Li Yuanhong's rule over the army is indeed sparing no effort, and he must take care of everything in the military affairs.
As a rather Westernized unit, the Hubei New Army eats and lives, and it takes the world's advanced level as the benchmark. As a famous "stove" on the Yangtze River, wuchang's summer has always been extremely hot. The officers and men of the New Army liked to drink the popular soda in the British Concession of Hankou to refresh the heat, which was called Dutch water at that time, and the salaries of the New Army were quite high, of course, they had the financial resources to catch up with the fashion. Li Yuanhong felt that in the summer, each person would have to drink a thousand yuan of soda, and the officers and men of a brigade would have to use up tens of thousands of large strings of money, so he consulted with Zhang Biao, and the officers crowdfunded, and simply set up a soda factory in the army.
At that time, some graduates of the New Army Academy, who had not been assigned a position to join the army for a long time, wanted to resign. Li Yuanhong painstakingly persuaded: "It is not easy to be in the academy for many years, and the state spends a lot of money on training, so resigning from the government and going home will not only lose the country's love for talents, but also delay its own future." "It is no accident that the officers and men of the New Army have a close feeling of affinity for the Le Xie Reunification.
During his time in Hubei, Li Yuanhong was not without bad luck. In May 1906, a gunpowder explosion occurred at the Hanyang Arsenal, and as an arsenal transfer, Li Yuanhong was punished with a major demerit and a two-month fine.
In the summer of that year, the barracks of the troops supervised by Li Yuanhong were washed away by heavy rain on the eve of the completion of the earth, and for a time, rumors spread in the provincial city, and the people thought it was an ominous omen.
A month later, Li Yuanhong fell out with Shan Qipeng, the commander of the artillery battalion, and the two of them separately wrote to the governor of Huguang and exposed each other.
After conducting a military exercise with the Beiyang Army, Li Yuanhong was insulted on the spot by Xie Shuquan, the forty-second standard commander of Hubei Province, who had always been discordant, at the scene of the closing ceremony, and as a result, the two were wrestled together. In the end, the provocative Xie Shuquan was dismissed, and his leaders did not ask right from wrong, firmly believing that "a slap cannot be made", and Li Yuanhong was also deducted from his salary for 3 months.
The most unfortunate thing was in May 1907, When Li Yuanhong was suddenly frightened by the horse, he was the first to land on the ground, probably rolling a few times, and his head, face, waist, and back were severely damaged, and he was helped home by his hands trembling.
This time, the leaders and colleagues wrote a warm letter of condolence, and Li Xietong's heart was also bitter and abnormal.
During the time when Li Yuanhong was on an errand in Hubei, the Qing court could not be saved, and casually flipped through the newspapers of the time, and on all sides were the signs of national defeat. In The last few years of Li Yuanhong's presidency, the most common task was to deal with the endless popular uprisings in various places.
In 1910, the area around Qiuyang in Hubei province was flooded again, crops were almost swept away by the torrent, hungry people begged everywhere, and the local deep-rooted non-governmental associations in Hubei took the opportunity to develop the congregation, and a large and organized contingent of displaced people appeared. The starving people soon began to surround the local rich, and the local garrison came to suppress them, but they were beaten away by the hungry people.
Li Yuanhong came to the aid with an elite new army, and found that the starving people had guns after being captured in the previous war, and wanted to "fight a decisive battle with the officers and soldiers".
These victims gathered in front of the local French Catholic Church and shouted to Li Yuanhong's officers and soldiers: "If you dare to come here, we will burn down the church." "This is already a reserved program for the local victims, who are suffering hardships for several years in a row, and each time they have to gather around the church to avoid the slaughter of officers and soldiers."
In the end, Li Yuanhong paid for the guns in the hands of the hungry people, announced that the first evil would be punished, and the threat would be ignored. The victims of the disaster are also forced to survive, and they only want to survive, so who is willing to test the Fa with their own body? The matter finally subsided.
At this time, although Li Yuanhong was an assistant commander, the strength of his subordinates was actually less than that of the First League (brigade), because his elite troops had become a fire brigade in Hubei Province, and wherever there was a civil unrest, a new army would be transferred to the past and stationed in the bomb press.
Suizhou, Hubei Province, is at the junction of Hubei and Henan, and the magistrate gave an 18-character comment on public order: "The people are strong, bandits are full of bandits, and cases of robbery and armed struggle are heard from time to time." "Li Yuanhong's troops arrived here, and after half a year, public order improved, and they wanted to withdraw, but the local rich gentry did not do it, and they stayed one after another, and even went to the governor of Huguang. At this time, it was already the year of the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
At this time, the revolutionary wind in the New Army could not be suppressed. The documents in the new army took the initiative to copy revolutionary slogans, posted them everywhere, heard that the Hubei Railway was about to be nationalized, and Li Yuanhong's soldiers gave public speeches, and cut off two fingers, calling on the people to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. The military judge believed that this person had demagogued the hearts of the army and must be severely punished, and the officers and men in the army gritted their teeth in hatred against the military judge. As for cutting braids, it has become quite a common thing.
The Wuchang Uprising took place on the 19th day of the eighth lunar month, at which point Li Yuanhong had already noticed the strangeness of the atmosphere. Originally, during the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15, the military should routinely stop practicing and give soldiers a holiday. Earlier, Li Yuanhong handled so many incidents of soldiers making trouble, believing that large-scale let officers and soldiers go out on vacation, before tea and after drinking, there would be incidents, so a day in advance, stopped the soldiers' exercises, prepared a banquet, let the soldiers rest well, no family, not allowed to take leave to go out, on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, resume the exercises.
Only 4 days later, Li Xietong was invited out by his soldiers and became the leader of the revolutionary army half pushed and half on the spot.
Although Li Yuanhong himself was not inclined to revolution, many revolutionaries always regarded him as a good commander. He broke his heart for the Hubei New Army, and the result was contrary to his ideals. When people commented on Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, he liked to ridicule him as "planting melons and getting beans", which means that Zhang Zhidong fisted and fisted the red hearted people, founded foreign affairs and trained new armies in order to consolidate the rule of the Qing court, and in the end it was precisely these achievements that destroyed the Qing Dynasty. Why is this not the case?
(Luo Shan/Wen)