Книга только для ознакомления
. He
was hailed as a young Confucius, but his popularity was
short-lived, for he so lacked all statesmanship as to allow the
young Emperor to issue twenty-seven edicts, disposing of
twenty-seven difficult problems such as I have given above in
about twice that many days, and it is this hot-headed and
unstatesman-like young "Confucius" who now calls Yuan Shih-kai
an opportunist and a traitor because he did not enter into the
following plot.
After the Emperor had dismissed two conservative vice-presidents
of a Board, two governors of provinces, and a half dozen other
useless conservative leaders, they plotted to overthrow him by
appealing to the ambition of the Empress Dowager and induce her
to dethrone him and again assume the reins of government. They
argued that "he was her adopted son, it was she who had placed
him on the throne, and she was therefore responsible for his
mistakes." They complimented her on "the wisdom which she had
manifested, and the statesmanship she had exhibited" during the
thirty years and more of her regency. To all which she listened
with a greedy ear, but still she made no move.
During this time were the Emperor and his young "Confucius" idle?
By no means. They had hatched a counterplot, and had decided that
what they could not do by moral suasion and statesmanship they
would do by force, and so they sent an order to Yuan Shih-kai,
who as we have said had drilled and was in charge of 12,500 of
the best troops in the empire, urging him to "hasten to the
capital at once, place the Empress Dowager under guard in the
Summer Palace so that she may not be allowed to interfere in the
affairs of the government, and protect him in his reform
measures
|
