A cigarette butt that changed history
Chance events and the fortunes of the Qing Dynasty
Marx said that the trend of historical development is inevitable, but the time and place in which specific events occur are often accidental. The Xinhai Revolution is the most vivid footnote to this sentence.
Some people say that this revolution started by accident, and some say that it came from accident, but in fact, a series of so-called coincidences were the explosion of public opinion that had accumulated deep grievances.
The Mid-Autumn Festival in the stillborn womb is difficult
In 1911 (the 3rd year of Xuantong), there was no name Wuhan at that time, only Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang, and the top leader of the country was Aixin Jueluo Puyi of Beijing, who was not yet 6 years old.
In July of that year, the Qing government nationalized the commercial Guangdong-Hanzhou and Sichuan-Han railways and prepared to sell them to foreign countries, but failed to compensate for the losses of the people, so it set off a large-scale nationwide road protection movement.
Defend the road
The Qing government urgently mobilized the Hubei New Army into Sichuan to suppress it, resulting in the emptiness of Hubei's troops, and the revolutionaries, mainly the two revolutionary groups of the Literary Society and the Communist Advancement Association, decided to take advantage of the situation to start an incident.
Prior to this, they had done a great deal of development work in the new army, which was composed mostly of Han Chinese soldiers.
On September 24, the revolutionaries held a meeting to draw up an extremely detailed plan for the uprising, and decided to launch an attack in Hubei and Hunan at the same time on October 6, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, to raise troops against the Qing Dynasty. On the Hubei side, Liu Zhongwen is the premier, Jiang Yiwu is the military commander-in-chief, and Sun Wu is the minister of military affairs.
There are many people talking, and it is difficult to keep secrets. The governor of Huguang, Chéng, heard some rumors and announced that there would be no Mid-Autumn Festival holiday that year, the whole city was under martial law, and mooncakes could only be eaten at home.
During this period, all new officers and men were not allowed to leave the barracks and were strictly forbidden to have meals under various names, and the Mid-Autumn Festival party in the barracks was held one day earlier. Except for the soldiers on duty, who can carry a small amount of ammunition, the rest of the ammunition will be collected and stored in a centralized manner.
When the enemy is on guard, the uprising will not be easy. Hunan proposed an extension. In desperation, the commander decided to postpone it for 10 days, and the matter was scheduled to start on October 16.
A life-threatening cigarette butt
If you postpone it for 10 days, you will have more time to prepare and be more assured. Therefore, for the sake of safety, the general headquarters of the uprising was set up in Baoshanli in the Russian Concession. But it's not that easy!
At noon on October 9, Sun Wu and others prepared explosives in the headquarters. Liu Zhongwen's younger brother, Liu Tong, also came, lit a cigarette and looked at the explosives with great interest.
It is said that he is the financier of explosives, so no one is embarrassed to remind him that he should not smoke for health and safety reasons.
After the cigarette addiction was over, Liu Tong looked around and couldn't find the ashtray, only a dirty basin next to it that seemed to be filled with garbage. He threw the still smoking cigarette butt into it with great precision. What he didn't know was that the basin contained explosives for the uprising.
As a result, with a bang, the explosives exploded. Sun Wu, who was close, was blown up beyond recognition, and was rushed to the hospital by others who were not injured, but Liu Tong was unharmed.
Sun Wu, who was seriously injured, escaped the fate of being captured
The explosion caused a fire that could not be contained, and thick smoke billowed everywhere. The others were supposed to take the documents of the uprising and the roster of comrades with them before they fled, but they were locked in lockers, and no one knew where the keys were.
Before they could figure out what to do, the Russian patrol had already arrived at the scene, and after controlling everyone, they searched carefully, and found not only dangerous explosives, but also the list of uprisings, flags, notices, ammunition and stamps that were found by splitting cabinets with large axes.
Soon, all six of these things, including Liu Tong, were handed over by the Russian side to the Hubei authorities of the Qing government. Liu Tong quickly recruited them all.
Chen Shuping, the chief political secretary of Hubei, suggested that the roster be destroyed to reassure the people, and Zhang Meisheng, the master of the governor's office, advocated that the roster be searched and arrested. Ruizi listened to Master Zhang's suggestion and immediately ordered the closure of the four cities and the arrest of revolutionaries according to the list.
Eight words less written on the urging notice
Seeing that the matter had been revealed, Jiang Yiwu decided to immediately launch an uprising at 12 o'clock that night, with the sound of the Nanhu artillery as a signal. He sent Deng Yulin to the Nanhu artillery team to convey the order: as soon as the cannon sounds, everyone will act!
And then, at twelve o'clock in the evening, there was no movement.
It turned out that the whole city was heavily guarded, and the traffic was almost paralyzed, Deng Yulin hurried and hurried to return to the artillery team after twelve o'clock. At this time, the artillerymen have already turned off the lights and gone to bed, who is still up and firing the artillery!
And even if the cannon goes off, it's useless. As early as half past eleven, the military police broke into the headquarters of the Literary Society, Jiang Yiwu escaped, and the other three backbones Peng Chufan, Liu Fuji and Yang Hongsheng hung their heads on the Wuchang City Gate Tower early the next morning.
At this point, the leaders of the uprising were killed, wounded, and fled, and the revolutionary army was scattered and chaotic. Can you still revolt like this, and can you still succeed?
However, Ruizi made this impossible possible.
In the case of knowing that someone has rebelled and has mastered the specific list, there is only one best way to deal with it: differentiation, dark tightness and light looseness. With lightning speed, the thief will capture the king first, and at the same time appease the people's hearts and calm the people.
But Ruizi chose the stupid trick of being tight and loose.
He ordered all gates to be closed and forbidden to enter or leave, and posted notices that no officers and soldiers of the new army were allowed to leave the camp, and that the revolutionaries should be arrested on the roster and brought to justice on the spot.
This immediately stabbed the hornet's nest. There were more than 5,000 revolutionaries in the Hubei New Army, but the vast majority of them had no idea whether they were on the roster or not.
So rumors abounded: at first, it was said that Ruizi wanted to kill all the revolutionaries, and then it was rumored that not only the revolutionary party wanted to kill everyone who cut their braids (many of the new army had already secretly cut their braids), and then it was said that as long as it was the Han New Army, they would be killed!
The Hubei New Army in exercise
Ruizi soon felt that the wording was inappropriate, and immediately added a clause to the notice: "Except for the mastermind, the past is not to blame." But it was too late.
Viral rumors became the best pre-war mobilization, and the recruits were at risk. In the end, everyone reached a consensus: if nothing happens, everyone will die, and if you want to survive, you can only strike first.
In fact, many people did not want to do it, and the plans of the revolutionaries even included bombs to force the soldiers to revolt. Unexpectedly, just because there were eight words written on the notice, people who had no intention of rebelling were determined to rebel to the end!
The first shot of the first righteousness was fired in a daze
Since it was decided to start an incident, who would fire the first shot?
After 7 p.m. on October 10, Tao Qisheng, the sentry commander (i.e., platoon commander) of the Eighth Battalion of the Army, inspected the night and found that the squad leader Jin Zhaolong and the soldier Cheng Dingguo were sleeping on their backs with rifles and a box of ammunition next to them.
Tao Qisheng gently stepped forward and helped the two cover the quilt. Seeing that the two of them opened their eyes, he said to them with a pleasant face: Don't think about it, sleep well, it's okay, everything has the platoon commander and me.
If he did, history might have been rewritten.
But the reality is that Tao Qisheng rushed over and reprimanded him sharply: What are you doing! You want to rebel, right?
Jin Zhaolong scolded back: If you rebel, you will rebel, what can you do!
The two scuffled, Cheng Dingguo knocked Tao Qisheng down with the butt of a gun, and then made up a shot in the back. It is said that this was the first shot of the Wuchang Uprising!
Subsequently, the three officers who came in a row to suppress the bullets were all killed by Cheng Dingguo one by one, and the barracks were in chaos. Xiong Bingkun, the squad leader of the eighth battalion and the representative of the Communist Association, immediately honked his horn to assemble, announced the official uprising, and went to occupy the Chuwangtai armory.
The elderly Xiong Bingkun and Pu Yi had a discussion at the same table
"If you don't want to die, follow along", nothing is as encouraging as this sentence, and immediately the sound of the resonance rang out in all directions, and the number of uprisings reached more than 3,000 people. After the occupation of the armory, the rebels had a large number of light and heavy weapons in their hands.
At half past 10 o'clock in the evening, the rebel soldiers attacked the Huguang Governor's Office and the adjacent Army Headquarters in three directions.
There were about 22 battalions of Qing troops stationed in the Wuhan area, and in addition to 5 battalions that participated in the uprising and completely became revolutionary troops, there were 17 battalions left, which was equivalent to three times the size of the rebel army.
Among them, the fire power of the guard unit of the Governor's Yamen was the most fierce, because there were many machine guns, and most of them were veterans, with good shooting skills and rich experience in actual combat.
Zhang Meisheng, the master who proposed to arrest people according to the list, suggested that he should stay at the official office. He said to Ruizi: The New Army mutinied for a reason. Now it is just a moment of restlessness, not only is it unstable, but also the group of dragons has no leader. As long as you wait for reinforcements to arrive, and then try to reassure the soldiers that they are not to blame, the overall situation can be safe.
However, Ruizi's Han concubine Liao Keyu persuaded Ruizi to leave the governor's office and go to command the Chuyu military ship on the Yangtze River, and the reason was also very good: if you get on the military ship, you can attack and retreat. If there is anything wrong with staying here, how can the family be good? Not to mention that if you don't leave at this time, you won't be able to leave after a while!
The Qing government's top military and political governor in Hubei, Rui Cheng, was once again defeated under the multiple-choice question. He didn't listen to Zhang Meisheng, and led the whole family to retreat from the backyard to the warship on the Yangtze River. How did he know that Liao Keyu was actually an inside line carefully arranged by the revolutionary party.
At this time, the 40-member death squad set up by the rebel army on the spot was moving forward bravely, and everyone knew in their hearts: if we don't capture the Governor's Office tonight, we will see you on Huangquan Road tomorrow morning. As soon as the soldiers guarding the Governor's Office saw that the commander had run away, what did they do with their lives? Their morale was demoralized, and the Governor's Office was taken down in minutes.
After Ruizi left the Governor's Mansion and boarded the ship, the command failed, and the Qing army was in chaos. At 1:30 a.m., the whole of Wuchang was under the control of the rebels. The next day, the three towns of Wuhan were all surnamed.
The first domino of the Qing Dynasty fell.
The sudden death of the empire is coming
After the Wuchang Uprising, it was unbelievable how easy it was to revolt in various places! Before that, the uprising was so difficult.
From 1906 to 1911, Sun Yat-sen led 10 armed uprisings, none of which were successful. Especially in the battle of Huanghuagang in Guangzhou, the sacrifices of elites such as Lin Juemin and Yu Peilun caused heavy losses to the revolutionaries.
Therefore, when Sun Yat-sen received a telegram in the United States that Wuchang was about to revolt, he wanted to call back and ask the Hubei New Army to stay still for the time being, and he must wait for the opportunity cautiously to avoid repeating the mistakes of Huanghuagang.
On October 12, Sun Yat-sen, who was about to call back after breakfast, bought a morning newspaper, glanced at it, and the blood all over his body was gone: a line of eye-catching black-lettered telegrams read, "Revolutionaries occupy Wuchang."
Soon, the military government of the Republic of China was established, Li Yuanhong was elected as the governor, changed the name of the country to the Republic of China, and called on the people of various provinces to revolt in response. In just two months, 15 provinces, including Hunan, Shaanxi, and Guangdong, declared their independence from the Qing government.
The Hubei Governor's Office was established
Less than three months after the outbreak of the revolution, on January 1, 1912, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was established in Nanjing. Four months after the outbreak of the revolution, on February 12, 1912, Pu Yi abdicated, the Qing Dynasty collapsed, and the ancient Chinese dynasty that lasted for more than 2,000 years came to an end. Chinese politics has taken a different path.
An inadvertent small cigarette butt ignited the revolutionary artillery fire, and even burned the weeds on the ruins of the old system.
Such a faint fire, but it can produce the potential of a prairie fire, there must be other conditions to support combustion. Among them, class antagonism, national contradictions, and the decay of the late Qing regime have become familiar to us in the historical narratives of the past.
In The Cambridge History of China: The Late Qing Dynasty, Fairbank put forward the idea of "civilizational opposition". In his opinion, in the late Qing Dynasty, the sparks of "ancient and slow-changing civilizations" and "modern and more vibrant civilizations" made Liu Tong's cigarette butts burn more vigorously.
In the face of the opposition between the two civilizations, there are always some forerunners who try to seek new institutions and social relations to reposition China. They embrace new ideas, discard old ideas, form new alliances, and abandon blood ties and clan ties. The revolutionaries and the Hubei New Army are typical examples of this combination.
In addition, in several small-scale uprisings before 1911, many anti-Qing groups and currents of thought were formed. Therefore, when the revolution comes, they can be entangled together and form a devastating trend.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Fairbank's "view of the opposition of civilizations" gradually manifested itself in various polemics of incompatible views, which ran through the century-long history of modern Chinese history