The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were the most active eras of various ideological trends in China. The fiasco of the two battles of Jia Wu and Xin Ugly made Chinese realize that it was impossible for this day to remain unchanged. The revolutionary party wants a republic, the royalist party wants a constitution, and all the spearheads are directed at the emperor and the imperial court of the Qing Dynasty.
Even some of the old ministers who were loyal to their duties and were deeply educated in traditional righteousness knew that daqing was unreliable. They defended the Qing court to the last moment, and after the revolutionary wave broke out, they actively joined the republic, and everything they did was to save the country and bring the country back into darkness. Jiangsu Inspector Cheng Dequan is such an old minister.
The Xinhai Revolution broke out and the Great Qing Dynasty fell violently. Cheng Dequan was the first to declare independence and participate in the revolution in the history of feudalism. He cut off his braids, threw away his official clothes, and personally took a bamboo pole and stabbed off the three tiles on the top of the patrol yamen, telling the world that Jiangsu has revolutionized, and we smashed the yamen of the Qing Dynasty.
Cheng Dequan was not like other Manchu Officials, who were afraid of both things and death, and could even be said to be a bold person. In the early years in the northeast, in order to save the people, he used his body to block the gun ports of the Russian army, telling the Russians to blow him up first if they wanted to fire.
Cheng Dequan was born in 1860 in eastern Sichuan, and his family was poor, and even food and clothing were problems, which forced him to give up scientific research and teach to support his family. When he married at the age of 18 and his younger siblings grew up at the age of 30, he was able to reduce his burden and go out to study.
During his studies at Guozijian, Cheng Dequan saw that Japan and Russia were eyeing the Northeast Tiger and that the situation in The Northeast was very critical, so he concentrated on studying the Northeast issue. Kung Fu paid off, and his knowledge was appreciated by Kiki Man Shoushan, who recommended him to serve in the Tohoku shogunate.
After five years of hard work, he took his wife and daughter to the northeast. Although he was only an out-of-staff official, he also had a decent career, and the problem of supporting the whole family was finally solved. After Shoushan became the general of Heilongjiang, he appointed Cheng Dequan as his copywriter and served as the general director of the Silver Dollar Bureau, which can be regarded as Shoushan's close confidant.
After the rise of the Boxers, Tsarist Russia not only sent troops to participate in the Eight-Power Alliance, but also took military operations in the northeast. First, he created the Jiangdong Sixteen Tun Massacre, and then invaded Yaohun in an attempt to seize the territory in the northeast while China was in chaos.
Shoushan appointed Cheng Dequan as a supervisor and went to the front to organize resistance. However, the Qing army had no intention of fighting at all, and once it retreated again and again, the Russian army's troops would soon arrive in Qiqihar. On August 22, Cheng Dequan was ordered to negotiate with the Russian army and asked the Russian army to stop advancing. The Russians agreed and insisted on attacking.
Cheng Dequan was in a hurry, and when he drew his sword, he was about to kill himself, and the blood splashed the enemy camp. The Russians had never seen such a desperate Chinese official, grabbed him by the wrist and stopped committing suicide. At this point, he finally agreed not to attack by force, not to rob or kill the Chinese people.
Coming out of the Russian camp, Cheng Dequan hurried back to Qiqihar and organized the retreat of the people. At this moment, it was another traitorous and bad thing, and a guy from Jiang Mou told the Russian army that Chinese peace was delaying time and setting up an ambush in the city. The Russians believed it and gave the order to attack.
After Cheng Dequan found out, he immediately ran to the Russian army and blocked the Russian gun port with his body, and the Russian army had to stop shelling. Cheng De was afraid that the Russians would not be at ease, so he stayed in the barracks as a hostage in exchange for the safe evacuation of the Chinese people.
The next day, the Russian army entered Qiqihar, and Qiren Shan committed suicide. When the Russian army saw that the supreme commander of the Qing army was dead, they wanted Cheng Dequan to replace Shoushan as a puppet of the Russian army. Cheng Dequan resolutely refused to agree, and he wanted to jump into the river and commit suicide. After the Russian army fished him up, he was no longer reluctant, and the Qing Dynasty official committed suicide at every turn, which was also a headache.
The Russian army wanted to bring Cheng Dequan back to Russia, but because he fell ill on the way, he had to release him back to Qiqihar, and since then he has fallen into the root of the wind and cold. Cheng Dequan's negotiations with the Russians showed rare courage and loyalty to protect the people. People from all walks of life in the northeast have great respect for Cheng Dequan and hope that he can really succeed Shoushan.
Considering Cheng Dequan's rank and seniority, the Qing court did not agree, but still promoted him to Zhizhou (知州) and added the title of three pins. Jumping directly from a small official to a state official, it cannot be said that the Qing court did not have the courage to employ people, and Cixi was able to maintain her authority for decades, and indeed had a certain level of rule.
In the next four years, Cheng Dequan rose step by step, and the Russian minister's wife, in front of Cixi, praised Cheng Dequan's courage and slapped Lafayette's face. In May 1905, Cheng Dequan officially became a general of Heilongjiang, which was the first time that Han Chinese held this position.
At this time, Yuan Shikai began to hold great power in the imperial court, and Cheng Dequan was ostracized by Yuan and said that he was ill and returned to his hometown. He used all the 10,000 taels of silver he had saved to help the Cheng clan relatives and won the unanimous praise of the township.
After the deaths of Cixi and Guangxu, Zaifeng took power and reinstated Cheng Dequan. He was first appointed as the Inspector of Fengtian, and a year later he was transferred to the Inspector of Jiangsu. Cheng Dequan advocated the establishment of a constitution and the establishment of a cabinet premier to save the crisis of the Qing Dynasty.
After he became acquainted with Zhang Xiao, a famous industrialist and educator at that time, he soon became a political alliance leading the revolutionary trend in Jiangsu. After the Xinhai Revolution, Cheng Dequan wrote to the imperial court for the last time, requesting that the imperial cabinet be dissolved and the constitution be implemented in accordance with the will of the people. The Qing court did not give him any reply, and finally prompted Cheng Dequan to make up his mind to participate in the revolution.
On November 3, 1911, Cheng Dequan telegraphed jiangsu to declare independence from the Qing government. This was the first Qing Dynasty feudal official to devote himself to the revolution, causing a sensation in the provinces. In order to show his heart, Cheng Dequan cut off his long braids and destroyed the Jiangsu Inspector Fu Dayin. In the end, he also stabbed down three tiles, indicating that he was also a revolutionary party.
After the all-out anti-Qing rebellion in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Cheng Dequan was elected as the governor of Jiangsu, and at first his cooperation with the revolutionary party was relatively pleasant. However, there were many factions within the revolutionary party, and the contradictions were difficult to reconcile, and Cheng Dequan was really unable to resolve these disputes, so the governor of Jiangsu did not work for long, so he had to run to Shanghai.
Cheng Dequan originally wanted to find some like-minded people to form a modern political party, but after approaching multiple groups, he gave up. The reason is that he believes that the time is far from ripe and that the conditions for forming the ideal political party are not yet in place.
In the chaotic political changes, Yuan Shikai finally became the president. On April 13, Yuan reappointed Cheng Dequan as the governor of Jiangsu. This was the last time Cheng Dequan held a public office, and with the support of Zhang Xiao, Cheng Dequan finally unified the forces of all walks of life in Jiangsu, stabilized the situation in Jiangsu, and maintained neutrality between the north and the south.
The contradiction between the North and the South finally evolved into a civil war, and Cheng Dequan was completely tired of politics and returned home to concentrate on praising the Buddha, not asking about the world. In 1926, he was ordained at Tianning Temple in Changzhou. In 1930, this former Qing high-ranking official who was located in the country's great service died at the age of 70.
[References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Historical Materials of Qing Dynasty Diplomacy]