On the 4th day of the seventh month of the fifth year of Ansei (1858), the Shogunate was defeated.

But this has nothing to do with Naoxiu - even though Qi Zhao himself has praised him for developing the Northern Ezo Land and fighting back against the invasion of Rusya, in fact, Naohide and Qi Zhao have never had anything to do with it.

What really gave Naohide a headache was that the Ruthia warship was pressing, so where he, the first person to provoke the dispute between the two sides, went from here, and now it became a big problem.

But "the blessing is incomparable, and the disaster is not a single line", before Zhixiu took a breath, the bad news of Jiushan came, due to overwork, Mr. Tan'an died suddenly on the fourth day of the seventh month of the calendar.

After Naoxiu got the news, he immediately visited Xiaopu and asked to visit Jiushan Mountain. However, until July 15, when Mr. Tanan's coffin was transferred back to Edo, he did not get the corresponding permission.

It's not that the shogunate is unkind, but that Naohide can't leave—in early June of the Japanese calendar, the envoys of Lucia and England visited Edo, and in addition to the negotiations agreed on trade, the dispute over the battle of the White Lord also became a key topic in the negotiations. As a straight show of the parties, he naturally can't get out.

In August 1857 Lucia invaded the White Lord, but was defeated by a light enemy. This matter is very clear, as evidenced by photographs and the confessions of Lucia's captured sailors.

However, the Lutian envoy Ignatiev insisted that this was a one-sided statement, and that according to him, it was the Lucian navy that had recently come ashore with pirates and then been unsuspecting by the Fuso. As for the confession, it is the product of torture and is completely inadvincing.

Therefore, he demanded that the shogunate apologize and pay reparations and severely punish the parties involved.

However, the Lu envoy then made a big mistake - seeing that the negotiating opponent was weak, he actually opened his mouth and proposed that Fuso should cede the northern Ezo land to Lusia.

The shogunate was originally prepared to settle the matter, even if he accompanied some money to accept it, but the Rusia envoy reversed black and white and was insatiable, which completely aroused the disgust of the important ministers, and the foreign trade hangers who went to negotiate changed their previous forbearance and hardened their attitudes.

According to the words of the leader of the negotiations, Chuanlu Shengmo, "Grievances are for seeking perfection, but 'completeness' is no longer available, what is grievances!" ”

This change in the shogunate's attitude was actually influenced by external factors:

More than a month ago, the Anglo-Franco-Coalition defeated the Tang people, and the draft of the Jinmen agreement was completed. After this assessment, the shogunate decided to open the country to trade so as not to "repeat the mistakes of its neighbors."

But it didn't work out, and things went back and forth:

On June 25, 1858, 1858, 12 ships of the Anglo-Buddhist alliance attacked the Dagu Fort again, but the result was a disastrous defeat, and even Admiral James Hope was seriously wounded.

After hearing the news, the attitude of quite a few ministers wavered again, feeling that even if the country was opened to trade, there was no need to make too many concessions. However, in the end, it was the original view that "you can't open a soldier without a plan and die for life" prevailed.

But what I never expected was that the Lu envoy actually put forward a request to cut the land!

It was obviously an invasion, but the result was to reverse right and wrong, and it was so excessive, and it suddenly forced the shogunate to a dead corner that could not be turned around - the invasion failed and proposed to cede the land, and the heart of the destruction of Fuso can be said to be undisguised, and even the most serious shoguns have nothing to say.

However, an immediate turn of face was not the first choice - the shogunate still did not have the courage to do so, so it was decided to ask the three envoys of Mito, Lankoku, and England to help coordinate.

At this time, the three envoys were not all in Uraga:

Harris, the special envoy of the rice people, came to Shimoda in July of the third year of Ansei (1856) and did not leave;

The special envoy of the Lan State, Kurtius, was in June of the fifth year of Jiayong (1852).

He was appointed as a special envoy to Edo in March of this year, and now he has returned to Nagasaki and is discussing a trade agreement with Oguri Tadashun and others.

As for the English envoy Ergin, he came immediately after the envoy of Lucia, and is now on the warship of Uraga.

At this time, it was the end of the sixth month of the Japanese calendar, and the trade agreement between the shogunate and the Mi people had been signed, and the agreement with England was still being negotiated. At this time, if the British were asked to coordinate, Ergin would inevitably take the opportunity to ask for benefits, but now he had to be a dead horse doctor.

The envoys of the Lan Kingdom were not mentioned in Nagasaki for the time being, and the two envoys, Mi and Ying, after receiving the request of the shogunate, actively carried out activities, and within a few days informed the shogunate that the matter was in full swing - the Lucians agreed to form a four-party coordination meeting to discuss the battle of the White Lord.

The Coordination Council adopts the procedures of the Western court, with the special envoys of Mi and Ying as the magistrates, and the decision will be made after Lucia and Fuso submit their respective evidence~.

However, the whole Edo is not optimistic about this form - the hearts of non-my race will be different, people of the same language and the same species, how can the elbow turn outward, and in the end, it is not Fuso's own people who suffer!

In fact, the shogunate was also prepared for this, and had already reached an agreement with all parties before the trial, "The coordination committee can only decide on right and wrong, but cannot decide on the specific amount of compensation." ”

In other words, after deciding who is right and who is wrong, the two parties Lucia and Fuso negotiate compensation.

To put it bluntly, because the Lucians were unreasonable, and the shogunate was unwilling to go to war, they just found such a step to ease up.

The incident caused a sensation on all sides, and many people applied to observe the hearing, and finally the Coordination Committee decided to borrow the official hall of the Uraga Commission, and the number of observers was 30, half of which was arranged by the shogunate itself, and the other half was decided by the three Western countries.

On June 21, 1858, the fifth year of the reign of the Shogunate, the court was held, with the plaintiff being Rusya's envoy Ignatiev and the defendant being the former shogunate's white lord Naohide Hori.

As expected, the Mi and the British, who were magistrates, favored Lucia many times.

In fact, the shogunate was very well prepared:

Since Naohide arrived in Edo last year, photographs, confessions of captured Lucians, the merchant ships that caused the incident, and witnesses related to the White Lord have all been gathered in Edo - Naohide has taken the matter all on himself, so the backbone of the White Lord is not involved much, but only a dozen ashigaru, townspeople, fishermen, and dock workers have been involved.

But no matter how rigorous and thorough you are, the Lucia people are unreasonable.

Using his rich experience, the Lu people put forward many fallacies and heresies:

He insisted that it was the Lucian navy that chased the pirates to the shore at that time, implying that the white lord was harboring pirates;

The Fuso cargo ship involved had already been sunk at the dock by the Lucia navy, so there was no evidence of death, and the shogunate sent the shogunate to Naohide's master Misaku Ruan Fu and Sugida Chengqing's seven tricks to smoke;

As for the signed confessions of the captured Lu people, Lucia refused to admit it on the grounds that he was coerced, and also let several captured sailors retract their confessions in court, saying that the white master had abused them many times, and that the confession was the product of severe torture;

The witnesses on the white side have also been questioned many times by him in the name of interest;

The most infuriating thing is that the photos provided were also questioned by the other party as posing.

"What is the unmistakable proof?!"

In the face of Fuso's question, the two magistrates in Yingmi were speechless.

However, under the pretext of procedural justice, the two magistrates declared null and void many of the evidence and testimony of Fuso.

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After three days, even the Westerners who were watching could not stand it anymore and withdrew in protest - as for the fifteen listeners arranged by the shogunate, they had already been expelled in the name of disturbing discipline.

Seeing that the situation was deteriorating step by step, Naoxiu had to go out in person.

In the final analysis, the two professors of the Fan Shu Research Institute, Ruan Fu and Sugita Chengqing, still do not know much about Western jurisprudence, and they cannot appreciate the essence of "procedural justice" and "reasonable evidence" in jurisprudence.

Anyway, these two didn't think it would be possible, and after telling the shogunate, Naohide began to defend himself.

Based on the Civil Law of Nations, the Right to War and Peace and the Public Law of Nations, he fought against the Lucians on the system of war and the laws of war, maritime passage, coastal restrictions, and personal security.

First of all, he relied on the documents issued by James, the captain of the English ship at the time, to prove that the White Lord had never mistreated prisoners of war;

Secondly, he proceeded from international practice to explain that the landing of the Lucian naval army was illegal, although the Lu division argued that the white lord first shelled the Lu warships, which led to the war. However, at that time, there was no agreement between Lucia and Fuso, and the invasion of territorial waters could not be cleaned up in any way.

In the end, the Lu people were annoyed and angry, saying that the white main naval army started a war before the high seas, and as soon as this remark came out, the hall burst into laughter - the Fusang naval army is notoriously weak, and no one believes that they dare to take the initiative to attack foreign warships!

As a result, the Lucians were defeated for two days, so the Lutian envoy applied for an adjournment on the 26th of the sixth month of the Hejia calendar.

At this point, the negotiation of the dispute came to an end, and it is said that even two of Eimi's envoys privately said, "If it continues, the shogunate will have a good chance of winning." ”

And the Westerners who listened to it also had a great change in their views of Fuso:

Naoxiu's fluency in English is one thing, which means that Fuso is not a completely closed and backward country;

What surprised these people even more was that some people in Fusang actually knew the two classics of the Universal Civil Law, "The Right to War and Peace" and "The Public Law of Nations"! What to say about it, it's as amazing as finding a musket in a native tribe!

However, the development of events has unexpectedly deteriorated further!

In the middle of the night of the adjournment on 26 June, five of Lucia's warships pulled anchor and headed north, only to be discovered the next morning. And the Lu envoy was also gone, which caused a lot of unease in the shogunate!

At this time, Edo already had steam warships and larger sail warships, but after careful consideration, the shogunate center still did not send warships to follow—this was for fear that the Lu people would deliberately provoke war.

Finally, on the afternoon of 27 June, the Uraga Navy sent two high-speed communication ships to Hakodate and Hakuju to report the news, but they did not know if it would be in time.

The shogunate also asked for help from Harris, the envoy of the Mi people, and Ergin, the envoy of England, but both said that the Lu people had not reported their whereabouts and reassured the envoys, "Lucia is also a civilized country, so there is no need to speculate." ”

But a premonition of uneasiness has always hung over the heads of the Edo shogun.

However, the infighting in the shogunate, which was not known to everyone, had reached its peak at this time, and before, the two elders were deposed on June 23 of the calendar, and the four daimyo of the Imperial Edia were reprimanded on June 24, so they could not take more measures, and could only take one step at a time.

On the 22nd of July, news of the northern land finally reached Edo, and Ruthia did indeed strike - on the 7th of July, the Lu people attacked Hakodate, and four days later attacked the white lord.

Because at the same time, the flying clippers from the Northland returned, so the news was not blocked, and it spread throughout Edo overnight, and a great upheaval occurred!

And Naoxiu, who has been living idle, has finally waited for the long-awaited opportunity to make a comeback!