two principal sieges taking place three hundred miles apart. Peking
understood this, and while the rebels reinforced their attack on the
right flank at Nanking, the imperialists brought down reinforcements
by railway to General Feng Kwo Chang, at Hankau, who at once attacked
the rebel left flank in force, aiming to cripple the rebels by taking
back the essential Hanyang arsenal. Hei Shan, Meit Zu and Tortoise
forts were taken by machine and field gun fire and charges, and General
Li’s rebel ranks fell back under severe loss. The retreating ranks
didn’t carry their bird cages with them as the gentlemen soldiers of
Chifu did in the China-Japan War of 1894! General Feng’s and General
Wong’s imperialist troops, after breaking through the Tung Chi (East
Messenger) gate and looting, now put the torch to the rest of Hankau,
destroying the homes of a million people, and burning a hundred million
dollars’ worth of property. Such an uncalled for, accursed outrage,
such an unjustifiable act of wholesale arson against non-combatants has
never been known. What would history have said had the Germans burned
Paris, the British, Pretoria or the Americans, Manila? What should
be said when the Manchu imperialists burned Hankau? Why didn’t they
rather sell its tiles, its silk, its oils, its mountains of tea? They
admitted that they needed money. At least there would have been no
world’s loss of property. Hankau belonged to the world as much as to
China. The Manchu must yet answer for this arson, for arson and murder
are unjustifiable world crimes. Arson makes it harder and costlier for
an American, a Briton, a German, a Frenchman, to live, as the wave of
cost rolls on, as much as it makes it harder for the Chinese to live.
In these days of world conservation, no nation should be allowed to
put the firebrand to property because men are fighting or arguing over
an idea. Shame on the sack and burning of Hankau by the Manchus. The
British, Americans, volunteers and jackies, and other foreigners on
the long bund, heaped up breastworks of even rice bags, and swept the
riverside and race track on either flank in defense of the palatial
foreign concessions. Here a blue-jacket, there a marine, and between an
ununiformed volunteer clerk, the boys shouldered their Springfields,
Lee-Enfields and Mausers, and held brave guard at the thinnest part
of the long-stretched line of the white man’s empire of influence and
trade.
On the same day the rebels were doing better on the right flank at
Nanking, despite their long front of fifteen miles wide. The Ta Ping
Men (North) gate of the city, and Tiger Hill fort within the walls
were bombarded, and General Ling brought up the rebel guns to bombard
General Chang the Second, who had contracted his lines to Purple, Lion,
Tiger and Pei Che Kao forts in the northeast of the city, as far away
as possible from the rebel fleet, part of which had to be recalled to
Wuchang to assist General Li in his extremity. The imperialists held
the strong Nan Men gate in the south of the city, and the Chao Yang
fort at the east gate, which was fortified with two six-inch, two
four-point-seven, and two three-inch guns, as well as Maxims, surely a
deadly armament. In wise patience America and Britain still held their
troops at Manila and Hongkong, respectively, but Japan was allowed, on
the 26th of November, to rush 1,000 more legation and railway guards
to Tientsin, and the railway guards along the Japanese railways in
Manchuria were reinforced far beyond international conventions. Captain
Sowerby, with the newly organized Foreign Frontier Guards, started
from Peking to help the harassed missionaries who were being murdered
in Singan and Taiyuen in the north. This astonishing expedition
was remarkable for its intrepidity and its success. Within a month
and a half Captain Sowerby’s men had gone from Taiyuen to Singan,
gathered together forty missionaries, and following the course of
the Wei and Yellow Rivers through the famous Tongkwan pass, brought
his charges safely to Honan City on the Honan railway, from which
place they could easily reach Tientsin. Lies began to spread like
wildfire. Pirates committed atrocities along the West River section
of Kwangtung province, and the Manchus and their sympathizers blamed
it on the ineffective rebel organization of Canton. In the north,
Hunghutz, Mongol and Boxer brigands murdered missionaries, rebels
and non-combatants, and the republican sympathizers blamed it on the
ineffective Manchu government. This is certain: the rebels desperately
disliked foreign intervention, and only pleaded for time to win and
organize, while the Manchus saw that, if driven to the last wall,
massacre and lawlessness would help the retention of the dynasty by
causing foreign interventions; and the Manchus were willing to lose all
Manchuria to Japan and all Mongolia and Turkestan to Russia, to bring
this about. The reader will note that none of the many old generals
has appeared on the imperial side, as the battles narrowed down to
engagements with modern weapons of precision and power, requiring
generals trained in modern war. Generals Li and Hwang, of the rebels,
opposed Generals Feng and Wong at Hankau, and Generals Ling and Hsu
opposed Generals Chang and Tieh of the imperialists at Nanking. More
foreign officers, especially Japanese and Germans incognito, served
in the loyalist ranks than in the rebel ranks, and German ammunition
and guns were freely served to the imperialists. After the battle of
Hanyang, two Germans were found among the imperialists’ dead, and two
of the imperialists’ wounded were Germans, one of them a colonel in
the German army. The Japanese trusts, the princes of the Choshiu and
Satsuma clans, who control the House of Peers and the Genro Council,
and thus run the government by veto, did not want a republic in China.
They feared it would bring about the control of the budget by the House
of Representatives and real popular government in Japan, which country
is now absolutely controlled by the aristocracy; for the Japanese Diet
is no more representative of the overtaxed people than is the Russian
Duma. They feared also that if the Chinese pope-emperor could fall,
so could the Japanese pope-emperor who was no more holy. The German
syndicates were also anxious to maintain their confiscatory privileges
in Shangtung province, which were obtained from the Manchus. Dictator
Yuan always preferred German instructors in his Pechili, Honan and
Shangtung armies.
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.
“Behold the woes of our fatherland.
Other men are becoming all kings.
Can we forget what our people are suffering?
China the Great is as an immense desert.
“We are working to open a new age in China;
All real men are calling for a new heaven and a new earth.
May the soul of the people rise as high as Kwangtung’s highest peak
(Nan Mountain);
Spirit of Freedom, lead, protect us.”
Nanking was attached in force. The American navy withdrew, while the
small rebel navy of fifteen vessels, under the protection of captured
forts holding back free play of the Lion fort guns, moved up within
range to support the wide rebel attack of fifteen miles frontage. It
will be remembered that General Chang the Second, of the imperialists,
held some of the peaks of Purple Hill outside the northeast walls, and
Yuwatei fort on the south, and nearly all the city. The rebels took
the Tiger Hill fort and four of the northwest gates and forts, after
bombardment by the Cantonese, sapping, and a spirited rush. Then Purple
Hill and Yuwatei forts were bombarded and rushed after a terrific
engagement, the imperialists, under Generals Chang and Tieh, making a
last stubborn stand behind the ninety-foot high and thirty-foot thick
walls of the vast city. The scene was terrible to view. Clouds of
cannon smoke, lighted by terrific flashes of gun fire, made the night
of November 30th memorable. The revolutionists, practising Wolfe’s
strategy before Quebec was taken, by a secret path, rushed up a peak of
Purple Mountain, above the imperial position, and shelled the imperial
park of guns. Then in the night a charge, led by Colonel Wen, was
made by the “Dare to Die” picked brigade, who carried hand bombs and
swords. A wild retreat followed down the mountain. Even boys fought
with the greatest bravery. The dying down of the terrific cannonade
in the south meant that the republicans had rushed the Nan Men fort,
and an explosion showed that they had successfully blown it up. Just
as daylight broke, the strong Chao Yang, Tiger and Lion forts were
again rushed and taken. The rebels were bitter, and there was great
slaughter of the imperialists in revenge for General Chang’s merciless
massacre of innocents when he declared a state of war at the beginning
of the month. Great lawlessness overspread the land, the rebels as
well as the imperialists being unable to establish a police force,
while they fought out the reform questions. Even in British Hongkong,
where 500,000 Chinese are ruled by 5,000 British, the authorities
had to institute the public whipping of offenders, so as to keep
disorder on the part of the lawless intimidated. Complaint increased
along the Yangtze valley that the Germans were supplying arms to the
imperialists at Hankau, as well as in the northern provinces, from
their colony base of Kiaochou. Bitter complaint was also made that
Baron Cottu was the go-between in asking Russia, France and Belgium for
a $30,000,000 loan for the Manchus and Yuan Shih Kai, which would give
the Russo-Asiatique Bank the same intrusive excuses that Russia availed
of in 1898. The rebels were weak in Shensi province, and American
missionaries were killed by the mob in Singan. Dictator Yuan threw the
Sixth Division from Honan into Shensi to take the province back.
On Saturday, December 2nd, at ten o’clock, a memorable scene occurred
at Nanking. General Chang the Second escaped across the Yangtze River
through the Ta Ping gate on the morning of December 1st to Pukow, the
northern railway terminus, after planting a mine under the Tartar
General’s yamen, which was to be blown when the rebel General Hsu was
caught in the trap at the capitulation. He also secreted eighteen
other mines in the Tartar city, which had therefore to be burned so
as to make the explosion safe. General Chao succeeded in command of
the imperialists. The investiture was complete, and the situation was
now hopeless for the defenders. Twelve brave Americans had remained
on the scene, the great missionaries, Doctor Macklin, Mr. Garrett,
Doctor Blackstone, President A. J. Bowen, of Nanking University, and
others, and the vice-consul, Mr. Gilbert, who dramatically, with
field glasses, watched the bombardment from a high graveyard within
the city. They believed in saving blood (“Chiu Ming,” as the Chinese
say), much provocation for revenge as there was on the side of General
Hsu’s victorious men. They pleaded with Hsu for the first humanitarian
surrender in Chinese civil war, as a thrilling example for all time
that Chinese revolutionists, like George Washington’s and Oliver
Cromwell’s men, were patriots and gentlemen at heart, and not mere
feudists fighting under the name of a great cause.