Abdication of Puyi

At dawn on 12 July 1917 a cannon shot gave the signal for the assault on Peking. Republican troops entered the city through several gates and attacked the last soldiers of General Zhang Xun, who eleven days earlier had restored Emperor Puyi to the throne. Zhang’s main force, entrenched behind the walls of the Temple of Heaven, opened negotiations after several hours of firing and surrendered. Zhang Xun himself, who had announced that he would fight to the end, fled from his residence next to the imperial palace to the Legation Quarter and took refuge in the Dutch legation. His men around the Forbidden City held out until early afternoon. That day the court announced that the eleven-year-old Puyi was giving up the throne for the second time. The restoration of the Qing dynasty had lasted twelve days. The British chronology of the war records the abdication as early as 7 July, because on that day the first reports appeared that the emperor would step down. The act of abdication had been prepared in the palace by about 9 July, but the courtiers, surrounded by Zhang’s pigtailed soldiers, did not dare to announce it.

The siege of the capital

The restoration was collapsing from its first days. President Li Yuanhong hid in the Japanese legation, on 6 July Vice-President Feng Guozhang took over the duties of president in Nanking, and Prime Minister Duan Qirui led against Peking the northern troops which as late as June had backed Zhang against the president. No one of any standing in the country joined the general. On 5 July the republicans cut the railway from Tientsin a few dozen kilometres from the capital, in the area of Langfang. Zhang’s troops, supported by Manchu units from the capital, went out to meet them, but after brief fighting at Langfang and at Fengtai they fell back into the city. On 7 July a republican aeroplane from Nanyuan airfield dropped three bombs on the Forbidden City. The damage was slight, and according to some accounts one of the palace eunuchs was killed, but the raid, regarded as the first aerial bombing in Chinese history, terrified the court. On 8 July the emperor accepted Zhang’s resignation from all his offices. The general kept only the command of his troops in Peking.

The last days were spent bargaining over Zhang’s fate. The Japanese vice-minister for foreign affairs told an American diplomat in Tokyo on 7 July that the general, surprised by the strength of the opposition even in the north and condemned by part of the imperial family, was looking for a way out that would save his life and property. The republicans put a price on his head, and from Nanking came announcements of severe punishment. General Wang Shizhen and the diplomats acted as mediators, because no one wanted fighting in the streets of a city full of foreigners. When on the evening of 11 July Zhang still refused to surrender unconditionally, the republicans announced an assault for the following morning.

After the assault

The fighting of 12 July, though noisy, cost few lives. According to the British Annual Register, ten soldiers were killed in the night-time firing, and the American minister, Paul Reinsch, reported that stray bullets had wounded three Americans. Several fires broke out in the city, but the legations were not harmed. Zhang’s soldiers surrendered en masse when promised three months’ pay, and they were then disarmed and sent home. Other participants in the coup also sought asylum with foreigners. Kang Youwei hid in the American legation, and the State Department had to decide whether to hand him over to the Chinese authorities. Zhang Xun long remained under the protection of the Dutch legation, and in October 1918 he was covered by an amnesty.

On 14 July Duan Qirui returned to Peking as victor and “saviour of the republic”. In his new government Liang Qichao became minister of finance, and Reinsch noted that it contained none of the republicans from the south. Puyi, whom everyone regarded as Zhang’s will-less tool, went unpunished. He kept the title and privileges granted to the imperial family in 1912 and lived in the Forbidden City until 1924. Li Yuanhong refused to return to office, and power remained in Duan’s hands. Peking now had a government determined on war: on 14 August China declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Duan did not, however, recall the dissolved parliament, and Sun Yat-sen and the deputies who had gone south regarded his authority as unlawful. The fall of the restoration thus did not unite the country, but deepened China’s division into north and south.