United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On November 8, Yüan Shih-k`ai was appointed Prime Minister, and on December 3, the new Empress Dowager issued an edict, in which she said: "The Regent has verbally memorialized the Empress Dowager, saying that he has held the Regency for three years, and his administration has been unpopular, and that constitutional government has not been consummated.
In the first, the baby-emperor renounces the throne, and approves the establishment of a provisional republican government, under the direction of Yüan Shih-k`ai, in conjunction with the existing provisional government at Nanking. In the second, approval is given to the terms under which the emperor retires, the chief item of which was an annual grant of four million taels.
By the middle of October the Manchus were beginning to feel that a great crisis was at hand, and the Regent was driven to recall Yüan Shih-k`ai, whom he had summarily dismissed from office two years before, on the conventional plea that Yüan was suffering from a bad leg, but really out of revenge for his treachery to the late Emperor, which had brought about the latter's arrest and practical deposition by the old Empress Dowager in 1898.
A plot was conceived, under which the Empress Dowager was to be arrested and imprisoned; but this was betrayed by Yüan Shih-k`ai, and she turned the tables by suddenly arresting and imprisoning the Emperor, and promptly decapitating all the conspirators, with the exception of K`ang Yu-wei, who succeeded in escaping.
Word Of The Day