Yes, just last year, that is, in the second year of Ansei (1855), under the continuous blows of natural and man-made disasters, the chief of the old middle finally changed - Masahiro Abe, who was praised as a "wise state" and had always been good at the left and right, couldn't bear it anymore, and took the initiative to give up his position to Hotta Masamu.

Since the sixth year of the Treasure Calendar (1756), after the ninth Tokugawa shogun's family relegated the close attendant "Imperial Side Imperial Servant" to "Lao Zhongge", Lao Zhong was the apex of the shogunate's ministers, and the first seat of the old middle became the first minister under the public style.

As a result, the shogunate has experienced great upheaval over the years, both before and after the change.

There were early signs of this matter, and on the fourth day of the eighth month of the Japanese calendar, the old middle Matsudaira Chengquan and Matsudaira Tadayu were forced to resign.

At the same time, he was also implicated in the Ometsu Ido Hiromichi - when the black ship visited for the first time in the sixth year of Kaei (1853), he was involved in the negotiations with Uraga Shinto.

The cause of the incident was that the old lord of Mito, Tokugawa Saiaki, headed by the Owari and Mito families, including Aizu, Satsuma, Fukuoka, Uwajima, Tokushima, Tottori, Okayama, etc., a total of more than 20 clans, pedigree, and foreign daimyo joined forces and demanded that Edo properly handle the three things.

The three events are "Western ordnance procurement", "confirmation of foreign policy", and "divine warning":

The first "Western ordnance procurement" was that everyone expressed dissatisfaction with the shogunate's eating alone - the shogunate engaged in a large number of advanced ordnance through the Hamheng foreign company, mainly rifled guns, breech guns, revolvers and mines, but it had been kept secret and made a fortune, and finally the stuffing was revealed.

There are no impermeable walls in this world.

Especially after the second visit of the black ships in the seventh year of Kaei (1854), each family began to reorganize their armaments, and then these people realized that something was wrong—they were all guns, why was the shogunate so effective?

In particular, the Mito Domain was particularly dissatisfied with the fact that in September of the 6th year of Kaei (1853), during the Edo Tsukitsu Gun Island drill, the large cylinders cast by the house were compared and gained a reputation as "useless". Tokugawa Saiaki and his son originally thought it was a craftsman problem, but after strict investigation, it turned out that this was not the case at all, and it turned out that the rifled cannon was doing something strange.

The daimyo of Kyushu Island, on the other hand, also discovered the existence of rifled guns in Odaiba, Nagasaki.

Everyone thought that this was sold to the shogunate, so they ordered from the Lankoku Shogunate through the shogunate - the rifled cannon was not a specialty of Xianheng & Co., in 1846, the Cavelli of the Kingdom of Sardinia made a rifled cannon, and then the countries of Europa imitated it.

When the goods arrived, not only these people, but also the shogunate, were surprised!

The effect of the rifled cannon of the Lankoku Merchant House is better than that of the bronze smoothbore cannon of Fuso, but the effect is just like that, and it is easy to explode, which is not at all comparable to the rifled guns purchased by the shogunate before - Shinagawa Odaiba and Nagasaki Odaiba in Edo have live-fire exercises, and there are people who have long been interested in getting specific data.

What's even more deceptive is that the material of the rifled cannon of the Languo Commercial Hall is bronze, and the price is expensive, while the material of the rifled cannon of the shogunate seems to be cast iron, although the specific price is not known, but fools can understand that this price must be "one in the sky and one underground".

Fortunately, because of the high price, they didn't dare to sell more for the first time, and the purchasers escaped by luck.

And the shogunate was also secretly glad - at that time, it was Xianheng Foreign Company that took the initiative to promote it, because the price was much cheaper than the Languo Merchant House, so he chose this one. Live for a long time, it turns out that there are really honest businessmen in this world.

However, from then on, some people were eyeing the shogunate, and it didn't take long for the breech guns, breech guns, revolvers, and mines to be picked up, and then asked the shogunate to purchase them on their behalf.

But such sharp weapons, how could the shogunate be willing to hand it over to outsiders, so it pushed back and dragged it out until things were out of control - you said that the Fuso was unanimous, the Kyoto court, the Edo shogunate and the daimyo in various places should be united, and the good things were not shared at all, where is this sincerity and where is the discipline?!

The second major event is the "confirmation of foreign policies".

I asked this question because one thing happened, and because I discovered another thing, I confused many daimyo and shogunates, and I couldn't do it without asking.

"In the autumn and July of the second year of Anzheng, Lan Guo sent a steamboat."

The Rankoku Shokan sent a steam warship as agreed, and the shogunate renamed it "Kansho Maru", and established the Nagasaki Naval Army Training Center.

The "Kankan Maru" is a paddlewheel steam-sail hybrid warship with a total length of 65.8 meters, a displacement of 353 tons, a top speed of 6 knots, and 6 guns.

There is a saying, "Born is the peak, and good is backward".

This phrase can be used to describe the daimyo such as Mito and Satsuma, who actively responded to the shogunate's call to build large ships, only to find that the construction was useless.

"Looking at the current situation, we know the necessity of a big ship. Therefore, from this day on, the great names can build great ships. However, the manufacturing method, the purpose of use, and the quantity of manufacturing still need to be requested."

On September 15, 1853, the shogunate lifted the ban on the construction of large ships.

After that, the daimyo along the coast started a plan to build large ships.

For example, in the same year, the Mito Domain began construction of the Western-style ship "Asahi Maru" on Ishikawa Island in Edo, and the Kagoshima Domain also began construction of the Western-style three-masted sailing ship "Shohira Maru".

In the 7th year of Kaei (1854), the Satsuma Shimazu family completed the construction of the Etsutsutsu boat, a small sailing ship with a western keel in the shape of Fuso, which was less than nine boats (16 meters) long, but accumulated valuable experience.

At the end of the same year, the Satsuma clan completed the construction of the "Shohei Maru" and handed it over to the shogunate, which was later known as the "Shohei Maru", a three-masted galleon, with a displacement of about 16 cannons.

The Satsuma clan also started the construction of four other sail warships that year.

In contrast, the Mito Domain was much inferior, and the "Rising Sun Maru" built at the Ishikawashima shipyard found a lot of problems during the sea trial, and basically it was not saved, so it had to be dismantled and rebuilt.

However, the first Western warship to be completed was the "Phoenix Maru" built by the shogunate itself - the construction started in October of the sixth year of Kaei, and was completed in June of the seventh year of Kaei (1854), a three-masted sail warship, with a total length of .4 meters), and a displacement of tons).

But as soon as Lan Guo's "sightseeing pill" came, everyone was a little deflated, and it seemed that it was useless to work hard to build warships - everyone knows the benefits of steam ships, but if they can't build them now, can they continue to build sail warships?

Originally, this was nothing, and all Fusang now knew that his warship was backward, but another thing aroused everyone's anger:

It's not that the shogunate is eating alone again this time - this time the Nagasaki Navy Training Center allowed the coastal daimyo to send people to participate. But it's good to die or not, and it was exposed in the Tsushima Navy Mission established a year before, and when you look at it, don't you eat alone? How much the hell is the shogunate hiding!

In addition, the most uncomfortable thing is that after confirmation, Lan Guo did not participate in the Tsushima Naval Army Training Center, so which country is the Western instructor of Tsushima?

Feelings: All Fuso unanimously fought against foreign insults, that is, this time we must tell us, "Who did Edo secretly collude with everyone from you?" Will the country be opened for trade next year? We want to know! ”

In the final analysis, this is the problem of the Fuso shogunate system - the important ministers of the shogunate are composed of a limited number of daimyo of the clan, the daimyo of the pedigree and the banner of the daimyo of the shogunate, and most of the Tokugawa clans, many daimyo of the pedigree daimyo and all the daimyo of the outer daimyo lack deep involvement, so everyone is afraid of accidentally being cheated by the shogunate!

As for the last "divine warning", it is because of the successive earthquakes in Fusang in recent years, according to the Confucian doctrine of "the unity of heaven and man", this is the work of someone, and the daimyo are uneasy about it—in fact, it is a hint that "the court and the central government have the power to be in charge, and the traitors are doing it."

In fact, these are all suspicions caused by the fluctuation of people's hearts:

Since the shogunate signed two contracts with the Mi people and the English people in the seventh year of Kaei (1854), Fuso was a little panicked, and after hundreds of years of peace, he was suddenly targeted by these fierce gods and evil gods of Western countries, what should he do in the future? Where is the way out?

The shogunate, as the center of Fuso's administration, that is, the leading brother, had to solve this problem - otherwise it would be a great crisis for the shogunate and the shogunate system composed of various feudal domains!

"Thinking of good generals in national distress", these 20 or so daimyo really did not sincerely cause chaos to the shogunate, and more or less asked the shogunate to come up with a solution because they felt the crisis.

For example, Tokugawa Saiaki, Shimazu Saibin, and others all felt that if they were to change power, then the situation would be much better.

Therefore, under the oppression of external forces, the shogunate system, which was already very weak in internal cohesion, was greatly tested - from the 7th year of Kaei (1854), the chief Abe attendant of the old middle school and others proposed to "raise Fusang in unison" in the reform of the security government, and they themselves were forced to a dead end.

In order to "raise Fusang in unison", it is necessary for the small court and the daimyo to participate in the governance of the government extensively, and the previous organizational structure is no longer suitable, and a new power structure must be found.

The pie of power is so big, and there are more people who eat it, so how can it be distributed? Whoever is humble is a fool, so it is not at all surprising that there will be disputes and even fights!

These are the conclusions of Naohide and Youngmin when they analyze the current situation.

This information was learned by Hidetoshi Egawa during his mission to Edo at the end of April 1856, and most of the inside story came from Nagasaki's Oguri Tadashun, who began to "stay in the prefecture for a year" in Edo, and another Nagasaki priest, Arao Narimitsu, who was "in the country" in Nagasaki.

According to what Yingmin learned, in response to the doubts of many daimyos, the response of the old and middle schools at that time seemed very weak:

Regarding the doubts about eating alone caused by the "Western ordnance procurement", although the old and middle schools gritted their teeth and did not expose the existence of Xianheng Foreign Company, they still handed over the list of goods and gave up forty percent of the ordnance share distribution;

As for why the "Tsushima Naval Training Institute" was kept secret, the old and middle schools said that the "situation is special", the other party is a maritime force, not a certain country, so there is no situation where the shogunate communicates with a certain country privately;

"Confirmation of foreign policies", the shogunate once again expressed the attitude of collective efforts, reiterating that "the opening of the port is a helpless move, and the non-trade is the current national policy";

As for the "divine warnings", the elders believed that "if the gods help the gods, the gods have issued disaster prevention orders in advance before many earthquakes, and the families have been favored, so the shogunate is under the care of the gods, and the suspicion of 'warning' is completely wrong."

However, at the beginning, the old middle Matsudaira Chengquan and Matsudaira Tadayu, who advocated "peace is precious" and supported the signing of the two agreements, were still forced to resign in August of the Heli calendar - most of the daimyo on the table this time were hardliners, and they opposed the signing of agreements with the Mi people and the British, believing that "he is insatiable, and he has to make inches, and his desires are difficult to fill." Once the agreement is opened, there will be endless troubles". So the resignation of the two can appease these people.

However, although the Qi Zhao family was appeased, many of the daimyo and flag books who held the real power of the shogunate began to be dissatisfied again, thinking that "the response was too weak, and there was a fall in the prestige of the shogunate", so the chief old man Abe and others added a new old old middle Hotta Masamu at the beginning of October of the Japanese calendar - this is highly respected, and he was originally in favor of signing agreements with foreign countries, and appointing him is a balance.

Since then, Abe's nickname "Ladyboy Catfish" has spread far and wide, "Ladyboy Catfish" is a kind of origin (mascot) of Fuso, and people use it to ridicule Abe-sama's tendency to "have milk for children who can scream", and whoever makes a lot of trouble will benefit.

However, not long after Hotta Masamu took office, "the Edo Land earthquake occurred in winter and October", and Lord Abe's attendant, who was overwhelmed by government affairs and disaster prevention, finally became exhausted and took the initiative to give up the throne of the chief of the old middle school to Hotta Masamu.

In April of the 7th year of Kaei (1854), due to the signing of the "Fuso Mikuni Peace Agreement", Abe's attendant resigned on his own initiative, but was retained by the new minister. This time, the same thing happened, and the Gongfang family still refused to let Abe completely resign, and only agreed to his resignation as the chief of the old middle school, and appointed him as the "winner Fang Lao Zhong" - the winner Fang Lao Zhong was in charge of finance and agricultural affairs, and had a lot of real power, and was regarded as the second seat of the old middle school.

At the same time, other important positions in the shogunate were adjusted, the most important of which was that the service of the supreme inspector "Ometsu" was increased by two after the departure of Ido Hiromichi, and the Shogunate Banner was held by the Shogunate Banner, which means that in this turmoil caused by the daimyos, the Omin Bannermen also reacted to this.

And the two commissioners of the white lord, Naohide Hori and Hidetoshi Egawa, not only survived this turmoil, but were also promoted to the rank of stone high and official in the fourth month of the second year of the Japanese calendar, on the grounds of "courage to do things and outstanding achievements".