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Updated: June 2, 2025
One might have employed a Chinese physician for him, but the last man whose physician the Emperor would have accepted would have been Yuan Shih-kai's. Had you or I been ill would we have allowed the man who was the cause of our fall to select our physician? No!
Wishing to be above all a constitutional President, he quickly saw that an interregnum must be philosophically accepted during which the Permanent Constitution would be worked out and the various parties forced to a general agreement; and thanks to this decision the year which has now elapsed since Yuan Shih-kai's death has been almost entirely eventless, with the exception of the crisis which arose over the war-issue, a matter which is fully discussed elsewhere.
But when the proposal was taken to Tokio, Japan rightly saw that its main purpose was simply to secure an indirect foreign endorsement of Yuan Shih-kai's candidature as Emperor; and for that reason she threw cold-water on the whole project.
Cautious to the end, it will be seen that Yuan Shih-kai's very acceptance is so worded as to convey the idea that he is being forced to a course of action which is against his better instincts. There is no word of what came to be called the Grand Ceremony i. e. the enthronement. That matter is carefully left in abeyance and the government departments simply told to make the necessary preparations.
Lun Yi, empress, death of Lung Chi-Kwang, Gen. created Prince Lung Yu, Empress Mahommedan rebellions Manchu conquest, the, of XVIIth Century dynasty, governmental system of plots against Imperial Family annuity people, number and distribution Manchuria, Chinese domination of Japan's intrigues in Manchurian policy of the Twenty-One Demands Mandate of Cancellation, the Yuan Shih-kai's last Manifesto of Gen.
The second-period is choke-full of action; and over every chapter one can see the ominous point of interrogation which was finally answered in his tragic political and physical collapse. Yuan Shih-kai's origin, without being precisely obscure, is unimportant.
For although constitutional government is insisted upon as the sole solution, he speedily shows that this constitutionalism will depend more on the benevolence of the dictator than on the action of the people. And should his advice be not heeded, when Fortune wills that Yuan Shih-kai's rule shall end, chaos will ensue owing to the "uncertainty" regarding the succession.
He beheaded the two messengers and personally reported the whole plot to the Empress Dowager who was already fully warned. This is no place to enter into the controversial aspect of Yuan Shih-kai's action in 1898 which has been hotly debated by partisans for many years.
As May drew to an end it was plain that there was no government at all left in Peking. The last phase had been truly reached. Yuan Shih-kai's nervous collapse was known to all the Legations which were exceedingly anxious about the possibility of a soldiers' revolt in the capital.
It was in that year of 1898 also that Legation Guards reappeared in Peking a few files for each Legation as in 1860 and it was then that clear-sighted prophets saw the beginning of the end of the Manchu Dynasty. Yuan Shih-kai's reward for his share in this counter-revolution was his appointment to the governorship of Shantung province. He moved thither with all his troops in December, 1899.
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