Part 6

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.

General Hsu, with the advice of Generals Ling, Li and Hwang, and Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang, rose to the high level. He agreed to a surrender with honors, even guaranteeing the life of the notorious murderer of non-combatants, General Chang the Second. The negotiations took place under the guns of historic Purple Hill, while the panting troops held enthusiasm in control. Behind the walls the imperialists breathed hard, and the great populace of shopkeepers eagerly waited and watched the republican sun flags on Purple Mountain. Hurrah! a shout went up that lives would be guaranteed (“Chiu Ming”); yes, honor, too! Fling open the pounded, riddled iron “Great Peace” gate! The steel muzzles of the hot Armstrongs, the deadly four-point-sevens, the spitting Rexer rapid fire and three-inch Krupp guns on Purple, Lion and Tiger Hills, held their smoky breath like good hounds in leash, but straining. The generals and captains marked time; the troops craned their heads; the Cantonese artillery hitched up the limbers to the gun carriages. The American missionaries thanked God and led on the way of peace for a China that would never forget the moving scene, where forgiveness towered over revenge. Here they come, General Chao riding ahead of the doughty Shangtung territorials with their yellow dragon flags flying for the last time, and the bloody turbaned men of escaped Chang’s army. Ground arms and mark time! The victorious rebels kept their places, and under the fluttering red, white and blue sun flags of the new republic, looked on at the impressive acts. The great column of imperialists deployed with music playing, saluted and piled their arms before the feet of the victors, General Hsu sitting on horseback where the pacificators stood. Sun flags and white flags fluttered everywhere as the sign of rebel dominance. Who are these who now come up with reversed arms? They do not wear the German peaked caps, and the khaki uniform of modern troops, but the old turban and slovenly blue uniform of the ancient troops of China. They are Chang’s bloody old-style warriors, 1,000 of them, wearing white bands in deep contrition and as a seal of their lives from massacre. They, too, salute Hsu, the giver of their lives, some of them giving the unmilitary kotow instead of the modern salute. A cheer went up, the bands playing with greater spirit. Hold open the “Great Peace” gate! Victorious Generals Hsu and Ling, and their men, they of a hundred cold steel and bomb charges, blowing hot the trumpets of victory, and led by the shaven heroes, the “Dare to Die” regiment of immortal night charges, are on the ringing, clanging march for the ancient Ming city, which they have conquered, Nanking the cultured; Nanking the proud capital of capitals; Nanking where was the yamen of the illustrious Viceroy Liu Kun Yih; Nanking of the Taipings, and Nanking of the world’s widest republic! A friendly hand had touched off the mine under the Tartar general’s yamen, and the eighteen other dastardly mines, so that the victors should not be blown up treacherously in the crowning hour of their rejoicing. White flags flutter everywhere. Once the sign of death in China, they are now the sign of peace in China, as well as in the rest of the world. A shout of welcome goes up from the populace, who from the beginning, like all the rest of the central and southern provinces, have been in sympathy with the revolution. Generals Hsu, Ling and Hwang at Nanking then have indeed balanced for the rebels the imperialist victory at Hanyang won by General Feng. The rebels lost their left wing, which was turned. The imperialists have also now lost their left wing, which has been thus crumpled up at Nanking. New moves must now be made on the checker-board by Dictator Yuan at Peking.

Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the Canton Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers _Wu Ying_ and _Wupang_, and with the British gunboats _Robin_, _Sandpiper_ and _Moorhen_ from Hongkong, and the American gunboat _Callao_, attacked the West River pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of Wuchow Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches and river peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their wheel-houses sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred hatches, which let air in but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on the ’tween decks, a guard at each hatch and over each port, and double quartermasters manning the wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval conditions, and it was exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas, Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000 uniforms and outfits to equip a regiment of President Wu’s provincial troops. Part of the rebel navy now made a four-hundred-mile dash at forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang, from Shanghai, to try to keep the successful right wing of the imperialists from crossing to the rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep the loyalists engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if greatly reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’ supply railway in the rear.

On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun, the regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai Su, and the other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to save the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the three hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus brought to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand councilor in the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he was put in as its president by Manchu power. Later he was president of the Navy Board, and president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He is a moderate progressive, a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former minister to Russia and Germany, and the first president of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He was a grand councilor in the old days, a viceroy of Manchuria, and president of the Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge of loans. He has visited America. The appointment of this republican general-in-chief was, of course, mere flattery, and he did not serve.

These moves on the recommendation of Dictator Yuan, who was an old enemy of Regent Chun, who exiled him, did not satisfy the rebels, who named Nanking as their permanent capital, called for delegates from all the rebel provinces, and pressed on the war. “The name is changed at Peking, but it is the same old game,” they said. A republican loan of ten million taels, bearing twelve per cent. interest, and sold at about eighty per cent. of face value, was sought at Shanghai, Wu Ting Fang seeking American subscriptions especially, for he kept reminding Americans: “You are the mother of republics; the greatest republic, as we will be the largest republic.” Wu also wired prominent American and British financiers and their governments, pleading that loans should not be made to the Manchu government, and respectfully warning that: “The republican rebels would remember if loans were made to fight their cause.” This really had a deterrent influence, for Americans and Britons were able to influence France to suspend financial action for a while. The American-educated Tang Shao Yi, Dictator Yuan’s chief assistant, now went to the rebel headquarters at Wuchang and Shanghai to interview General Li, Minister Wu and General Hsu regarding peace, and the rebels held sessions of delegates from the Yangtze, southern and western provinces. Kwangtung province began its republican organization, and sent up another quota of 3,000 modern troops from Canton, added to 10,000 previously sent, to reinforce General Li, who stood marking time at Wuchang against General Feng of the imperialists at Hanyang.

By this time the fine Tyne-built, gray Chinese cruiser _Hai Chi_, which sailed from New York in October, arrived at Shanghai, and amid wild rejoicing, such as only the southern Chinese can express, ran down the triangular yellow dragon and hoisted the square tri-color sun flag of the republican revolution. She was at once ordered to report at the arsenal with her heavy load of ammunition, which was a godsend to the revolutionists. This cruiser was the best known abroad of Chinese war vessels, and at once became the flagship of the rebel navy. She is armed with two eight-inch, and ten four-point-seven guns. On December 14th, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), with the American, Homer Lea, arrived safely at Penang, Straits Settlements, a hotbed of Chinese reform, which has from time to time sheltered all the reformers like Sun, Kang, etc., since the coup d’état in 1898. The rich foreignized Cantonese owners of tin mines have been loyal to reform from the beginning. When Sun arrived at Singapore on December 16th, a band of Chinese girls met him, each waving the tri-color of the revolution and of the emancipation of Chinese womanhood, and singing the Chinese Marseillaise, _Chung Kwan_. The Chinese wore no queues, and the caricatures which they distributed showed the pig, the dog, the monkey and the Manchu as all belonging to the races which wear queues! Who will say that the Chinese are not distinguished for humor! I have for years been trying to point out this quality in them.

The first wave of the revolution, which had died down somewhat by the Hankau defeat, had rolled on even into far mountainous Tibet, and Gyangze, a walled and fortified town on the trade route between Lhasa and Darjeeling, fell before the revolutionists on December 14th. Gyangze will be remembered for the stand it made against Sir Francis Younghusband’s brilliant campaign in 1904 to open up the way from India to Lhasa, and also for the operations in its neighborhood by General Chao Ehr Feng, who drove the sacred plotting Dalai Lama for the first time out of China into India in the startling campaign of 1910.

During this week the Yangtze River for six hundred miles presented a remarkable scene, as Tang Shao Yi, the emissary of Dictator Yuan, sailed down to Shanghai to discuss peace terms with the revolutionists at the Town Hall at Shanghai, which was guarded by British, Sikh and other troops of the international settlement. At Hankau the last yellow dragon flag of the imperialists was seen, as the imperial legates, Tang Shao Yi, Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chih, on the steamer _Tung Ting_, sailed between the new navy of the rebels on patrol of the great river, which was now their six hundred miles of front. The fine cruiser _Hai Chi_, with New York Chinese among the crew, the companion cruisers _Hai Yung_ and _Hai Sun_, the gunboats _Kwang Kang_, _Kwang Poa_, _On Nam_, etc., headed the republican fleet, which flew the red, white and blue sun flag. The armistice was not kept in Shansi or Shensi provinces by the imperialist general, Sheng Yun. When the pourparler opened, the six powers, at America’s suggestion, informed Wu and Tang that they would appreciate a settlement, because neither side seemed to be able to keep down piracy, it being as bad along the Liao River in the north as along the Si valley in the distant south. It will be recalled that the Manchus of Shansi province early in the campaign assassinated the great rebel general, Wu Lu Cheng. It was now rumored that the Chinese had induced Tuan Fang’s troops in the same province to murder that noble Manchu, who was the greatest friend the foreigners had among the Manchu officials in the dark “Boxer” days of 1900. Tuan had been governor of Pechili and Szechuen provinces, head of the railway development in the Yangtze basin, and above all head of the famous constitutional committee (Hsien Cheng Pien Cha Kuan), which, in 1906, went abroad to study foreign parliaments and congresses. He was the noblest of the Manchus, a repetition in character of Prince Kung of Victorian days, and he died like a modern hero. “Kneel and be decapitated,” his troops demanded. “You’ll shoot or cut me down where I stand,” he declared. Individual virtue does not belong exclusively to any organization.

The rebels went on with their work in calling up troops from Premier Wu Hon Man at Canton, and in equipping aeroplanes, run by Americanized Chinese, for a possible air attack on Peking, if the peace conference should break up in failure, and Hankau could be won back. The missionaries agreed to flee to the Methodist compound which adjoined the legation quarter in the Tartar city of Peking, on a signal being given by rocket. The foreigners in the northern provinces were dubious that a republican government could be established, but it must be remembered that many of these foreigners were more surprised than the rest of the world that the reformers ever shouldered arms for reform and declared for a republic on October 10, 1911. The foreigners of the northern provinces were accordingly at first largely in sympathy with the retention of the Manchu, under a limited monarchy system, and the election of Yuan as premier. Many of the foreigners of Peking and Tientsin tried to impose their views upon the foreigners of Shanghai and Hongkong, who naturally knew more about the reform and republican movement in China, for the initial reformers of China all came from Canton, Penang, Manila and Shanghai, where they were influenced by British Hongkong, Singapore and America. The income of the imperial authority had been levied mainly on the southern provinces, which had least representation on the Peking Boards (Pus) since the coup d’état of 1898. Taxation again without representation! The doubt in the minds of the reformers was that if the Manchu was retained, he might revert to his old faults of by turns oppressing China, and by turns looting it, for certain foreign concessionaires. True, said some, peace could be fixed up now, and matters fought out again, if faith was not kept. But, said others, by that time certain foreigners will have given Yuan Shih Kai an army of forty divisions with a fortified base at Peking in touch with the Russian railway, a navy of battleships, 2,500 miles of new flanking railways down into the south, and a full exchequer box, while the new parliaments may be without a Cromwell, a Pym, a Hampden, a Jefferson, a Franklin, a Lincoln. It was a great question, the largest any nation has ever handled, and the one answer was: “Well, then, develop your Cromwells, Pyms, Hampdens, Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns, out of such timber as you have in Sun, Wu, Kang, Li, etc., and let us have peace.”

There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.: that China will remain a republic, and will become a republic based on the worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s Bible. Such a wonderful nation of four hundred millions, preserved from the immemorial past as one people, must have been preserved for some providential purpose, to put irresistible might behind certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the giving of a truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we have exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and lamentable mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional wars notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the Board of Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, in 1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion. President Sun and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said before, a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian.

As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion, identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of the belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to obtain at Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to fight if a republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the Manchu hoards at Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan. He needed two million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern bannermen. Four of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but the rebels said, if you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your trade in the central and southern provinces, and you know that most of the foreign trade emanates from Southern China, that is, your tea and silk come from that section, and your exports go there in exchange. If you want to know what a trade boycott by us means, ask the Japanese, who will recall the “Tatsu Maru” incident. The rebels also threatened that if loans were made by foreigners to the imperialists, and the rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate these loans. This was the most brilliant move to date of the republican diplomacy. The rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move. They wanted to save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been made out of a stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their day stanch “standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a republic, with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible foreign minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao Yi, was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China had no idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel provinces. Tang, it will be remembered, is a graduate of an American university, and he is even more progressive than his patron, Yuan. In making overtures to Yuan, Sunyacius and Wu of the rebels were showing that they were strong and calm diplomats, who could waive a detail to win a general cause. Recent Occidental politics exhibit no such example of the suppression of factiousness. Wu, however, did not hesitate a minute to tell the six powers that if they loaned money to the north, or interfered, they would only prolong the war indefinitely.