QOTD

QOTD: “Finally, as some radical Republicans complained, the abdication agreement that capped the success of the revolution was extraordinarily favorable to the Manchus. Unable to capture or depose the Xuantong emperor (who had just turned six when he abdicated), the revolutionaries allowed him to keep a semblance of his former title and to continue to live at one of his palace complexes, and they even granted him and his household an enormous annual pension. When the journalist G. E. Morrison first learned that the Qing wanted a subsidy of four million taels, which by one estimate was equivalent to more than 1 percent of China’s national revenue, he dismissed it as a “quite preposterous amount”; hardly a Republican sympathizer, he thought that one million was more than ample, especially since the Qing itself had pensioned off the former prince regent with fifty thousand taels. The Republicans, however, consented to the larger sum. They also promised to keep up, at least for a while, the monthly payments to the Eight Banner soldiers. These terms in the abdication agreement were the product of genuine give-and-take between the Republicans and the Qing that lasted over three months; they were not imposed by the victorious revolutionaries upon a vanquished foe.” Manchus & Han by Edward J.M Rhoads