Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/75

 Manchus had abdicated. Its Northern leaders, roughly grouped together under the name of the Peiyang Party—Anglice, the party of the Northern seas or, better, the Northern vice-royalties—had nearly all risen from humble captaincies in Yuan Shih-kai's original model corps (organized in 1896 after the Korean war) to divisional commands; and one and all they coveted the direct control of provinces. In other words, the revolution, having abolished the viceroys, who had ruled over single or linked provinces, and substituted the Tu-tuh (now Tu-chun) or military governor for each province, the aim of all these men was to rule at the provincial capitals where provincial taxation was centred and where money necessarily was to be found.

By the use of terrorist methods, which commenced in Peking on the memorable 29th February, 1912, when the capital was sacked by the Third Division, these divisional commanders soon became the most solid factors in the very fluid post-revolutionary China. Commander after commander received as reward for fealty to Yuan Shih-kai the gift of a provincial capital; and although a parliament or assembly of some kind has been in session in Peking most of the time, such real power as