It is October 10 of another year, another anniversary of the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution. On this day of universal celebration, I would like to pull out an old question - why was the final success of the Xinhai Revolution incomplete (Yuan Shikai stealing the fruits)? If we extend the question to this, why did the old democratic revolutions, such as the Xinhai Revolution, the Dharma Protection Movement, the Second Revolution, and so on, fail in the end?
If, according to the answer of the history textbook, there is no huge bourgeois masses in China, the revolutionary party does not dare to let go and mobilize the masses, and finally conclude that the bourgeois revolution is not suitable for China.
You can't say these conclusions are wrong, because they are indeed the final results. Logically speaking, the answer given in the textbook is more or less to explain the result as a cause, and the whole cause and effect are reversed, and the "historical necessity" is answered.
If you have an understanding of the economic generalizations of the late Qing Dynasty, especially after the New Deal, you will find that in the big cities of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, there were already a very large number of bourgeois masses, which were large enough to support a huge "bourgeois revolution", especially after the rubber stock market disaster, there were many asset holders dissatisfied with the Qing government, and there would be only a lot more rights protection riots like the Sichuan Road Protection Movement.
That is to say, the lack of a revolutionary mass base is really a bit far-fetched, after all, when the French Revolution broke out, the main force in the localities was also the peasant army.
What is the fundamental reason for the failure of the old democratic revolution? To be fair, in this regard, China and the baguette are really similar.
In the previous article, I said that the twists and turns of the French Revolution boiled down to the fact that there was no greatest common denominator, no common bottom line among the revolutionary parties, and the only consensus was the seizure of power. Everyone is too idealistic, how to find consensus on this?
In this regard, China at the end of the Qing Dynasty and France on the eve of the Revolution are too similar. How to revolutionize and what kind of regime to establish, in fact, there is no consensus within the League. According to Dr. Sun Yat-sen's meaning, the preferred place for revolution to take place should be the coastal areas of Guangdong, because it is convenient to obtain material assistance from overseas Chinese.
But this point seems to the members of the Hubei League in Hunan Province to be a wrong local feeling. Therefore, the members of the League, headed by Song Jiaoren and Tan Renfeng, established the Central Association of the Chinese League in Shanghai in July 1911, responsible for the revolutionary cause in the Yangtze River Basin. Although it was also called the League, it actually became an independent revolutionary organization.
Although the literary society and the Communist Progressive Association, which were responsible for launching the Wuchang Uprising, were also independent revolutionary groups based on the principle of listening to propaganda and not listening to the tune.
The revolutionary party is divided, and the Qing side does not stop. The young regent Zaifeng, sensing that the local governors were too powerful, often ignored the central government (the Sino-Japanese War and the Gengzi Rebellion). How can the local Han officials be allowed to be mighty and blessed under the feet of the Heavenly Son, and how can the Han people not listen to the command of the flag people, simply swing a large pen and collect power!
Obedient obedience, disobedient direct substitution. Zaifeng played this hand very beautifully, and if it was in a peaceful era, Daqing could definitely continue to work for more than ten years. However, now that the domestic revolutionary atmosphere is strong, this wave of operations directly buried a big hidden danger - the soldiers do not know the generals.
Most of the supervisors responsible for training the new army were either dismissed or transferred, which made the relationship between the new army and the local superintendents strange. The new governor commanded the veterans, which is a common occurrence in history, not to mention that this is still a group of thinking soldiers.
Feeling that the quality of the soldiers in the regimental training and the Green Battalion was too poor, when training the new army, the local supervisors deliberately recruited many intellectuals, especially those who had received Western-style education. In other words, they have seen democracy and republicanism. There is knowledge, there is thought, there is blood, then in the face of decay, they will have revolutionary potential. If a good superior with a discerning eye manages them, perhaps they will be able to settle down, but now there is no one to stop them from absorbing the nourishment of the revolutionary spirit.
The local army is already vaguely out of control, so there is always the main bureau of the Central Army. Unfortunately, the big boss of the Central Army is Yuan Shikai, who is ambitious of the wolf. Even more regrettably, Yuan Shikai and Zaifeng were enemies of life and death.
So when the Revolution broke out, Yuan Shikai told Feng Guozhang, "Go slowly, wait and see."
Judging from the above situation, the two beaches of the Great Qing and the Revolutionary Party are muddy waters, but the Revolutionary Party has another sober goal, that is, to revolutionize the life of the Great Qing.
In June 1911, in order to save the Shanghai rubber stock market disaster from a series of chain economic crises, the Qing government decided to nationalize the Sichuan-Han Railway. The move provoked riots and protests from the people of Sichuan. In order to suppress the Sichuan people's uprising, the Qing government transferred hubei new troops into Sichuan, which once caused hubei to be empty. The Communist Progressive Association seized the opportunity to launch the Wuchang Uprising, and the Hubei Military Government was established.
The explosive Zaifeng rushed to encircle the Revolutionary Army, the Janissaries and the Navy of Sa Zhenbing. But what made him depressed was that the counterinsurgency army was pregnant with ghost fetuses - the Beiyang Army was well versed in the principles of cunning rabbit death, running dog cooking, and the boss would not let me move, and touched the fish on the front line; Sa Zhenbing said that he usually does not burn incense, and hugs the Buddha's feet in the front, so that Lao Tzu will not give you a life; The Janissaries felt that our main task was to prevent the Han Chinese from rebelling, and we fought with the revolutionary party to protect who would be clean. The three sides dragged on all kinds of delays until the Hubei military government gained a firm foothold and dragged until the new army in 15 provinces responded to the uprising. The Great Halal couldn't stand it.
The revolution was raging, and the whole of China was boiling over. But under such an unprecedented revolution of the New Army, it is indeed fragmented and divided into separate battles. Throughout, the loose alliance failed to effectively integrate the new rebel army throughout the country. To put it simply, the League had little solid strength of its own, and the rebels everywhere cooperated with it at best with short-term, consistent goals.
The problems caused by such shortcomings were vividly revealed in the late revolution and the early construction of the Republic of China. In deliberating on how to form a new government and how to proceed with the line of the state, questions arose within the Revolutionary Party as the Jacobins and Girondins, after the success of the French Revolution, for whom and how they would govern. That is what kind of political philosophy to pursue.
First of all, within the League, many bigwigs in the association did not approve of the political ideas put forward by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, believing that Sun Yat-sen's ideas were too idealistic. Some believe that strongman politics should be established, hoping that a hard-line leader will lead the republic. Local Forces nouvelles officers advocated the establishment of a military junta, with military personnel running the places. Several parties argued over this issue, so they gave Yuan Shikai an opportunity to take advantage of it.
Yuan Shikai, who smelled political interests, proposed that he could recognize the republican system, but only if he became a big president. On this point, many elders of the League expressed their firm opposition (especially Huang Xing), but Cai Yi and others from the New Army faction agreed, believing that Yuan Shikai was his ideal "strongman".
Seeing that the people on the side of the Alliance would be difficult to unite, the Beiyang Army was aggressive. Sun Yat-sen was concerned about the great cause of the republic and expressed his willingness to make Yuan Shikai the president, as long as he recognized and abided by the Provisional Law of the Republic of China.
In this way, the north and the south reached a consensus, Puyi successfully abdicated, the Qing Dynasty ended its rule over the land of China, the Republic of China was founded, and Yuan Shikai became the president.
However, the contradiction between Beiyang and the revolutionary party has not been resolved, and the temporary compromise is only for the purpose of victory in stages. The revolutionary party did not trust Yuan Shikai and believed that it was necessary to find a way to use the system to keep Yuan's power in a cage; Yuan Shikai also did not believe in the revolutionary party, and he did not believe that the enemy who was still dueling with his life and death yesterday could work together peacefully today.
The revolutionary party's trick was to let Yuan Shikai come to Nanjing to take up his post, and Yuan Shikai faked a mutiny in Beijing to cause turmoil and made him unable to leave. Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren saw that since you were not coming, we would find a way to get you to the whole place. So he abandoned the presidential republic of the United States and adopted the French presidential parliamentary system instead, using a congress that tried to use the majority to lock up Yuan Shikai.
With this in mind, Song Jiaoren set out to form the Kuomintang and defeated Liang Qichao's Progressive Party in the 1913 parliamentary elections. Enraged, Yuan Shikai assassinated Song Jiaoren and directly tore open the revolutionary party's legal blockade. They also borrowed military supplies from the great powers and prepared to go south to eliminate the obstructing revolutionary party in one fell swoop.
An enraged Sun Yat-sen set about launching a second revolution, but the internal divisions of the Kuomintang were exposed at this time. There were not a few Kuomintang members in the provinces, but the only respondents were Anhui Bai Wenwei, Shanghai Chen Qimei, Hunan Tan Yanmin, Fujian Xu Chongzhi and Sun Daoren, and Sichuan Xiong Kewu. Zhu Rui of Zhejiang and Cai Yi of Yunnan declared neutrality. Others looked on the sidelines.
The whole course of the operation lasted just over a month, and the Second Revolution failed.
It is true that as the textbooks say, the failure of the Xinhai Revolution and the second revolution that followed was largely due to the lack of a solid revolutionary force of its own. The so-called power out of the barrel of the gun is what it means. However, judging from the scale of the Xinhai Revolution, it is not difficult to find that the revolutionary forces are all pens and pens, and the number of guns is absolutely enough, but the people who hold guns have their own ideas. If the revolution fails to achieve a unity and concession of an ideological bottom line, but only for the sake of revolution, then the final result will be greater chaos.
As Chairman Mao said, it is necessary to unite all forces that can be united, but the premise is that we must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party, and at the same time, we must be able to unite our hearts and minds within the Communist Party. Looking back at the period of the Xinhai Revolution, the scattered alliances only instigated the revolution of the new army in the provinces, but they could not effectively unify the leadership and let the revolution continue to be fragmented like the society at that time, then such a revolution was doomed to failure.