Li Lieh-chün 李烈鈞 Orig. Li Lieh-hsun 李烈訓 T. Hsieh-ho 協和 H. Hsia-huang 俠黃 Li Lieh-chün (1882-1946), T'ung-meng-hui military man who commanded troops at Kiukiang, Anking, and Wuchang during the 1911 revolution. As military governor of Kiangsi, he led the Kuomintang's so-called second revolution of 1913. He joined with Ts'ai O and T'ang Chi-yao in leading the 1515-16 campaign against Yuan Shih-k'ai. After serving as Sun Yat-sen's chief of staff in the 1917-23 period, he became an active supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and held important posts at Nanking in 1927.

The forebears of Li Lieh-chün had been farmers in northern Kiangsi until the time of the Taiping Rebellion, when his father and his uncles had joined the insurgent forces. After the rebellion ended, they engaged in transporting tea from Nanchang to Kiukiang. The business prospered, and Li Lieh-chün spent his boyhood in comfortable circumstances. After receiving a traditional education in the Chinese classics, he decided to pursue a military career. Accordingly, he was one of the first students to enroll at the Kiangsi Wu-pei hsueh-t'ang [military preparatory school] when it w'as established in 1902. After graduation in 1904, he was sent to Japan for further study. He enrolled at the Shimbu Gakko [military preparatory academy] in Tokyo, where his classmates included Li Ken-yuan and T'ang Chi-yao (qq.v.). He came to know a number of Chinese revolutionaries in Japan, and in June 1906 he joined the T'ung-meng-hui. After completing the training course at the Shimbu Gakko, he received a year's field training with an artillery unit. In 1907 he enrolled at the Shikan Gakko [military academy] as a member of the sixth class, which included such future military leaders as Sun Ch'uan-fang and Yen Hsi-shan (qq.v.) as well as his former classmates Li Ken-yuan and T'ang Chi-yao. After completing his studies at the Shikan Gakko in December 1908, Li Lieh-chün returned to China, where he received command of a battalion in the 54th Regiment, stationed in Kiangsi. Early in 1910 he went to Kunming and served as an instructor and then as the director of a provincial military school. Li Ken-yuan and T'ang Chi-yao also taught at the military school, and Li Lieh-chün worked with Li Ken-yuan, who was head of the Yunnan branch of the T'ung-meng-hui, to win student support for the revolutionary movement. In 1911 Li Lieh-chün was ordered to participate in the imperial army's autumn military maneuvers at T'aihu. He reached Hankow in mid-October, only three days after the Wuchang revolt had begun. After surveying the Wuhan situation, he went to Peking and met with several republican revolutionaries who had studied with him in Japan.

At the end of October 1911 Li responded to a call from revolutionaries in his native province and left Peking for Kiukiang, where he became chief of staff to Chiang Ch'ün, who then resigned in his favor. With the help of Wu T'ieh-ch'eng (q.v.) and others, he negotiated with Huang Chung-ying, the commander of an imperial navy fleet, and gained control of Huang's ships and their crews. Ma Yu-pao, the tutuh [military governor] of Kiukiang, named Li commander in chief of all army and navy units in the area. By this time, fighting had broken out among the republican forces in Anhwei. When the people of Anhwei appealed to Li to restore order to their province, he sent some of his land units to Anking and sailed with his naval forces to join them. Upon arrival at Anking he was chosen tutuh of Anhwei, but he soon relinquished this oflfice and sailed upriver to aid the republican troops at Wuchang, who were being attacked by the imperial army of Feng Kuo-chang (q.v.).

Li Lieh-chün remained in Wuchang until March 1912, when he was elected tutuh of Kiangsi. He went to Nanchang, assumed office, and began the work of restoring political and economic stability to the province. He also reorganized the Kiangsi military forces. In May 1913, after the assassination of the Kuomintang leader Sung Chiao-jen (q-v.), Li Lieh-chün joined with Hu Han-min, T'an Yen-k'ai (qq.v.), and Po Wen-wei, the Kuomintang governors of Kwangtung, Hunan, and Anhwei, in a public denouncement of Yuan's government at Peking. On 9 June, Yuan responded by dismissing Li as governor of Kiangsi. Soon afterwards, Hu Han-min and Po Wen-wei were also dismissed. Yuan then ordered the Peiyang Army to move southward toward the Yangtze, with Li Lieh-chün's base in Kiangsi as a principal target of military operations. As the First Peiyang Army of Tuan Chih-kuei and the Second Peiyang Army of Feng Kuo-chang advanced in a two-pronged drive on Kiukiang and Nanking, Li Lieh-chün went to Shanghai to consult with Sun Yat-sen and other Kuomintang leaders. Li insisted that the Kuomintang declare war on Yuan Shih-k'ai, and, with Sun's approval, he returned to Kiangsi early in July to mobilize his forces. Because Kiukiang had already fallen to Yuan's forces, Li concentrated his troops downriver from Kiukiang at Huk'ou. On 12 July, he declared Kiangsi's independence and assumed the title of commander in chief of the Kiangsi Anti-Yuan Army [T'ao-Yuan-chün], thereby initiating the so-called second revolution. Although Kuomintang leaders in Kwangtung, Anhwei, Fukien, Hunan, Nanking, Shanghai, and Chungking followed Li's lead in declaring independence from Yuan's regime, most of them were unable to giv'e Li military assistance, and others were unwilling to do so. Thus, Li's troops at Huk'ou and the Kuomintang forces at Nanking were left to bear the brunt of the Peiyang offensive. Li's troops could not resist the onslaught of the larger and better trained First Peiyang Army, and on 25 July 1913 they retreated from Huk'ou to Nanchang. By 19 August, the Kiangsi Anti-Yuan Army had been routed and scattered, and Nanchang had fallen to Yuan's forces. Li Lieh-chün took refuge in Hunan, hid on a river steamer bound for Shanghai, and sailed from Shanghai for Japan. The fall of Nanking on 1 September 1913 signified the end of the second revolution and the triumph of Yuan Shih-k'ai.

Early in 1914 Li Lieh-chün went to France and spent several months at the home of Chang Chi (q.v.) in the Paris suburbs. In October, he decided to return to China in the hope of organizing resistance to Yuan Shih-k'ai. His destination was Yunnan province, for his old friend and classmate T'ang Chi-yao had become its governor. When Li's ship reached Indo- China, the French authorities refused him permission to land, and he was obliged to spend several months in Singapore. In the summer of 1915, after learning of the campaign to make Yuan Shih-k'ai monarch, Li sent some of his associates to Yunnan, where, with the tacit consent of T'ang Chi-yao, they began to organize anti-Yuan groups within the Yunnan army. Li also established contact with Ts'ai O (q.v.), a former governor of Yunnan who was working to organize resistance to Yuan Shih-k'ai. In November 1915 Li Lieh-chün was allowed to pass through Indo-China. He arrived in Kunming on 17 December, and Ts'ai O joined him two days later. The two men and T'ang Chi-yao's military subordinates prevailed upon T'ang to send Yuan Shih-k'ai an ultimatum which demanded that the monarchical enterprise be abandoned and that those who had promoted it be punished. Yuan did not reply, and T'ang declared Yunnan's independence on 25 December 1915. Military leaders in Yunnan held a council of war at which they organized the National Protection Army [Hu-kuo-chün]. It was composed of the First Army, led by Ts'ai O, which was ordered to attack Szechwan; the Second Army, commanded by Li Lieh-chün, which was ordered to pass through Kwangsi and Kwangtung to Kiangsi; and the Third Army, nominally under T'ang Chi-yao but led by Tai K'an, which was ordered to march into Kweichow.

Early in 1916 the First Army and the Third Army moved north from Kunming, and Li Lieh-chün's Second Army moved east into Kwangsi. Lu Jung-ting (q.v.), the governor of Kwangsi, allowed Li's forces free passage through the province. Despite stiff resistance from the forces of Lung Chin-kuang, a brother of the pro-Yuan governor of Kwangtung, Lung Chi-kuang , Li's army won control of several cities in northern and central Kwangtung and advanced eastward to Nanhsiung (Namyung), near the Kiangsi border. By the end of March 1916 Kweichow and Kwangsi had declared themselves independent of Yuan's government. Lu Jung-t'ing's forces joined those of Li Lieh-chün in invading Kwangtung, and they forced Lung Chi-kuang to declare Kwangtung's independence in April. Soon afterwards, several other provinces followed suit. Yuan Shih-k'ai had sought to stem the rising tide of opposition by announcing his abandonment of the monarchical plan, but this gesture had failed to appease the leaders of the National Protection Army. In mid-April, Li Lieh-chün, Ts'ai O, and T'ang Chi-yao demanded that Yuan resign from the presidency in favor of Li Yuan-hung and that the National Assembly of 1913 be restored. Because Yuan did not accede to their demands, they formed a military council at Chaoch'ing (Kaoyao) on 8 May. The stated purpose of the council was to act as the legitimate government of China until such time as Li Yuan-hung replaced Yuan Shih-k'ai as president.

The death of Yuan Shih-k'ai on 6 June 1916 and the passing of the presidency to Li Yuan-hung brought the National Protection Army's [315] Li Lieh-chün campaign to an end. Their military council was dissolved on 14 July. In northern Kwangtung, however, the fighting between Li Lieh-chün and Lung Chi-kuang continued. Li soon forced Lung's forces to withdraw to Canton, whereupon Lung's allies among the Peiyang militarists called for a campaign against Li Lieh-chün. Under heavy pressure from the Peiyang leader Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.), the premier of the Peking government, Li relinquished command of his forces, then known as the Yunnan Army in Kwangtung, and went to Shanghai. When Sun Yat-sen formed a military government at Canton in 1917, Li Lieh-chün became chief of staff in the new regime. In the spring of 1918 Li led an expedition against Lung Chi-kuang, who was attempting to recover Kwangtung, and defeated Lung's forces in May. Soon afterwards, the government at Canton was reorganized in accordance with the wishes of the Kwangsi militarists in Kwangtung, and Sun Yat-sen retired to Shanghai. Li Lieh-chün continued to serve as chief of staff at Canton, but the dominant Kwangsi faction severely limited his military authority because of his association with Sun Yat-sen.

In June 1920 the Kuomintang broke with the Kwangsi militarists, and Sun Yat-sen sent Li Lieh-chün to Yunnan to confer with T'ang Chi-yao. T'ang, who was engaged in a struggle for power in Szechwan, gave Li command of two battalions. Li's forces soon were driven from Szechwan into Kweichow, where they remained for about a year. When Sun Yat-sen established a new government at Canton in May 1921, he named Li chief of staff and ordered him to lead a combined force from Kweichow and Hunan in an attack on northern Kwangsi. Li's forces captured Kweilin in the late summer of 1921, and the Kwangtung Army of Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.) conquered southern and central Kwangsi.

In December 1921 Sun Yat-sen arrived in Kweilin to direct the advance of the expeditionary forces into Hunan. Because of the obstructive tactics of Ch'en Chiung-ming in Canton, Sun withdrew his forces from Hunan in the spring of 1922, established field headquarters at Shaokuan in northern Kwangtung, and planned an advance into Kiangsi. In late May and early June the expeditionary forces, with Li Lieh-chün as chief of staff, advanced into southern Kiangsi, causing the Peiyang governor, Ch'en Kuang-yuan, to resign and flee the province. The campaign came to an abrupt halt in mid-June when Ch'en Chiung-ming occupied Canton and took control of the government. Sun Yat-sen ordered Li's forces to return to Kwangtung and drive Ch'en from Canton. In July, the expeditionary forces were defeated and scattered by Ch'en's armies in northern Kwangtung. Li Lieh-chün fled to Hunan and made his way from there to Shanghai. After meeting with Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai, he went to Hong Kong and discussed plans for a campaign against Ch'en Chiung-ming with representatives of military leaders in Yunnan and Kwangsi.

After the defeat of Ch'en Chiung-ming by the Yunnan and Kwangsi armies and the return of Sun Yat-sen to Canton in February 1923, Li Lieh-chün was sent to Chaochow in eastern Kwangtung to reorganize units of Ch'en Chiung-ming's army which had declared allegiance to the Kuomintang. Li was recalled to Canton in June to serve as chief of general staff in Sun Yat-sen's military headquarters. At the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in January 1924, he was elected to the Central Lxecutive Committee. Late in October, Sun Yat-sen accepted an invitation from the Peking government to explore the possibilities of forming a new national government. He sent Li to Japan to investigate the prospects of Japanese support for such a venture. After Sun arrived in Japan, Li joined his entourage and accompanied him to Tientsin and to Peking, where Sun died in March 1925.

Li Lieh-chün left Peking in the spring of 1925 and went to Kalgan, where he became an adviser to Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.). After Feng's departure for Urga (Ulan Bator) in 1926, Li remained at Nank'ou with Feng's troops and accompanied them on their retreat to Suiyuan. He joined Feng at Urga, but left his service soon afterwards and went to Hong Kong. By the time Li reached Hong Kong, the forces of the Northern Expedition, led by Chiang Kai-shek, had encountered stern resistance in Kiangsi from Li's old friend and classmate Sun Ch'uan-fang. Li corresponded with Sun and went to Shanghai in December in a futile effort to win him over to the Kuomintang cause. In January 1927, after arriving at Chiang Kai-shek's military headquarters in Nanchang, Li was appointed governor of Kiangsi.

When the Kuomintang split into two major factions early in 1927, Li Lieh-chün decided to support the conservative group led by Chiang Kai-shek. Accordingly, the left-Kuomintang government at Wuhan dismissed him as governor of Kiangsi on 2 April. Li joined Chiang's opposition government at Nanking as a member of the five-man government standing committee. After Chiang Kai-shek retired from office in August, Li Lieh-chün and Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei (q.v.), the only members of the standing committee who were still in Nanking, assumed responsibility for party and government affairs. They called a conference of party and military leaders, including Li Tsung-jen, Pai Ch'ung-hsi, and Ho Ying-ch'in (qq.v.), at which a political-military council was formed, with Li Lieh-chün as its chairman. Li worked with other party leaders to reunify the Kuomintang. They intensified their efforts after Sun Ch'uan-fang and Chang Tsung-ch'ang made an unexpected attack on Nanking in late August. Li played an important part in the formation of the chung-yang t'e-pieh wei-yuan-hui (Central Special Committee), which established a new- National Government at Nanking. Li then became one of the five members of the newgovernment standing committee. On 22 November 1927 troops in Nanking fired on a crowd celebrating the victory of Li Tsung-jen over the Wuhan militarists who had opposed party reunification. The Central Special Committee was blamed for the incident, and after Chiang Kai-shek returned to Nanking in December, the committee was denounced for its alleged role in the incident and its members, including Li Lieh-chün, were dismissed from office. Li left Nanking early in 1928 and went to Shanghai. He was not reelected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in 1929. Despite his estrangement from the central party leaders, he resisted all attempts by opponents of Chiang Kai-shek to enlist his support. Although his name appeared on lists of participants in the so-called enlarged conference of 1930 and in the secessionist government formed at Canton in 1931, he did not take part in these ventures. He was restored to membership on the Central Executive Committee in November 1931, but was dropped from that body and elected to the Central Supervisory Committee in 1935. Beginning in 1932, he a so held advisory positions in the National Government. However, he no longer wielded power in either the party or the government, and he lived quietly in Shanghai until 1937. After the Sian Incident of December 1936, he served as presiding judge at the trial of Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.).

After the Sino-Japanese war began in the summer of 1937, Li Lieh-chün moved to Kunming and then to Chungking, where he served on the State Council of the National Government. He died in Chungking early in 1946, at the age of 65 sui.