When the political situation in the late Qing Dynasty was turbulent, the rulers were faced with the alternation of old and new ideas, should they embrace new ideas or stick to the old methods? With a keen eye, the young historian Yu Ge captured this historical clue, deeply analyzed the knowledge structure and literacy of Cixi, Li Hongzhang, Yuan Shikai, Yi and others, as well as the decisions they made in the current situation, analyzed their complex mental journeys, and summarized the experience and lessons of governing the country. Yu Ge pointed out that looking back at the history of the late Qing Dynasty, we talked more about the system and ignored the people, and when we talk about the fortune of the country, it will eventually fall back to the individual.
Knowledge and National Fortunes: The Confusion of Political People in Modern Times", by Yu Ge, published by Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House.
Selected readings from the text. A mirror image of Yuan Shikai.
Who Yuan Shikai is most like, before and after his death, is a popular topic. In the reference system, the one with the highest rate and the most famous name should be Cao Cao. Here are two examples. Zhang Guogan said that in the third year of Xuantong (1911), he talked with Yu Shimei in the northeast about Yuan Shikai's unsubjugation, and Yu Shimei recalled the past: "Yuan returned from North Korea, lived in Beiyang and lived in Xiancao, with his family background, he often went to the shogunate (at that time in Li Hongzhang's curtain) to point out the past in the east, and everyone liked to listen to his remarks, and he was regarded as a hero of a lifetime. Every time Yuan arrives, Xianxi calls Cao Cao, and he also responds casually. Yu secretly peeked at his behavior, and he was indeed very human. Subsequently, Yuan organized and trained the new army of Wuwei, and even supervised Beiyang, marched into the military plane, soared upward, although today retreated to Zhangde, but its power is distributed in half the world, and now there is no one in the court, which is really deeply worried. Another example is the aforementioned mention of Cha Cunqi, the son of the Minister of Internal Affairs Zeng Chong, who met Yuan Shikai and told him about the situation with the Qiren teacher, who praised Yuan Shikai's ability on the one hand, and worried about his ill-intentioned intentions, perhaps like Cao Cao, the able minister who ruled the world and the traitor in the troubled times, became a great trouble for the Qing Dynasty. These two stories just complement each other, presenting people's perception of Yuan Shikai in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspectives of the Manchu and Han dynasties.
However, I think that Yuan Shikai in the late Qing Dynasty, no matter his position or ambition, could not look at Cao Cao's back in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. At that time, Cao Cao was known as "coercing the Son of Heaven to order the princes", so that although the princes were close to empty talk, it was a fact that the coercion of the Son of Heaven was a fact, so that above the court, he was not the emperor, but like the emperor, and the power was so great that there was no difference for a while. In comparison, Yuan Shikai is far behind. When Cixi was there, he was afraid of accumulating power, and he didn't dare to make a mistake; Zaifeng was regent, so that he could return to his hometown, and he could only obey his fate. Moreover, until the death of the Qing Dynasty, his political ambitions, as Xu Shichang said, "at best, just want to be a powerful minister", and he has no ambition to be a lonely widow. This is also where he can't compare to Cao Cao, although Cao Cao is not the emperor, but he dares to say "If the destiny of heaven is in me, I am the king of Zhou Wen", his thoughts are obvious. Speaking of being the emperor, Cao Cao can obviously be called the emperor but not the emperor, and Yuan Shikai is obviously not the emperor but prefers to be the emperor.
The most similar thing between Yuan Shikai and Cao Cao is expressed in a hypothesis: it is not to say what history would have been like without them, but what history would have been like without them. Cao Cao's "Let the County Clarify the Decree" cloud: "Let the country be lonely, I don't know how many people are called emperors and how many people are kings." If there was no Cao Cao at the end of the Han Dynasty, the situation of "the title of Huainan Brother and the seal engraved in the north" would have been aggravated, and the situation of "white bones exposed in the wilderness and no rooster crow for thousands of miles" would have intensified. The same is true of Yuan Shikai's role in the early Republic of China. He once said to Xu Shichang: "To ask yourself, although it is not enough to look at the ancients, and the world seems to have no place to the right." "During his lifetime, ** despite many crises, at least he maintained unity and stability, even if it was only a formality; As soon as he died, he immediately fell into a warlord melee, and the sky fell apart. This shows his historical power: he is not the ideal person to govern, but without him, it can only be worse. On the day of his death, Yan Fu sighed in the letter: "The end is like this, isn't it a great sorrow." After this state affair, it is fascinating to think about it. ”
In addition to Cao Cao, Yuan Shikai was also compared to Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu's brothers who were contemporaries of Cao Cao. In the late Qing Dynasty, writing letters, diaries, etc., involving ** bigwigs, it is easy to use or has to use hidden words, such as Yuan Shao's character at the beginning, so he referred to Yuan Shikai at the beginning. After the six gentlemen of Wuxu**, Lin Xu wrote a poem to Tan Sitong in prison, that is, he used this codex: "If you want to sing a thousand miles of grass for the king, don't speak lightly about the primordial health." The Qianli grass in the previous sentence is combined into the word Dong, referring to Dong Fuxiang. These two poems involve the mutiny conspiracy within the Kang Party, and for lobbying which army to launch a mutiny, Lin Xu advocated the use of Dong Fuxiang's army, and Tan Sitong advocated the use of Yuan Shikai's army. After Yuan Shikai's death, Huang Xing Banglian compared him to Yuan Shu: "He can be regarded as a hero in the world for forty years, with steep ambitions, pretending to have a good reputation for the word "An", and he is bent on doing it, and he actually wants to learn from Yuan Highway; He only did the emperor in the house for three days, and he was sad and short-lived, and he was happy for a while, and compared with the two, after all, he was worse than Guo Yanwei. "Yuan Highway is Yuan Shu. Compared with Yuan Shao, Yuan Shikai seems to be closer to Yuan Shu, and they both used to be called the Son of Heaven and were despised by the princes, so they were defeated. However, Yuan Shikai has always looked down on the Yuan brothers and does not want to be compared with them. The so-called "Huainan Yuan Shu, summoning honey to death; Yuan Shao of Hebei, the country is ruined and the family is ruined", they are all ominous people, so that Yuan Shikai talked about the Yuan lineage, "every sigh is noncommittal".
Author: Text: Yu Ge Editor: Jiang Chuting Responsible Editor: Zhu Zifen.