e had already consented to peace
negotiations with the revolutionary South in the middle of December,
1911, and once he was drawn into those negotiations his policy wavered,
the armistice in the field being constantly extended because he saw that
the Foreign Powers, and particularly England, were averse from further
civil war. Having dispatched a former lieutenant, Tong Shao-yi, to
Shanghai as his Plenipotentiary, he soon found himself committed to a
course of action different from what he had originally contemplated.
South China and Central China insisted so vehemently that the only
solution that was acceptable to them was the permanent and absolute
elimination of the Manchu Dynasty, that he himself was half-convinced,
the last argument necessary being the secret promise that he should
become the first President of the united Republic. In the circumstances,
had he been really loyal, it was his duty either to resume his warfare
or resign his appointment as Prime Minister and go into retirement. He
did neither. In a thoroughly characteristic manner he sought a middle
course, after having vaguely advocated a national convention to settle
the matter. By specious misrepresentation the widow of the Emperor
Kwanghsu--the Dowager Empress Lung Yu who had succeeded the Prince
Regent Ch'un in her care of the interests of the child Emperor Hsuan
Tung--was induced to believe that ceremonial retirement was the only
course open to the Dynasty if the country was to be saved from
disruption and partition. There is reason to believe that the Memorial
of all the Northern Generals which was telegraphed to Peking on the 28th
January, 1912, and which advised abdication, was inspired by him. In any
case it was certainly Yuan Shih-kai who drew up the so-called Articles
of Favourable Treatment for the Manchu House and caused them to be
telegraphed to the South, whence they were telegraphed back to him as
the maximum the Revolutionary Party was prepared to concede: and by a
curious chance the attempt made to assassinate him outside the Palace
Gates actually occurred on the very day he had submitted an outline of
these terms on his bended knees to the Empress Dowager and secured their
qualified acceptance. The pathetic attempt to confer on him as late as
the 25th January the title of Marquess, the highest rank of nobility
which could be given a Chinese, an attempt which was four times renewed,
was the last despairing gesture of a moribund power. W