总第 30 集｜北洋灭亡：庆祝的理由吗？ | 神州大地 Ep.30

《神州大地》系列 總第 30 集：「北洋倒台：庆祝的理由？ | 神州大地 Ep.30」是本集影片的完整圖文轉錄，可逐字閱讀，也可前往影片頁觀看對應畫面。

用金钱买来的总统职位。

神州大地。第 30 集。北洋倒台：庆祝的理由？

上集我们跟随着南方的秘密战争：广州、武昌和那一夜在中山舰上的激动。

现在把镜头转向北方，你会看到一个不同的倒塌——更为安静，更为致命。

五千银币可以买到一个选票，数百万可以买到共和国的龙椅。

然而在那一件荒谬的交易发生之前的一年里，北京的报纸仍然指着总统的鼻子说他是贼，尽管如此，它们的大学仍然为各种思潮留下了空间，左派和右派，新派和旧派。一个在哪怕总统职位也能买卖的年代，竟然成了现代中国历史上最松散、最有生气的时期。

腐败和生机在同一条藤上生长。这个藤就是北洋系统。

北洋的幕布并没有因为一枪而倒塌。它像一部连续剧一样倒塌，演员们不断更换：一个贿选的总统，一个倒戈的将军，一个北上行走的政客，一个在广州宣誓效忠的军队。我们从有价格标签的椅子开始。

两个线程，先从北方开始吧。

曹锟是直隶派的权贵，他用钱买来总统的位置，认为自己已经买到了这个国家。实际上，他买来的只是去往悬崖的单程车票。

1923年十月五日，北京。国会在宣武门外的相府桥上举行会议，选出新总统。 曹锟的支持者在每张选票上贴出一张公布的价格：每张选票五千两白银，现金付款。议员们排队，拿到钱，举起手。后来的人们估计这整个事情花费了不少于几十万两白银。一个共和国的总统被给了一个价格。

收受贿赂的议员被称为“小猪”议员——他们有135人。 国民大会主席吴敬琏，在选举之后被承诺将出任总理。 然而，曹锟提名孙宝琦。 吴敬琏把主席印章塞进口袋，夜晚逃离北京。 当甚至战利品无法平均分配时，你可以想象购买的政权的基础。

但公平需要另一半的画面。在那些同样的一年，北京的媒体仍在印刷中辱骂总统，大学仍允许左派和右派，激进派和保守派。让总统可以被买卖的时代，也让你可以大声说出来。 那種放縱的狀態在很長一段時間內再也沒有出現過。

歷史學家們至今仍無法統一對此腐敗的看法。有一種解讀認為，這是共和國的憲政體制終於崩潰的時刻，總統職位變成了銀元交易。 另一方面指出，国会早已被军阀破坏，投票买票并不是由曹锟开始的——只是这次投票价格被公然地、丑陋地披露，无法忽视。

两条线索。现在南方。

北方议员们忙着数着银元，而广西山区的三位年轻人却在一块块地拼凑着他们的破碎省份。

一九零九年出生的来自凌归的李宗仁带领他在榆林打出来的安抚广西军队。 白崇禧，出生于一九零三年，来自桂林，三人团的头脑，担任参谋长。 黄绍洪，出生于一九零五年，来自荣县，曾在沈鸿英手下担任团长; 一九二三年，他与沈鸿英决裂，占领梧州，加入李宗仁麾下。 他们三个人都差不多大,都很倔强,三者相得益彰:有胆敢打仗的,有能计算的,有能固守后方的。

1924年两军在浔河相遇，组建了安抚桂系和惩办叛贼军：李宗仁为总司令，黄绍鸿为副总司令兼省长，白崇禧为参谋长。一个打，一个守，一个谋。三个人用力将一块松散的沙子挤成一个拳头。

那一拳先是打在广西系的老大罗荣桓身上。

他们没有使用粗暴的方法。1924年春天，罗荣桓被另一位军阀沈鸿英围困在桂林内。沈鸿英命令邓友珍和沈荣光两位将军各带一师人围剿桂林，围得水泄不通，连个小卒都不能溜过去；

突袭持续了七十多天的白天黑夜。李、白和黄看到了机会：路的精锐部队被钉在桂林，南宁的基地空虚。他们制定了一个策略 - 与沈结盟，推翻路。他们没有直接面对路，反而等待他撤出南宁的部队北上。六月下旬，白崇禧从宾阳、上林和武鸣等地通过陆路。 李宗仁从桂县直线北上到南宁，黄少鸿则在梧州作内援。三路封锁，老大的巢窟几乎不战而下。广西都司印章还未冷透，张其华都司大人已经收拾好家当，悄悄地通过安南逃到吴佩孚处。

卢荣廷在桂林失去根据地，失去了根基。七月九日，三人在南宁举起了统一pacify桂西军的旗帜：十一路和六支游击队，分三路。右路，李、白两员下令进攻柳州和桂林；中路，于作培下令清除卢的残余部队在都安和那马； 左边，胡宗度下令，一路推进到龙州，将路支部推向越南边境。八月十一日，白崇禧占领了柳州。九月二十一日，路容庭在香山寺宣布退休，离开广西前往上海生活为私人公民。老桂系，占领广西超过十年，开始分崩离析。

沈鸿英仍然站在那里。卢去后，他占领了桂林、平乐和柳州，想要独占该省。1925年一月二十九日，他对李和黄发动三路进攻。李宗仁拒绝直接冲锋；他避开强大的阵地，集中力量打击弱点，一一击破了每一路军。 从二月到四月，申的左翼、中央和右翼在武宣、永福的金珠澳以及 Guilin 周围接连遭到破坏。最后一次战斗发生在 Guilin 附近的良江塘：白崇禧在洛晴河设置埋伏。申的主力部队渡过浮桥时，山洪水倾泻而下，断桥使他们的撤退路被切断。 两百人被杀，七百人被俘，数百人在洪水泛滥的河流中溺死。沈红英伪装成商人，通过广东逃到香港。离开时他对记者说，我从来没想过会被几个小军官打败。他说的是李、白和黄三人 - 这三人曾是老广西军队中的小官员。

十多年来的混乱中，广西第一次被三位年轻人拉进了一个拳头中。南方的火焰在这些山脉中点燃了。另一端是广东。

李宗仁后来回忆说，广西太穷，不能养活大军——而这种贫穷正是新桂系的坚硬边缘。 没有资本的男人，才会在刀口上赌上生命。只有广西稳定了，孙中山在广东隔壁的总部才有一个可以依靠的邻居。

北面回顾。二零二四年秋季，张作霖和吴佩孚这两个北洋世界最强大的男人，撕下最后一层面子。

九月十五日，奉天军分三路入关：一路由山海关，一路由热河南部向锦州进军，一路由热河北部通过承德和西丰口。九月十八日，吴佩孚亲自统领讨袭军前往迎战。 一百五十到一百七十万的奉天军队，二百到二百五十万的直隶军队——在山海关线上，四百多万人互相残杀。 一旦枪声响起，曹锟就无法坐以待毙。他派吴佩孚亲自前往前线——并没有料到自己的后方会先着火。

在山海关前线，直隶派把彭寿善放在了前线与张福来相互支持；奉天派则投入了蒋德宣和张学良进攻。周边的九门口和石门寨炮声不断，伤亡人数难以计数。直隶派和奉天派都是北洋派的两大派系。 现在他们正在为了谁坐在那把椅子上而互相残杀。

高克（Cao Kun）以为自己已经买通了这个国家，直到现在才发现自己不过是吴佩孚（Wu Peifu）的棋子 - 而棋子从来不能决定游戏的走向。吴佩孚，曾经赢得了那么多艰苦的战斗的将军，却没有意识到真正的危险并不是在山海关的炮火中。真正的危险在于北京内部的一场静悄悄的政变。

武佩玉在他的一生中赢得了许多胜利，但他犯了战争的经典错误：他把每一支能战斗的部队都推到前线，留下后方空虚。他相信自己的速度，忘记了自己后面的速度更快。 两个军队还在山海关交战时，北京的牌子已经悄然地发生了变化。

两条线 - 南方再次爆发了。

云南的唐继尧，出生于一八八三年，出生于徽州，自称四川、贵州、云南联军总司令，打算通过广西，吞并两广省。

In January nineteen twenty-five he sent two armies into Guangxi: one under Long Yun, out of Guangnan, taking Baise and driving down the You River at Nanning; the other, commanded by Tang Jiyao's own younger brother, entering from Rongjiang in Guizhou, taking Sanjiang and Rong County, and driving down the Rong River at Liuzhou. Together they came to nearly eighty thousand men, and claimed a hundred thousand.

One point must be clear: the northern route was led by Tang Jiyao's younger brother, not by Tang Jiyao himself. Tang Jiyao never left Yunnan. From here on we will call that force the Northern Route Yunnan Army.

What they ran into was the New Guangxi Clique, barely formed into a fist: Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi and Huang Shaohong, twenty thousand men all told, and worse equipped than their enemy.

It was a hard fight against odds, and more than that, a contest of heads. Li Zongren was cold-eyed. He saw the Yunnan army's weak point: the Yunnan-Guangxi-Guizhou border is all high mountains and broken roads; tens of thousands of men cannot pour in at once, they have to be fed forward column by column. Long Yun's spearhead pushed ahead and took Nanning, but the follow-up never arrived - and the spearhead became a living target. Li settled on a plan of beating them one at a time, and Nanning first.

On May sixteenth Li Zongren came to the front to direct the assault on Kunlun Pass. The pass sits on hard ground, easy to defend and hard to take. The Guangxi troops fought a full day and night, losses piled up, and still could not bite through. Seeing Fan Shisheng on the left flank standing still, Li made his decision on the spot: he pulled two columns around to the left to envelop the position. Hit from front and rear, the Yunnan force lost more than two thousand men and gave up Kunlun Pass; the Guangxi troops pursued, took Batang, Qitang and Wutang in succession, and drove Long Yun back inside Nanning.

Nanning's walls were high and thick, and the Guangxi army had no heavy guns to break them. Li simply surrounded the city without attacking, cut the grain, cut the water, and waited to see how long they could hold. The siege ran for the better part of a year. Long Yun grew desperate, offered heavy rewards and formed a suicide corps of more than a thousand men to break out at night; Fan Shisheng, guarding the city, was caught off guard and fell back dozens of miles. Li Zongren heard of it and rushed Yu Zuobai back to the rescue. The breakout force was cut to pieces. The breakout failed.

While Nanning was stalled, Liuzhou sent an alarm: Wu Xuexian of the Northern Route Yunnan Army had taken Sanjiang and was besieging Liuzhou; its defender Li Shiyu had been killed at the front, and the city was about to fall. Li Zongren wired Bai Chongxi to come back from Guilin; Huang Shaohong shifted Wu Tingyang and Zhong Zupei from Nanning to Liuzhou. The Yunnan army fell back to Shatang and Shapu. Bai Chongxi deployed: Zhong Zupei on the left, Lin Zhufang in the centre, Wu Tingyang on the right, Lu Huanyan in reserve. It was a savage battle; Baima Mountain changed hands five times. In the end, attacked on three sides, the Yunnan line broke and retreated through Chang'an and Qingyuan, then by Donglan and Fengshan, and escaped home to Yunnan by way of Lingyun.

Inside Nanning, Long Yun heard that the main force at Liuzhou had collapsed. Epidemic disease was running through the city, food and ammunition were gone. On the night of July seventh, nineteen twenty-five, under cover of dark, he crossed the Zuo River with what was left and slipped back to Yunnan. Li Zongren sent Yu Zuobai after him; Yu moved half a beat too slowly, and Long Yun got away.

Seven months. Eighty thousand Yunnan troops. Not one of them swallowed Guangxi. Tang Jiyao's dream of being deputy marshal broke against the hills and rivers of Lingnan.

There is a footnote to the campaign. As the Yunnan army retreated, Tang Jiyao sat in one corner of Yunnan and lost because his command was tangled and every commander had his own plan: Long Yun and the Northern Route fought separate wars and obeyed no one. The New Guangxi Clique won cleanly; from then on no strong neighbour coveted the two Guang provinces, and they were free to take the olive branch Guangdong held out. Tang Jiyao never recovered from the defeat, and years later his own subordinates, Long Yun among them, forced him from power. That is a later story, and not for this episode.

While the northern battlefield was at full heat, a Zhili general named Feng Yuxiang quietly turned his guns around.

Feng Yuxiang, born eighteen eighty-two, from Chaoxian in Anhui. On October twenty-third he marched his army back to the capital, imprisoned Cao Kun in a single night and scattered the Zhili clique. That night is called the Jiazi Coup.

Cao Kun, the president who had bought his office, announced his retirement on November second. Wu Peifu heard the news at the front; his army dissolved and he fled south from Tanggu on a naval transport. Duan Qirui took over the government, and Zhang Zuolin rode into Beijing in state. Feng Yuxiang did one more thing that startled the country: on November fifth he drove Puyi, long since abdicated, out of the Forbidden City and abolished the Articles of Favourable Treatment for the Qing House. Even many who cursed the Beiyang system nodded at that.

That night has never had one agreed account. Feng said he could not stomach Cao Kun's bribery and Wu Peifu's monopoly of power, and wanted renewal. His enemies called it desertion and bad faith, and said he had been in secret understanding with Zhang Zuolin, Duan Qirui, and even Sun Yat-sen in the south.

The telegram that follows was issued by Feng Yuxiang, with Hu Jingyi, Sun Yue and others, on October twenty-third, nineteen twenty-four - the day he brought his army back to Beijing - and addressed to the whole country. Because the code word for that day in the telegraphic calendar was yang, later writers call it the Yang Telegram. Here it is, in English translation.

Armies are raised originally to defend against insult from abroad; for countrymen to slaughter one another is a shame before China and before the world. Unhappily, since the troubles of the ninth year, nameless campaigns have risen again and again; the sharper the quarrel, the deeper the wound to the nation's vitality. If those who govern had the slightest conscience, how should they have sought peace and given the people rest? Instead, trouble in the southeast spread to the northeast; the soldiers of the whole country were moved, and the bones of ten thousand people were dried up. Ask what they fight for, and for whom they fight: those who ordered it could hardly answer. We, Yu-xiang and the others, pace at midnight with no tears left to shed; driven by conscience, we take our stand for ending the war. Therefore on October twenty-third we resolved to bring our troops back, and with all the units under our command have formed the National Army of the Chinese Republic, sworn to be of use to the country and the people. If any still toy with war and bring calamity to our people and our country, this army, in order to shorten the war, will not shrink from meeting them in arms. The whole army has now reached the capital. Here the legations of all friendly powers are placed, and local order is of the first importance; we shall be responsible for maintaining it. As for all questions of political settlement, we ask the wise and able of the whole country to rise at once, to meet and devise a remedy, and to open together a new order. Perhaps it is from many hardships that a nation is strengthened. As we send this telegram we look up, and await your instruction.

One line after the reading: the telegram handed the question of the country's direction back to the wise and able of the whole nation. The sentence about where power lies is, we ask the wise and able of the whole country to rise at once and open together a new order; and its last line is, we await your instruction.

Two threads, and here they twist into one rope.

After the Jiazi Coup, Feng Yuxiang was the first to telegraph an invitation to Sun Yat-sen to come north and discuss the state of the nation; once Duan Qirui took office, he joined Feng and Zhang in a second joint invitation.

Sun left Guangdong on November thirteenth, nineteen twenty-four, travelling by way of Japan, and reached Beijing on December thirty-first. The proposals he publicly put forward were a national convention and the abolition of the unequal treaties. He was already seriously ill when he boarded; on arrival he entered Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and in February of the following year the diagnosis was liver cancer.

No one in the north took up those proposals. In February nineteen twenty-five Duan Qirui opened a separate Rehabilitation Conference and set the national convention aside. Feng Yuxiang, who had invited him, had by then lost power and withdrawn to Zhangjiakou. Zhang Zuolin talked to him about an entirely different arrangement. Three men, three calculations; the courtesy of the telegrams dissolved at the conference table.

On March twelfth, nineteen twenty-five, Sun Yat-sen died at his residence in Iron Lion Alley, Beijing, aged fifty-nine. His late disputes over the road ahead with Zhang Taiyan, Song Jiaoren, Huang Xing and Chen Jiongming are not judged here. Only the facts are laid out: the proposals were his, the conference was someone else's, and he died of illness in the north.

What follows is the Declaration on Going North, also called the Declaration on the Situation, issued by Sun Yat-sen on November tenth, nineteen twenty-four, before he set out - his own public account of what he intended by the journey. The phrase the eighteenth of September this year refers to September eighteenth of the thirteenth year of the republic. In English translation:

On the eighteenth of September this year, this party issued a declaration on the purpose of the northern expedition. Its central meaning was that the aim of the national revolution is to create an independent and free country, so as to protect the interests of the nation and the people. That aim is absolutely incompatible with the imperialist desire to keep China a colony forever. Thus in the revolution of nineteen eleven, though we overthrew the Manchu government, in no time the imperialists had joined with the warlords to oppose the national revolution, and did all they could to obstruct its aim. In thirteen years the warlords themselves have come and gone, but their nature and their function, from Yuan Shikai down to Cao Kun and Wu Peifu, have run in one and the same groove. Therefore the aim of the northern expedition is not merely to destroy Cao and Wu, but to ensure that after Cao and Wu are destroyed no men of the same kind rise again; in other words, it is not merely to overthrow the warlords, but to overthrow the imperialism on which the warlords live. Only so can the aim of the national revolution, its obstacles cleared, advance with vigour. The destiny of the people lies in the people's self-determination. If this party can win the aid of the people, then China's independence, freedom and unity will certainly be fully achieved through struggle. The aim of the national revolution is to create an independent and free country, so as to protect the interests of the nation and the people; its content was set out in the declaration of this party's first national congress. Taking the three principles of nationality, civil rights and livelihood as its base, and listing, according to the times, the remedies that are the minimum programme, in outline: in foreign policy, on one side, cancel all unequal treaties and privileges; on the other, change the nature of foreign debts so that the powers cannot use those debts to keep China in the position of a sub-colony. In domestic policy, define the powers of the centre and the provinces so that national unity and provincial self-government may each develop without obstructing the other; establish the county as the unit of self-government to lay deep the foundation of civil rights; and use all our strength to protect the freedom of the people, to assist the growth of agricultural, industrial and commercial bodies, and to seek improvement in the economy and in education. If the foreign policy is realised, the influence of imperialism in China will disappear and the country's independence and freedom will be secure; if the domestic policy is realised, the warlords cannot rise again from the ashes and the foundation of government by the people cannot be shaken. This, I dare believe, is a medicine suited to the present condition of China.

One line after the reading: the declaration handed the answer to where China goes to the self-determination of the people. The sentence about where power lies is, the destiny of the people lies in the people's self-determination; and the last line is, a medicine suited to the present condition of China.

The thread returns to the south. On July first, nineteen twenty-five, the Nationalist Government was established at Guangzhou, and the young soldiers trained at Whampoa got a proper name for the first time: the National Revolutionary Army.

Whampoa Military Academy had opened in June nineteen twenty-four on Changzhou Island at Guangzhou, with Chiang Kai-shek as commandant; Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying and Nie Rongzhen taught there in turn, and a Russian adviser, General Galen, helped train the troops. The first class was about five hundred men; they graduated that winter and went straight into the Eastern Expeditions, which drove Chen Jiongming out of Guangdong. Those men were the backbone of the new National Revolutionary Army.

From that day the south was no longer a slogan. It had a real army - and that army's general headquarters stood in Guangzhou.

The story comes to July of nineteen twenty-six. On July sixth the General Headquarters of the National Revolutionary Army was set up and Chiang Kai-shek became commander-in-chief. Three days later, on July ninth, the banners covered the sky at the East Parade Ground in Guangzhou.

Three years since Cao Kun bought the chair with silver. Two years since Feng Yuxiang changed the board in Beijing in a single night. The old account in the north had turned to its last page; the army in the south stood on its starting line.

What came after that day belongs to the next episode. Here, remember only one date: July ninth, nineteen twenty-six.

Two threads, written as one. In those three years the north changed hands: Cao Kun fell, Zhang Zuolin entered Beijing. The south found its strength: Guangxi was squeezed into a fist, Guangzhou assembled an army. In the very same year, nineteen twenty-four, one side was changing its government and the other side was building one. Old actors left, new actors came on, and between them lay countless lives and accounts that will never be settled. Which side was cleaner, which side muddier, this narration will not decide. One thing can be said plainly: in the Beiyang years the newspapers could curse the president and the man would still go to the opera; the universities made room for left and right, new and old alike. That looseness was not seen again for many years to come.

We can still stand on the traces of that history today. At Zhengyangmen in Beijing, the troops entering and leaving the city in the republican years passed under the arrow tower; at the Shenwumen gate of the Forbidden City, Puyi was escorted out of the palace in the thirteenth year of the republic. On Changzhou Island at Whampoa, the parade ground and the two-storey walkways of the old academy still stand, now open to visitors as a national key cultural relic. Around the East Parade Ground, in today's Yuexiu district near the Martyrs' Park, you can still find the ground where the oath was taken. In Guilin, the Jingjiang Princes' Palace and Solitary Beauty Peak looked down on Shen Hongying's siege of the city; outside Nanning, Kunlun Pass still holds the terrain of that bloody fight in the fourteenth year of the republic. These places say nothing, yet they are more honest than any textbook. This history was not invented; it is solid ground beneath your feet.

In Beijing the rules lay broken: if a president could be bought, did the law still count? Yet the teahouses in the lanes stayed open and the storytellers kept telling, and the old Beijing saying went, under the Son of Heaven the rules are strict - only now the Son of Heaven had bought the job himself, and the rules grew strangely light. In Guangxi the mountains bred a hard temper: a bowl of rice noodles, a jar of pickled bamboo shoots, and people who kept their word in a bargain and kept it in a fight. In Guangdong, morning tea talked over the fate of the country, and remittances from overseas kept whole families alive; people there had long since learned to look outward. The true face of an age is often not in telegrams and declarations, but in the bowl, the teacup, the stage. Histories usually leave that out. We put it back.

The Beiyang government was broke: owing more than a hundred million in military arrears, its taxes long since scraped clean by the warlords. Cao Kun's silver dollars were only robbing one wall to patch another. The more notes it printed the less they were worth; when the soldiers' pay did not arrive, mutinies followed, again and again. At the other end, Guangxi's tin and rice, Guangdong's silk and overseas remittances, came in as real money. Who could feed so many armies, so many mouths? Not the chair in Beijing, but the mines of the south, the rice in the fields, the remittances from across the sea. The north fed its armies with a printing press and grew hollower with every campaign; the south made blood from industry and remittances and grew stronger with every fight. An army with an empty stomach, however well it fights, does not march far.

After his abdication Cao Kun lived in Tianjin and died there in nineteen thirty-eight, never touching power again. Wu Peifu fled south, never recovered, and died in Beiping in nineteen thirty-nine. Tang Jiyao was forced from power by his own subordinates in the sixteenth year of the republic and died a disappointed man in the twentieth. Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, the twin stars of Guangxi, were only just rising; their story belongs to later episodes, not this one. Three old marshals down on their luck - one in retirement, one in ruin, one in bitterness; two young men from Guangxi stepping onto the stage. Who among them was a good man, who a bad one, I will not answer. Cao Kun was greedy yet not without kindness; Wu Peifu was proud yet had backbone; Tang Jiyao failed, yet he had once had ambitions. I only set them inside the board of their own time. You decide what you see.

One chair with a price tag collapsed. Another chair still stands empty.

The president who bought his office has gone, the general who changed sides has gone, the statesman who travelled north has gone, and the oath at Guangzhou has been sworn. The old actors are leaving; the new ones are at the door.

The Beiyang curtain has fallen. But what follows - celebration, or a longer and harder disorder? That is the story of our next episode.

▶ 觀看本集影片（含畫面與地圖）：The Beiyang Fall: Cause for Celebration? | Shenzhou Dadi Ep.30