After the introduction of the imperial cabinet in May 1911, the Qing court made another bad move, that is, nationalizing the railways. This policy of competing with the people for profit annoyed the people everywhere, and the pro-road movement broke out.
As Sun Yat-sen said, the Sichuan Road Protection Movement was the precursor of the Xinhai Revolution. However, although the Baolu Movement and the Wuchang Uprising took place in the same year, there is no direct causal relationship between the two. Some authors say that as a result of the Baolu Movement, a part of the Hubei New Army (about two regiments) was transferred to suppress the ammunition, which caused the lack of troops in Hubei and facilitated the Wuchang Uprising. In fact, this was not the case, because this part of the new army in Irikawa was also infiltrated by the revolutionaries, and it was not a stubborn local patrol battalion. The proportion of revolutionaries in the troops who went to Sichuan was no less than that left in Wuhan. However, judging from the general political climate of the country, the Baolu Movement did promote the outbreak and success of the Wuchang Uprising to a certain extent.
Since Zaifeng led a group of young relatives to power in 1908, there have been many perverse actions, and the greater impact is to collect power, one local power is taken over, and the other is the power of the Han people is returned to the Manchurians. The so-called nationalization of the railways was the most involved action in this power collection movement.
Soon after the establishment of the imperial cabinet of the Qing Dynasty, it promulgated the policy of "state-owned railway trunk lines", which included the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway and the Sichuan-Hanzhou Railway, which had been owned by the merchants, and appointed Duan Fang as the minister to supervise the Guangdong-Hanzhou-Sichuan-Han Railway, and signed the "Huguang Railway Loan Contract" with the banking group of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States.
The Han gentry, who had launched the constitution several times, wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of the Qing court's constitution to share a little power with the Manchus, but as a result, not only did they not get the power, but even the existing families had to take it away, and in a fit of anger, they turned to sympathize with the revolution. In this sense, the Baolu Movement is closely related to the Xinhai Wuchang Uprising.
In fact, the road protection movement is not just a matter of Sichuan. Wherever railways are built or are preparing to be built, there is such a thing as road protection, such as Lianghu and Guangdong involved in the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang involved in the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway. Moreover, all the gentry involved in this matter were indignant and very angry about this, but in comparison, the Sichuan people who were accustomed to eating chili peppers seemed to be more angry. On the other hand, the imperial court seems to be more harsh on the Sichuan people.
The construction of the railway by the Sichuan people began with the initiative of the governors of Sichuan and Han. In 1903, Xiliang, then governor of Sichuan, and Zhang Zhidong, governor of Huguang, agreed to build the Sichuan-Han Railway. The railway went up from Wuhan along the Yangtze River, first to Chongqing, and then from Chongqing to Chengdu. With Yichang as the boundary, west of Yichang, Sichuan is responsible for repairing, and east of Yichang, Hubei is responsible for building. In 1904, the Sichuan Railway began to be established, and funds were raised by raising shares. Due to the relatively flexible way of raising shares, by 1909, Sichuan had raised more than 10 million taels of funds. Since a considerable number of shares were collected by renting shares, not only the gentry had many shares, but also ordinary people and peddlers and pawns also had shares. Sichuan's robe brother is naturally indispensable. Moreover, although the Sichuan Railway is nominally a commercial office, it is inextricably linked with the local government, and when raising share capital, each county uses the power of the government, and even apportions it through the collection of money and grain. In this sense, the right of way in the provinces belongs to a typical local sphere of influence, from all levels below the governor to the gentry, all belong to a community of interests.
The terrain of Sichuan is complex, and the so-called difficulty of Shu Road is difficult to go to the blue sky. It is not easy to build roads. However, the Sichuan people built the railway, but they chose the wrong route from the beginning. Because there is a waterway of the Yangtze River from Wuhan to Chongqing, even if the railway is not built, it will not affect the exchanges between the two provinces. Moreover, the mountain road along the river in this section is steep, the geological landform is very complicated, and it is quite difficult to repair, even with today's technical conditions, it is not easy to build, but the Sichuan people at that time had to face the difficulties. The Sichuan-Han Railway started construction in Yichang in 1910, and it took a year to build a roadbed of more than 100 kilometers from Yichang to Xiangxikou, which is still far from entering Sichuan. However, the house leak happened to rain overnight, and the Sichuan Railway Company had millions of taels of silver in several money houses in Shanghai. It turned out that Shi Dianzhang, the manager of the Sichuan-Han Railway Company in Shanghai, wanted to use Shanghai's ** wild rubber to make profits, but the result was a loss of the old capital.
Therefore, when the news of the state-owned railway reached Sichuan, it did not cause a fierce ** as in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Lianghu. The Sichuan people only asked the imperial court to bear the cost of starting the construction, and to pay the losses to the bottom of the debt, and to repay the shares that had been raised, partly in cash, and partly in **, and that's it. It seems that the Sichuan people have also retreated from the difficulty of building the railway. However, the attitude of the imperial court towards various places is often different according to the achievements of road construction, and it is the most polite to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, because the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo railway has been almost repaired, the section from Shanghai to Hangzhou has been completed and opened to traffic in 1909, and the section from Ningbo to Hangzhou has also been repaired to Cicheng. The two lakes and Guangdong are second, and Sichuan is unceremonious, not only unwilling to cover for the Sichuan people, but also to check the project funds of the Yichang section. The remaining shares were only willing to be exchanged for official shares, and the cash of the Sichuan Railway Company had to be withdrawn and taken away.
At that time, Zhao Erxun, the governor of Sichuan, had left office, and Zhao's younger brother Zhao Erfeng took over. Wang Wenwen knew that this matter was related to the interests of the Sichuan people, so he completely stood on the side of the Sichuan locality. has been speaking for the Sichuan people and fighting with the imperial court. The major shareholders of the Sichuan Railway Company also submitted documents to the imperial court one after another. But the arrogant court relatives and nobles refused to make even the slightest concession, and their attitude became more and more tough. As a result, the Sichuan Province established the Baolu Comrades Association. Farmers who hold leased shares rushed to join the association, with hundreds of thousands of participants. The streets and alleys of Chengdu have set up the "imperial platform" of the Guangxu Emperor, and the "railway quasi-return to the commercial office" was written during the Guangxu Wuxu Restoration. The robe buddies are also unprecedentedly active, and the whole Sichuan is moving, and the Qing court's borrowing from foreign countries to build roads is naturally labeled as selling Sichuan.
Every time Comrade Baolu held a meeting, it was a cry that shook the sky. At this time, the imperial court was still obsessed, and responded with a tougher attitude, drove away Wang Wenwen, and replaced him with Zhao Erfeng, who was unknown, and it was clear that he was going to be tough. As a result, in the face of wave after wave of ** and market strikes, Zhao Erfeng ensnared Pu Dianjun, Luo Lun and others, representatives of the Baolu Comrades Association, and seized the Comrades Association and the railway company. Tens of thousands of people in Chengdu rushed to the governor's yamen to demand the release of the people, Zhao Erfeng ordered a gun to suppress it, killing more than 30 people, and the situation was even more out of control.
After the Chengdu Bloody Case, the League united with the Elder Association and other anti-Qing parties to form a comrade army and besiege the provincial capital. Comrade armies in various states and counties rose up one after another. On September 25, 1911, Wu Yuzhang and Wang Tianjie, members of the League, declared independence in Rong County, Sichuan Province. Following the uprising of the comrade army in western Sichuan, the masses in eastern Sichuan also responded one after another, occupying Chengkou County and Dazu County. At this time, the Yi people in the Xichang area and the Tibetan and Qiang people in northwest Sichuan also joined the ranks of the comrade army and fought against the Qing army. By early October, the flames of the uprising of the Comrade Army had burned throughout the whole province of Sichuan. In Sichuan, the Qing army was defeated everywhere, embattled, unwilling to accept orders to continue to suppress the masses, and the situation in Sichuan was completely out of control. Duan Fang was unwilling to take this hot potato, so he stopped and stopped, and did not lead the troops to Zizhou, Sichuan until November, at this time, the news of the Wuchang uprising came, and the new army in Sichuan was fluctuating, and the soldiers were in a dilemma. So Duanfang and his younger brother were beheaded by the soldiers, and all the soldiers returned to Hubei with Duanfang's head. At this time, the desperate Qing court had no choice but to order Cen Chunxuan, who had served as the governor of Sichuan, to go to Sichuan to deal with Zhao Erfeng to deal with the pacification affairs, and also sent troops from Hunan, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Gansu, Guizhou, Yunnan and other provinces to Sichuan for reinforcements.
At this time, the Sichuan Baolu Comrade Army had blossomed everywhere, and Sichuan soon declared independence. As a result, the Baolu Movement and the torrent of the Wuchang Xinhai Revolution converged and jointly washed away the Qing Dynasty. And Zhao Erfeng, a generation of famous ministers who are more meritorious than Zuo Zongtang, is the same as Duanfang, and he is also in a different place in this revolutionary torrent and has become a sad victim.
Sun Yat-sen once spoke highly of the importance of the Sichuan Baolu Movement - "If there was no uprising of the Sichuan Baolu Comrades Association, the Wuchang Revolution would have been postponed for a year and a half."