When Liang set sail for Fremantle on the steamliner Brittania from the port of Penang on 7 October 1900, his political career in exile had reached a very low point. Less than two months earlier on 22 August, 1900, his friend Tang Caichang 唐才常 and several of his former students had been arrested and executed under orders from Zhang Zhidong 张之洞, governor of the Hunan-Hubei region, for attempting to stage the overthrow of the Qing government. This was an ambitious attempt, masterminded by Liang and Tang, to stage an uprising that would lead to the declaration of the independence of central China from Peking and the establishment of a new constitutional government in which both Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao would play leading roles.
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