Homer Lea: American Soldier of Fortune

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION Homer Lea’s career was stranger than many stories found in romantic fiction. Lea, a five-foot, three-inch hunchback who suffered from debilitating health, overcame his afflictions in pursuing dreams and ambitions such as few achieve. He is best remembered as a somewhat mysterious adventurer, author, and geopolitical strategist who challenged conventional wisdom and confronted significant odds to create for himself a role in world politics. He began his adventures in 1900, after dropping out of Stanford University and going to China during the Boxer Rebellion, and ultimately became the trusted personal military advisor to Chinese revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen during the 1911 Chinese republican revolution. In the interim he became a celebrated author and internationally recognized geopolitical strategist . In 1912, poised on the brink of fulfilling a Napoleonic destiny in China, his health gave out. He died later that year, shortly before his thirty-sixth birthday, but the actions of his short life left a profound imprint on the history of his era. Lea became involved in Chinese affairs while attending Stanford University from 1897 to 1899. In San Francisco he joined a secret Chinese movement, the Pao Huang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society), which had been organized by K’ang Yu-wei, formerly a close advisor to Emperor Kwang-hsu. K’ang Yu-wei was behind the emperor’s initiation of a series of liberal reforms in the late 1890s that led to a palace coup d’état by the conservative regent, Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. She imprisoned the emperor and put a price on K’ang Yu-wei’s head. K’ang Yu-wei then established the Pao Huang Hui to restore the emperor to power. Lea recognized a great opportunity for adventure with the Chinese and promoted himself among the reformers as a military expert, claiming to be a relative, which he was not, of the famous Confederate general Robert E. Lee. He dropped out of Stanford and in the summer of 1900 went to China, where he received a lieutenant general’s commission in the nascent Pao Huang Hui army. His role entailed training Pao Huang Hui soldiers in Kwangtung and Kwangsi 4 • Homer Lea provinces just as China became embroiled in the Boxer Rebellion, although he himself took no part in the fighting. Ultimately, the Pao Huang Hui’s military plans to restore the emperor to power failed, but Lea, a valued member of the movement, returned to the United States to continue his work to further Pao Huang Hui goals. In 1904 Lea masterminded a plan to covertly train a cadre of Chinese soldiers in America. Under his guidance the Pao Huang Hui established a network of military schools, as a cover, in more than twenty cities nationwide. The intent was to have these soldiers return to China, infiltrate the imperial Chinese army, and then take part in a coordinated coup d’état to restore Emperor Kwang-hsu to his throne. Lea hired former U.S. Army soldiers as instructors and commissioned them in the Pao Huang Hui’s army. He outfitted his soldiers in altered U.S. Army uniforms, simply replacing the national eagle on the buttons and cap with the imperial Chinese dragon. For himself, he wore an American lieutenant general’s uniform, with the altered insignia, along with a modified U.S. Army officer’s sword with a dragon handle . His covert training operation nearly collapsed in 1905 when the U.S. Secret Service and several states investigated it for possible violations of neutrality laws. He also fended off the ambitions of another American with ties to the Pao Huang Hui, an opportunist named Richard A. Falkenberg who sought to install himself as the head of the Chinese cadets. Lea’s affiliation with the Pao Huang Hui ended by 1908, the year Emperor Kwang-hsu and the dowager empress died (within two days of each other); when they died, so did his commitment to bolstering up the Manchu dynasty. Lea’s next involvement in Chinese affairs brought him into contact with Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose revolutionary movement was dedicated to the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. In 1910 Dr. Yung Wing, an eminent Chinese scholar and friend of Lea, arranged for Lea to join forces with Sun Yat-sen, who was in the United States on a fund-raising trip. Sun Yat-sen made Lea his military advisor and promised him an important military position in the...