With the Parliament of China effectively destroyed, and the turbulent Yangtsze Valley dragooned into sullen submission, Yuan Shih-kai’s task had become so vastly simplified that he held the moment to have arrived when he could openly turn his hand to the problem of making himself absolutely supreme, de jure as well as de facto.  But there was one remaining thing to be done.  To drive the last nail into the coffin of the Republic it was necessary to discredit and virtually imprison the man who was Vice-President.

It is highly characteristic that although he had received from the hero of the Wuchang Rising the most loyal co-operation—­a co-operation of a very arduous character since the Commander of the Middle Yangtsze had had to resist the most desperate attempt? to force him over to the side of the rebellion in July, 1913, nevertheless, Yuan Shih-kai was determined to bring this man to Peking as a prisoner of state.

It was just the fact that General Li Yuan-hung was a national hero which impelled the Dictator to action.  In the election which had been carried out in October, 1913, by the National Assembly sitting as a National Convention, in spite of every effort to destroy his influence, the personal popularity of the Vice-President had been such that he had received a large number of votes for the office of full President—­which had necessitated not one but three ballots being taken, making most people declare that had there been no bribery or intimidation he would have probably been elected to the supreme office in the land, and ousted the ambitious usurper.  In such circumstances his complete elimination was deemed an elementary necessity.  To secure that end Yuan Shih-kai suddenly dispatched to Wuchang—­where the Vice-President had resided without break since 1911—­the Minister of War, General Tuan Chi-jui, with implicit instructions to deal with the problem in any way he deemed satisfactory, stopping short of nothing should his victim prove recalcitrant.

Fortunately General Tuan Chi-jui did not belong to the ugly breed of men Yuan Shih-kai loved to surround himself with; and although he was a loyal and efficient officer the politics of the assassin were unknown to him.  He was therefore able to convince the Vice-President after a brief discussion that the easiest way out of the ring of intriguers and plotters in which Yuan Shih-kai was rapidly surrounding him in Wuchang was to go voluntarily to the capital.  There at least he would be in daily touch with developments and able to fight his own battles without fear of being stabbed in the back; since under the eye of the foreign Legations even Yuan Shih-kai was exhibiting a certain timidity.  Indeed after the outcry which General Chang Cheng-wu’s judicial murder had aroused he had reserved his ugliest deeds for the provinces, only small men being done to death in Peking.  Accordingly, General Li Yuan-hung packed a bag and accompanied only by an aide-de-camp left abruptly for the capital where he arrived on the 11th December, 1913.