Yuan Shikai, (1859~1916) as the leader of the Beiyang warlords and the president of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai, the name Weiting, the name Rongan, was born in Xiangcheng, Henan. His uncle Jia San was meritorious in suppressing the Twist Army, and was promoted from the Supervision of the Anhui Regiment to the Governor of Caoyun. His father, Baozhong, was a prominent local gentry, and his uncle Baoqing served in the army of Jiasan, and eventually became an official in the Yanxun Road in Jiangnan. Yuan Shikai became the heir of Baoqing since he was a child, and studied with his father in Jinan, Nanjing and other places when he was a teenager. After Baoqing passed away, he once again accompanied Yuan Baoheng, the son of Jiasan, to Beijing to continue his studies.
In the township examinations of 1876 and 1879, Yuan Shikai failed to pass, so he decided to abandon literature and join the military. In May 1881, he went to Dengzhou, Shandong, and defected to Wu Changqing, a sworn brother in Baoqing, and served as the director of the "Qingjun" battalion office. Wu Changqing, as the commander of the Huai Army, commanded the six battalions of the Qing Army to garrison Dengzhou and was responsible for the defense of Shandong. In August of the following year, the "Imwu Mutiny" occurred in Korea. Due to the suzerain-vassal relationship between Korea and China at that time, Wu Changqing was ordered to go to suppress it. In this incident, Yuan Shikai was honored by the king of Korea for his meritorious work in rectifying military discipline and suppressing the mutiny, and was rewarded with the title of Wupin Tongzhi of the Qing government.
After the outbreak of the Sino-French War in 1884, Wu Changqing returned to China. On the recommendation of Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang, Yuan Shikai was appointed as the "Prime Minister's Barracks Office" of the Qing Army stationed in Seoul, which will handle Korean defense. However, in December of the same year, the Korean Kaihua Party staged a coup d'état with the support of the Japanese legation in Seoul. But this incident triggered the Japanese government's coercion, and Yuan Shikai was transferred back to China. The following year, he was reappointed plenipotentiary of the Qing government in Korea, in charge of negotiations and trade matters, and was promoted to the rank of Taoist, with the rank of third rank.
By 1893, Yuan Shikai was promoted to Wenchu Province in Zhejiang, but remained in Korea. However, on the eve of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1894, he fled Seoul in disguise and returned to Tianjin. After the outbreak of war, he was sent to the Northeast Front to assist Zhou Fu in the former enemy battalion office, responsible for raising food and liaising with various armies.
In December 1895, Yuan Shikai accepted the recommendation of Rong Lu, Li Hongzao, and others, the Minister of Military Affairs, and was responsible for expanding the Dingwu Army stationed at the small station in Tianjin, and renamed it the "New Army". He hired more than 10 German officers as instructors and selected more than 100 students from the Tianjin Wubei Academy to serve as officers at all levels. At the same time, he also cultivated and brought in a number of personal cronies to strengthen his control over the whole army. Most of these people later became important military and political figures in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, such as Xu Shichang, Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang, Wang Shizhen, Cao Kun, Zhang Xun, etc. The small station training was regarded as a turning point in the development of the new army in the late Qing Dynasty, and also laid the foundation for Yuan Shikai's future career. Since then, his reputation has risen day by day.
In 1897, Yuan Shikai was promoted to the position of envoy of Zhili (now Hebei) and continued to preside over military training. At that time, the reform movement led by Kang Youwei was booming, and Yuan Shikai actively participated in it, donating money to join the Strong Society as a token of support. In 1898, during the Wuxu Reform, when the old faction led by the Empress Dowager Cixi conspired to launch a coup d'état and overthrow the new policy, Emperor Guangxu was in a lonely situation. At the suggestion of the reformers, Emperor Guangxu summoned Yuan Shikai on September 16 and rewarded the alternate squire. The next day, Tan Sitong, a reformist faction, secretly visited Yuan Shikai at Fahua Temple and asked him to lead the new army into Beijing to "get rid of the old party and help implement the new policy." Although Yuan Shikai agreed in person, he immediately returned to Tianjin and reported to Rong Lu, the favored minister of the Empress Dowager Cixi and the governor of Zhili. On the 21st, the Empress Dowager Cixi imprisoned Emperor Guangxu and announced the resumption of the "training of the government". In June of the following year, Yuan Shikai was promoted to the right attendant of the Ministry of Industry. In December, he acted as governor of Shandong and led all the new army (then known as the "Wuwei Right Army") to Jinan. At that time, the Boxer Rebellion broke out in Shandong, and Yuan Shikai regarded it as a "leftist cult" and sent troops to various prefectures and counties to brutally suppress it. This action made him a powerful figure in China and abroad.
In November 1901, Yuan Shikai succeeded Li Hongzhang as acting governor of Zhili and minister of Beiyang, and the following year he was appointed to this position, and his power became even more prominent. After the signing of the Treaty of Xincho, the Qing government decided to implement a new policy in response to the internal and external situation. Yuan Shikai actively expressed his support and took the opportunity to further expand his power. In 1902, he concurrently served as the Minister of Advance and the Minister of Military Training in the Administrative Office, and organized and trained the Beiyang Standing Army (referred to as the Beiyang Army) in Baoding. The following year, the Qing government set up a military training office in Beijing, with Prince Qing Yixuan as the prime minister and Yuan Shikai as the minister of the conference office, and held real power. He founded various martial arts schools and hired a large number of Japanese officers as instructors. By 1905, the six towns of Beiyang had completed the training, with more than 12,500 people in each town. Except for the banner soldiers in the first town led by the Manchu nobleman Tie Liang, the other five towns were all under the control of Yuan Shikai, and the important generals were almost all his cronies and officers during the training period at the small station. At the same time, Yuan Shikai also served as the Minister of Supervision, the Minister of Railways and the Minister of Conferences. During this period, he achieved remarkable results in the development of Beiyang industrial and mining enterprises, the construction of railways, the establishment of patrol police, the rectification of local political power, and the establishment of new-style schools. Through the implementation of the new policy, he succeeded in "making friends with nobles at home and building party support from outside" and actively expanded his power, and soon formed a huge Beiyang military-political group headed by him.
The expansion of the power of the Beiyang clique posed a serious threat to the hereditary status of the Manchu pro-noble clique that held the political authority of the central government, and the struggle for power between the two sides intensified day by day. The royal family instigated some imperial historians to impeach Yuan Shikai for his high power and power, appointed private individuals, and even predicted that he would follow in the footsteps of Cao Cao and Liu Yu. In 1906, Yuan was forced to resign from various conpositions and handed over the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th towns of the Beiyang Army to the direct jurisdiction of the War Department. The following year, he was transferred out of Beiyang and went to Beijing to serve as Minister of Military Aircraft and Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In November 1908, Emperor Guangxu and Empress Dowager Cixi died of illness one after another, and the young Puyi succeeded to the throne and changed the yuan to "Xuantong", and his father Zaifeng became the regent. At the beginning of the following year, Yuan Shikai was dismissed from all positions by Zaifeng, and he was ordered to return to his hometown to "recuperate". But many of his subordinates are still in important positions and have real power, and Yuan Shikai is always ready to make a comeback.
In October 1911 (August of the third year of Xuantong), the Wuchang Uprising broke out, and Hanyang and Hankou were captured by the revolutionary army one after another. Zaifeng was forced to reactivate Yuan Shikai, and on October 27, he was appointed Minister of the Imperial Mission to control the army and navy on the Hubei front. On November 1, he was appointed Prime Minister. After commanding the Beiyang Army to capture Hankou, he immediately entered Beijing to form a cabinet, and forced the regent Zaifeng to return to the domain, taking over the military and political power of the Qing government. He also ordered the Beiyang Army to capture Hanyang, forcing the revolutionaries to accept the proposal for an armistice and peace. In December, Tang Shaoyi was sent south to negotiate with the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen insisted on the abdication of the Qing emperor and Yuan Shikai's oath of allegiance to the republic as prerequisites for his election as president. So Yuan Shikai took advantage of the momentum of the revolutionaries to force Emperor Xuantong to abdicate on February 12, 1912 (December 25, the third year of Xuantong). The next day, he promised the Provisional Government of Nanking: "Never again will the monarchy be in China." On the 15th, Sun Yat-sen, the provisional president of the Republic of China, resigned, and the Senate unanimously elected Yuan Shikai to succeed him, and decided to invite him to Nanjing to take office. But he refused to go south under the pretext of a "mutiny" in Beijing. The Senate had to allow him to take office in Beijing.
Although Yuan Shikai became the provisional president of the Republic of China, he tried his best to seek autocratic dictatorship from the beginning of his inauguration. In 1912, Sun Yat-sen's League was reorganized into the Kuomintang and attempted to form a party cabinet to limit Yuan's power. Therefore, Yuan regarded the Kuomintang as the greatest obstacle to the centralization of power, instigated the Beiyang military and police to interfere in politics, forced the Kuomintang to withdraw from the cabinet, cut the revolutionary army in the southern provinces, and sent people to assassinate the Kuomintang leader Song Jiaoren. At the same time, he co-opted the late Qing constitutionalists led by Liang Qichao and funded them to form the Progressive Party to confront the Kuomintang. On the diplomatic front, he received strong support from the British, who borrowed £25 million from a group of banks from five countries. After a series of preparations, Yuan Shikai openly sent the Beiyang Army south in July 1913 to suppress the Second Revolution launched by Sun Yat-sen, extending the Beiyang power to the provinces in the Yangtze River Valley. In October of the same year, Yuan Shikai sent military and police to coerce the National Assembly to elect him as the official president, and obtained the official recognition of the foreign powers. Then, the Kuomintang and the National Assembly were dissolved, and a separate political conference and a legal conference were convened as instruments of dictatorship. In May 1914, it announced the abolition of the "Provisional Constitution" with the spirit of democracy, the abolition of the State Council, and the establishment of the Political Affairs Hall and the Office of the Generalissimo of the Army and Navy. Through this reshuffle, the Progressives who had supported him were forced to withdraw from the government, and Duan Qirui and others were deprived of their military power, so as to consolidate military and political power. He can not only be re-elected as president for life, but also designate an heir.
At the end of 1914, Yuan Shikai thought that the conditions for becoming an emperor were ripe, and signaled his henchmen to incite everywhere, create public opinion, and claim that the republican system would not work, and that only by changing to an imperial system could the country become rich and strong. In order to gain the support of the Japanese government for the imperial system, he did not hesitate to sell his national sovereignty and accepted most of the provisions of the "Twenty-one Articles" demanded by Japan in May 1915. Soon after, he instigated some Beiyang bureaucrats and politicians to come forward to organize a preparatory committee and a petition group, and stepped up the activities of restoring the imperial system. On December 11, the Imperial Senate elected him as the "Great Emperor of the Chinese Empire" in the name of the general representative of the National Congress, and after pretending to resign, issued a decree accepting the imperial throne the next day. The fifth year of the Republic of China (1916) was changed to the "first year of Hongxian", the presidential palace was changed to Xinhua Palace, and it was prepared to be crowned on New Year's Day in 1916 (see Hongxian Imperial System).
However, Yuan Shikai's perverse behavior aroused the righteous indignation of all strata of the country. Not only Sun Yat-sen, Liang Qichao and others resolutely opposed the imperial system, but the Beiyang generals Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang were also deeply dissatisfied. The imperialist powers also kept warning him. On December 25, Cai Yi, Tang Jiyao and others declared an uprising in Yunnan, launched a war to protect the country, and crusaded against Yuan Shikai. Guizhou and Guangxi have responded one after another. The Beiyang faction was in crisis. Yuan Shikai was forced to announce the abolition of the imperial system on March 22, 1916, the restoration of the "Republic of China" era name, and the appointment of Duan Qirui as Secretary of State and Chief of the Army, in an attempt to rely on Duan to unite the Beiyang forces and support him to continue to serve as president. But the rebellious provinces did not recognize him as president again. Duan Qirui also forced him to hand over the real power of the military and government. Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Hunan, and Sichuan have all telegraphed to declare independence or sever relations with Yuan Shikai personally, and Yuan Shikai fell into a situation of rebellion and separation. In late May, he became ill with fear and died on June 6 amid national condemnation.