, slept neither day nor night. The Revolution was spreading. Unable to ascertain what was to follow, foreigners from interior provinces came down to the coast and the treaty ports for safety. Foreign warships came up one after another, Japanese predominating in number, and at one time totalled no less than fifteen, under nominal command of Rear-Admiral Kawashima. Foreigners everywhere were doing volunteer duty. Barricades had been built up, and all tiptoed in expectancy. Fighting was desultory, with more Revolutionary losses than Imperial, for several days. Eleven days after the great battle of Kilometre Ten, more than the savage burning of the city, very little effective work had been done. Firstly, they had not done what they led the people to believe they would do. Promise after promise by Admiral Sah to bombard had been broken, the army had marched on Tachimen and captured it, Hankow had been shelled and the place left a mass of charred ruins with five hundred thousand helpless people cruelly turned adrift to seek shelter where they might--and there the accomplishment was _in extenso_. Although they had tried, the Imperialists had failed to capture Hanyang. Wuchang still stood {93} as the stronghold of the Revolutionary party, with ever-brightening prospects of power. Those who had closely followed events here had been surprised greatly by the manner in which the Loyalist Army had worked out this campaign. Instead of smashing the Revolutionary Army in a few days, which at the outset, after the first battle, seemed an easy thing for them, they had dilly-dallied to such an extent that now they had a greater task before them than they ever had--partly because of the fact that trained rebel reinforcements had arrived from Hunan, and partly because the _esprit de corps_ among the Revolutionists, which, after their reverse, it would not have taken a great deal to have knocked entirely out of them, had again wonderfully revived.