In the Russo-Japanese War, the great Russia of Nuo let such a small Japan defeat.

When the news came, some people seemed to have a lot of balance in their hearts. Russia has been defeated by the Japanese, and China is the defeat of the Japanese, so it seems that it is not so shameful.

But there are also more people wondering, how can little Japan be so powerful? Meiji Restoration!

The most important thing is the new policy of the Qing court after the Gengzi national disaster. A window was opened outward, and people saw the world outside, and things from outside came in through the window.

Democracy on the outside is doing so well, but China is still shrouded in a backward feudal autocracy. If we want to be strong, we must seek institutional change.

As a result, many people of insight began to call for a constitutional monarchy.

In March 1904, Sun Baoqi, the Chinese minister to France, Hu Weide, the minister to Russia, Zhang Deyi, the minister to the United Kingdom, and Liang Cheng, the minister to the United States, Mexico, and Peru, sent a telegram requesting the imperial court to establish a constitution.

At the same time, Zhang Jian, Wei Guangtao, the governor of Liangjiang, and Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, were also discussing the constitution, they felt that their strength was too thin, and they wanted to pull Yuan Shikai, the big celebrity in front of Cixi, on.

Zhang Zhidong asked Zhang Jian to come forward to ask Yuan Shikai's opinion.

Zhang Jian has broken off his friendship with Yuan Shikai for many years, and he was unwilling to deal with Yuan Shikai again. However, the constitution has a bearing on the state and the nation, and personal grievances cannot be taken into account. So, Zhang Jian took the initiative to write a letter to Yuan Shikai.

Yuan Shikai was very cautious, and he didn't want to follow in the footsteps of the Wuxu Reform School, so he asked Li Lianying to listen to Lafayette's tone.

It didn't take long for Li Lianying to send back the news. Tell him it's best not to get involved in this kind of thing.

Yuan Shikai understood and replied to Zhang Jian: Now is not the time, we have to wait and see.

When a year passed, Li Lianying took the initiative to tell Yuan Shikai that the matter of the constitution could be discussed, and this matter could not be left behind.

Therefore, on July 2, 1905, led by Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong, Zhou Bei, Duanfang and others jointly played a concert to request the implementation of constitutional government.

The Qing court apparently attached great importance to the recital of Yuan Shikai and others, and made a decision on July 9 of the same year to send ministers abroad for investigation.

It is no wonder that at that time, there was already a call for constitutionalism.

On July 16, the imperial court announced that it would send Zhenguo Gong Zaize, household servant Dai Hongci, Minister of Military Aircraft Xu Shichang, Hunan Governor Duan Fang, and later the Ministry of Commerce Youcheng Shaoying to investigate the East and West.

In August, Yuan Shikai sent officials and gentry to Japan to open up their official wisdom and prepare for the implementation of local autonomy in the future.

The imperial court played Zhili and Fengtian on a trial basis.

In order to promote constitutionalism, Yuan Shikai supported the five ministers to go abroad for investigation, and directly funded 100,000 yuan to sponsor it.

On 24 September, the five ministers and their attachés set off for Beijing.

Teachers and students of various new-style schools in Beijing, businessmen, officials of all sizes, and foreign envoys and embassies in China came to see him off. Zhengyangmen Railway Station is full of canopies, gongs and drums are noisy, and the flow of people is surging.

This is no ordinary official visit, it is a historic event, and people are enthusiastically looking forward to the beginning of a new era.

However, just as the five ministers waved goodbye to the people who saw them off, there was an explosion, and more than a dozen people fell to the ground. Zai Ze and Shao Ying were injured, and more than a dozen people were killed or wounded.

There was a big chaos at the scene, and some people were injured by stampede, and the overseas investigation was suspended.

When Cixi heard about it, she sighed at the difficulty of doing things and burst into tears.

After Yuan Shikai learned the news, he immediately dispatched Zhao Bingjun, the general office of the Tianjin Patrol Police, to solve the case within a time limit.

Zhao Bingjun quickly took 200 patrol policemen to go. The facts of the case are very simple, it is a revolutionary named Wu Yue, who engaged in suicide and human bombing. The bomb exploded to prevent the five ministers from going to sea, and he was already killed on the spot.

We've already mentioned this earlier.

In view of this situation, Yuan Shikai suggested the establishment of a patrol police headquarters in Beijing, and recommended Xu Shichang as a scholar and Zhao Bingjun as a squire.

We can see that Yuan Shikai arranges his own people when he has the opportunity. And these people are also very loyal to Yuan Shikai, because following Yuan Shikai can be promoted, there are good things Yuan Shikai thinks about everyone.

The Qing court accepted all the orders and fully accepted Yuan Shikaidi's suggestion.

Xu Shichang is nothing, he is already in a high position as the Minister of Military Aircraft.

Zhao Bingjun is different, in today's words, it is simply a surprise promotion. He jumped from the chief police officer of Tianjin to the deputy chief of the national police.

It is estimated that Xu Shichang is also a name, and Zhao Bingjun must be the executive deputy general manager who presides over the work. Following Yuan Shikai is promising, because when Zhao Bingjun was the president of the Republic of China when Yuan Shikai was the president, he was high and served as the general state minister. Reason.

In this way, the police system founded by Yuan Shikai has also been promoted to the whole of China.

The five ministers went abroad to investigate and finally made the trip, but the personnel changed.

Although in order to save time and visit more countries, the overseas inspection of the constitutional group has been divided into two routes, but relatively speaking, their itinerary is still very tight.

Therefore, the entourage will use their own strengths to observe different aspects of other countries according to their own fields, in order to achieve the greatest effect in the shortest time.

Constitutionalism was the primary goal of this trip, so a visit to the House of Representatives and an inspection of the parliamentary system must be planned in each country, which has become a practice and has given rise to a lot of thought.

In these constitutional countries, they are refreshed by the communication between the ruling and opposition parties in the interests of the country, and the interaction between the monarch and the parliament.

When they set foot in the United States, they saw that the members of the House of Representatives "always protested with the right thing, fought against each other, and when they went out after the discussion, they held hands happily and did not suspect that they would be a mustard." Because the boundary between public and private is very clear, it is not a problem."

And when they came to the UK, they also noticed that "parliamentarians are divided into politicians. Government Party and Non-Government. There are two factions in the government. Politics. Government Party and Government. The government agrees, non-governmental. The government party refutes everything and makes sure that the compromise is appropriate, and there is no dispute between them. The so-called fight for justice, those who do not fight for will, are also the precious ones of the law."

During their inspection in Italy, Dai Hongci and other officials saw that in the Italian parliament, the House of Representatives could often decide whether the king would appoint ministers or not.

For these visiting ministers, this surprised them: "The power of the righteous country to appoint ministers is in the hands of the king. The failure of a minister to perform his duties may be complained against by the House of Commons, and the House of Lords shall adjudicate the matter. European countries, political systems are mutually maintained, and their laws are perfect, and Xu is the way". Reading between the lines, there is a sense of surprise and admiration for this political system.

In the summer and autumn of 1906 (the 32nd year of Guangxu), after nearly half a year of overseas investigation, two groups of foreign ministers returned to China one after another. On the basis of the articles on the implementation of constitutionalism written in advance by Liang Qichao, Yang Du and others in Tokyo, they drafted a "report on the study of constitutionalism" and submitted it to the Qing government. The government reinstated the government, formally put forward the idea of implementing a constitutional monarchy, and also pointed out that "constitutionalism is beneficial to the monarch and the people, but not to the officials".

On 12 August, Yuan Shikai made a separate presentation calling for the preparation of a constitution and presented his views on the establishment of an upper house and the implementation of local self-government.

Yuan Shikai wrote: The Central Government. Officials above the fifth rank of the government should participate in important politics to prepare for the establishment of the House of Lords in the future; Prominent squire merchants in all states and counties should participate in local government affairs to prepare for local self-government in the future; The preparatory constitution should first be carried out on a trial basis in a province and then gradually rolled out. And volunteered to let Zhili Province as a pilot.

On 25 August, the five ministers formally submitted to the imperial court a report on the investigation and proposal of the five-year constitution.

The Imperial Court decreed that the Minister of Military Aircraft, the Minister of State, the University Scholars, and the Minister of Beiyang jointly discussed the constitutional plan.

On August 26, Yuan Shikai was summoned by Cixi, and she didn't seem to know much about the constitution, so she asked Yuan Shikai some things about the constitution.

This is the fourth time in the past two days that Cixi has summoned Yuan Shikai, which shows that she attaches great importance to the constitution and trusts and values Yuan Shikai.

Perhaps she regretted that Gengzi Guoyan did not pay attention to Yuan Shikai's opinion.

Yuan Shikai proposed to Lafayette that the constitution should first organize a cabinet and start with the reform of the official system.

On 28 August, the ministers studied and discussed the reports of the five ministers on their overseas investigations. Everyone was excited, and almost all of them expressed their approval and support.

It has only been a few years, and the ideals of the Reform Movement seem to have become a matter of course at this time.

Of course, there is a process for everything, and today's harvest is certainly not unrelated to the hard work of the reformers in the past. The reform movement was at least an enlightenment and baptism for the Chinese people, and the blood of Tan Si and the six gentlemen of Wuxu was not shed in vain.