The Survival Wisdom of the Beiyang Era (115): Being alive is a kind of decency.
On the twenty-fifth day of the third year of the xuanun, if you can drink a bowl of laba porridge around the small stove, it must be a beautiful enjoyment, but at this time, the Qing court palace is not in a good mood. Above the empty hall, the last court of the Qing court was staged, Xuantong announced the abdication, and Empress Longyu was in tears before she had finished reading the edict, and finally was helped back to the back hall by the internal attendants. Since Empress Dowager Cixi bowed to the government, the late Qing Dynasty struggled to support herself in the wind and rain for nearly half a century, and at this time the Great Qing Dynasty was really dead. But a crucial figure missed this historic moment, and that person was Yuan Shikai.
Not long ago, Yuan Shikai took a double carriage home from the palace, passing through Donghuamen Street, the assassins threw three bombs at the horse team, two bombs exploded on the spot, two of Yuan Shikai's personal bodyguards were killed, and although the two horses were also seriously injured, they drove Yuan Shikai to the scene of the accident like crazy, and Yuan Shikai also escaped the disaster. Yuan Shikai, who returned home, saw his family and simply said the situation, and then laughed loudly, he hid the panic and fear alone, but since then Yuan Shikai has been staying in the palace, and everything is handled by his assistant Zhao Bingjun and others, and for such a critical moment as the abdication of the Qing court, Yuan Shikai still did not go out.
However, Yuan Shikai did not participate in the Abdication Court of the Qing Court, not only for security reasons, but also because he could not face Empress Longyu above the court. The regent Zaifeng this opponent has been squeezed out of the game, Empress Longyu has also approved Zaifeng's resignation, betting all her hopes on Yuan Shikai, this short and fat little old man once knelt on the red carpet and cried opposite her, a bitter love play, Yuan Shikai interpreted too realistically, Empress Longyu even sold all kinds of property in the inner palace, and painstakingly squeezed out six million two military salaries, but in front of the Beiyang Army's gluttony, it was not a cup of water.
In this regard, the royal family relatives and nobles sat idly by, and Prince Qing, Prince Li, prince Su and others deposited as much as 37 million taels of family property in the foreign bank, but in the end only donated a mere 100,000 taels. These royal relatives and nobles all had their minds changed, and Yuan Shikai, who was watching the fire, could only consider how to let his old subject end in the face. However, in the face of the hardliners of the imperial family, Yuan Shikai only added another fire and sacrificed his own killer skills: the generals of the front-line Beiyang Army, such as Duan Qirui, and others jointly electrified, and the murderous Beiyang Army was ready to wave its division north to advise. It just so happened that Liangbi, who had been the commander of the Gyeonggi Janissaries, was bombed, and the royal family members began to flee like birds of fright, and for a time the first-class carriages of the Beijing-Tianjin Railway, the relatives and relatives of the nobles occupied most of them.
In the end, as the last four words of the abdication edict "Don't you yi yi" said, Empress Longyu had to announce her abdication, and the reluctance and reluctance of the emperor, the misfortune of the royal family, and the anger of her were even more indisputable. Yuan Shikai's role as an accomplice, naturally it is inconvenient to participate in the abdication court, but everything he did was not protecting the last decency of the Qing court, less than three years after the qing court's retirement, the First World War broke out, and there were tsars, German emperors, etc. Compared with their encounters, the Qing court's abdication was absolutely worthy of the word decent.