Feng Guozhang
During the period 1911–1915, Yuan Shikai remained the only man who could hold the Beiyang Army together. He and his followers strongly resisted any attempt by the Kuomintang (KMT) to insert outsiders into their chain of command. They negotiated a £25-million (sterling) loan from a five-power banking consortium to support the Beiyang Army, despite an uproar from the KMT. In 1913 Yuan Shikai appointed four of his loyal lieutenants as military governors in southern provinces: Duan Qirui in Anhui, Feng Guozhang in Jiangsu, Li Shun in Jiangxi and Tang Xiangming in Hunan. The unified Beiyang military clique now attained its maximum extent of territorial control. It exercised firm control over North China and the Yangtze River provinces. Throughout 1914 it supported Yuan in making revisions to the constitution to give himself treaty- and war-making powers as well as substantial emergency powers (the three commanders were nicknamed by the newspapers of the time as angel, tiger and dog. Angel was Duan Qirui, tiger Wang Shizhen and dog Feng Guozhang).