Following the publication of this manifesto a general movement of troops began.  On the 5th July the important Peking-Tientsin railway was reported interrupted forty miles from the capital—­at Langfang which is the station where Admiral Seymour’s relief expedition in 1900 was nearly surrounded and exterminated.  Chang Hsun, made desperate by the swift answer to his coup, had moved out of Peking in force stiffening his own troops with numbers of Manchu soldiery, and announcing that he would fight it out to the bitter end, although this proved as false as the rest had been.  The first collision occurred on the evening of the 5th July and was disastrous for the King-maker.  The whole Northern army, with the exception of a Manchu Division in Peking, was so rapidly concentrated on the two main railways leading to the capital that Chang Hsun’s army, hopelessly outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, fell back after a brief resistance.  Chang Hsun himself was plainly stupefied by the discovery that imperialism of the classic type was as much out of date in the North as in the South; and within one week of his coup he was prepared to surrender if his life and reputation were spared.  By the 9th July the position was this:  the Republican forces had surrounded Peking:  Chang Hsun had resigned every appointment save the command of his own troops:  the Manchu Court party had drafted a fresh Edict of Renunciation, but being terrorized by the pigtailed troops surrounding the Palace did not dare to issue it.

The usual bargaining now commenced with the Legation Quarter acting as a species of middleman.  No one was anxious to see warfare carried into the streets of Peking, as not only might this lead to the massacres of innocent people, but to foreign complications as well.  The novelty had already been seen of a miniature air-raid on the Imperial city, and the panic that exploding bombs had carried into the hearts of the Manchu Imperial Family made them ready not only to capitulate but to run away.  The chief point at issue was, however, not the fate of the monarchy, which was a dead thing, but simply what was going to happen to Chang Hsun’s head—­a matter which was profoundly distressing Chang Hsun.  The Republican army had placed a price of L10,000 on it, and the firebrands were advocating that the man must be captured, dead or alive, and suffer decapitation in front of the Great Dynastic Gate of the Palace as a revenge for his perfidy.  Round this issue a subtle battle raged which was not brought to a head until the evening of the 11th July, when all attempts at forcing Chang Hsun to surrender unconditionally having failed, it was announced that a general attack would be made on his forces at daylight the next morning.