Peking with a picked force. The attack on the Shanghai arsenal which had
been quietly occupied by a small Northern Garrison during the months
succeeding the great loan transaction, although pushed with vigour by
the South, likewise ultimately collapsed through lack of artillery and
proper leadership. The navy, which was wholly Southern in its sympathies
and which had been counted upon as a valuable weapon in cutting off the
whole Yangtsze Valley, was at the last moment purchased to neutrality by
a liberal use of money obtained from the foreign banks, under, it is
said, the heading of administrative expenses! The turbulent city of
Canton, although it also rose against the authority of Peking, had been
well provided for by Yuan Shih-kai. A border General, named Lung
Chi-kwang, with 20,000 semi-savage Kwangsi troops had been moved near
the city and at once attacked and overawed the garrison. Appointed
Military Governor of the province in return for his services, this Lung
Chi-kwang, who was an infamous brute, for three years ruled the South
with heartless barbarity, until he was finally ejected by the great
rising of 1916. Thoroughly disappointed in this and many other
directions the Southern Party was now emasculated; for the moneyed
classes had withheld their support to the end, and without money nothing
is possible in China. The 1913 outbreak, after lasting a bare two
months, ignominiously collapsed with the flight of every one of the
leaders on whose heads prices were put. The road was now left open for
the last step Yuan Shih-kai had in mind, the coup against Parliament
itself, which although unassociated in any direct way with the rising,
had undoubtedly maintained secret relations with the rebellious generals
in the field.

Parliament had further sinned by appointing a Special Constitutional
Drafting Committee which had held its sittings behind closed doors at
the Temple of Heaven. During this drafting of the Permanent