They introduced into the palace as the private adviser of the Emperor, Kang Yu-wei, as we have already shown, to whom was thus offered one of the greatest opportunities that was ever given to a human being--that of being the leader in this great reform. He was hailed as a young Confucius, but his popularity was short-lived, for he so lacked all statesmanship as to allow the young Emperor to issue twenty-seven edicts, disposing of twenty-seven difficult problems such as I have given above in about twice that many days, and it is this hot-headed and unstatesman-like young "Confucius" who now calls Yuan Shih-kai an opportunist and a traitor because he did not enter into the following plot. After the Emperor had dismissed two conservative vice-presidents of a Board, two governors of provinces, and a half dozen other useless conservative leaders, they plotted to overthrow him by appealing to the ambition of the Empress Dowager and induce her to dethrone him and again assume the reins of government. They argued that "he was her adopted son, it was she who had placed him on the throne, and she was therefore responsible for his mistakes." They complimented her on "the wisdom which she had manifested, and the statesmanship she had exhibited" during the thirty years and more of her regency. To all which she listened with a greedy ear, but still she made no move. During this time were the Emperor and his young "Confucius" idle? By no means. They had hatched a counterplot, and had decided that what they could not do by moral suasion and statesmanship they would do by force, and so they sent an order to Yuan Shih-kai, who as we have said had drilled and was in charge of 12,500 of the best troops in the empire, urging him to "hasten to the capital at once, place the Empress Dowager under guard in the Summer Palace so that she may not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the government, and protect him in his reform measures."