t was concentrated
on raising an efficient fighting force. In those five years, despite all
financial embarrassments, North China raised and equipped six excellent
Divisions of field-troops--75,000 men--all looking to Yuan Shih-kai as
their sole master. So much energy did he display in pushing military
reorganization throughout the provinces that the Court, warned by
jealous rivals of his growing power, suddenly promoted him to a post
where he would be powerless. One day he was brought to Peking as Grand
Councillor and President of the Board of Foreign Affairs, and ordered to
hand over all army matters to his noted rival, the Manchu Tieh Liang.
The time had arrived to muzzle him. His last phase as a pawn had come.

Few foreign diplomats calling at China's Foreign Office to discuss
matters during that short period which lasted barely a twelve-month,
imagined that the square resolute-looking man who as President of the
Board gave the same energy and attention to consular squabbles as to the
reorganization of a national-fighting force, was almost daily engaged in
a fierce clandestine struggle to maintain even his modest position.
Jealousy, which flourishes in Peking like the upas tree, was for ever
blighting his schemes and blocking his plans. He had been brought to
Peking to be tied up; he was constantly being denounced; and even his
all powerful patroness, the old Empress Dowager, who owed so much to
him, suffered from constant premonitions that the end was fast
approaching, and that with her the Dynasty would die.

In the Autumn of 1908 she took sick. The gravest fears quickly spread.
It was immediately reported that the Emperor Kwanghsu was also very
ill--an ominous coincidence. Very suddenly both personages collapsed and
died, the Empress Dowager slightly before the Emperor. There is little
doubt that the Emperor himself was poisoned. The legend runs that as he
expired not only did he give his Consort, who was to succeed him in the
exercise of the nominal power of the Throne, a last secret Edict to
behead Yuan Shih-kai, but that his faltering hand described circle
after circle in the air until his followers understood the meaning. In
the vernacular the name of the great viceroy and the word for circle
have the same sound; the gesture signified that the dying monarch's last
wish was revenge on the man who had failed him ten years before.

An ominous calm followed this great break with the past. It was
understood that