Sasha today in its history.
Author: Sasha
This article is Sasha's original and will not be reprinted by any media
The constitutional monarchy at the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was a complete bluff: on September 24, 1905, the Chinese revolutionary Wu Fan assassinated the five ministers of the Qing government who were preparing to go abroad to investigate the constitutional monarchy at the Zhengyangmen Railway Station.
After the disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, people of insight in China believed that reform was necessary.
It can be said that Japan is the weakest of the great powers. If the Manchu Qing dynasty had been beaten to the knees by the Japanese, who else could have been defeated? The ensuing change of law caused the wrath of the Manchu qing elite.
Although the Manchu elite was ignorant, it understood a truth. The essence of the Reform Law is to take a part of the power of the elite group and distribute it to other forces in the country.
Although this may have greatly improved the national strength and military strength of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, it was quite dangerous for the elite itself.
In the case of the Meiji Restoration, Japan actually destroyed feudal shogunate rule and carried out reforms after the feudal system was largely abolished.
The essence of the Meiji Restoration was the establishment of a new capitalist system that took away the power of the shogunate's feudal government.
Even though the samurai clique later rebelled and resisted, trying to regain power.
However, once the people have adapted to the new system and know what is better, it is impossible to turn back. Thus, feudalism ended in Japan.
The Manchu clique was no different from the shogunate, and once it lost some of its power to carry out reforms, it was difficult to say whether it could control the situation. Most of the Manchu elite group were wine bags and rice bags, and had no practical ability. They only relied on the system of their ancestors to control the power of the state.
The Manchu clique understood that reform was very likely to make the country rich and strong, but it could not protect the interests of its own clique. And the members of these groups are arrogant and lascivious, doing whatever they want. For example, a Mongol prince, Nayantu, prince of Zasak and Shuo, lived in Beijing all year round. Once his concubine quarreled with him continuously, Wang Ye buried the concubine alive in anger. This matter was very big, and the Beijing Dialect Daily published it, and even Empress Dowager Cixi asked about it, but in the end it was still not resolved. Look, with all this power, killing people is all right.
As for wealth, not to mention. Prince Zhuang of the Eight Iron Hat Kings, do you know how much property he has?
The real estate of Zhuang Wangfu is distributed in more than 40 counties in Hebei, Liaoning and Shanxi provinces, with about 550,000 mu of land.
Many people don't have any concept of 550,000 acres?
In the Guangxu era, there were only 900 million mu of arable land in the country.
In other words, the land that can be cultivated in the country is divided into 1600 parts, and Prince Zhuang's family will have 1 share exclusively.
The wealth and power of these people do not depend on individual ability, but mainly on the special position of small groups to grasp the power of the state.
Once this small group is unable to grasp all the power of the state, the wealth and power of these people can easily become nothing.
If so, why reform? The good or bad of the country has nothing to do with me, as long as I can maintain arrogance and lavishness and monopoly of power.
Therefore, the Wushu transformation method is bound to fail, and Guangxu does not have the strength to change the law. He was completely different from the Japanese fallen faction, which held military power.
In 1900, the Gengzi Incident was defeated, Beijing was occupied by the Eight-Power Alliance, Empress Dowager Cixi ran away, foreigners flaunted their military might in the Forbidden City, the northeast was occupied by Tsarist Russia, the finance collapsed, and the "Xinugu Treaty" was signed.
All of this indicates that the Manchu Qing regime is crumbling!
After returning to Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi also understood the general trend of reform.
Among other things, in 1903, before Empress Dowager Cixi's death, the state deficit was as high as 30 million taels, and in 1905 it was 33 million taels.
And that's not all, the Manchu foreign debt is very heavy.
By 1900, the year of the Gengzi Incident, the Manchu Qing's 7 foreign debts needed to pay 25 million taels per year.
After the Gengzi indemnity, in the last years of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, various reparations alone had uniforms as high as 47 million taels per year.
The most stable tariff in the Manchu Qing Dynasty was only 22 million taels, which was not enough to repay half of the foreign debt and indemnities.
These huge fiscal deficits made it difficult for the Manchu Qing government to maintain, not to mention the difficulty of paying military expenses and disaster relief funds, and even the salaries of government officials were in arrears.
If this continues, without the need for foreigners to fight, the Manchu Qing regime itself will collapse.
Beginning in 1904, governors from all over the world wrote letters calling for a constitutional change.
In 1905, even Yuan Shikai, the governor directly subordinate to him who opposed the change of law at that time, joined hands with Zhou Fu, the governor of Liangjiang, and Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, to jointly send a telegram to request the implementation of a constitutional form of government twelve years later, and asked Jian to send his pro-noble ministers to various countries to investigate politics.
Empress Dowager Cixi did not want to give up her power, and she always had to put on her face.
Thirty years ago, in 1871, Japan sent a "European and American Envoy Delegation" with Right Minister Iwakura As the right envoy, Cabinet Advisor and Senator Takayoshi Kido, Senator and Secretary of State Okubo Toshitsuru, Senator and Ministry of Works Daisuke Itō Hirobumi, and Foreign Minister Shosuke Yamaguchi As the deputy envoys to visit Europe and the United States.
In 1905, the Manchu Qing also pretended to send five political ministers to investigate the outside world (Zhenguo Gong Zaize, Hubu Shilang Dai Hongci, Bingbu Shilang Xu Shichang, Hunan Inspector Duanfang, and Shangbu Right Cheng Shaoying).
The revolutionary party saw very clearly the Manchu Qing's intention to change the law, and it was all fooling the common people.
The revolutionary Wu Fan believed that he wanted to assassinate the five ministers and prevent the Manchu Qing from using a false constitution to confuse the people.
Wu Fan was a native of Anhui and was only 24 years old at the time. He was an intellectual, having worked as a secondary school teacher and newspaper editor-in-chief. Although he was a reader, Wu Fan was not powerless and believed that he wanted to use assassination against the enemy.
In 1904, he and fellow revolutionaries Zhang Rong and Yang Dusheng infiltrated Beijing, first preparing to assassinate the leader of the Shaozhuang faction, Hubu Shangshu Tieliang. However, Tie Liang was more cunning, attached great importance to his own safety, and was strictly defensive, and it was difficult for wu Fan to attack them
At this time, the five ministers were about to leave for Beijing, and they decided to start on September 24, 1905.
Why the Five Ministers? Yang Dusheng was an interpreter attaché of the constitutional inspection delegation of the five ministers, and he was very clear about everything about this trip and was more sure to start.
Wu Fan knew that he would die this time, so he returned to his hometown of Tongcheng in advance and settled the life of his wife and children.
Carrying a bomb on his back, Wu Fan mixed with the servants and entered the Zhengyangmen Railway Station in Beijing. Wu Fan prepared to approach the five ministers with the bomb, and then detonated it and died. But they were not bomb experts, nor did they have professional guidance, and the quality of the bombs they produced was poor.
At that time, the train of the five ministers was a special train with five carriages, the first two carriages were accompanied by an attaché, the middle was the five ministers, and the rear two carriages were used for luggage and servants.
Wu Fan got into the car with the bomb, and because Yang Dusheng provided detailed information, he dressed no differently from the servant. Upon entering the servant's carriage, the guards were not suspicious, not even cross-examined.
But when Wu Fan was about to enter the carriage of the five ministers, he was stopped by the guards and asked which minister's servant he was. Wu Fan immediately replied that he was Zai ze's servant, but his Anhui accent made the guards suspicious.
The five ministers have lived in Beijing for generations, and the servants are all Beijing natives, all of whom speak fluent Beijing films and should not have a foreign accent.
The guards carefully looked at Wu Fan and found that he did not have the temperament of a servant, and he did not know what to hold in his hand.
The guards felt that the situation was not right and immediately called other guards to come and check it out.
Seeing that the wear help was helped, Wu Fan could only risk coming hard and trying to force his way into the carriage. The guards were horrified and struggled to pull Wu Fan.
Between entanglements, Wu Fan prepared to rush into the carriage to drop a bomb. Unexpectedly, at this time, the front of the car fell backwards and hung on the train, "banging", the body was knocked backwards, and the passengers on the car shook up. The bomb carried by Wu Fan was a firing pin type, which was triggered by the body vibration, and it exploded automatically before Wu Fan threw it. Wu Fan was killed on the spot, and his lower body was almost shattered. Nearby, 3 servants and guards were killed. The five ministers were far apart, only Zaizawa and Shaoying were slightly injured, and the remaining 3 were slightly injured.
After this attack, on October 26, 1905, the Qing court reassigned Shang Qiheng, the envoy of Shandong Province, and Li Shengduo of Shuntian Province, together with Zai Ze, Dai Hongci, and Duan Fang.
After Wu Fan's death, his comrade-in-arms Yang Dusheng continued to participate in the revolution. However, after Yang Dusheng went to England to establish a revolutionary newspaper, he suddenly fell ill with a serious chronic disease and could not continue working.
He still did not give up the revolution, and the bombs used by Wang Jingwei, Huang Fusheng and others to assassinate the Manchu regent Zaifeng were purchased from Britain. However, by 1911, Yang Dusheng's illness worsened, and he barely managed to take care of himself.
Seeing his comrades-in-arms die one by one in uprising, Yang Dusheng, who was powerless, was very sad and indignant.
In 1911, he Yang Yulin heard in England that the Huanghuagang Uprising had failed, and the great powers were trying to split China in vain, and their grief and indignation were so great that the old disease recurred, the headache was puffy, and the pain was unbearable.
Seeing that he had become a wasted man, Yang Dusheng handed over all the inheritance trustees to the revolutionary leader Huang Xing as a revolutionary fund, and then committed suicide by jumping into the sea at the age of 39.
On December 7, 1905, the first group of the expedition, Duan Fang and Dai Hongci, set out. They visited 13 countries, including Japan, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy.
On January 14, 1906, Zaize led the second group of the expedition, namely Shang Qiheng and Li Shengduo. The delegation visited Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and other five countries.
As the Revolutionary Party had expected, the expedition was merely a tourist.
At a time when domestic uprisings were rife, the Manchus still did not wait until 1908 to promulgate the Outline of the Constitution of the Qing Dynasty, stipulating that the Qing Empire would be a lineage.
Of the 23 articles in the Outline of the Constitution, 14 uphold the power of the monarch, and the remaining 9 stipulate that the broad masses of the people (subjects) have the obligations of serving as soldiers, paying taxes, and obeying the rule of the late Qing dynasty government of China, but they have no practical significance.
Even so, the Manchu Qing dynasty was not prepared to use this constitution to fool the common people, so it declared that "the constitution will be implemented in ten years."
This caused great dissatisfaction among the domestic public, and the Manchu Qing could only declare a constitution five years later at the end of 1910, and first created a responsible cabinet.
On May 8, 1911, the Qing government abolished the Military Aircraft Division, promulgated the cabinet system, and appointed the prime minister and ministers.
Exaggeratedly, there were 13 members in this cabinet, of whom 9 were Manchu nobles and 7 were Aisin Kyora royals.
And that's not all, the remaining four members are Xu Shichang, Assistant Minister of cabinet, Tang Jingchong, Minister of Academic Affairs, Sheng Xuanhuai, Minister of Posts and Communications, and Liang Dunyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Of these four people, with the exception of Foreign Minister Liang Dunyan, the rest had no real power at all.
Although Liang Dunyan is the foreign minister, that is, today's foreign minister, he cannot make a decision. Liang Dunyan can only carry out diplomatic activities according to the above orders, can not formulate his own foreign policy, is completely a sounding board, equivalent to no power.
It can be seen from this that the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not have any sincerity in establishing a constitution at all, and it was nothing more than a new bottle of old wine.
Who can be fooled by something so fake?
A few months later, the Wuchang Uprising broke out, and the Manchu Qing regime collapsed.
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