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Also called: Li Yuan-hung
Brigade commander of the Hubei New Army who was pushed by the rebels into heading their military government after the Wuchang uprising of 1911, later vice-president and president of the Republic
On the night of 10 October 1911 the engineers of the New Army in Wuchang rose, took the city the next morning and set up a Hubei military government under the brigade commander Li Yuanhong — the start of the 1911 Revolution.
From late October to late November 1911 Yuan Shikai’s Beiyang Army, recalled by the Qing, retook Hankou and Hanyang. But meanwhile the provinces of the south and west broke away from the Qing one after another, and on 2 December the revolutionaries took Nanjing.
When Yuan Shikai moved to take the throne in December 1915, Cai E and others raised the National Protection Army in Yunnan on the 25th. As southern provinces declared independence one after another, Yuan gave up the monarchy after 83 days, and died of illness on 6 June 1916.
Late-Qing master of the Beiyang Army who meddled in Joseon affairs after the 1882 Imo Incident; in the 1911 Revolution he secured the emperor’s abdication and became president of the Republic, but his bid to make himself emperor failed
Revolutionary from Hunan who founded the China Arise Society and led the Tongmenghui with Sun Yat-sen, commanding the 1911 Guangzhou uprising and the defence of Hanyang
Soldier from Hunan who led the 1911 rising in Yunnan and, when Yuan Shikai moved to make himself emperor in 1915, slipped back to Yunnan to raise the National Protection Army
From the Revive China Society to the death of Yuan Shikai — twenty-two years in which, amid debt and failed reform, revolutionaries and the New Army brought down the Qing and founded Asia’s first republic, which passed through dictatorship and a short-lived monarchy into the age of the warlords