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.