Cai E

Early Life and Study in Japan

Cai E, originally named Cai Genyin, courtesy name Songpo, was born in December 1882 into a poor family in Baoqing (now Shaoyang), Hunan; his father worked as a tailor and pedlar. At 16 he entered the Shiwu Academy in Changsha, where he studied under Liang Qichao. In 1900 he joined Tang Caichang’s failed Independence Army rising and afterwards changed his name to E—meaning a sharpened blade—as a sign of starting afresh. With Liang’s help he went to Japan, studied at the Seijō School in Tokyo and then graduated with distinction from the cavalry branch of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.

Training Troops and the Double Ninth Uprising

On his return Cai trained New Army troops in Hunan and Guangxi. Li Jingxi, then governor of Guangxi, appointed him chief staff officer and chief instructor of the province’s New Army, and after Li became governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou he brought Cai to Yunnan to command the 37th Brigade of the 19th Division. On 30 October 1911, in response to the Wuchang Uprising, Cai led a rising in Yunnan, known as the Double Ninth Uprising; when the Yunnan military government was formed on 1 November he was chosen as military governor. In office he twice cut his own salary, from 600 to 120 dollars a month and then to 60.

His attitude towards Yuan Shikai shifted several times. In January 1912 he praised Yuan to Li Yuanhong as a great man of the age; two weeks later, when Yuan tried to convene a national assembly in Beijing to decide the form of state, he denounced it to Sun Yat-sen and the provincial governors as a scheme of Yuan’s and organised a Yunnan northern expedition; after the abdication and Yuan’s inauguration he sent congratulations. Liang Qichao later remarked that Cai had rather fancifully hoped to lead Yuan onto the proper political path and do constructive work for the country.

Cai never joined the Nationalist Party; after leaving the United Republican Party he declared that soldiers should not belong to parties. After Song Jiaoren’s assassination in 1913 he opposed taking up arms against Yuan Shikai, arguing that the case should be settled by law, and Yunnan remained neutral in the Second Revolution.

In Beijing

In September 1913 Cai was summoned to Beijing; before leaving Yunnan he declined a gift of 30,000 dollars voted by the provincial assembly, accepting only 5,000 to repay debts and for other purposes. In Beijing he was given the nominal title of General Zhaowei among other posts and, according to Jiang Baili, did the work of each post while declining the salaries. Yuan reportedly judged him far above Huang Xing and the other Nationalists. Zeng Yeying of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argues that Yuan valued Cai’s military talent but feared his influence in the southwest and never fully trusted him. After the Chou’an hui was formed in August 1915, Cai was the first to sign a statement by military leaders on 25 August favouring monarchy, and in Beijing he called his teacher Liang Qichao out of touch; yet, according to China Newsweek, from 15 August he regularly travelled to Tianjin to confer secretly with Liang. Between October and November 1915 he requested sick leave from Yuan four times and made his way back to Yunnan via Tianjin, Japan and Vietnam. Yang Du, a leader of the Chou’an hui, warned Yuan that letting him go was like releasing a tiger into the mountains. The popular story that he escaped with the help of the courtesan Xiao Fengxian is, the same article says, regarded by historians as legend.

The National Protection War

Cai and Dai Kan reached Kunming on 22 December 1915; on the 25th Yunnan declared independence, beginning the National Protection War, and Cai led the First Army into Sichuan. The first of the principles he wrote out was to work with all citizens to uphold the republican form of state so that monarchy would never again arise in China. He was already suffering from a throat illness, and during the fighting at Naxi in southern Sichuan was reported to sleep less than three hours a night. Zhu De later recalled that when he saw Cai before the battle he was emaciated, his cheeks sunken, yet still insisted on going to the front.

Death and State Funeral

After the war Cai was appointed military governor and civil governor of Sichuan, and at his repeated request the Beijing government allowed him to resign and seek treatment in Japan. When Huang Xing died in October 1916, Cai wrote an elegiac couplet for him that proved to be his last writing. He died of his throat illness in Fukuoka, Japan, on 8 November 1916. In his dictated final telegram he asked for a modest burial, saying that his short life had not allowed him to serve the Republic fully. On 12 April 1917 he was given a state funeral on Yuelu Mountain in Changsha, the first in the Republic’s history. In 1951 the Central People’s Government recognised him as a revolutionary martyr.