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Updated: June 2, 2025
The old parliament of 1913 was reported to be assembling in Shanghai, whilst terrorist methods against Peking officials were bruited abroad precipitating a panic in the capital and leading to an exodus of well-to-do families who feared a general massacre. An open agitation to secure Yuan Shih-kai's complete retirement and exile now commenced.
Yuan Shih-kai's position was considerably strengthened by this auspicious event which secretly greatly delighted him; and by his order for three days the defunct Empress lay in State in the Grand Hall of the Winter Palace and received the obeisance of countless multitudes who appeared strangely moved by this hitherto unknown procedure.
It was understood that the Court was torn by two violent factions regarding the succession which the Empress Tzu-hsi had herself decided. The fact that another long Regency had become inevitable through the accession of the child Hsuan Tung aroused instant apprehensions among foreign observers, whilst it was confidently predicted that Yuan Shih-kai's last days had come.
With the Parliament of China effectively destroyed, and the turbulent Yangtsze Valley dragooned into sullen submission, Yuan Shih-kai's task had become so vastly simplified that he held the moment to have arrived when he could openly turn his hand to the problem of making himself absolutely supreme, de jure as well as de facto. But there was one remaining thing to be done.
Yuan Shih-kai's career falls into two clear-cut parts, almost as if it had been specially arranged for the biographer; there is the probationary period in Korea, and the executive in North China.
But Yuan Shih-kai's first care after that coup d'etat had been to promulgate with the assistance of Dr. Goodnow and others, a bogus Law, resting on no other sanction than his personal volition, with an elaborate flummery about three candidates whose names were to be deposited in the gold box in the Stone House in the gardens of the Palace.
But Yuan Shih-kai's first care after that coup d'état had been to promulgate with the assistance of Dr. Goodnow and others, a bogus Law, resting on no other sanction than his personal volition, with an elaborate flummery about three candidates whose names were to be deposited in the gold box in the Stone House in the gardens of the Palace.
He was then twenty-eight years old; he had come to the front, no matter by what means, in a quite remarkable manner. The history of the next nine years furnishes plenty of minor incidents, but nothing of historic importance. As the faithful lieutenant of Li Hung Chang, Yuan Shih-kai's particular business was simply to combat Japanese influence and hold the threatened advance in check.
And in order to illustrate and make clear the sort of daily exacerbation which the nation must endure because of the vastness of its territory and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we give two typical cases of international trouble which have occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death.
That the Chinese experiment was looked upon in England more with amusement than with concern irritated the Japanese more particularly as the British Foreign Office was issuing in the form of White Papers documents covering Yuan Shih-kai's public declarations as if they were contributions to contemporary history.
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