Zhang Xun

Beiyang government and warlords Monarchy and royalism 1854–1923 ○ Natural death

Qing loyalist general who never cut his queue, the “Queue General” who restored Puyi in 1917

From Fengxin in Jiangxi, he escorted the Empress Dowager Cixi during the Boxer crisis of 1900 and became a Beiyang Army general under Yuan Shikai. In 1911 he fought the revolutionaries for the Qing at Nanjing, and as a general of the Republic he refused to cut his queue as a sign of loyalty to the Qing. In the Second Revolution of 1913 he took Nanjing from the Kuomintang forces and let his troops loot the city, yet Yuan made him a field marshal. Summoned in 1917 to mediate between President Li Yuanhong and Premier Duan Qirui, he entered Beijing, forced the dissolution of parliament and on 1 July proclaimed Puyi’s restoration together with Kang Youwei and others. The restoration collapsed after twelve days before Duan’s republican troops, and he took refuge in the Dutch legation and left politics.

Also known as: Chang Hsün · Chang Hsun