Section 251 Protecting the road eventually becomes the fuse
Time has to go back to the twentieth year of Guangxu, and Qiao Fu established the Xingzhong Society in Honolulu. In the following year, the headquarters of the Xingzhong Society was established in Hong Kong, and the oath was set up as to expel the Tartars, restore China, and establish a united government, clearly putting forward the first program of the bourgeois democratic revolution in China. In this sense, Jov was not wrong as a forerunner of the Chinese bourgeois revolution,
After the failure of the uprising in Guangzhou in the 22nd year of Guangxu, Qiao Fu was wanted by the Qing court, expelled by the Hong Kong authorities, and went into exile. On September 23 of the same year, the Qing court detected that Qiao Fu had taken a ship from New York to England from the United States, and Qiao Fu was a prisoner at that time. A week later he landed in Liverpool, England. On October 11, Jove was captured by the Qing legation in Britain. On the 12th and 14th, Joff managed to get in touch with his teacher, James Cantline, but failed. The small note he threw out did not end up on the street due to geographical reasons, but was found. The Qing embassy decided to send Sun back to China by water in the name of "sending the madman". But on the 17th, news of the charter spread among the servants of the mansion, and the Christian housekeeper, Mrs. Hovi, could not bear it and sent a letter to the Kang family. When Conderley found out, he searched for Counselor Margery overnight and reported the case, but Margery was not there, and the police did not care about the matter. The next day, he went to the Scotland Yard Police Station again to report the case, but found nothing. Kang and Meng went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform them of the incident, and also to the Times. Conderley, on the other hand, feared that the legation might take Sun away overnight and monitor the legation's movements. On the 19th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already begun to act - Kang and Meng did not know about the matter until the 20th. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs records confessions, applies for court hearings, and monitors water transport. On the 22nd, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs switched from defense to offense. Margery said that it was necessary for the minister to release talents, and it was really difficult for him to be caught in the middle. But Gong refused to let him go. At that time, British Prime Minister Salisbury ordered the Chinese embassy to release Jof, otherwise the ambassador to the United Kingdom, Gong Zhaoyuan, and a number of diplomats would be expelled. "The Earth" exposed this news, and the forces of public opinion intervened - at this point, some studies said that the British court released Qiao Fu because of the pressure of public opinion, and it is not true. On October 23, Jof was finally released. Condrew financed Jof £50 for the publication of The Passion of London. The "Martyrdom of London" became the world-shaking political persecution case, and it was a turning point in Jof's revolutionary activities, turning him from obscurity into a world-class political exile. Since then, no one in the revolutionary camp against the Qing government has surpassed Jof's prestige. This fully illustrates the ignorance of the Qing government, if the government of later generations dealt with it, and casually hid and hid-boo, drank boiled water, and so on, they could come to the conclusion that they would die a natural death, and the Qing Dynasty would not be able to live in peace by the revolutionary party. A government that can't even hide and hide is not a competent government, and the Qing Dynasty should die, and there is no reason for it not to die.
In the early days of the establishment of the Xingzhong Society, there was a great lack of pen skills among the revolutionaries, and the only materials they propagated were "Ten Diaries of Yangzhou", "Jiading Massacre of the City Chronicles", and "Yuan Jun" and "Yuan Chen" in Huang Zongxi's "Ming Yi Waiting to Be Visited" in the Ming Dynasty. It pales in comparison with the propaganda of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao's royalist reformists. However, it still left a deep impression on the young people, and its influence was very great, and even spread to the Southern New Army and the Beiyang Army. Judging from the fact that the crackdown on this kind of pyramid scheme organization is so ineffective, this Qing Dynasty really deserves to die.
Later, when the newspaper of the Kyushu Revolutionary Party, Minbao, was published, Jov put forward for the first time the three-* doctrine with the nation, civil rights, and people's livelihood as the core content. After the failure of the Wuxu Restoration Movement, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao went into exile and still called for royalism. After the establishment of the "Minbao", Wang Zhaoming immediately launched a polemic with the "Xinmin Cong Bao" edited by Liang Qichao. As a result of the debate, the revolutionaries gained the upper hand and the political influence of the reformists declined considerably.
From the 21st year of Guangxu to the 34th year of Guangxu, the revolutionary party actively launched many armed uprisings. Although these uprisings failed and caused heavy losses to the elite of the revolutionary party in the country, they effectively attacked the rule of the Qing Dynasty and expanded the influence of the revolution. However, it is precisely because of these uprisings one after another that after the Russo-Japanese War, when the international environment was relatively relaxed, the Qing court never dared to do anything to Yuan Xiangcheng, Wu Chenxuan and others who controlled the heavy troops. With the establishment of the four provinces of Lusu, Anhui, and Zhejiang, the imperial court made up its mind to make Wu Chenxuan the first governor of the Han people without the title of governor. However, Wu Chenxuan did not disappoint the imperial court, and the long-delayed Taizhou rebel army simply laid down its arms and became a supplementary brigade of the Wuyi New Army, while the team of the salt lord Yu Mengting was squeezed from all sides, and the room for maneuver was greatly reduced, becoming a turtle in the urn trapped in Jiangbei.
There are many people in the court who look at the new army of Wuyi unpleasantly, but there is no one who dares to say that Wu Chenxuan is incompetent, and even the Qing prince who recommended Wu Chenxuan won a big red envelope of 50,000 taels of silver. The government and the opposition felt that the chaos in northern Jiangsu should be silenced, and from then on, when the world was peaceful, no one could have imagined that a stupid policy would completely offend a class that held the lifeblood of the Qing Dynasty!
This brain-in-the-water policy is "state-owned railways". In fact, the construction of railways as an official policy was established before the New Deal, and played a positive role in the construction of railways in modern China. From the end of the First Sino-Japanese War to the Xinhai year, the Qing Dynasty built a total of 4,936 kilometers of railways, accounting for nearly 40% of the railways built in modern China, and most of them were built during the New Deal period. However, 4,029 kilometers were built mainly with foreign funding, accounting for about 81% of the total length. However, in return, the Qing Dynasty had to cede the right to manage, use, audit, and purchase materials to foreign borrowing companies, which led to a serious loss of China's rights. Even so, when Li Hongzhang was alive, he still said with regret: "It is difficult to raise funds at present, so we must borrow foreign money." However, the imperial court seems to have never lived a generous life, and even the military expenditure for suppressing bandits is more than half of the white strips, so letting the Qing Dynasty invest in building a railway by itself is tantamount to asking for fish from a wood.
On December 2, the 27th year of Guangxu, the Qing government promulgated the "Concise Regulations of the Railway", stipulating that "both Chinese and foreigners" could submit a petition to the "Governor Yamen to run the railway", and including "trunk roads or branch roads", and if the Chinese invested more than 500,000 taels and achieved real results, the imperial court should also "give a special award to the court". The gentry and merchants in the provinces then launched a large-scale movement to reclaim the right of way, and this action resonated even more with the government and the opposition. The gentlemen of Hunan, Hubei and Guangdong provinces demanded the resumption of the construction right of the Guangdong-Hankou Railway on the grounds that the American businessmen had violated the contract, and instead built it themselves, which was strongly supported by Zhang Zhidong, and the Hunan gentry Wang Xianqian finally redeemed the shares originally issued by the American company at the cost of 6.75 million US dollars in compensation, and annulled the contract signed with the American businessmen for the construction of the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway. Encouraged by this successful case, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhili, Jilin, Yunnan and other provinces have also put into practice the work of recovering the right of way, and the social call for the redemption of the right to undertake the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway, the Suzhou-Ningbo-Hangzhou Railway, and the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway has become louder and louder, and a number of road construction rights have actually been recovered, and the railway commercial movement has entered a climax period. Shandong's railways have been taken back as early as the years of Gengzi to run private, and now it has been done in various provinces, and the key counties also have the level of branch lines, although the maximum speed of the passenger car is only 60 miles per hour, but for the people of the Qing Dynasty who have gone out for many years, it has been galloping, some people have sighed in the newspaper that "step on the hot wheels, sit down and dew the purple shadow, talk and laugh and generate the wind by themselves, and flick the fingers for a thousand miles." Of course, the Jiaoji line is still a German-controlled railway, but due to Wu Chenxuan's share exchange and capital injection, the shares of the Shandong Chamber of Commerce actually occupy more than sixty percent.
Although the commercial railways in the late Qing Dynasty lacked capital, under the enthusiasm and encouragement of the patriotism of the Chinese people, they all set up strict regulations on accepting funds, resolutely refused foreign capital, did not solicit foreign shares, did not borrow foreign debts, and private railways except Shandong had to carry out a large amount of private financing. The cost of railway construction was extremely high, and it was not possible to raise enough funds for a while, so the government had to come forward to assist, and for a time "renting shares and distributing shares" flourished all over the country. The plenary meeting of the Hubei Consultative Bureau passed a resolution, and later put forward 10 further refusal plans, including the purchase of stocks by each homeowner with his two-month rent income, the opening of railway lotteries, and the use of foreign technicians to save money. It was further decided that the prefectures and counties would share the shares, ranging from 50,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan for each county. In addition, each member of the Hubei Provincial Education Association is required to purchase shares with one-tenth of his salary every month, which can reach a total of more than 4.2 million yuan. They further estimated that chambers of commerce, military associations, and other organizations in various parts of Hubei were deeply stimulated by public opinion, and it was estimated that there would be no problem in sharing shares, which could reach 20 million yuan. However, at that time, some public opinion also realized that using a one-size-fits-all method to offset foreign capital would not be beneficial to the operation of railways, and "on the contrary, it would be better to oppress the national economy than to borrow foreign debts and use capital to open up sources of profits, thereby helping the development of the national economy and consolidating the foundation of the state's finances." Sheng Xuanhuai, Liang Qichao, Meng Luochuan, Miao Hainan and other big businessmen of the Shandong Chamber of Commerce also held this view. On the one hand, commercial railway companies are plagued by the problem of shortage of funds, and on the other hand, they have the problems of poor management, embezzlement, and serious losses. In the field of railway construction, it has become a common practice to go their own way, and the railway construction of commercial railway companies has become an "enclosure movement" without comprehensive planning. In fact, Shandong does not agree with this narrow nationalist style of restricting the entry of foreign capital, but the strength of the Shandong Chamber of Commerce has always allowed foreign capital to occupy a guest position in Shandong, and there is no way to compete with the Shandong Chamber of Commerce, but instead sells many markets in their own country to the enterprises of the Shandong Chamber of Commerce, in this case, even the most radical revolutionary party has no way to accuse the Shandong Chamber of Commerce of using foreign capital as a traitorous act.
In the face of the world trend of nationalization of railways, the Qing government tried to establish the nationalization of railways as an economic policy when commercial railway companies were struggling. In the first year of Xuantong, under the pretext of planning the national railway, the central government ordered a serious survey of the funds for the construction of commercial railways in various provinces, and the intention of nationalizing the right to build roads was already revealed. In the early 20th century, not only the government but also the domestic public opinion began to show a trend of nationalizing railways. Zhang Zhidong, who once led the Chinese people to successfully recover the right of way, is also revising his own financing concept for railway construction at this time. In June, on behalf of the Qing government, Zhang Zhidong signed a draft loan contract with a consortium of British, French, and German banks, with a total loan of 5.5 million pounds and 5% interest, for the construction of the troubled Guangdong-Hankou and Sichuan-Han railways. At the time, the draft treaty was not met with the overwhelming backlash that the government feared. There are also signs that public opinion is tilting further in favor of the government. With the completion of the negotiations on the loans of the Tianjin-Pudong Railway, the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway, and the Huzhou-Guangzhou Railway, the rejection movement has taken a noticeable turn. In the middle of the year, Sheng Xuanhuai, with the support of the degree branch Shangshu Zaize, took over Wu Chenxuan's resignation as the secretary of the Ministry of Posts and Communications, and accelerated the official introduction of the state-owned policy.
Soon the Qing government officially issued an edict on "state-owned railways". There was a road protection post in the Changsha market, and the next day there was a petition of 10,000 people in Changsha; In Hubei, where the construction of the Sichuan-Han line had begun, Sheng Xuanhuai ordered the suspension of construction in order to forcibly seize the equity, which triggered the gathering of Yichang merchants and people to protest, and the Qing court mobilized troops to suppress the ammunition, and the two sides clashed, killing and wounding more than 20 people, which was the first bloodshed of the road protection movement. Pu Dianjun, chairman of the Sichuan Consultative Bureau, and Luo Lun, vice chairman of the Sichuan Consultative Bureau, convened an extraordinary meeting of Sichuan and Han shareholders in Chengdu, proposing "civilized road protection", gathering 2,400 shareholders, and the next day, students and citizens from all walks of life who heard the news made the number of participants reach more than 4,000. At this time, Baolu was more like a confrontation between the demolition households and the local government, and the two sides were more of a confrontation of economic interests, and no one took the banner of nationalism seriously.
Various non-governmental organizations in Sichuan set up the "Sichuan Baolu Comrades Association", elected Pu Dianjun, chairman of the Sichuan Advisory Bureau, as president, and Luo Lun, vice chairman of the Sichuan Consultative Bureau, as vice president. On August 5, an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Sichuan-Han Railway was held in Chengdu, on August 24, the masses carried out a boycott of the city, and on September 1, under the call of the shareholders' meeting of the Sichuan-Han Railway Company, the anti-grain and anti-donation activities were carried out. On September 7, the representative of the Baolu Comrade Association led tens of thousands of people to ask Duan Fang, the minister of the Sichuan-Han Railway, to enter Sichuan. Nine people, including Pu Dianjun and Luo Lun, who were powerless, were arrested on the spot, and this was the appalling "Chengdu Bloody Case" with many casualties. It can be seen that Zhao Erfeng has been mentally weakened by Comrade Baolu, so he made such a big stupid move. However, in this way, the situation in Sichuan immediately turned into a direct confrontation between the government and the people, and the always spicy Sichuan businessmen and Sichuan people did not hesitate to raise the anti-flag against Zhao Erfeng, an old melon baby.
On September 8 of the first year of Xuantong, the peasants near Chengdu formed the Baolu Comrade Army under the leadership of the League and the Elder Association, besieged the provincial capital, and fought with the Qing soldiers, and the masses in nearby prefectures and counties responded one after another, and the team grew to more than 200,000 within a few days. Rong County became independent, and Rong County became the first regime in China to break away from the Qing Dynasty. When the Qing Dynasty government learned of the popular uprising and the siege of Chengdu, it was very frightened and hurriedly dismissed Zhao Erfeng, the governor of Sichuan, and transferred the acting governor of Sichuan to the supervision of the Chongqing-Han Railway, and led a part of the new army from Hubei into Sichuan. After Duan Fang contacted Wu Chenxuan, he fell ill with a lot of vision, simply hung up the seal and sealed the gold, and took the family straight to the British and American concessions in Shanghai, and lived in the villa prepared for him. The imperial court had no choice but to continue to put pressure on the governor of Huguang. In mid-September, Ruicheng, the governor of Huguang, transferred 1/3 of the new army of Hubei to enter Sichuan through Yichang, and the landing of Wuchang was empty. However, the Qing government was not completely defenseless against the imminent movement of the revolutionary party, on the contrary, its control over the new army was greatly strengthened, and the officers and soldiers of each battalion could not come and go freely, and there were even fewer bullets and shells in the barracks.
Therefore, the organization of the later Wuchang Uprising was chaotic, but in this chaos, there were some extremely wise decisions. These decisions always come from people who are extraordinarily calm, and Xiong Bingkun belongs to this type of person. After Xiong Bingkun issued the order, he felt extremely uncomfortable when he noticed that the soldiers were disapproving of him. Considering that he was in a lowly position in the army, he was afraid that he would not be able to convince the public, and he was worried that if the situation got out of control, he would fall short, so he complied with the wishes of the soldiers and gave up the post of commander-in-chief to Wu Zhaolin, who had participated in the Japanese Notification Meeting and had rich experience in military command, and was known as "Zhiduoxing" among the officers and soldiers. Wu Zhaolin was the officer of the left team of Chuwangtai, and this decision played a very important role in the spontaneous uprising, but it also led to the emergence of Li Yuanlong and other wall grasses.
The revolutionaries seized the opportunity to launch the Wuchang Uprising on October 10 and succeeded in one fell swoop. When the news broke, the Qing forces in Sichuan collapsed. On October 18, the Baolu Comrades Association announced the establishment of the "Dahan Sichuan Military Government"; On the 21st and 22nd, Guang'an and Chongqing successively established the Han Shubei Military Government and the Shu Military Government, and 57 prefectures and counties in southeastern Sichuan announced their response to the Wuchang Uprising. On October 27th, Chengdu was peacefully liberated, and the "Han Sichuan Military Government" was listed in the old Eight Banners garrison city, and on the same day, the governor of Huguang, who was far away in Zizhou, was killed by Liu Yifeng, an officer of the eighth town of the uprising, in the Yuwang Palace, Dadong Street, Zizhong, which also made the end side afraid. In the early morning of November 13, Yin Changheng's command post department captured Zhao Erfeng, and held a public trial meeting in Chengdu Huangchengba to try Zhao Erfeng, denounce his crimes in public, and ordered his subordinates to kill Zhao Erfeng on the spot in the imperial city "Mingyuan Tower". Zhao Erfeng's head was hung on a long pole and paraded through the streets of Chengdu. Although Zhao Erfeng caused a certain amount of public resentment, after his death, he was also regretted by the people for his achievements during his lifetime.
However, from the perspective of the Qing court, this guy almost single-handedly provoked the revolutionary fire in Sichuan and Hubei, thus sounding the death knell of the Qing Dynasty in advance.