Jagged Warlord

From April to May of 1916, both the North and the South basically stopped military operations and started a long round of telegraph negotiations. During this period, the Shaanxi Independence Incident was released.

In the north, Shaanxi is the only independent province in Northern China, but it was a farce in the anti-Yuan movement. Independence became a means for local warlords to fight for power. The leader is Chen Shufan, whom Li Mohan met when he was chasing Bai Lang in Shaanxi.

When Bai Lang entered Shaanxi, General Lu Jianzhang of Shaanxi was relying on Chen Shufan to defend Xi'an. Transferred from northern Shaanxi to southern Shaanxi, Chen raised the banner against Yuan. Lu Jianzhang's eldest son, Lu Chengwu (the commander of the first brigade), volunteered to lead his troops to attack Chen. Unexpectedly, in the battle of Fuping, this young master Lu was actually under the command of Chen Shufan. Battalion commander Hu Jingyi was captured alive.

Chen Shufan took Lu Chengwu as a hostage and coerced Lu Jianzhang to declare independence. Lu Jianzhang expressed his willingness to leave Shaanxi voluntarily, so Chen Shufan issued an independent telegram: "Since the Xinhai, Shufan has exhausted its people's strength and cannot bear to have wars. Our people are severely trapped. Keep calm. A few months ago, it was a negotiation between the north and the south, which had been ineffective for a long time. However, the people of Shaanxi had long-standing grievances against the greedy and violent behavior of the Lu governor. What's more, cannibalism of the same species is extremely contrary to human nature, and the feeling of being a vassal is unstoppable, because on the [-]th of the month in Pucheng, northern Shaanxi, officially declared independence in the name of the commander-in-chief of Shaanxi Protectorate, hoping to promote the progress of the peace talks. The law and order in Shanxi has been heard, and all the volunteers have returned. Now they have stationed in Sanyuan, and they have negotiated with the army to order them to disarm and withdraw from Shaanxi. Lu has admitted that Shufan will be stationed in Xi'an tomorrow to accept the surrender and prepare to build everything!"

After Chen Shufan took office as the commander-in-chief of the Shaanxi Protectorate, he handed over to Lu Chengwu what he called the Commander-in-Chief of the Shaanxi Protectorate. After leaving the city of Xi'an, they were taken away by Chen Shufan's troops. Later, Chen Shufan personally recovered some of them and sent troops to escort Lu out of the country.

In Shandong, Juzheng issued a telegram: "Mr. Sun Yat-sen, Mr. Tang Shaochuan, Mr. Zhaoqing Cen Yunjie, Dudu Tang in Yunnan, Dudu Liu in Guizhou, Dudu Lu in Guangxi, Dudu Lu in Zhejiang, Commander-in-Chief Cai in Sichuan, and Commander-in-Chief Li in Baise. , the southern service is roughly determined, the attack has not yet been made, the rebellion is unharmed, the peace talks are spread repeatedly, the sun and the moon sit in the desert, the hope of the elders in the Central Plains, the heart of the strong men in the sea, even if it is resolved peacefully, things are hasty, although the wolves are gone, the fox is still there. , the reality of the republic is not lifted, the disaster of the revolution is endless, the internal strife has repeatedly arisen, the vitality is healed, the moment of appeasement, the catastrophe will never be restored, I look at this here, I can not cry, now my teacher is rising and approaching Jingguo, staying temporarily Weiyi, a famous city that has been repeatedly visited, scholars have a dead heart, people have no ambition to live, reward and lead the three armies, wait for Mingjiao, work hard to share the same hatred, have two hearts, mere zeal, and hope to observe, the commander-in-chief of the Northeast Army stationed in Weiyi lives Knocking!"

On the other hand, seeing the huge momentum of the guards, Wu Dazhou, who originally belonged to the Northeast Army of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, suddenly changed his banner and renamed his army the Shandong Guards. He called himself the governor of the Shandong Guards. After the failure of the Taohuashan encounter and the capture of Bo Ziming, Wu Dazhou was held accountable by members of the Northeast Army of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, and Wu Dazhou changed his family in a fit of anger.

Then Wu Dazhou also sent a telegram in the name of the governor of Shandong Province: "Tie Yuan is raging, harming our country, destroying civil rights, stealing artifacts, the whole world is indignant, and everyone is at heart. In the year, the fortune of the thief is not exhausted, the destiny is hard to fulfill, the empty fist is empty, the great honor has not been gathered, fortunately, the evil is full, the emperor regrets the misfortune, billions of trillions are at the same time, kill the thief to protect the country, we are afraid of the sangzi, the wormwood The time is difficult, reward the army, clear out the evildoers, swear to make the world a great country, see the sun again, the sanctuary of East Asia, restore civilization, report the country's grace, and do your duty. It is a last resort. How can we call it a good soldier? , I agree to forgive you, I would like to reveal this, Wu Dazhou, the governor of Shandong Protectorate, sing, seal!"

However, just as naive as pulling Li Yuanhong out as the leader during the Wuchang Uprising, the revolutionaries bet this time on Jin Yunpeng, the governor of Shandong, who was almost at the end of the road. They asked Jin Yunpeng to issue a telegram declaring Shandong independence against Yuan.

Jin Yunpeng hid in Wuding Mansion. Seeing the strength of the militia, he did not dare to refuse, so he used the strategy of slowing down the army. He falsely claimed that he was in favor of overthrowing Yuan, but Shandong could not be compared with Yunnan and Guizhou. If necessary, the only way is to urge Yuan to step down. If Yuan does not reply, the military and political figures in Shandong Province will resign as general to deal with Yuan. For the sake of local stability, the militiamen should guard their original defenses. If they violate the government’s defense line, the government will be forced We had to meet each other in battle.

Jin Yunpeng was closely related to Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui in the Beiyang Army Department, and was even one of the Four King Kongs of Duan Qirui's Anhui Department. , so he took this opportunity to call to persuade Yuan Shikai to resign and give up the virtuous. If there was no satisfactory answer, he had to declare independence. On May 5, Yuan called Jin Yunpeng to Beijing to discuss the issue of abdication. Zhang Huaizhi, the commander of the Fifth Division, was reassigned to succeed him, and Shandong's independence was aborted.

When the news reached Jinan and Xuzhou, Li Mohan had to admire the Revolutionary Party for how healed the scars were.

"These revolutionary parties are really endless." Li Mohan laughed at the childishness of the revolutionary party, and at the same time asked the secretariat to send a telegram to Jiang Fangzhen, Xiao Wenlong, and Ma Qian'an, ordering them to station on the spot and stop military operations. And actively and comprehensively carry out and abolish lijin, [-] rent reduction, land redemption and road construction measures in the local area.

The high efficiency under the ** system was immediately reflected. Administrative orders were dispatched step by step and quickly implemented to each execution unit. However, under such a model, some simple and rough execution methods inevitably appeared. .

"The villagers rioted in order to move the graves." Sure enough, not long after, Li Mohan received a telegram from Xiao Wenlong in Jinan, saying that there was a mass riot in Zhou Village caused by the removal of people's ancestral graves due to road construction.

Road construction, basic construction, water conservancy, river engineering, and urban planning inevitably involve demolition and land occupation. Sometimes cultivated land needs to be occupied, and some tombs need to be removed. The only thing is that Shangqiu is Li Mohan's lair with many years of experience. It has a certain mass base and the government's prestige is also high. Moreover, the new cemeteries to be relocated are all new sites with good Fengshui, and they are all jointly selected by several prestigious Fengshui masters. Therefore, this matter can generally be handled smoothly. The Xuzhou and Haizhou areas, because they are the core areas controlled by the National Party, generally adopt both hard and soft tactics. Preferential compensation measures can usually be solved very well, but it is not so simple to carry out this kind of work in newly acquired sites like Shandong Zhoucun.

At the same time, if it was only one or two places in Zhoucun, Li Mohan would not have paid attention to it. The problem is that this incident became a big one. Tens of thousands of people from Boshan, Changshan, Zhangdian and other places near Zhoucun gathered tens of thousands of people and surrounded the village. The construction team and migrant workers' residences were destroyed, and even newly built roadbeds, bridges and culverts were destroyed. Some materials such as steel and cement hoarded on the construction site were also looted, and many excavators and trucks were also damaged.

However, the fuse that caused this incident was not the grave relocation in the strict sense, but the fear of the nearby villagers that the excavation of the road would damage the feng shui of the ancestral tombs. What was more serious was that the situation developed later and turned into damage to the Jiaoji Railway track. sabotage activities.

Fortunately, Xiao Wenlong had learned enough of Li Mohan's iron fist, and after dispatching the army to arrest some of the culprits, he quickly quelled the riots. In fact, the so-called "mob" except for a very small number of leading rioters, most of them came under coercion. Ordinary people, of course, do not rule out the idea of ​​taking advantage of the fire to fish in troubled waters to gain some benefits. However, according to the report sent by Lu Ming of the Military Intelligence Department, this mass incident was instigated by someone behind the scenes. Judging from the information at hand, Most of the gentry in Zhoucun, Boshan, and Changshan participated in this process. The [-] rent reduction, land redemption, and abolition of lijin systems implemented by the National Party in Shandong violated the rights and interests of these gentry to varying degrees.

Generally speaking, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the control of the local grassroots was held by the gentry power. The reason why the gentry power suddenly became domineering in the late Qing Dynasty was because of the fact that the three modern expansions of the gentry power began in that period.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising and the Nian Army Uprising, the Eight Banners and Green Battalions of the Qing Dynasty were incompetent, so they had to rely on the gentry from all over the country to manage the Baojia militia. Local government agencies such as bureaus, emergency labor bureaus, etc. are controlled by gentry, and even the land tax levy is also controlled by gentry bureaus. This is still the situation where the power of gentry in the north is weaker than that in the south.

The self-government movement and constitutional movement in the late Qing Dynasty ushered in the legal status and role of the gentry. In 1908, the Qing government promulgated laws, urban and rural academic affairs, sanitation, water conservancy, agriculture, industry, commerce, charity and public undertakings, the collection and use of self-government funds, and personal In the local area, I am used to all the affairs that the gentry and directors handle are all within the scope of self-government, and the gentry govern themselves.

With the outbreak of the Revolution of [-], the power of the gentry got rid of the last shackles, that is, the restriction of the imperial power, and reached its peak. The so-called local grassroots power, the power of the clan, the power of the gentry, and the power of the husband are actually four powers combined into one. Controlled by gentlemen, the same is true for family power, and only gentlemen may be entitled to enjoy husband power. Of course, as agents of the regime's family power, gentlemen are also the executors who supervise the husband's power.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the grassroots administrative organizations below the county level were completely controlled by the gentry. At that time, a county was divided into several townships, and a township was divided into several maps. The township director and Tu Dong shall be elected from the local gentry and appointed by the county magistrate. The construction of bridges and roads, the construction of water conservancy projects, and the operation of charitable undertakings shall be carried out at any time by agreement of the Tu Dong and the consent of the township director. .

No profit, no early life”, regardless of official power and gentry power, they are all for self-interest. In local self-government affairs, all profitable affairs such as shantang, rice accumulation, road construction, bridge building, and school running are routinely performed by gentlemen, which are extraordinary affairs For example, the establishment of village groups, disaster relief, land measurement, tax collection, and handling of apportionment and other affairs must also be led by gentlemen.

However, the nationalism that Li Mohan pursues, the main means of governance or political point of view, is to strengthen government functions, and have the country arrange all kinds of political, military, and economic resources in a unified way. In short, it is to strengthen the backbone, weaken the branches, and strengthen official power. Weakening the power of the gentry, whether it is [-] rent reduction, redistribution of land after redemption, or the establishment of state-owned farms like production corps, without exception, strengthens the direct control of the state apparatus over the people, which directly violates the long-standing The interests of the country gentlemen who compete with the official power are big,