Hsinchu Campaign
The Japanese had hoped that their occupation of Taipei on 8 June 1895 would end the fighting in Taiwan. It did not. The Republic of Formosa tottered on for another five months of existence, as its presidency was assumed by Liu Yung-fu on 26 June in Tainan. Liu's assumption of the presidency stiffened the will of ordinary Formosans to resist the invaders. The result was a perceptible growth in guerrilla activity against the Japanese, and as the month of June wore on it became clear that all the island's main towns would have to be occupied forcibly before opposition to the Japanese invasion collapsed. From now on, the capture of Tainan became a political as well as a strategic imperative for the Japanese. During the next four months the Japanese would direct their efforts towards occupying Tainan and snuffing out the nascent Formosan Republic.
Japanese invasion of Taiwan (1895)
When the news of the treaty's contents reached Taiwan, a number of notables from central Taiwan led by Chiu Feng-chia decided to resist the transfer of Taiwan to Japanese rule. On 23 May, these men proclaimed the establishment of a free and democratic Republic of Formosa in Taipei. Tang Jingsong, the Qing governor-general of Taiwan, was prevailed upon to become the republic's first President, and his old friend Liu Yongfu, the retired Black Flag Army commander who had become a national hero in China for his victories against the French in northern Vietnam a decade earlier, was invited to serve as Grand General of the Army. Chiu Feng-chia was appointed Grand Commander of Militia, with the power to raise local militia units throughout the island to resist the Japanese. On the Chinese mainland Chang Chih-tung, the powerful governor-general of Liangkiang, tacitly supported the Formosan resistance movement, and the Republicans also appointed Ch'en Chi-t'ung, a disgraced Chinese diplomat who understood European ways of thinking, as the Republic's foreign minister. His job would be to sell the Republic abroad.