The Fight for the Republic in ChinaPutnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox)
History
The Fight for the Republic in China
Putnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox)
China -- History -- Republic, 1912-1949; China -- Politics and government
The campaign was short and inglorious. The South, ill-furnished
with munitions and practically penniless, and always confronted by
the same well-trained Northern Divisions who had proved themselves
invincible only eighteen months before, fought hard for a while,
but never became a serious menace to the Central Government owing
to the lack of co-operation between the various Rebel forces in
the field. The Kiangse troops under General Li Lieh-chun, who
numbered at most 20,000 men, fought stiffly, it is true, for a
while but were unable to strike with any success and were
gradually driven far back from the river into the mountains of
Kiangse where their numbers rapidly melted away. The redoubtable
revolutionary Huang Hsin, who had proved useful as a propagandist
and a bomb-thrower in earlier days, but who was useless in serious
warfare, although he assumed command of the Nanking garrison which
had revolted to a man, and attempted a march up the Pukow railway
in the direction of Tientsin, found his effort break down almost
immediately from lack of organization and fled to Japan. The
Nanking troops, although deserted by their leader, offered a
strenuous resistance to the capture of the southern capital which
was finally effected by the old reactionary General Chang Hsun
operating in conjunction with General Feng Kuo-chang who had been
dispatched from Peking with a picked force. The attack on the
Shanghai arsenal which had been quietly occupied by a small
Northern Garrison during the months succeeding the great loan
transaction, although pushed with vigour by the South, likewise
ultimately collapsed through lack of artillery and proper
leadership. The navy, which was wholly Southern in its sympathies
and which had been counted upon as a valuable weapon in cutting
off the whole Yangtsze Valley, was at the last moment purchased to
neutrality by a liberal use of money obtained from the foreign
banks, under, it is said, the heading of administrative expenses!
The turbulent city of Canton, although it also rose against the
authority of Peking, had been well provided for by Yuan Shih-kai.
A border General, named Lung Chi-Kwang, with 20,000 semi-savage
Kwangsi troops had been moved near the city and at once attacked
and overawed the garrison. Appointed Military Governor of the
province in return for his services, this Lung Chi-kwang, who was
an infamous brute, for three years ruled the South with heartless
barbarity, until he was finally ejected by the great rising of
1916. Thoroughly disappointed in this and many other directions
the Southern Party was now emasculated; for the moneyed classes
had withheld their support to the end, and without money nothing
is possible in China. The 1913 outbreak, after lasting a bare two
months, ignominiously collapsed with the flight of every one of
the leaders on whose heads prices were put. The road was now left
open for the last step Yuan Shih-kai had in mind, the coup against
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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