massed for an attack on the rebels’ capital at Wuchang. The Twentieth
Division was at Lanchow camp, east of Peking, under General Chang Shao
Teng. They formed the famous Army League, and made reform demands
on the packed National Assembly at Peking, just as Cæsar’s immortal
Thirteenth Legion, before the rebellion, sent demands to the Roman
Senate, whose orders they were supposed to take. In consternation, the
packed National Assembly granted the Nineteen Constitutional Articles,
and the Manchu regent, Prince Chun, an able and traveled man (he went
to Germany in 1901) daily issued edicts and yellow Peking Gazettes,
full of tearful promises, in which, however, the central and southern
rebellious provinces had no confidence. They said: “Edicts are like the
wings of day and night; it all depends on which side the sun is.” This
action of the Twentieth Division halted the government’s war measures,
and plans were laid to get loyal divisions near the Lanchow camp, and
get rid of General Chang the First. This general was not strong enough
to attack Peking on his own account, for there were imperial divisions
between him and Generals Li and Hwang of the revolutionists. But he was
strong enough to be stubborn, and not move forward. Peking was largely
in panic. The railroad station was piled high with household goods,
and excursion trains for the flight of the Manchus were running to
Tientsin as fast as they could be switched. The streets of Peking were
crowded with mule carts, bearing bullion sycee and coins to be stored
in the vaults of foreign banks in the legation quarter. No one half
guessed before the wealth which the pensioned and privileged Manchus
had in cache. Proud princes of the blood were even willing to stand
up all the way to Tientsin in open coal cars. Foreigners, legations,
railways and banks were popular as never before in the north, as a
very present refuge in time of trouble! Marvelous treasures of vases,
tapestries, and jade were entrusted to foreigners for safe-keeping,
and the treasures of the Mukden and Peking palaces were sacrificed,
foreign agents taking advantage of the opportunity. Where could a
Manchu take them: to Jehol, to Kalgan where the Russ waited, to Mukden
where the Japanese waited? That was only like running from the door
to be caught on the roof. Before long, treasures next in wonder to
those looted at Peking in 1900 will find their way into the palaces,
mansions and museums of the Occident, and artistic China will be robbed
bare as a bone; for Peking has long been robbing China of art. The
hotels and khans of Peking were crowded to the roofs, and the refugees
overflowed into the cellars and stables and moats. Merchantmen were
chartered, and held with steam up at Tientsin, ready to afford a refuge
for panic-stricken Manchu princes, or disgraced Chinese officials
like Sheng. Missionaries in the outskirts trusted the promises of the
“Sia Hwei”, and stayed at their posts. Alarmed consuls arrested them
in order to bring them into the capital, and the Chinese forgot the
dignity due to their arms and laughed at the humorously incongruous
situation!
On November 3rd, the Imperial Third Division under General Wong Chou
Yuen, with the assistance of Admiral Sah’s fleet, attacked the rebels
in native Hankau City. The vast flat city is not adapted for defense,
and the loyalists were infinitely better equipped. General Li was short
of ammunition. His troops, however, put up a brave fight, time and
again charging hopelessly with cold steel against machine guns, and
eliciting the unqualified admiration of the foreigners. On that day the
Imperial Third Division made a bloody name for itself in the respect
of massacre of non-combatants and arson. A prosperous city of nearly a
million was reduced to the appearance of nearly a wrecked village. Both
rebels and loyalists saved the foreign quarter along the Yangtze Bund,
with its palatial consulates and business houses, and the American
Episcopal St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Peter’s church, which were
turned into hospitals by Doctors Glenton and MacWillie, and nurse Miss
Clark of the Red Cross. Across the river at Wuchang, the buildings of
the American Episcopal Boone University were turned into a hospital by
Doctors Merrins, Paterson and others of the brave. Heroic missionaries
held up their hands against the Third Division, and pleaded the rules
of the Red Cross, but the Manchus, especially Prince Tsai Tao and
others of the Tsai princes, desired by a massacre to induce the rebels
to massacre the first time they had a victory, and thus bring on
foreign intervention to save the dynasty. A dynasty that can not stand
without foreign intervention will never stand, for true strength is
in the hearts of the people alone. It was the old Boxer trick of the
dowager empress, Tse Hsi, in 1900.
The rebels, however, meant to keep their heads, even under such
terrific provocation as that bloody Race Track field of Hankau, over
which the machine guns of the Imperial Third Division swept, and those
bloody streets, maloos and walls where non-combatants were butchered
if they wore a piece of white, or had their queues severed, both of
which were hated rebel signs. To and fro the tide of war surged. On
November 3rd, a great change occurred, for on that day the rebels’
great misfortune in having no fleet, was to a large degree nullified.
Shanghai arsenal, which supplied Admiral Sah’s fleet, and Shanghai’s
native walled city, went over to the revolutionists. This was the
second great step forward. The rebels secured the well-known Wu Ting
Fang as foreign minister of the republic of Han, and their organization
spread and strengthened in everything except money and a modern
equipped force.
On the same day, the far southwestern capital and province, Yunnan,
with its splendid army and police, declared for the red, white and
blue sun flag of the republic. Two days after, on November 5th, the
famous bore-city, Hangchow, the center of culture, and capital of the
coast province of Chekiang, was captured by assault, the Manchu general
putting up a strong defense in the Tartar walled section of the city.
Ningpo, in the same province, and Suchow, another ancient capital of
culture in Kiangsu province, went over on the same day.
On November 6th, Admiral Sah’s sailors handed part of the imperial
fleet over to the rebels at Shanghai, and the rebels were now able to
reform their center line. This also gave the republicans their first
nucleus of a navy. Admiral Sah Chen Ping received his baptism of fire
in the battle of the Yalu, under the brave Admiral Ting and Commander
Teng. He commanded in suppressing riots at Changsha in 1910, when Yale
College branch was barely saved, and he is well known as the host
of Admiral Emery’s American fleet at Amoy, when the white squadron
was girdling the world under the surprised eyes of Japan, whose
mixed-school and emigration “bluffs” were called by President Roosevelt
in this significant but quiet way. It was most important to win Kiangsu
province, and Chinkiang City was therefore talked over on November 6th.
The same day, in the far north, the coaling city and naval base of
Chifu in Shangtung province, declared for reform.
Up to this time the cultured old Ming capital of Nanking, the most
beloved city in China, had held out under a concentrated force of
12,000 imperialists, who were unusually well equipped. After Wuchang,
Hanyang and Shanghai, it was next in importance to capture Nanking
on the right wing of the rebels. The imperialists knew that to hold
Nanking was worth an army of 200,000 men, and General Chang Hsun (we
will call him Chang the Second) was in equipment and temper a man
to their minds. His second in command was General Chao, and it was
rumored that bloody General Chang Piao was within the walls. The civil
viceroy of Nanking was the well known Chang Jen Chung, who instituted
the first Chinese industrial exhibition at Nanking in 1910. On the
northeast of the walled city are the peaks of Purple Mountain, 1,400
feet high, dominating with its huge Armstrong and Krupp guns the north
gate, Ta Ping Men, and the east gate, Chao Yang Men, and the great
capital, around which the mighty Yangtze flows, yellow flooded to the
brim. This hill, and the Tartar section of the city, Chang the Second
fortified, so that it would take a hundred to one to drive him out.
On November 8th, the dauntless rebels, led by General Ling, under the
protection of fire from the Canton artillery, took the armory, arsenal
and powder mills outside the south wall, rushed the outworks, and held
part of the southern city with insufficient force. One of the cannon
balls went crashing through the “North Pole” pagoda in the Tartar City.
On November 9th, the imperialists at the strong south fort (Nan Men)
hoisted a white flag of apparent surrender, and as the republicans
came up, “near enough to see the white of their eyes,” they opened a
treacherous fire upon them. The Manchu troops, under General Tieh
Liang, looted their own fine military school in the city. There let us
leave the rebel lines and pickets for a few days, while General Li and
General Hwang on the far left wing were being appealed to for men, and
above all, for siege and machine guns and ammunition.
On November 9th, Fuchau had to be stormed again, for the imperialists
had been reinforced. On that same day, Canton, always stanch for a
modern China, and mother of nearly all the reformers, went over to
the rebels under President of Assembly Wu Hon Man, General Chan Kwang
Ming, and Wong Ching Wai, and drove the imperial viceroy to Hongkong
near by, where the British government pleaded with the great Chinese
body to spare their unwelcome hostage, who had fled in Chinese custom
“to a city of refuge”. All over China, as in the Palestine of the
Bible, are towers of refuge for this very purpose. The American cruiser
_New Orleans_, Captain Miller, had steamed up to Nanking and taken
on board hundreds of foreigners, including seventy-five Americans,
and records. On November 10th, bloody Chang the Second gave orders,
in the old “Boxer” trick plan, for the awful massacre of Nanking.
The aim was first to incite the imperial soldiery with the sight of
blood, as tigers baited. On the lovely bright afternoon, the prison was
opened and 200 prisoners were sent into the yamen courtyard, “to their
freedom,” as they thought. There they were made to kneel in a row,
while their necks were stretched out by the queue. An executioner, with
a mercury weighted Taifo shortsword, hurried along the long line, using
only one practised blow to sever each head. The heads were elevated on
bamboo poles. The Manchu troops then tasted the blood in the belief
that human blood would make them brave and invulnerable. They even
dipped their coarse biscuits in the gory pools. They were then ready
for anything that was merciless.
In force, Chang’s trained troops, with machine guns, swept down from
Purple Mountain, Tiger fort, Lion fort and the Tartar section of the
city, on the small force of republicans, and the innocent population
of Nanking the Refined. Shame on the Ninth Division of Shangtung
territorial troops and the old-style turbaned “braves”. Every man
who had no queue; every woman who had the rebel sign of white in her
apparel or hair; every man, woman or child who was a Nankingese was
slaughtered without opposition, and the odious Ninth Division waded
back to Tiger, Lion and Purple Hills through the bloody shambles.
This was not war; not even hell; this was an insane massacre of the
innocents. The few republican troops under the indomitable General Ling
fought until their ammunition was spent, and then with cold steel set,
they awaited the rain of bullets from machine guns across the lead
swept spaces of the immense, half-built-up city. It availed nothing.
Peking breathed with hope. Chang the Second was a general after the
“Boxer” Manchu heart. Manchu princes--yea, even those who had visited
America and England, like the dashing Prince Tsai Tao and Prince Tsai
Chun, and who should have known better--had been urging massacres, and
Chang the Second had apparently understood them. General Chang the
Second was heartily backed up by the merciless Tartar general, Tieh
Liang.
On November 11th, Amoy, the famous port of Fukien province, where
American officers have been so often entertained by Admiral Sah and
other Chinese admirals, was taken, the American cruiser _Saratoga_ (the
old _New York_ of Santiago fame) and the American gunboat _Quiros_
steaming out of the harbor so as to be non-combatants in fact and
in influence. The American monitor _Monterey_, so as to protect
foreigners, later steamed into the harbor, where she was often struck
by stray bullets. On November 13th, the most remarkable thing thus far
in the revolution occurred, though the impulse was not permanently
fixed. Mukden, the home capital of the Manchu race, the mausoleum of
their founder, and of many of their dead emperors, under the influence
of Chinese immigrants, declared its independence under General Wuh
Hsiang Chen, and the reform speaker of the Mukden Assembly, Wu Lun
Lien. During all this turmoil, Pechili, Shansi, and Honan provinces
were strongly held by Manchu and Mongol “banner” troops, but Foreign
Minister Wu Ting Fang of the republicans got a note through to the
American minister at Peking, asking him to deliver it to the Manchu
regent, Prince Chun. The note requested the Court to abdicate, and
retire to Jehol, 200 miles northeast of Peking, where they were
promised positive protection, and liberal pensions. In the meantime
Yuan Shih Kai returned from exile at Chang Te in Honan province to
Peking, and took up the reins of power as provisional premier of
a limited Manchu monarchy; began treating with the republicans,
solidifying the Manchu army, and soliciting foreign loans, as the
empress dowager’s strong-box no longer furnished funds. Only three out
of twenty-one provinces, and three territories, were now remitting to
Peking, but Peking had the mighty northern army.
On November 17th, the revolutionists under Generals Li and Hwang
attacked the imperial lines at Hankau, and despite their poor equipment
in machine guns and artillery, led by a regiment of Roundheads called
“Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) men, commanded by Colonel Wen, who graduated
from West Point in 1909, they took three of the four parallels by
cold steel charges, sapper work and bomb throwing. One of the rebel
shells from Wuchang punched a hole in a 2,000,000-gallon tank of oil in
Hankau, and the streets were flooded two feet deep with kerosene. It
was the first time that Chinese had met Chinese in scientific modern
war, and it marked the entrance of China into the modern arena, where
Might strikes for Right, instead of only arguing for it. China had
begun to find herself. Meanwhile there was distress in Singan in the
north, which city had declared for reform on October 24th. The Manchus
had retaken the suburbs of the city, for it was in their sphere of
control, and had begun, with their mobs, to massacre missionaries, as
was expected. The China Inland Mission outside the city was attacked,
and the English Baptist, Scandinavian and American missions throughout
the province were struck at. Blame was put on the Mohammedans wherever
possible.
Let us go down to Nanking for a moment, to see how the war is
progressing. To keep Nanking and Shanghai in touch, the Americans had
brought up their beautiful cruisers _New Orleans_ and _Albany_, for the
American Vice-consul Gilbert and the intrepid American missionaries,
Doctor Macklin, President Bowen, Mr. Blackstone, Mr. Garrett and
others were in the city. General Hsu of the imperialists, with the
Thirty-fifth Regiment of Infantry, on November 21st, hoisted the red,
white and blue flag and left the strong lines of Purple Mountain and
the Tartar city to join the rebel ranks, which were being reinforced
from Canton and other directions also. Bloody General Chang the Second,
the imperial commander, immediately had all General Hsu’s relatives in
Nanking murdered in revenge.
In far-away London, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, with an American adviser and
friend, “General” Homer Lea, set sail for Shanghai on the same day. He
first went to Paris, and then took the liner _Martha_ at Marseilles
for Hongkong, from which place he planned safely to reach Shanghai to
complete the rebel government. On November 22nd, when the imperialists
with all their foreign friendships were unable to consummate their
loans, the rebels at Shanghai opened a Republic of Han Central Bank,
with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The title of the bank was the “Chung
Hua”, and the first notes were dated in the 4609th year of Huang Ti
(august sovereign), he being the mythical first emperor of China,
and the inventor of the Chinese ideograph. The notes were printed in
English on one side and entitled “The Republican China Military Bank
Note”. Other notes were issued by the provincial rebels and read as
follows in English and Chinese: “The Chinese Revolutionary Government
promises to pay the bearer ---- dollars after one year of its
establishment in China on demand at the Treasury of the said government
in Canton, or its agents abroad. 1st January, 1911. For President
(sd.) Sun Wen.” It will be noted that the Christian calendar had now
come into effect. The shops immediately took the notes at a premium,
something unique in China, the land of financial discounts and chaotic
exchange. Enthusiasm grew. For the first time in the history of modern
China, a company of women took up arms and advanced with the lines.
There were also many Red Cross corps of women, from Canton, Fuchau,
Wuchang, Shanghai, etc.
We shall return to Nanking. On November 25th, by hard scraping at
Canton, the rebels under General Ling brought up twelve field guns for
six hours and fired on the imperial position on Tiger Hill and Lion
Hill on the northwest, near the famous Ming tombs, which are outside
the walls of Nanking (not to be confounded with the remainder of the
Ming dynasty tombs which are at Nankou, northwest of Peking). Then
1,500 troops, led as usual by companies of queueless “Dare to Die”
boys, many of whom were students in Nanking Protestant University
(American), charged, and drove twice their number of imperialists
from the strong lines, which were supplied with heavy Armstrong and
Krupp four-point-seven and six-inch guns. Unfortunately, many shots
struck the gate of the tombs, behind which the imperialists had also
fortified themselves. The rebel navy now came nearer, despite the fire
of Lion Hill, and prepared for the attack, as the rebel infantry drew
their lines closer around the largest walled city of China. Guns were
immediately brought up to breach the heavy walls and high gates and
train on the Lion Hill and Tiger forts, which were within the Tartar
city, and keeping the navy back.
On the left wing at Hankau the rebels were gaining successes. At an
armistice, on November 24th, Yuan Shih Kai’s representatives told
General Li (whom they met at the British consulate on the bund) that he
had better trust the Manchus, as they could secure the hated Russian
or Japanese intervention as in the old notorious days of 1896 and
1900. Li replied that the republicans had no trust any more in Manchu
promises of reform or real permanent constitutionalism; that the usual
relapse of the “Boxer sickness” would come! At Manila, Hongkong and
Singapore, the Americans and British were preparing troops to be ready,
as in 1900, to rush them to Tientsin to save the Peking legations
and missionaries, if the Manchus, or Hunghutz, or Mongol brigands
brought on a massacre to secure foreign intervention. Though America
and Britain emphatically stand for non-intervention and non-partition
of China, both these nations feared Russia and other powers which
were hard to restrain. Britain’s action at this time in restraining
ambitious Japan (greedy with the taste of Formosa, Korea and South
Manchuria) can not be praised too highly. Wu Ting Fang, Doctor Sun
and General Li of the republicans, from Shanghai, London and Wuchang
respectively, issued proclamations that foreigners and missionaries
were to be respected highly as the best friends of New China. In Shansi
province the republicans, separated from their base, were having a hard
time against the Imperial Sixth Division under General Sheng Yun, which
had every advantage of succor by railway from Peking and the junction
at Ching Ting. The imperialists bribed soldiers to assassinate General
Wu of the republican forces operating in these northwest provinces.
This was a terrible blow to reform.
On November 26th, the rebels, under General Ling Chang, attacked the
strong hill forts above Nanking with determination. There was much
firing of heavy guns from the river also, as the new navy of fifteen
small vessels came up. Dogged charges were made across the open and
up the zigzag of Purple Hill. The rebel losses were tremendous, and
Chang the Second, of the imperialists, proved himself as grim a defense
fighter as he was a ruthless leader of massacre. The rebel attack
under General Ling Chang was brilliant and reckless. Who will sing
the feats of the new Chinese arms,--yes, the Chinese, who the world
said would never make soldiers, even if they had a great cause at
heart. The fighting was not as magnificently solid and desperate as
Pickett’s gray charge at Gettysburg, the Cuirassiers’ wild ride into
the valley of death at Waterloo, Linievitch’s grim defense of Putiloff
Hill, the shouting sweep of Oku’s dwarf Japanese up Nanshan Heights,
or the silent plunge of Oyama’s ranks into the Liaoyang valley, or
against the black Mukden lines. It was as determined, daring and
brilliant, however, as any land engagement in the South African or
Spanish-American Wars, and far braver and stronger than the theatrical
engagements, with air-ship accessories, of the Italy-Tripoli War. The
world’s critics must now change their criterions. A strong cause WILL
make a strong battle anywhere the world over, no matter what the color
of the soldier, or the cut or tint of his battle flag. The fighting now
closed in on Nanking, the old capital of the Mings, the high-water city
of the Taiping rebellion, and the rebels had a great deal to avenge,
and a great deal to gain. To fail in the attack on Nanking meant a
tremendous setback to the rebellion. Few reinforcements could come, for
the fighting was in half a dozen provinces, and along a broken front
extending from Chingtu to Hankau and Nanking, 1,000 miles, with railway
transport service, foreign ammunition, money and sympathy, favoring
the imperialists; and sea and river transport, and the sympathy of the
British and American peoples favoring the rebels, who, of course, had
no navy worth counting as yet.
The alarmed Manchu regent, Prince Chun, at Peking, now gave out
his oath, in the name of the child emperor, Pu Yi (throne name,
Hsuan Tung), sworn before the open heaven to God (Tien), before the
Confucian ancestral tablets, and before Buddha’s image, as follows: “My
policy and choice of officials have not been wise; hence the recent
troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred Manchu dynasty, I accept
the advice of the National Assembly. I swear to uphold the Nineteen
Constitutional Articles (demanded by the 20th Army Division at Lanchow)
and organize a parliament, excluding the Manchu and Mongol nobles from
administrative posts. The heavenly spirits of your forefathers will see
and understand.” They understood! The educated Chinese of the central
and southern provinces laughed; they had heard the like before, and
besides, this oath was taken under compulsion of the Army League.
The new rebel government in Kwangtung province, under Wu Hon Man, its
president, was as yet unable to police the notorious pirate waters
of the Si Kiang (West River), running far up country from Canton,
and the large British tonnage, though armed, suffered. Chief Officer
Nicholson, of the steamer _Shui On_, was killed in a private attack at
Junction Creek on November 30th, which infuriated British Hongkong,
which was holding its gunboats in leash. The large Chinese tonnage in
fear tied up to the wharves and bund of Canton and the riverine ports.
A trick of the West River pirates was to anchor a deserted stoneboat
across the channel, and as the steamer slowed up, the snake boats and
motor launches of the pirates dashed alongside from the creeks and
cane-brakes. The most daring of these brigand chiefs was the notorious
Luk, from whom we shall hear later. Everywhere else, however, as we
have shown, for instance at Fuchau, the republicans were splendidly
protecting foreign traders and missionaries.