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After this denouement it was not very strange that General Feng Kuo-chang should have intimated to the Republican Party that as soon as they entered the Yangtsze Valley he would throw his lot with them together with all his troops.
First on one excuse, then on another, General Feng Kuo-chang had managed to delay his departure from day to day without actually coming under the grave charge of refusing to obey orders.
Chief of these was General Feng Kuo-chang at Nanking who held the balance of power on the great river, and whose politics, though not entirely above suspicion, had been proof against all the tempting offers South China made to him until the ill-fated monarchy movement had commenced.
It was to save Feng Kuo-chang, then, that the young patriot Tsao-ao caused the ultimatum to be dispatched fourteen days too soon, i.e., before the Yunnan troops had marched over the mountain-barrier into the neighbouring province of Szechuan and seized the city of Chungking which would have barred the advance of the Northern troops permanently as the river defiles even when lightly defended are impassable here to the strongest force.
First on one excuse, then on another, General Feng Kuo-chang had managed to delay his departure from day to day without actually coming under the grave charge of refusing to obey orders.
But during this movement General Feng Kuo-chang had expressed himself in such contemptuous terms of the would-be Emperor that orders had been given to another high official Admiral Tseng, Garrison Commissioner at Shanghai to have him assassinated.
Even the Nanking Conference, though composed of trimmers and wobblers, decided that the retirement of Yuan Shih-kai was a political necessity, General Feng Kuo-chang as chairman of the Conference producing at the last moment a telegram from the fallen Dictator declaring that he was willing to go if his life and property were guaranteed. A more dramatic collapse was, however, in store.
Of this Yuan Shih-kai became aware through his extraordinary system of intelligence; and following his usual practice he had ordered General Feng Kuo-chang to Peking as Chief of the General Staff an appointment which would place him under direct surveillance.
The Nanking troops, although deserted by their leader, offered a strenuous resistance to the capture of the southern capital which was finally effected by the old reactionary General Chang Hsun operating in conjunction with General Feng Kuo-chang who had been dispatched from Peking with a picked force.
By a masterly move in one of these Mandates General Tuan Chi-jui was reappointed Premier, whilst Vice-President Feng Kuo-chang was asked to officiate as President, the arrangements being so complete as at once to catch Chang Hsun in his own net. Here is the text of these four historically important messages: Dated July 1.