Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Jiang Yiwu
Hunanese soldier who headed the Literary Society in the Hubei New Army and, as provisional commander, ordered the Wuchang rising before escaping arrest
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as Zi Bokui
Jiang Yiwu, courtesy name Bokui, came from Lizhou in Hunan; he was already active against the Qing as a normal-school student in Changde. Enlisting in the Hubei New Army's 41st Regiment in 1909, he built revolutionary groups among the soldiers, and in January 1911 he reorganised one of them as the Literary Society and became its president. In September the society merged its plans with the Common Advancement Society, and a meeting on the 24th made him provisional commander of the rising. On 9 October, after a bomb accident exposed the Hankou base, he issued from the Xiaochaojie headquarters in Wuchang the order to rise that night; police raided the house, and he escaped while Liu Fuji and others were taken. After the rising succeeded he returned to Wuchang and directed its defence after Hanyang fell. Opposing Yuan Shikai in 1913, he fled through Guangxi, was arrested at Quanzhou and put to death in Guilin that September at twenty-nine. In 1916 he was reburied on Yuelu Mountain in Changsha.
Life and times
Dates 1885 CE–1913 CE