Yuan Shikai, the word Weiting, is a native of Xiangcheng, Henan. The story we tell takes place at the age of forty-one, in the prime of a man's life. Yuan Shikai, who had just passed the age of not being confused, became famous in his career and became a feudal official of the imperial court, winning glory for the Henan Yuan family, who had been hairpins for generations. Due to his outstanding performance in North Korea, this rising star in the military circles with a short body has long been famous all over the world.

Yuan Shikai's position is the acting governor of Shandong, but he has not actually given it, and of course he understands the meaning of the imperial court, and it depends on his performance after coming to Shandong.

At first glance, Yuan Shikai's appearance gives people a sense of generosity. This person has a short figure, a blessed face, and often looks smiling, generous, and indisputable. Moreover, Yuan Shikai is unkempt, and his most signature action is to rub his mouth with his sleeve, resulting in the cuffs of his military uniform always being greasy. All this not only did not reduce his prestige in the new army, but made the generals of the new army, who were mostly warriors, more attentive.

However, when he walked into his heart, it was an authentic ambition.

Yuan Shikai was born in Xiangcheng, Henan, and the Yuan family in Xiangcheng is also a famous family, and has been hairpins for generations.

A famous minister of the Xianfeng Dynasty, he was nicknamed "Duanmin" by the Tongzhi Emperor, and was the governor of Caoyun and the governor of the Jiangnan River, and the Huaijun general Yuan Jiasan, who was a member of the military gate of the eight provinces, was Yuan Shikai's uncle and grandfather. He is also the first son of Xiangcheng Yuan's family to enter the imperial examination.

Yuan Shikai's biological father is called Yuan Baozhong, who is a local gentry in Henan, and his uncle Yuan Baoqing once led troops in Yuan Jia's three armies, and the official went to the salt patrol road in the south of the Yangtze River. Yuan Shikai is not Yuan Baozhong's son-in-law, but a concubine. Yuan Baozhong, who is not valued by many sons. At the age of seven, he was adopted by his uncle Yuan Baoqing as his son, and was taken by his parents to live in Nanjing and Jinan.

When he was young, Yuan Shikai was not very interested in reading sage books, but he was quite enthusiastic about being an official, and Yuan Baoqing also taught him his experience of leading soldiers as a eunuch. It is said that when Yuan Shikai was thirteen years old, he wrote a couplet: Daye Dragon Fang sting, Central Plains deer is fat. However, this matter is a little unreliable, and I am afraid that it will be false. Because the anti-meaning of the joint language is obvious, the imperial court has been in the Central Plains for a long time, and he said that the Central Plains Lu Zhengfei didn't want to seize the country of the Manchu Qing court? Therefore, this couplet is either a work of Yuan Shikai after he trained the new army to grasp military power, or it is a "planting" of good deeds.

But Yuan Shikai's personality is indeed somewhat similar to Xiang Yu two thousand years ago, he likes to read military books, so that he can be the enemy of ten thousand people.

When Yuan Shikai was fifteen years old, his father died and he lost his support. Fortunately, his cousin Yuan Baoheng (Yuan Jia's third son) returned to his hometown and saw that Yuan Shikai was worthy of accomplishment, so he took him to Beijing, urging him to study while letting him have more contact with officialdom to increase his experience and knowledge. When Yuan Baoheng served as a waiter in the Criminal Department, he deliberately cultivated Yuan Shikai, and often gave him some chores that were not easy to do. Yuan Baoheng took him with him when he was in Henan for disaster relief. But what he didn't expect was that Yuan Baoheng died in disaster relief at the age of 51. None of the males of the Yuan family seem to have lived past the age of sixty, and Yuan Jiasan, who made the Yuan family prosperous, lived to be fifty-seven years old, his biological father Yuan Baozhong was fifty-one years old, and his heir father Yuan Baoqing was only forty-eight years old. This strange phenomenon like a curse Yuan Shikai has not escaped, but this is a story for another time.

The Yuan family was deeply frightened by this. After listening to Mr. Feng Shui's words, I made a separation. So nineteen-year-old Yuan Shikai left the Yuan family's mansion and moved to Chenzhou, inherited his father's rich inheritance, and began a comfortable time of literati poetry and wine. He funded and organized two literary societies in Chenzhou, where he met Xu Shichang, who was of great help to his life's work. The two were like-minded and had a good conversation, but they both hated the imperial examination, so they became brothers with different surnames. When Yuan Shikai learned that Xu Shichang went to Beijing for a scientific expedition and lacked Sichuan funds, he generously funded it.

But Yuan Shikai's own road to the imperial examination was not smooth. In the second year of Guangxu (1876) and the fifth year of Guangxu (1879), the two township examinations were named by Sun Shan, and in a fit of anger, all the poems and articles made in the past were burned, and he decided to study Ban Chao and Fu Jiezi, serve the field, make meritorious contributions to foreign lands, and no longer engage in any things to pick chapters and find sentences.

Yuan Shikai's wife's surname is Yu, the daughter of a large landowner in Henan, and gave birth to Yuan Shikai's eldest son, Yuan Keding. But Yu's wrong words angered Yuan Shikai, and Yuan Shikai never entered Yu's bedroom for life, which shows his ruthlessness.

Yuan Shikai's officialdom originated from the famous general Wu Changqing of the Huai Army, Wu Changqing is the brother of Yuan Shikai's father Yuan Baoqing, in the seventh year of Guangxu (1881), the twenty-three-year-old Yuan Shikai took refuge in Wu Changqing, and the following year the Qing Dynasty's vassal Korea had a "Renwu Coup", the imperial court was worried that Japan coveted Korea, and sent Wu Changqing to lead six battalions of the army (about 3,000 people) to North Korea to quell the rebellion. Yuan Shikai was brave and resourceful in a series of actions to rectify military discipline and design the capture of Dayuanjun, which won Wu Changqing's appreciation and praise him as worthy of being the son of the general. Wu Changqing pacified the civil strife in Korea in seven days, and bankrupted Japan's conspiracy to interfere in Korea.

If Yuan Shikai's first Bole was Wu Changqing, then the second and more important Bole was Li Hongzhang, the founder of the Huaijun Army and an important minister of the imperial court. In the tenth year of Guangxu (1884), the Sino-French War broke out, and Li Hongzhang ordered Wu Changqing to lead three battalions back to China and stationed in the northeast. The left-behind troops of the DPRK were handed over to Yuan Shikai, who was "the Prime Minister's Camp Office, which can handle the defense of the DPRK", and Yuan Shikai was only 26 years old. In the winter of that year, civil strife broke out again in Korea, and the pro-Japanese faction imprisoned the king, organized a pro-Japanese government, and expelled the Qing army. Yuan Shikai calmly observed, reported to the country in a timely manner, after Li Hongzhang fully authorized, Yuan Shikai led the army to attack the Korean palace, and had a fierce conflict with the Japanese troops stationed in the palace, taking the lead, defeating the Japanese army when the guards were killed and he was wounded, rescuing the king, hunting down the pro-Japanese faction, and making Korea return to the rule of the Qing Dynasty again. Li Hongzhang was deeply satisfied with Yuan Shikai's performance in Korea, saying that he was "brave and strategic, and able to hold the general situation", and the imperial court did not hesitate to reward him, appointing him as "the prime minister stationed in Korea to negotiate trade matters", "distribute it to the prefect, fill it as soon as possible, and after filling the vacancy, he will be promoted to a Taoist and add three ranks." ”

Yuan Shikai's cultivation of his own strength originated from small station training. The experience of Korea, especially the lessons of the First Sino-Japanese War, made Yuan Shikai correctly realize the incomparable importance of military power. After going through the Military Aircraft Department and Li Lianying and getting the right to train troops, Yuan Shikai made great preparations and made great efforts.

During the training at the small station, Yuan Shikai not only showed far-reaching vision, but also had a deep understanding of controlling his subordinates, and used various tactics to win the support and loyalty of people such as Wang Shizhen, Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang and others. Yuan Shikai naturally regarded this army soaked in his hard work as the flesh of his heart.

Yuan Shikai's real development should be attributed to the Wuxu Incident. Regarding the Wuxu Incident that occurred last year, Yuan Shikai's feelings were extremely complicated. Yuan Shikai said that his reputation had been stinky since last fall. The reason, of course, is that the thrilling things that happened in Beijing in August and September last autumn pushed me into a situation where the scholars gritted their teeth and hated them.

Although it has been a long time, at least several months, that heroic face still appears in Yuan Shikai's memory from time to time, and that person is Tan Sitong.

"Look at the door and stop thinking about Zhang Jian, endure death and wait for Dugan. I smiled at the sky with my horizontal knife, and went to leave the liver and gallbladder two Kunlun. "The seven poems inscribed on the prison wall by the Hunan scholar with stone charcoal have long been spread to the world, and while creating Tan Sitong's immortal reputation among the imperial scholars, it has also nailed Yuan Shikai to the pillar of shame.

Yuan Shikai is not a conservative. He did not belong to the circle of Rong Lu, the representative of the conservative faction, although his article on the formation of the new army was appreciated by Rong Lu and said good things in front of Cixi. Yuan Shikai has always been inclined to reform ideologically, he is also one of the initiators of the Qiang Society, and he also personally wrote to Emperor Guangxu, calling for change of law and strength. Yuan Shikai and Kang Youwei not only know each other, but also have a good relationship. In the summer of 1895, Kang Youwei submitted the book for the fourth time, facing the difficulty of not being able to hand it in, and the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Ministry of Industry (Kang Youwei was the director of the Ministry of Industry at the time, equivalent to the director of the central ministries and commissions in later generations) refused to pass it on, and the most difficult thing was Yuan Shikai who delivered it through the Military Affairs Department of the Supervision Office!

Yuan Shikai's closeness to the reformists was not only out of ideological proximity, but also out of consideration for his own development. At that time, Emperor Guangxu vigorously supported the reform of the law, and the reformers saw great credibility. Whether it is out of loyalty to the monarch or seeking personal development, it is natural for Yuan Shikai and the reformers to mix together.

Speaking of the reform of the law, it is necessary to mention the book on the bus in 1895.

The defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki ruined Li Hongzhang's reputation for half a lifetime. It also brought about profound changes in the empire.

The first thing that caused the change was Kang Youwei's book on the bus.

Bus, in ancient times, referred to official cars. As early as the Han Dynasty, literati entered Beijing for examinations, and the means of transportation were provided by the state. Later, he used the bus to refer to the people entering Beijing.

In the Qing Empire, the emperor did not have the right to directly submit a letter to the emperor, and the book had to be forwarded by the Imperial Procuratorate. The Metropolitan Procuratorate is the highest level of procuratorate, impeachment, and recommendation organ in the country, and it is also the highest government agency to receive petitions from non-governmental organizations. As an organ of the imperial government with such great power, it has the duty to send petitions, and it also has the privilege of withholding and handling it on its own. Especially when the petitions of the people were not only about state affairs but also addressed directly to the emperor, the officials had to be very careful in dealing with them.

So the officials of the Metropolitan Procuratorate chose the safe way of suppressing the petition.

But Kang Liang is clearly unwilling to give up. At their instigation, the "buses" began to connect on a large scale, and more than 1,000 scholars jointly signed the petition, of which almost all the people from Guangdong and Hunan went into battle. In modern times, the two provinces of Guangdong and Hunan are very special, and they have almost become the birthplace of the rebellion. Led by Guangdong and Hunan, the provinces followed suit, and they must write to the emperor before the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki to save the country.

Kang Youwei's book did not have an immediate effect. They were not reconciled, in the following days, in Beijing organized the Qiang Society, the Baoguo, many dignitaries supported and participated in these organizations, the founding fee of the Qiang Society was 1500 taels of silver or Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang. Kang Youwei's propaganda efforts were effective, and more and more people in the upper echelons of the imperial court supported the idea of changing the law, which led to the Guangxu Emperor promulgating an edict on April 11, 1898.

An event that profoundly affected history occurred.

Guangxu was made emperor at the age of four, and it was not until 1889, when he was eighteen, that Cixi returned power to him. But that is nominal return, major personnel appointments and dismissals still have to be nodded by Cixi, and the specific regulations are that the appointment of officials above the second rank must be decided by Cixi. In order to implement the new policy, Emperor Guangxu must establish his own team, and he was afraid that Cixi would not agree, so he could only promote Yang Rui, Liu Guangdi, Lin Xu, and Tan Si of the Kang Party to be the four-rank military machine Zhang Jing.

Since the Yongzheng Dynasty, the highest decision-making body of the Qing court was the Military Aircraft Department. Naturally, the ministers of military aircraft are mainly Manchus, and the ministers of the Han nationality are just ornaments and cannot really participate in the decision-making of military affairs. Since Emperor Guangxu set up four military aircraft Zhangjing in the military aircraft department, this situation has changed. With four military aircraft Zhang Jing, who are like the emperor's confidential secretaries, the Minister of Military Aircraft has become the embellishment of the Military Aircraft Department. This naturally affects the power of the former ministers, and further affects the status of the former ministers. In this way, with the progress of the new policy, the contradiction between the emperor and the Han reformers behind him and the Empress Dowager Cixi and the Manchu ministers gradually became prominent.

This is only one side of the problem, and the other side of the problem is that the emperor promoted all Han talents, and the dispute between the old and the new brought out the dispute between the Manchu and Han people. Since the summer of that year, there have been people writing to Cixi, and the Manchu ministers have seized Cixi's prejudice and vigilance against the Han people, and constantly stimulated Cixi with the emperor's words that the Han people discriminated against the nation, and then on the third day of the eighth month, a writer in the imperial history Cixi hoped that Cixi would take action to take back the emperor's power and stop the emperor's "nonsense".