[Illustration: Cover art]
CHINA'S REVOLUTION
[Frontispiece: GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG, THE LEADER OF THE REVOLUTION
Frontispiece.]
CHINA'S REVOLUTION
1911-1912
A HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL
RECORD OF THE CIVIL WAR
BY
EDWIN J. DINGLE
WITH 2 MAPS AND 36 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1912
(_All rights reserved._)
TO
THOSE WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES AND
TO THE NEW CHINA PARTY
IN THE HOPE THAT THEIR STRUGGLES FOR FREEDOM
MAY HERALD THE DAWNING OF A DAY OF
RIGHT AND TRUTH FOR CHINA
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
{7}
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This volume is a popular history of the Revolution in China that
broke out at Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang in October of 1911. The
narrative contains a good deal of new information touching upon
revolutionism in China, and the events leading up to the present
climax. The magnitude of this Revolution cannot possibly be
understood yet; but this volume is written in the hope that it will
enable the student otherwise untutored to understand much that one
absorbs in Chinese life.
When the Revolution broke out, I was residing in Hankow. Throughout
the war I remained in Hankow, leaving this centre for Shanghai during
the days when the Peace Conference was held in that city. I am a
personal friend of the leader of the Revolution, General Li Yuan
Hung, and, by virtue of having all the time been in possession of
much exclusive information from behind the political curtain, am
probably equipped to write of the main doings of the Revolution in
that area where its effects were most marked. On the very eve of the
Revolution, a book written by myself was published simultaneously in
England and America, which contains some strangely prophetic
utterances, and will give the reader who has not made Chinese
politics a study a general idea of the condition of the country when
the Revolution made the scales drop from the eyes of her teeming
millions.[1]
{8}
I wish gratefully to acknowledge the kind offices of Mr. Thos. F.
Millard, editor of the China Press, for allowing me free use of the
columns of that journal. Much of my information has been culled from
the C.P., although many of the articles were written by myself for
that newspaper, whilst the war was in progress; but I am largely
indebted to that paper also for many of my general later facts.
Especially also do I wish to thank the Rev. Bernard Upward, of
Hankow, for the assistance he has rendered me whilst this volume was
being prepared. The chapter entitled "Some Revolution Factors" is
from Mr. Upward's pen, as is also that headed "Yuan Shih K'ai"; many
of the illustrations shown in the volume also are reproductions from
Mr. Upward's splendid collection. My warm thanks are also due to Mr.
Stanley V. Boxer, B.Sc., for the drawings from which the two maps
embodied in this volume were prepared, and for the explanatory note
accompanying the sketch map of the battlefields.
It should, perhaps, in fairness to myself, be mentioned that, owing
to absence from England, I have not had an opportunity of reading the
proof-sheets before this volume was printed.
EDWIN J. DINGLE.
HANKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.
_April_ 1, 1912.
[1] "Across China on Foot: Life in the Interior and the Reform
Movement." Henry Holt & Co., New York. $3.50. J. W. Arrowsmith,
Ltd., Bristol, 16s.
{9}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE REVOLUTION
II. THE AFTERMATH
III. GENERAL EXPECTATIONS
IV. GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG'S AMBITIONS FOR THE NEW CHINA
V. A PREMATURE OPENING
VI. THE EARLY HOSTILITIES
VII. THE BATTLE OF KILOMETRE TEN
VIII. THE BURNING OF HANKOW
IX. THE STRONGHOLD OF WUCHANG
X. LI YUAN HUNG SEEKS PEACE
XI. THE FALL OF HANYANG
XII. THE REPUBLIC SEEKS RECOGNITION
XIII. THE PEACE CONFERENCE--A MONARCHY OR A REPUBLIC?
XIV. THE COMING OF SUN YAT-SEN
{10}
XV. YUAN SHIH K'AI'S RETIREMENT
XVI. RECALLED TO SAVE THE MONARCHY
XVII. THE SZECHUEN REVOLT
XVIII. SOME REVOLUTION FACTORS
XIX. THE ABDICATION EDICT
XX. THE OUTLOOK FOR REFORM
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG .... Frontispiece
WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED
THE PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY HALL, WUCHANG
A CAPTURED BOMB-MAKER
A QUEUELESS BRIGADE
TYPICAL REVOLUTIONARIES
THE RAW MATERIAL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY
THE CENTRAL MART OF THE WORLD
THE FLIGHT OF THE GUN-JUNKS
THE EFFECT OF A NAVAL BOMBARDMENT
PREPARED FOR EVENTUALITIES
FOES MEETING AS FRIENDS
TACHIMEN, WITH IMPERIALISTS IN OCCUPATION
THE BURNING OF HANKOW
THE SING SENG ROAD
THE TOLL OF THE DEAD
ESCAPED FROM WUCHANG
TOMMY ATKINS ON GUARD
{12}
HOW THE IMPERIALISTS CROSSED THE HAN
HUNAN SOLDIER
HUPEH SOLDIER
THE IMPREGNABLE HANYANG HILL
THE THREE-EYED BRIDGE
THE HANDY MAN ASHORE
DISMANTLED IMPERIAL GUN ON PURPLE MOUNTAIN, NANKING
THE UBIQUITOUS BOY
DR. WU TING-FANG
YIN CHANG
TANG SHAO-YI
FENG KUO-CHANG
HWANG HSING
DR. SUN YAT SEN
YUAN SHI-K'AI
A PRE-REVOLUTION GROUP
THE CHILD-EMPEROR OF CHINA
WHAT REMAINS OF HANKOW'S MAIN RIVER GATEWAY
MAPS
HANKOW NATIVE CITY, SHOWING BURNT AREA
WUHAN CENTRE: SKETCH MAP OF THE BATTLEFIELDS
{13}
CHINA'S REVOLUTION
1911-1912
CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION
The story of the great Chinese Revolution of 1911-12 will probably
never be told fully or accurately. China is a continent in its vast
area. Its population is one-fourth of the whole human race. The
country is not opened up by roads or railways and travel generally is
arduous and slow; exaggeration among the people, as among all
Orientals, is second nature. And so it would be at once impossible
for any one man closely to follow up and widely and accurately to
write of the Revolution which broke out at Wuchang last year, tracing
it up to the present moment and getting a clean political and
international outlook whilst doing so. Although I have endeavoured
by careful study to get into focus with doings all over the Empire, I
confess that I have been unable to secure unimpeachable information
on any part of China other than that in which I was living (I speak
of the interior of China, for it was easy enough to be kept informed
in the main centres and the treaty ports whilst the telegraph lines
were intact). Had there been roads and railways and communication of
a kind to render it physically possible to move about, even then this
would {14} have been impossible; for soon after the Revolution broke
the anti-foreign spirit and the outlawry shown in many parts of the
country forbade any European going far from the treaty ports--and, of
course, practically all foreigners were ordered to the coast by their
consuls. Had a man a workable knowledge of the Chinese language in
character, it would have been foolish to form one's opinions from the
rumours that were printed everywhere in the Chinese Press. And so it
comes about that only upon those things which one saw and did is a
man justified to write.
The reader, if he knows China, will need no further explanation, for
readily will he recognise my meaning. He will understand by
experience what a mass of inconsistency and incongruity China and her
people are. But to the Westerner who has never been into China nor
rubbed shoulders closely with this peculiar people it will perhaps be
necessary to add that life in China, in all its forms and phases, is
fraught with such a truly remarkable atmosphere of the unexpected
that to write on any Chinese man, woman, custom, habit, place, or
thing one is able only to generalise--unless he goes into the tedium
of particularising. To get into line it is necessary so to cut down
and to prune and generally to reinterpret that when one has told his
story there seems to be very little at all in it. But those who have
lived in China know the conditions. They will have absorbed this
incomprehensible spirit of the country, will understand what is
written--and what is more important still, will magnetically feel
what is left out which the writer on Chinese affairs would have said.
When in writing upon men and things Chinese you think you have pruned
down all apparent misinterpretation or misrepresentation, you find
there is still a little pruning left to be done; you prune again, and
in the end you find you often are, to the Western mind,
misinterpreting and misrepresenting facts merely because you have
left out that which, to you, with {15} your Chinese eyes, appeared
untrue. You see a thing in China and you think that you understand
it. You fix it in your mind and tell yourself that you have absorbed
it, whatever it may be, and that you now have the final thought and
word and correct meaning. But after a little time you find, by a
peculiar process of Chinese national twisting and shifting, no matter
what you see, hear, think, believe, your final thought and word and
correct meaning are changed completely.
This, perhaps, describes the political atmosphere during the
Revolution. Into everything there came an exasperating suspense, a
terrible tangle of all national affairs, as there still must be for a
very long time to come. Therefore to the man who sets out to write a
detailed history of China's Revolution, and correctly to diagnose the
effect of one event upon another in a consecutive and truthful line,
there at once appears a formidable task.
What the author has set out to do in this volume is to tell of what
he saw and understood, and then to put into print carefully
considered opinion on the general situation and a historical survey
of revolutions and main events in China that have led up to the
Revolution of last October. This Revolution, although outbreaking
prematurely, was all wonderfully planned. "The movement began to
take definite shape about fifteen or sixteen years ago," says Sun Yat
Sen, the greatest of Chinese revolutionists, though he had been
interested in the movement for a longer time than that. "Three years
ago we were ready to take over Wuchang, Canton, and Nanking, but we
were waiting to gain control of the Peking soldiers. We had been
working for some time through the students. Following the war with
Japan, the Peking Government began to organise its new army, sending
students abroad to be trained to take charge of the army. It was at
once seen that if the Manchus were able to organise and control a
modern army it would greatly strengthen their position, and the
Revolutionary {16} party set to work to counteract their efforts.
They worked through the students, so that when they returned to China
to take positions as officers in the army they came as
revolutionists. The outbreak could not have been postponed for more
than a few months, but it did occur before it was expected. We knew
that we had Wuchang, Nanking, and Canton, but there was a preliminary
outbreak at Canton, then another one last summer. Then when the
outbreak at Wuchang occurred it was no longer possible to postpone
action, for the Government would have begun to disarm the soldiers
who sympathised with us. At Canton they scattered our sympathisers
over the province, so that it was very difficult to concentrate them.
If our original plan had been carried out, there would have been very
little fighting. Canton, Nanking, and Wuchang would have quietly
gone over to us, and then all the troops could have marched on Peking
if necessary. We have always had half of the Peking troops with us."
Thus declared Sun Yat Sen--and there is little doubt he was right.
The hitherto irremediable suppression of the individual qualities and
national aspirations of the people arrested the intellectual, the
moral, and the material development of China. The aid of revolution
was invoked to extirpate the primary cause, and China now proclaimed
the resultant overthrow of the despotic sway wielded by the Manchu
Dynasty and the establishment of a Republic. The substitution of a
Republic for a Monarchical form of government was not the fruit of a
transient passion; it was the natural outcome of a long-cherished
desire for broad-based freedom, making for permanent contentment and
uninterrupted advancement. It was the formal declaration of the will
of the Chinese nation.
In a manifesto issued to all friendly nations from the Republic of
China, when Sun Yat Sen was appointed Provisional President, it was
declared that "we, the Chinese people, are peaceful and law-abiding.
We {17} have waged no war except in self-defence. We have borne our
grievances during two hundred and sixty-seven years of Manchu misrule
with patience and forbearance. We have by peaceful means endeavoured
to redress our wrongs, secure our liberty, and ensure our progress,
but we have failed. Oppressed beyond human endurance we deemed it
our inalienable right as well as our sacred duty to appeal to arms to
deliver ourselves and our posterity from the yoke to which we have so
long been subjected, and for the first time in our history inglorious
bondage has been transformed to an inspiring freedom splendid with a
lustrous light of opportunity. The policy of the Manchu Dynasty has
been one of unequivocal seclusion and unyielding tyranny. Beneath it
we have bitterly suffered, and we now submit to the free peoples of
the world the reasons justifying the Revolution and the inauguration
of our present government. Prior to the usurpation of the Throne by
the Manchus, the land was open to foreign intercourse, and religious
tolerance existed, as is evidenced by the writings of Marco Polo and
the inscription on the Nestorian Tablet of Sian-fu. Dominated by
ignorance and selfishness, the Manchus closed the land to the outer
world, and plunged the Chinese people into a state of benighted
mentality, calculated to operate inversely to their natural talents
and capabilities, thus committing a crime against humanity and the
civilised nations almost impossible of expiation."
[Illustration: WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED. This picture of
Wuchang gives a good idea of the type of buildings seen in a Chinese
city. Six hundred Manchus perished in Wuchang during the early days
of the slaughter.]
And there can be no doubt that, actuated by a perpetual desire for
the subjugation of the Chinese, by a vicious craving for
aggrandisement and wealth, the Manchus had governed China to the
lasting injury and detriment of the people, creating privileges and
monopolies and erecting about themselves barriers of exclusion in
national custom and personal conduct which were rigorously maintained
throughout the centuries. They had levied irregular and unwholesome
taxes upon the Chinese without their consent, {18} restricted foreign
trade to treaty ports, placed likin embargoes upon merchandise in
transit, and obstructed internal commerce. They had retarded the
creation of industrial enterprises, rendered impossible the
development of natural resources, and wilfully neglected to safeguard
vested interests. They had denied the people a regular system and
impartial administration of justice; inflicted unusual and cruel
punishments upon all persons charged with offences, whether innocent
or guilty; and frequently had encroached upon Chinese sacred rights
without due process of law. They had connived at official
corruption, sold offices to the highest bidder, and had subordinated
merit to influence. They repeatedly rejected the Chinese people's
most reasonable demand for better government, and reluctantly
conceded pseudo-reforms under most urgent pressure, making promises
without intention of fulfilling them.
Thus the manifesto showed up the weak spots in the Manchu
governmental policy. And it continued: "To remedy these evils and
render possible the entrance of China to the family of nations, we
have fought and formed our Government; lest our good intentions
should be misunderstood, we now publicly and unreservedly declare the
following to be our promises:--
"All treaties entered into by the Manchu Government before the
date of the Revolution will be continually effective up to the
time of their termination; but any and all entered into after the
commencement of the Revolution will be repudiated.
"All foreign loans or indemnities incurred by the Manchu
Government before the Revolution will be acknowledged without any
alteration of terms; but all payments made to and loans incurred
by the Manchu Government after the commencement of the Revolution
will be repudiated.
"All concessions granted to foreign nations or their nationals by
the Manchu Government before the Revolution will be respected,
but any and all granted after the commencement of the Revolution
will be repudiated.
"All persons and property of any foreign nation within the
jurisdiction of the Republic of China will be respected and
protected.
"It will be our constant aim and firm endeavour to build upon
{19} a stable and enduring foundation a national structure
compatible with the potentialities of our long neglected country.
"We will strive to elevate our people, secure them in peace, and
legislate for their prosperity."
At this juncture it were idle to investigate how far these ideals
have been reached. There has as yet been no time for deep national
reforms to have been worked, and it is not the ambition of this
volume to go deeply into political actualities. But no one,
realising now that the Manchu rule in China has passed for ever, will
doubt that, with such excellent qualities of common sense and eminent
industry as the Chinese possess, we shall see a nation move that may
move the world with it. The day will assuredly come, perhaps it is
not so very far distant, when the Occidental observer will look
around to see the globe girdled with an indissoluble bond of Chinese
peoples, no longer too weak for aggression, but independent in all
departments of national life. They will be taken up as equals into
social relations of the white races. They are now struggling among
themselves, asking merely to be allowed to fight out their own civil
battles and order their own civil affairs. They will make mistakes,
but probably will profit by them. The day will come when Chinese
will no longer be elbowed and hustled by their haughtier Occidental
neighbours, but perhaps instead we shall find ourselves entered into
no easy international and commercial competition with people whom not
so long since we looked down upon as servile and considered fit only
to minister to our needs in manual ways. The problems that loom
across the threshold of the future of this newly emancipated race,
however, surpass in magnitude any that civilisation has hitherto had
to encounter. There are clear indications of progress, but they are
not yet clear enough. China has to be remade, and those engaged in
the project may blunder because of the varied and widely varying
patterns they have in stock to choose from.
{20}
Certain phases of development we are sure of. We are able to place
our fingers upon certain points in China's national propaganda and
say with certainty that such and such a line is bound to be followed,
such and such a thing bound to happen. But, generally speaking,
China is a land of unintelligibility; the best advice one can give is
to "wait and see."
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