Constitutional Protection Movement

After Yuan Shikai died in 1916, Li Yuanhong succeeded as president and Duan Qirui became premier, holding real power in the Beijing government. In 1917, over whether to declare war on Germany in World War I, President Li and Premier Duan fell into the “Presidential Office versus State Council dispute”. After Li dismissed Duan, he summoned Zhang Xun to Beijing to mediate; Zhang instead used the chance to enter Beijing with his “pigtail army”, dissolved parliament and restored Puyi, but soon failed. After Duan regained control of the Beijing government, he refused to restore the Provisional Constitution and parliament. In July 1917 he led part of the navy south to Guangzhou and called members of parliament to an “Extraordinary Parliament”. In September the Extraordinary Parliament set up the Military Government of the Republic of China in Guangzhou and elected Sun Grand Marshal; troops were sent north and the movement began. But the southwestern warlords joined only to preserve and expand their own territories. In May 1918 the Guangxi clique and the Political Study Clique manipulated the Extraordinary Parliament into reorganizing the military government, replacing the grand marshal system with a collective directorate and sidelining Sun. Sun resigned as grand marshal in anger and left Guangzhou for Shanghai, saying in his resignation telegram: “The greatest scourge of our country is the contest for supremacy among military men; north and south are birds of a feather.” The movement failed. Its failure marked the end of the old democratic revolution led by the bourgeois democrats represented by Sun, who realized that relying on one warlord faction to defeat another would not work and began to seek a new revolutionary path.