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