THE FALL OF HANYANG
Three days before the naval escapade described in the last chapter
started the great struggle made by the "Imps" for the recapture of
Hanyang. Yuan Shih K'ai, impatient at the dauntless manner in which
the enemy were standing their ground--and even gaining upon the
Imperial Army--made an offer of 3,000,000 taels (some £375,000) for
the recapture of Hanyang. The Revolutionary Army was now fighting as
never before.
The important news that Shantung had gone over to the Revolutionists
was received on the 16th in a laconic message, stating briefly that
the entire province was now flying the white flag. This news was all
the more important inasmuch as about ten days before the Government
granted all the demands of the Shantung people, with the exception of
the evacuation of Peking by the Manchus. This, it was thought, would
be a sufficient sop to Cerberus, but it seemed not so, and the
Shantungites had apparently decided to go the whole hog in the same
manner as their local compatriots.
The real bombardment of Hanyang commenced at night on that date, and
the sight was one never to be forgotten by those who had pluck enough
to go to the high buildings and watch the guns opening. From a score
of batteries on the Wuchang side of the river, from the big forts on
the main hills inside Wuchang, from perhaps thirty guns raised on
Hanyang Hill and {126} four hills away to the right there came
constant tiny flashes. The distant boom for hours in the dense
darkness gave one an eerie feeling. The furious whizz of the shells
as they swept over the foreign houses intensified one's peculiar
fascination. Bullets sailing through the air bred in one a spirit of
cool bravado. Around the countryside for miles one could count a
score of fires--the whole population seemed to be burned out of house
and home. At midnight there came a significant lull. Waiting and
watching, watching and waiting on the tops of their houses, foreign
civilians looked on to the passing tragedy, and were held spellbound
in the dark. Those tiny flashes of blue seemed to be the sparks of a
new life, but the morning brought the news that the Revolutionists
had had the worst of it. When the Northern Army first arrived at
Niekow it was part of their programme to dispatch a force through the
lakes to the Han River at Hankow, from which place they could reach
Hanyang in half a day. The boats were collected for the expedition,
but for some reason or other it was called off. The project appears
to have been taken up again, and this time carried through, with the
result that the Imperialists, by November 20th, were in possession of
Tsaitien, a busy market town on the Hanyang side of the Han twenty
miles up. A foreign traveller, who was there at the time of the
occupation, wrote up the following particulars about the situation
then:--
"After we had passed Hsinkow on the way down by boat we noticed
parties of grey-coated soldiers on the left bank marching down.
There might be twenty in a party and sometimes a hundred. In
conversation with them we learned that they were Chilhi or Shantung
men, and belonged to Yuan Shih K'ai's army. Their General was named
Wu, a very friendly man who said that he had a force of three
thousand, and that they were bound for Hanyang. Our boat outstripped
them, and on reaching Tsaitien we found it still under {127}
Revolutionary control, but with no soldiers there beyond the crews of
some twenty fighting junks at anchor. There had been a thousand men
in the place, but they had marched up the river before our arrival,
said to be bound for Anluh. We reached there on Saturday evening,
and at daybreak the following morning the gunjunks got up anchor and
made for up-river. The Imperialists did not put in an appearance
till Sunday afternoon about two o'clock, when some forty native boats
came in crowded with soldiers. They had also on board half a dozen
mules and probably guns, but these were not visible. They had large
supplies of ammunition. By the time they landed all trace of the
Revolutionists had disappeared. No one interfered with them, and
they interfered with no one. There might have been close on a
thousand men in that lot. All afternoon and evening there was heavy
firing up-river. The people said it was the Revolutionists attacking
the rear of the party up at Hsinkow, and that they had driven it
back, but the puzzle was how the advance contrived to reach Tsaitien
without either side apparently having seen the other. We left
Tsaitien about ten o'clock on Monday, at which time the Imperialists
were all in their tents engaged on their breakfast. There was no
sign that they intended making any further move that day. It is
impossible to reach Hankow by the Han route, as both parties fired on
every boat seen. We therefore crossed the Machia Lake, and came out
beyond Hanyang. Here a large force of several thousand
Revolutionists was setting out by land for Tsaitien, and had the
weather been favourable, they would have reached there last night.
As it is, they will have to wait for fine weather, and then some
further interesting news may be forthcoming from that quarter."
[Illustration: HOW THE IMPERIALISTS CROSSED THE HAN. One of the
three bridges built on boats across the river while the
revolutionaries were quarrelling among themselves.]
Thus at last had the Imperialists crossed the Han. And with their
crossing commenced one of the most determined battles in history,
lasting five long days and {128} four frightful nights of heaviest
fighting. Day after day the close riflery work and Maxim fire was
terrific. The Revolutionists for some time had the best of it. The
slaughter among the Imperialists was fearful. The gunnery was heavy
and deadly on both sides, but with Maxims the Revolutionists mowed
down the enemy in hundreds each day. The death-roll no one was able
to calculate. Each night the Imperial dead was taken away by train.
The Imperial wounded were left on the field in the cold to die of
their frightful wounds and hunger. The pressure did not allow of Red
Cross work being done. To the left of the advancing Imperialists
already referred to was the rapidly rushing Han, to the right a lake,
in front a creek and high hill, defended by strong forces of
Revolutionists. The hill in itself was a natural fort, but in the
undulations of the ground and in the long grass the mountain guns and
Maxims were as thick as blackberries. Every Imperial was fighting
for his life, for he knew, once across the Han, that it was a fight
to kill or be killed. Such scenes were probably never eclipsed in
any war. The fusillading and incessant cannonading was harder than
in any war of recent times. The Imperialists had given up the
endeavour and were downcast at the meagre prospects of their success.
To take Hanyang appeared altogether impossible. Their idea was to
again make a wide flanking movement towards Siaokan, run a light
railroad up to Siangyang, in North Hupeh, and so draw the
Revolutionists away from the hills to open country. Certain it
seemed to them that Hanyang would always remain a Revolutionary base.
But as one sets out to write an accurate account of the situation in
those last days in November, he is confronted by innumerable
obstacles that render it almost futile. On the 26th every man in the
Concessions, except the very few more closely associated with the
happenings on the field, was under the impression that the
Revolutionary Army was forging ahead, that it {129} had by far the
better position in the field, and that the taking of Hanyang was a
task that the Imperialists were not by any means strong enough to
accomplish. As I have said, the Imperialist officers thought so,
too, but when on Saturday (the 25th) I learned that the Hunan men
were becoming a little disaffected, I foresaw to some extent what
turn events would take if it were proved impossible for General Li
Yuan Hung and Commander Huang Hsuin successfully to handle this new
and somewhat treacherous move on the part of the Hunan Army. Now the
greatest blow that had yet fallen, and which could fall short of a
complete smash-up, fell to the Republican cause here on November 27th.
Hanyang was captured--how will later be explained.
[Illustration: HUNAN SOLDIER. One of the men who turned traitor,
causing the disastrous fall of Hanyang.
HUPEH SOLDIER. From time immemorial at feud with the Hunanese, but
brought into co-operation in the early part of the Revolution.]
One found it the more difficult to write an accurate account of the
situation which would remain true because from now onward it seemed
to change its aspect hour by hour. Everything seemed to have taken a
change for the worst. Chinese met in the streets and told each other
the bad news with long faces. The sight of the dead being brought in
from the field and prepared for burial, under the gaze of all and
sundry, brought a peculiar depression into the very atmosphere.
Foreign and Chinese communities waited hour by hour for what was
coming. Rumours were wild on the lips of every one. No one could be
believed, and what one actually saw could scarcely be taken as truth.
The general situation was extremely grave to the Republican military
cause, and the Imperialists were never stronger in numbers, and in
the advantage that they held over their enemy in their positions in
the field. In possession now of Hanyang Hill, it was expected that
they would bring their big guns into position and blow Wuchang to
pieces in three hours. There was nothing to stop them. They were
the military masters of the situation. All the Chinese could do now
was to sit tight, interfere as little {130} as possible, endeavour to
keep their heads on their shoulders by keeping out of the way of the
executioner's knife, and wait to see what would happen.
Then slowly came the story of the fall of Hanyang.[1]
{131}
Sensational incidents during the day that Hanyang fell, with
picturesque incidents and all the gore that the newspaper-reading
public calls for were provided under the eyes of every one.
Junkloads of helpless, bullet-driven men were drifting down the river
in a ghastly succession. Have you ever seen a boat drifting on a
rapid river? Have you ever watched a Chinese junk, ungainly and ugly
perhaps, just going helplessly with the tide? And have you ever seen
a cargo of human freight not knowing what to do to reach the shore or
any place of safety? That morning the men had been riddled by
bullets as they attempted to make away in the boats. They had had
machine-gun fire rained into them, and, scampering like a lot of
frightened birds in their cage, had crept all over to the covered end
in their frenzy, hoping that the wood cover would save them. Tighter
and tighter they pressed against each other. They trampled on each
other, threw their rifles out into the river, their cartridge-cases,
their general impedimenta, and then settled down {132} to die as the
boat slowly drifted down-stream. And there, when they were found,
these thirty, forty, fifty men were sitting huddled grimly together,
their glassy eyes staring upwards into the unknown. Mercilessly,
with hideous brutality, they had been slaughtered as they sat, and
now were in the sitting posture, dead, wedged in tightly one against
the other. Some had fallen outward to the side of the boat, and
their bodies now were hanging limply, swaying to and fro with the
dull motion of the junk. Some, shot through the head, through the
heart, through the limbs, had sunk exhausted to the bottom of the
boat, where the water was fast rushing in through the splintered
bulwarks, and lay, face down, in the water, drowned as they lay.
Another boatload, equally helpless and void of all hope but the
river, had their wounded at the bottom, some of the less seriously
wounded putting their hands through the holes into the water and
endeavouring vainly to get a motion on the boat. When these junks,
after terrific labour, were brought into the side {133} of the
British Bund, the sight will never be forgotten--men, bleeding from
the throat, from the side, limping as they dragged a shattered leg
behind them up the steps, to fall exhausted at the top and carried
away to the hospitals. 'Twas a bloody conflict that ended the fall
of Hanyang.
[Illustration: THE IMPREGNABLE HANYANG HILL, Shown in the background.
It is the main strategic point on the Yangtse. At one time it
bristled with revolutionary field-guns.]
For the first time since the beginning of the revolutionary movement
in China the Imperialist cause had scored an undeniable success,
always excepting the savage burning of Hankow. The success of the
Imperialists was rightly ascribed to their superior equipment and
discipline, and that their loyalty to Peking, as well as their
efficiency, had stood the supreme test of battle was in itself an
event of first-rate importance. The strong feeling which has grown
up almost all over China against the Manchu had still to be reckoned
with. At this time it was an amusing diversion to read the opinions
being printed in the home Press. After referring to the feeling
among the proletariat against the Manchus, a writer in an editorial
in the London _Times_ said that "again a middle {134} term may
conceivably be found in the suggestion that, as an alternative to the
withdrawal of the Court from Peking, the present Regent should resign
his office into the hands of a Chinese Regent or Council of Regency.
The singular ceremony which took place a few days ago in Peking, when
the Regent, in the name of the infant Emperor, made atonement before
the 'heavenly spirits' of the Imperial ancestors for the
responsibility which he has to bear in the present troubles, may be
taken as something more than a mere formal acknowledgment of the
gravity of the crisis. In the solemn oath of allegiance to the new
constitutional regime taken by the Regent, there is, in so many
words, an admission that the Dynasty is in danger; and so grave an
admission is, we imagine, at least as unprecedented as the
circumstances which have provoked it. If it truly represents the
chastened spirit of the rulers of China, it can hardly fail to make a
deep impression upon the masses of the Chinese people, whose
traditional reverence for the Throne as a sacred {135} institution
dates back to time immemorial, and has survived numberless
revolutions in the past which, however disastrous to the occupants
for the time being of the Throne, never permanently affected its
inherent prestige."
But in a period of such national travail as China was passing
through, it would have been unwise just then to build too much upon
the claims of mere common sense, even where people in many ways so
eminently sensible as the Chinese were concerned. Immense forces, of
which we could not yet pretend to estimate the energy, had been set
in motion for better or for worse; and, when once elemental forces
have been set in motion, they cannot easily be arrested. In pleading
for the maintenance of the Dynasty, Yuan Shih K'ai himself did not
conceal his belief that its overthrow would be followed by a series
of internal convulsions extending possibly over several decades.
Time may prove Yuan to be right. But though we may hope that the
world may be spared such a calamity, {136} it was now impossible to
look forward to the future without apprehension. The old order of
things had departed, never to return. But it would have been then,
and still is, idle to expect that a new and stable order of things
can be immediately evolved by any magic wand out of the existing
chaos. However rotten the old fabric may have been, it cannot be
destroyed and a new fabric built up in a day. Japan went through
some fifteen years of internal strife and turmoil before modern Japan
emerged from the ruins of the old feudal Japan. And Japan not only
had the good fortune to possess an influential class inspired by
great patriotic ideals, ready to lead her in the path of national
regeneration, but she had also, in the restoration of the Imperial
authority, an ancient national tradition round which modern ideas of
reform could crystallise. Whether China possessed a class equally
competent to steer her through the breakers had yet to be seen--and
has still; but it was only too clear, unfortunately, that the present
Dynasty could never be a rallying point for patriotic enthusiasm such
as the reigning Dynasty proved to be in Japan. The future alone
could show whether any effective substitute could be found for it.
[Illustration: THE THREE-EYED BRIDGE, Seven miles north of Hanyang,
where some of the hottest fighting took place. The Revolutionists
held the bridge and the adjoining hills till the fall of Hanyang made
the position untenable.]
The fall of Hanyang gave to the Imperial cause an impetus it was hard
to estimate. But it had cost the Chinese as a people a lot during
its fall.
* * * * *
During the first two days of December the author formed one of a
party of Europeans whose duty it was to superintend the operations of
a search party of the Red Cross Society around the neighbourhood of
Chiakow and the four hills across the Han River, all of which formed
the scene of one of the great battles. This was the belt of country
which for days was held by the Revolutionary Army, encamped and
fortified in {137} the many hillocks and surrounding lake country,
which by its very impassable nature was practically a fort. It was
here that the Revolutionists must have fought with more dauntless
courage than the Russo-Japanese War ever gave record of to the world.
It was here that for days, at closest range, they were driven back by
the Imperial shrapnel and rifle fire from the other side of the Han;
here that they repeated daring onslaughts upon the enemy when it
seemed that the end was near with the speedy cutting-up of the
Imperialists; here that the Peking men again and again endeavoured to
force an entry and were cut down hopelessly and retreated with but a
scanty percentage of their own attacking regiments; here that the
hills bristled with batteries that whistled shells simultaneously by
the dozen into the enemy as they lay encamped in the open country
behind the waterworks. Altogether those four hills, still looking up
reverently to their Maker, seemed silently to tell forth stories of
heroism that would make the memories of men who were cruelly tortured
immortal among their own people. But it was here also that the Hupeh
men and the Hunan men had their squabble; and in this was their
downfall, as it could have been in nothing else, for the place was
impregnable.
And as during those two days I rode my pony in and out those
hillocks, through those swamps, around those lakes, and as I stood by
the graves of men who gave their own cause away, I could not help
wondering what might have been had the Revolutionary Army remained
one in spirit. What would have happened is this: the Imperialists
would never have crossed the Han. But by December 1st they were in
full possession. Every man and thing seemed numbered, all was
wonderfully organised; from far away up the Han on both sides down
past the point where the Han bifurcates into the Yangtsze and down
past Kinshan forts the Imperialists were in possession.
{138}
As it was the rebels had lost, the Imperialists had won: but as one
went around the countryside and talked with the country people,
peaceable souls who had only their small cabbage-patch to bring forth
their wherewithal to live, the tales of savagery and cruelty and
devilish treatment which the Imperialists said they found it
necessary to bring into their "military measures" did not make one
wonder that, although compelled at the point of the bayonet to
submit, the whole of the rural population swore vengeance upon the
army that had worked havoc among them. Such behaviour as the
Imperial soldiers, in their devilry, persisted in was worse even than
one would expect from the worst of Chinese. We all know that the
Chinese are cruel, that they have no sympathies in the usual Western
sense; we know that they delight in the torture of all things that
have life. But such grossly inhuman conduct as was countenanced by
the Imperial military authorities in this centre almost compelled one
to exclaim that to the depths of Chinese barbarity one cannot probe.
What one saw made one instinctively draw back, yet one did not see a
tithe of what there was.
Of the searching for the dead I shall have but little to say. There
were few dead to be found. We buried 207. As soon as the military
stationed in command of the captured hill heard that the Red Cross
Society was sending parties to search for the dead and to bury the
corpses, they set about with their own burial parties to remove those
who had been shot in that dreadful battle. The villages that had
been razed to the ground, and incidentally rid of all the menfolk
with a rifle shot or a few bayonet thrusts, had been made to bury
their own dead; most of it was done by the girls before they were
taken off to be made worse than slaves to the fiendish men who took
them. But the tale had better be told in sequence.
If one is able to keep his mind free from the gruesome {139} and the
cruel, the fiendish tricks practised everywhere along the Han by the
Imperial soldiers, he cannot but admire the smartness of the military
training and the extremely creditable manner in which this Imperial
Army had been handled. When it is remembered that from the four high
hills overlooking the Han River the Revolutionists were able
continuously to blow to smithereens anything that was attempted in
the way of bridge-building, the making of the bridge by which the
main body of the enemy passed over the river is little short of a
marvel. At this point the Han, with no inconsiderable current, is no
less than three hundred and fifty yards wide. The bridge by which
the Imperialists crossed was composed of some one hundred and fifty
boats of all sorts and sizes, each in its turn tied to an extremely
stout hawser; over this the whole of the attacking force with their
complete equipment was brought. Then from this point to another
point some twenty li away, at the base of the hills, villages were
indiscriminately scattered, some with twenty families, some with half
a dozen. All had suffered the same fate and were now but places of
ashes.
To the left was found a Revolutionary soldier, dead, half-eaten,
dressed still in his black uniform. About the body, which was
huddled in a decomposing heap on the ground, were noticed several
bayonet wounds; it had been brought from a bed, upon which the
wounded man had probably been done to death. Under the bed was found
a lamp, on and around the bed were found huge chunks of charcoal and
charred firewood; nothing else in the room was burned. Is it
possible to think that those devils of men, first getting their prey
like the beasts they are, then maiming him, then putting him on a
bed, then getting the fire by which they intended burning him to
death, had fired the lot and literally roasted their victim alive,
and sat down to watch the last agonies? Such was my theory, and the
{140} circumstantial evidence, with the guarded explanation of the
temple caretaker--who was spared because he could wait upon these
vicious greycoats--made for none other. And there the body lay; dogs
had come in and eaten off a leg, a part of the neck, a part of the
body; the main bone of the leg had been wrenched off, and a dog near
by still growled with another for possession. Soon the burial was
made, the wistful onlookers, lucky that they had escaped, remarking
blandly that we were performing _hao si_. Further gruesome details
of a most gruesome duty it were reasonable not to expect given;
sufficient has been written to show where the great battle took place
and what its effects had been. Over the hills one came across one,
two, a dozen peaked caps, a dozen uniforms. Near by were nightsoil
pits and ponds of stagnant water; into these the unlucky victims had
been thrown. Pools of blood there were everywhere, cartridge-cases
and cartridges there were by the thousand, seven big guns with the
breach-blocks gone, boxes of unopened field-gun cases, piles of 2¼
gun shells alongside the heavy pieces, pieces of bone, bloody
bandages, and much else all too eloquent of the carnage and the
battle. One man volunteered to show us where the corpse of a
villager lay; he said the body had been hit fair by a big shell and
now there was little left to show for what had been a soldier doing
his duty for a cause of reform; when we came to the place a pool of
blood and a few bones were all that the canine scavengers had left.
[Illustration: THE HANDY MAN ASHORE. Residents in the British
Concession owe much to the bluejackets. They are seen here carting
bricks in rickshaws, with which to build barricades.]
Farther on an old woman sat upon a heap of rubbish, which had been
her home for forty years. She was ill-clad, cold, had had no food
for four days, and thought that she, too, would die. Her husband,
poor old man, had been killed by stray shots before the Imperialists
made their rush; her sons, four of them--peaceable men, she said, who
offered no resistance--were killed cruelly at sight; their wives had
been carried off. "But I am not alone," she added; "others in the
{141} village suffered the same fate. Our young boys had their
queues taken off to make them into rebels so that the soldiers would
have an excuse to shoot them. And our 'little babies'"--the poor old
lady was now wiping her eye--"our girls of fourteen and fifteen were
carried off across the river. I wonder whether I shall see them
again." I wondered, too, as I watched the old woman weeping. And
the farther I went the more was I impressed with the cruelty of this
war towards the civilian rather than to the military part of the
community. The devastation was terrific.
Have you ever noticed how soon a Chinese can spoil or totally destroy
things in general? Whether it be the mechanic in the factory, the
cook in the kitchen, the boy about the house, the gardener, the
boatman, the tinker, tailor, or sailor, it is undeniable that the
Chinese is a pastmaster in the art of spoiling and damaging and
putting things destructively to their wrong uses. One sees it, not
in one district and among one class of the Chinese; it is universal
in the country and the people. To go through China one is struck
more than anything else by the manner in which everything is brought
to a general condition of decay and uselessness. And so in war the
Chinese have been showing us how destructive is their nature, how
vile they are in pillaging and looting and destroying. For miles
around the city of Hankow long stretches of burned and pillaged
districts stand as painfullest evidences of the ravages of this
horrible civil war. These northern victors could not have behaved
worse had they specifically endeavoured, and this is much to say.
All the cruelties, all the infamy in its several forms, all the
wanton destruction, the stealing, the ravishing of pure women, the
killing of little children, the kidnapping of young girls, the gross
oppression practised by them all will go down to history as the
conduct unworthy of any civilised nation. I am aware that in writing
this I may call down {142} considerable criticism, but I fail to see
why such things should be kept back from public knowledge. China is
making claims, as she long has been, that she is coming line to line
with the civilisation of the West. She has claimed that she has got
out of the rut of the past, and that now the world may confidently
look for that which in history has made the nations of the world
great--liberty, justice, and other so far unknown virtues in her
present military campaign against those who truly, so far as we can
tell, are urging for real reform.
Another instance before I close this chapter. Whilst I was riding
round the country I collected a couple of shells from the field, and
asked an old man to put them in his house for me until I should later
return for them. He agreed and away I went. Some time after I
returned to find four soldiers yelling at this old man and some of
his neighbours who had foregathered to save him from the common doom.
The soldiers had accused him of harbouring the empty shells for some
rebels they were sure he was sheltering, and already their fingers
were itching on the triggers of their rifles. "A foreign gentleman
asked me to keep them for him; I am telling you the truth!" shouted
the terrified old fellow. "You lie! you old blackguard, you'll have
to die for this. Come out of your house!" Vainly were his
neighbours endeavouring to mediate on his behalf, and were threatened
with the same treatment if they did not desist at once. But at the
moment I rode up. I took the shell-cases quietly, thanked the old
man, asked what the trouble was, and was about to explain when one of
the soldiers, with an eye filled with evil, wished me peace and told
me that they were merely having fun with the old man, and that I
could go on my way resting assured that no harm would be done. I
went, but I do not know the fate of the old man.
* * * * *
{143}
The reader should understand that probably of all strategic points in
the Chinese Empire there is none more naturally formidable than
Hanyang. It was the pivot of the whole situation. With Hanyang
gone, Wuchang was practically gone also--if the enemy had any guns at
all. At dawn on November 27th the war correspondents brought the
news that the Hunan men had refused to fight at Hanyang, and that the
city was about to be taken. Bombarding and heavy fusillading had
been going on all the day on the Sunday and throughout the night, but
by midnight the Imperialists were known to be masters of the
situation, and it was only a matter of time for them to march upon
the fortified city of Hanyang. That city, as will have been
gathered, every one looked upon as impregnable. There was treachery.
The Hunan men were said to have shot their officers, to have left the
hill, to have boarded junks that were drifting hopelessly down-stream
in an attempt to retreat to Wuchang, only to find that after they had
been shelled in the junks they drifted down-stream in the face of
Maxim fire, placed to greet them at the bend of the river. What
happened to them has already been described, but can better be
imagined.[2]
{144}
As I was dressing on November 27th my bedroom door was slowly opened.
A smart young Chinese, a man from Yale University and one of the
smartest men of his year, crept in and cautiously closed the door
behind him.
"Man," he said, "it's all up. We are going to lose Hanyang."
And then he began to tell me the story of the treachery. 'Twas a sad
story, true; but it gave the city away. Coming over to me, with
sincerity shining in his eyes, he exclaimed: "Come, you're a
journalist; can't you help us? Can't you stop this dreadful carnage?
The city has fallen completely. The Imperialists are in control of
the hill and the city, with the arsenal, the powder factory, and much
else."
{145}
In a nutshell it may be said that the Revolutionary military cause in
this immediate centre was with the fall of Hanyang irretrievably
lost. It will be futile in this volume to go into the way the men
behaved; they fled, many of them cowards, others struck down still
sticking manfully to their duty, others barbarously bayoneted as they
endeavoured to hold their guns on the hill and in the valley on the
river bank; but that they were shamefully routed was borne out by the
fearful misbehaviour of the Imperialists. On they came like a pack
of maddened animals for the onslaught. They had no mercy. Every one
within {146} reach fell at the point of the bayonet or was shot
ruthlessly despite all humane methods brought to bear in surrender in
war. The boating community, quietly adopting a neutral attitude,
were served in the same heartless manner. Women, children, old men,
babies--all were shot, and their corpses floated down-river in their
drifting boats. Some of the sights were too terrible to behold. Old
men and women were all subjected to the same cruel fate.
But leaving for the moment the fighting, we come to the Bund, in the
afternoon, to watch the Red Cross Association conducting its errands
of mercy. Out on the Bund--some shot through the head, through the
limbs, through the body, all showing up in ghastly significance the
horror of this war--we see ten, twenty, thirty, forty of the dead
laid out for burial. Foreigners and Chinese all lend a hand to tie
the bodies in matting, others heave them into the carts, the
pavements are littered with the discarded coats and implements of war
which the dead still held as evidence of this civil butchery; on a
little way farther one finds a group of wounded on the grass plots
waiting for the stretcher-bearers to return to take them to the
hospitals. One was a mother with a little baby, the baby dying, the
mother mortally wounded; others were civilians who had shown no
fight; others were trained soldiers; others were recruits who had run
at the sound of the machine-guns, shot in the back. Then there is
the rumble of the wheels as cartload after cartload of the covered
dead are conveyed out of sight, and the police set to work to pick up
the blood-stained uniforms, the money-pouches, the little
knick-knacks of the Chinese soldier's paraphernalia. All is so sad,
so significant.
Meantime over across the way the shells were falling into the capital
of Wuchang. The air was rent again and again by the sharp booming of
the Imperial big guns on Coffin Hill. Men came and went, looked down
at the {147} pools of human blood that were swelling the rivers of
blood through which China has yet to pass before this Revolution
ends. The river was deserted. If a sampan ventured out into the
stream rifles were set to work, and a hasty retreat was made. The
people were downcast.
And this young Chinese, sent specially from General Li, who called
upon me before I was dressed, had come asking whether I could not
send a message from Li Yuan Hung to the world. "We don't want to
fight any more!" he excitedly exclaimed. "General Li is genuinely
anxious that peace should be declared, that slaughter on this
wholesale scale should be stopped forthwith. Although this reverse
has overcome the Revolutionary Army, our cause on the field is not by
any means lost. Even if we have lost Hanyang, it does not follow
that our fighting strength is gone, and if it becomes necessary
General Li will alter the base of fighting operations, a scheme which
the Imperialists had under consideration before their victory
yesterday. None were more surprised than the Imperialists themselves
when they were able to march up Hanyang Hill without having to fire a
shot. But the fact that they are in possession of Hanyang does not
necessarily mean that the military conquest is entirely won, for if
needs be we shall be able continually to augment our army from other
provinces until such time as in the very nature of things the
Imperial Army will have been weeded out, man for man, or two to one,
or three, or four if necessary."
I was sorry I was unable to help him.
I learned subsequently that, just an hour or so before Hanyang
actually changed hands, Yuan Shih K'ai wired from Peking to the
British Acting Consul-General here, asking him to inform General Li
that he was anxious to hear what terms he proposed that peace might
be established. This was just at the moment that Hanyang was passing.
{148}
What was to be the outcome of this Hunan dissension any one who knew
the Hunanese would not be inclined to say offhand, but the fact that
there has always been some little contempt mutually between the
Hupehese and the Hunanese probably magnified the dissension in the
military that occurred. One of the first arts of warfare is to cut
off the pursuers. Now, when the Hunan men were in the city of
Hanyang the Friday previous there was a little teashop squabble
between a couple of dozen men, the Hupeh men being accused of
flinching the hard graft of the front line. To this squabble is
traced directly the capture of Hanyang by the enemy.
"We are always sent to the front," said the Hunanese; "we are getting
less pay, doing more work, suffering heavier losses in our ranks."
Then one word brought forth another, the party offered to have a
fight on the spot, some picked up their rifles and discharged a few
shots, and one or two men were wounded. After that the Hupeh men
were placed on the front line.
On the Saturday during a sharp engagement, in which the
Revolutionists got the worst of it, a retreat at the double was made;
the Revolutionary gunners opened with their three-inchers and
endeavoured to cut off the pursuers, but instead dropped their shells
among the first lines of their own men as they retreated. Upon this
the Hunan men swore vengeance as they saw their comrades falling
thickly around them. When they got under cover they refused to fight
any more. They almost at once commenced to go back to Wuchang, where
they declared they were going to talk terms with General Li, and so
they lost one of the most impregnable positions in the whole of
China--a veritable Chinese Gibraltar. And when the Imperialists were
able to march upon Hanyang they never had such a delightful surprise
in their lives. In conversation with an Imperial officer, who was
leading the first regiment {149} to get into the city, I was told
that they had almost given up all idea of ever capturing Hanyang.
Had the Revolutionary men been kept under better control while off
duty this never would have happened. The Imperialists stood a far
greater risk of having dissension creeping in among their men, but
they took great care that no such loophole should be offered to them.
In Wuchang the people, essentially Chinese, talked so wildly about
this Revolutionary reverse that it was found necessary to remove the
heads of several, and war talk became absolutely taboo on the streets.
The Imperialists then directed their attention to Wuchang. Every
hour the Revolutionists expected a bombardment. "We shall put up a
bit of a fight, but it will be quite useless to expect to hold the
city," a prominent Revolutionary officer in the Foreign Office told
me; "then our main army will go away at the back of the city and trek
down to Kiukiang, concentrating at Nanking." But the Imperialists
somehow hung fire. They did not seem anxious to take Wuchang. Li
Yuan Hung is reported to have declared that he believed the
Revolution was lost; he told his second that the Imperialists were
sure to come and capture the city, behead him, and kill all those who
had no queues. That the Imperialists were doing their best to find
out all they could of affairs on the opposite side of the river was
evident. They collared one of the Revolutionary spies, and he was
promised pardon if he would tell his captors something about the
inside movements of Wuchang.
He set about to tell his story.--how that the whole of the officials,
from General Li downwards, were in a blue funk; how that there were
some ten thousand troops now in Wuchang; how that the intention was
to blaze away with all the bluff in the world on the foreshore whilst
the army was clearing out by the back gates of the city; how that if
the Imperialists cared to march upon Wuchang they could capture it
{150} forthwith. He then waited for the pardon that did not come.
[Illustration: DISMANTLED IMPERIAL GUN ON PURPLE MOUNTAIN, HANKING.
The author is seen standing in the foreground of the picture.]
"Have you any more to say?" asked the officer to whom he told the
story.
"No, I've told you all I know."
"Well," retorted the officer, "if this man has nothing more to tell
us"--and he turned to a man who commanded the execution
proceedings--"take him outside and have his head off." In a couple
of minutes the big knife fell, and the head of the best spy in the
Revolutionary official camp rolled to the ground.
[1] The following story as told me by a Red Cross worker who was in
charge of the Emergency Hospital, of what he saw before the
Imperialists took the Hanyang Hill, will be of interest:--
"At 7.30 a.m. our launch made a trip to our Emergency Hospital in
Hanyang. As the launch was needed for work in Wuchang until ten, I
sent her away as soon as we had landed. At once we began to notice
that there was a change of some kind about the place. There were
very few soldiers about, and movement that was being made was in the
direction of Wuchang. I noticed too, that the ground along the
riverside was pretty liberally sprinkled with unused rifle
cartridges, many in their clips. These seemed to betoken a somewhat
hurried embarkation at least, but I thought that it might have been
caused by a hurried dispatch of troops in the night. On arrival at
the hospital, one of the Army Red Cross men said, "You'd better go
back. It is dangerous to be here." However, there were one or two
cases awaiting our arrival, so we at once set to work to attend to
them. A little later we noticed that the servants who had been so
freely helping us had all disappeared, and presently I met one of
them on the street carrying his bundles of goods off to the
riverside. One of our number had some business inside the city
walls, so we decided to go on with the work for the time being and
await his report as to the state of things. After about an hour I
had occasion to take a wounded man to the landing-place, some two
hundred yards distant to await the arrival of the launch, and then
found that there was some cause for uneasiness. All who could secure
a sampan or other boat were hurriedly gathering their bits of goods
together and making off up-stream against the current, all hands in
the boat helping to row. It was the panic of the populace that
feared the arrival of the enemy. I also overheard a quiet
conversation between two Chinese coolies and gathered from their
remarks that the Hunan raw recruits had been unable or unwilling to
face the northern guns and had gone off by the regiment. Just then a
dismantled gunjunk drifted down from somewhere up-stream. There was
only one man on board, and his unseeing eyes were turned up to the
full glare of the sun. He had evidently been the helmsman, and had
died at his post. There were bullet marks on the woodwork, and a cap
or two lay in the bottom of the boat, and I guessed what had become
of the rest of the boatload. Promptly at ten o'clock I saw the
launch steaming back to us, and almost at the same moment there was a
movement on the part of some troops who had arrived on the Bund and
wished quick transport to Wuchang. Some of them came down as the
boat drew up, but I was informed that this launch was for wounded men
only, of which there was quite a number now being brought in from the
West Gate first-aid place. Whilst getting these on board, the
Revolutionary Army Field Hospital Corps, with their stretchers rolled
up and empty and their kit entire, marched up and began to make a
move on our launch, saying that they also were Red Cross workers, but
after a little difficulty I got them safely by to a boat farther up
the river. They were told of the difficulty we were experiencing in
getting coolies to carry their wounded down from the West Gate and
other places, but they declined to stay any longer in a place that
was "dangerous." Some field-pieces had been brought in by the
retiring troops, and one gunner, unable to get off his gun, brought
in the breech block. There was no "scuttle," but a systematic
retreat of all sections of the army. On my way back to the hospital
(the Baptist Church building) I met a regiment of troops marching up
to the Bund. These had come from the top of Hanyang Hill immediately
to the north of us, and as an officer had already been to tell us
that the army was in retreat we decided to pack up everything--drugs,
instruments, bandages, and all--and leave not even a splint behind.
All the wounded were taken undressed, or with very rough dressing, to
the launch as soon as we could secure bearers. Whilst making another
trip to the launch with some gear, stray bullets pinged by my ear and
plopped into the water. At the same time I heard a noise of firing
at the west side of the city far more distinctly than on the previous
day, and shrapnel began bursting in the city behind us. It was time
we were off. Just as we were casting off some bearers were seen
making their way towards us with another casualty, so we came
alongside and took him in and then steamed away. When off Wuchang we
were stopped by a zealous blackcoat, who presented the wrong end of
his rifle to us and said that he would fire if we proceeded. We hove
to and cast anchor, and waited for this man's officer, who came up,
gave him a scolding, and made him stand to attention in front of the
field-piece his comrades had got ready to fire. We hauled up the
anchor and got under weigh once more, but only to be hailed again by
the next guard of soldiers at the battery some fifty yards farther
down-stream. Once again we hove to. This time it was to take on a
wounded man, who, they said, was a spy. I guessed that this was part
of their joke, as we knew perfectly well that a suspicion of being a
spy would have been more than enough to have sealed that man's fate.
Just as we had got under weigh for the third time in our short run to
Hankow, the Imperialists fired a volley at us from somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the China merchant's godown. Most of the bullets
fell short, some struck the water by the side of the boat just below
where a group of Red Cross workers were standing. We then realised
that the greycoats had worked their way back to the side of the river
again. A few moments more, and the waterway between Wuchang and
Hankow had become a veritable hell. Scores of boats were on the
river, some being full of fleeing soldiers and others crammed with
civilians, trying to get away from the greycoats; but orders had been
given in Wuchang that all deserting Revolutionaries were to be shot,
and so all craft on the river came in for a terrible cross fire from
rifle, machine gun, shrapnel, and shell. We ran alongside and got
off our thirty wounded, and a little later, when some of the boats
that had weathered the storm of shot and shell began to drift down, I
suggested that we should take the launch out into midstream and pick
up the boats as they came down-river on the chance of finding some
still alive. In this way we rescued three soldiers unwounded, six
civilians and soldiers wounded, mostly of serious character, and then
towed two boatloads of dead across to the Wuchang side and sent off
the three unhurt soldiers with them. One of the wounded we had
picked up died almost immediately. Our attention was next attracted
to a big boat crammed with men, women, and children which was trying
to reach the Wuchang side of the river. Destitute of oars, the
panic-stricken folk were using the loose floor boards in frantic
attempts to escape. On our approach they set up terrible cries for
mercy. By the time we got alongside we were close in to the Wuchang
shore, not far from a huge timber-raft. The scene was truly piteous.
Women were on their knees imploring us to spare them. One man was so
beside himself with terror that he jumped into the air and threw
himself on to the deck, evidently under the impression that he was
plunging into the water. In vain we tried to tell them that we had
come to save and to heal the wounded who were lying about the boat.
Then a new difficulty arose. Just as we seemed to succeed in calming
the fears of the terrified creatures a company of Revolutionary
soldiers raced down the banks and along the huge raft with their
rifles at "the ready." One or two dropped down behind the logs,
covering us with their guns, whilst others ordered us to leave the
boat alone or they would fire. I stood at the bow of the boat
holding up both hands as a signal, but they would not recognise the
large Red Cross flag floating above me or listen to my arguments.
So, after having looked down the other end of the rifle for quite a
time, we gave up the attempt and left the boatload to its fate. What
that was we soon saw. Their goods were seized by the soldiery and
they were led up the banks under arrest. The soldiers were evidently
carrying out their orders to allow no one to retreat from Hanyang. A
subsequent visit of the Red Cross launch to the creek near by the
raft resulted in the bringing over of many wounded found there.
Some, however, had already been taken into Wuchang for treatment in
the overcrowded hospitals there. On this journey we learned
something of the awful fate that had befallen the innocent in their
attempt to reach a place of safety. One was the sole survivor of the
family who had started out on their journey a few hours before. One
little lassie of some twelve summers as I was carrying her to the
shore told me that all her people had been killed with the exception
of herself and her father, and he was also wounded severely. A woman
was found who had been shot through the hand as she had tried to
shelter her baby girl--the poor little mite had been shot through the
head. I carried the child up to the shore, and sent the woman and
her dying babe to the Margaret Hospital."
[2] Startling stories of the cruelty of the Imperial soldiers who
visited the Hanyang battlefields after the retreat of the rebels were
told by every one who went over the battlefields. One writer said:--
"I went with a party of Red Cross men all over the battlefields after
the capture of Hanyang by the Imperialists. We went on bicycles,
riding over the Han by the pontoon bridge, going out at eight o'clock
in the morning and not returning until after six. During that time
we covered a great deal of territory, and saw evidences of almost
incredible cruelty on the part of the Imperial soldiers. We came up
with a party of four or five of them wearing Red Cross badges, but
carrying arms instead of first-aid kits. They told us that they were
Red Cross men and thoroughly understood their duties, which were to
bring in any wounded Imperial soldiers and to kill all the wounded
rebel soldiers. There was plenty of evidence that they had been
carrying out that programme, and they were very indignant when we
interfered and prevented their killing a wounded rebel. We met
several parties of this kind.
"All over the battlefield there were wounded rebel soldiers and
non-combatants, who had lain for four or five days without food or
water or any kind of attention. We were passing through one village
when a woman called out to us that there was a wounded man there. We
got off our bicycles and looked for the man, finding him under a
bunch of straw in the road, where he had lain for several days
without food or water, while hundreds of coolies passed by. We found
that he had a compound fracture, and called for some of the villagers
to help us carry him inside. None of them would help, and we had to
carry him into a hut ourselves. The villagers gave him tea and water
only when we insisted on it. We asked them why it was they would
allow a wounded man to remain inside their village for such a long
time without giving him any attention, and finally got at the reason.
When the fighting started four wounded rebels and one wounded
Imperialist came into the village, and a woman took them into her
house and gave them food and a place to sleep. The following day a
band of Imperial soldiers came to the village in search of their
wounded men and were told of this. They went to the house, removed
the wounded Imperial, then put all of the members of the family in
the house, with the wounded rebels, walled up the doors, and set fire
to the place. After telling us this story, the villagers took us to
the house and we saw the bodies half burned amidst the ruins. As the
villagers were afraid to help us in any way or to allow us to place
the wounded rebels in their houses, we carried two to an abandoned
hut in the middle of a field, dressed their wounds, and buried them
down in straw as best we could. We had no guard to leave over them,
nor did we have any stretcher-bearers with us, so we planned to come
back and get them the following day. In order to protect them as
much as possible, we pinned on each one a card stating that these
people had been taken charge of by the foreign Red Cross, and asked
all to protect them. When we went back the following morning, we
found one of the men dead, his face mutilated by bullets fired at
close range. The other one had not been harmed, though almost dead
with fright. He said that only half an hour before we came a party
of Imperial soldiers visited them. The wounded men showed them the
card we had left and pleaded with them for mercy. The Imperials spat
on them, and then walked just outside the door and fired. It seems
that all of the guns were aimed at one man, which was the reason the
other escaped, for the Imperials left immediately after the firing.
There were many non-combatants wounded--we treated eight in one small
village. One of them was a woman who had been shot through her small
foot. Another had been shot through the leg; one old man,
seventy-six years old, crawled an English mile with a broken leg to
get assistance from us. All of the wounded people we treated had
been wounded for four or five days and had remained all of that time
without any kind of attention, because of the fear of the people that
the Imperialists would wreak vengeance on any one that aided the
wounded. The line of retreat was covered with ammunition, arms,
haversacks, and clothing. I believe that there must have been a full
trainload of ammunition alone.
"The missionaries in Hankow are doing noble work caring for the
wounded. The seats of the churches have been turned into beds, and
the missionaries risk their lives daily in caring for the wounded and
rescuing them from the battlefields."
{151}