Beiyang Great Era Fanwai Chapter (III): The wise do their best, the brave do their best, the benevolent spread their favors, and the believers are loyal to them.
In the history of Beiyang, the temple is a bead curtain. Big people and small characters are beads, and big events and small stories are strings. The word "love and righteousness" is the spirit of those beads, the matter of eating the king and the loyalty of the king, the two do not owe each other, that era of strange waves, the warlord tyrants or on the battlefield to die vigorously, or in the temple to fight the corners of the organs to calculate, seek fame and profit, seek benevolence and righteousness, each has its own needs.
Just like the great warlord likes to climb the literature and attach elegance, it is natural to pay attention to a gentleman who loves money and has a way. However, the small warlords cannot get rid of the cliché of "the army is not respected, how can it become a valve", and eating looks is not decent enough. The image of the small warlord with a fat belly is not empty, and most of these second-rate grass-headed kings have made a lot of money in scraping the land, just like Zhang Xun, the "Yangtze River Patrol Envoy" who is stationed in the Sulu Border Region. In the warlord dispute, this braided marshal mostly plays the role of being used as a gun, but he can still save a lot of family money.
In March of the seventh year of the Republic of China, Zhang Xun, who was already like a rat crossing the street after the ugly drama of Ding Wei, was finally pardoned by the Beiyang Center on the grounds that "current events are difficult, and talents are rare" and began to live in Tianjin. Although the braided handsome who once jumped up and down has completely retired at this time, the solid family foundation still makes its scenery unlimited. In the Zhang Mansion of the Jinmende Concession, there are more than a hundred servants in the mansion, carpenters, florists, drivers, servants, yahuan, tailors, cooks, etc., and there are guards sent by the British Concession Bureau at the door. On the 15th Lantern Festival of the first month, fireworks are set up in the courtyard of Zhangfu and friends are called on to watch. Once, when the young emperor Puyi of the Sunqing Dynasty came to the Zhang family to see the fireworks, Zhang Xun even led his wives and concubines and children and servants, and more than a hundred people lined up in the courtyard to kneel and "greet the driver".
However, like Duan Qirui, the leader of the Anhui warlords, as the head of the Beiyang Central Cabinet, he once won the top spot, but this "Duan Zhilao" had a really average family situation after bidding farewell to the temple, he had no savings in the bank, and the daily necessities of the Duan family were also bought from the shop with a needle and a thread, no different from the civilian household. Sometimes the turnover can not be opened, but also write a white note, go to the Golden City Bank or the mainland bank to exchange a hundred yuan. These debts, Duan Qirui will remember, the money will be repaid if you have more money, which bank wants to take the opportunity to send people "lai account" without even a door, and the loan to the Japanese army is borrowed or not repaid, this is the unique banditry and principle of the great warlord.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Duan Qirui resolutely abandoned his previous suspicions and was invited to go south, and Jiang Zhiqing, who was already at the helm of the Southern Temple, led all the generals in Ning to greet him at Pukou Wharf that day. The southern authorities gave Duan a living expense of 20,000 oceans per month, and Duan was too much to collect, and Jiang directly stated: "If the teacher does not need this number, he can give the old robes, I heard that their lives are also very difficult." Duan Then accepted it, kept a few thousand pieces for himself, and distributed the rest to the old beiyang department, thousands of yuan per person. After Duan Qirui moved to Shanghai, the mansion was even more lonely, with dead leaves and no one sweeping the floor. In fact, Duan Qirui also received gifts, he had received the mansion given by the old man of the Beiyang warlord, but he was asked back by the landlord with the contract and had been renting a house, and he had also received two tailed river fish from Zhang Zuolin, the king of the northeast, and half a pumpkin from Feng Yuxiang, the king of the northwest. Of course, the life of the Beiyang warlords after their "retirement" is most impoverished and destitute, and It is Wu Peifu, the bearer of the direct warlords, who has reached the point of subsidizing his family by writing for people.
At the height of his prestige, this jade marshal was the "Joint Commander of the Fourteen Provinces" who commanded the crowds, and twice made a comeback, beating the Beiyang warlords who were next to the Fengzhi warlords who did not dare to enter the pass, and the Southern Army stopped marching in Shonan, which was the continuation of the "hope of the whole village" by the old Beiyang warlords of the Beiyang clan. However, after the sixties, he lived in Beiping, and at first there were warlords and young marshals who paid 4,000 yuan a month for living expenses. After the young marshal left his post, he was transferred to the Beiping Army Branch on a monthly basis and allocated to the full salary, but the military salary "routine must" be paid by 70%.
Therefore, the actual income in the hands of this Confucian general is only 2800 yuan, due to the large number of attachés, there is naturally a risk of not being able to make ends meet. Someone then asked He Yingqin, then acting chairman of the military branch, to increase it, and after thinking about it, he gave a "I also know about this public situation." However, this is not to be violated. When he was a young man, when he gave subsidies in the name of the military branch, with the original number", Wu Peifu also laughed at himself in a couplet for the book of the seeker: "Looking back at the poor song and dance land, it is not like Luoyang now." ”
References: "History of the Reign of the Beiyang Warlords", "The Origin and Collapse of the Beiyang Faction", "The Economic Life of the Warlords after their "Retirement""