Читать книгу China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War онлайн

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On the same morning that I interviewed the Revolutionary Commander of the Field Forces I was successful in discovering that General Chang Piao was on board a launch down-river. I immediately made off by launch to see him. As I sat soon afterwards by the side of this Chang Piao, the man in all Hupeh who had been entrusted with the authority of the Model Army, and looked at a medium-sized Chinese who gave no evidence of being a common soldier by anything in his dress, and as I looked at his unshaven head and bloodshot eyes, I could not find it in my heart to extend to him anything but genuine pity. He recently had been a strong man, high in office, and dazzled with braid and buttons and all official paraphernalia which to-day is thought so much of in military China; now he was a crestfallen man, knowing that he had lost, cut off from all supplies, with a helpless army on his hands, and himself knowing that fifty thousand Chinese dollars were being offered for his head. With some little difficulty I had jumped on board, asked for Chang Daren, and was shown into the cabin aft, where I found some dozen or so officers eating their morning rice. Towards me came a man dressed in an ordinary teacher's garb; he extended his nervous hand, and with ceremony bade me enter. His name he told me was Chang—this, then, was the man, General Chang Piao, erstwhile Commander-in-Chief of the Hupeh Model Army.