Retreat and Return
The Empress Dowager and the Guangxu Emperor died within a day of each other in November 1908. and sources indicate that the will of the Emperor specifically ordered Yuan be executed. Nonetheless avoiding a death sentence, in January 1909 Yuan Shikai was relieved of all his posts by the regent, Prince Chun. The public reason for Yuan's resignation was that he was returning to his home in the village of Huanshang (洹上村), now the prefecture-level city of Anyang, due to a foot disease.
During his three years of effective exile, Yuan kept contact with his close allies, including Duan Qirui, who reported to him regularly about army proceedings. The loyalty of the Beiyang Army was still undoubtedly behind him. Having this strategic military support, Yuan held the balance of power between various revolutionaries (like Sun Yat-sen) and the Qing Court. Both wanted Yuan on their side.
Read more about this topic: Yuan Shikai
Famous quotes containing the words retreat and/or return:
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The emancipation of today displays itself mainly in cigarettes and shorts. There is even a reaction from the ideal of an intellectual and emancipated womanhood, for which the pioneers toiled and suffered, to be seen in painted lips and nails, and the return of trailing skirts and other absurdities of dress which betoken the slave-woman’s intelligent companionship.”
—Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960)