Like Li Mu, Benjamin Harrison is not an honest person, in Cuba, Benjamin Harrison and Claudia have a hot fight, as far as Li Mu knows, there is already a crystallization of love between the two, which is much more excessive than Li Mu.

Li Mu and Chu Xue's affairs, I didn't hide it from Gloria, and Caroline Scott didn't know about Claudia at all.

Some people may think that this kind of deception is easy for Caroline Scott to accept, but in Li Mu's view, this kind of deception can only be concealed for a while, and there will be more hidden dangers in the future, so it is better to be open and honest at the beginning.

In the spring of 1877, it was a mixed blessing for Li Mu, Hayes successfully became president, and the Panama Canal Company also successfully pocketed the Panama Canal, but because of the rupture of the relationship between Li Mu and Hays, it also cast a shadow on the prospects of Li Mu and the Junma Group.

Li Mu didn't care too much about Hais, just like Rockefeller said, since the power of capital can bring Hayes to power, it can also pull Hayes down, so Hayes will not go too far, and he doesn't dare to go too far.

The reason why Hayes was elected president of the United States is well known, if it weren't for Li Mu's support behind the scenes, maybe Hayes would not have been able to win the party primary, so if Hayes dares to target the Inside and the Horse Group now, then Hays's personality will completely collapse, and this result is disastrous for a politician with the label of "integrity and integrity".

The establishment of the Panama Canal Company is tantamount to the establishment of a capital alliance, in which Li Mu plays an important role, if Hayes dares to target the Panama Canal Company, then it is tantamount to being the enemy of capital power, and "self-isolation from the people", he does not dare to borrow the courage of Hayes.

For the Japanese, the spring of 1877 was extremely cold.

In September last year, four gunboats from the Ryukyus raided the Japanese military camp in Kagoshima, and although Kagoshima had a shore defense battery, the caliber of the guns on the batteries was not as large as the caliber of the main guns on the Ryukyu gunboats, so the artillery battle ended almost as soon as it began.

After the fort was destroyed, Kagoshima opened its arms to the Ryukyu gunboats, which raged in Kagoshima for two hours, destroying all the Kagoshima coastal defense batteries, and then the Ryukyu gunboats shelled the Kagoshima military camp, killing more than 100 recruits and wounding nearly 800.

This loss was insignificant compared to the total number of people in the Kagoshima military camp, but the psychological blow of this shelling to the Japanese was extremely heavy.

Different from the past history, the current Japan has not experienced the victory of the First Sino-Japanese War, the victory of the Russo-Japanese War, and the continuous blood transfusion of the puppet Manchukuo for Japan, which can show that the restoration has not yet seen any results, and the Japanese are building their own country with all their spirits.

Don't look at the Ryukyu flag flying on the gunboats, in fact, all Japanese know that these gunboats have almost nothing to do with the Ryukyus, and these gunboats are all from the United States, or more specifically, all from the American Shoma Group.

That's right, it's the company with the Chinese as the main body.

In fact, the concept of the Shoma Group was passed on to the Japanese by the Japanese government, after all, the Japanese government had suffered a defeat in the Ryukyus before, and at this time a group needed to come out and take the blame, either an "evil group" or an incompetent Japanese government.

The government will certainly not be incompetent, so the Shoma Group from the United States has become what the Japanese government calls a "man behind the pot".

However, in Li Mu's view, this pot is not very good, the effect is appropriate, you must know that the Japanese are extremely inferior in their hearts, the Japanese have an indelible servility to the strong in their bones, and in the face of the strong, the Japanese habitually choose to obey, so the Japanese government took out the Junma Group to take the blame, not only did not arouse the consciousness of all the Japanese to fight against the strong enemy, but made the current Japanese pessimism rampant, defeatism prevailed, causing panic in the hearts of the people, and the people's resentment boiling. This was something that the Japanese government did not anticipate.

Of course, the Tokugawa Tachiken's loyal shogunate forces played a large role in this.

In early October, the Ryukyu army landed on Kagoshima under the leadership of Ryukyu Marshal Shiraki.

Nearly 60,000 Japanese soldiers and 15,000 Ryukyu soldiers fought fiercely in Kagoshima for half a month, and finally 15,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, nearly 40,000 Japanese troops surrendered, and less than 5,000 Japanese troops withdrew from Kagoshima.

On the occasion of this great victory, it was supposed to march into the Japanese mainland, but there were serious disagreements within the Ryukyus over the use of these nearly 40,000 Japanese prisoners.

According to Bai Qi's meaning, these 40,000 Japanese troops will be used as hard labor, building fortifications and advancing camps in Kagoshima in preparation for the attack on the Japanese mainland.

However, in the opinion of Pan Tingzhen and Tokugawa Tatsuyan, they should do their best to get these captives to set up a Japanese servant army to assist the Ryukyu army in attacking the Japanese mainland.

It must be explained that in order to attack Japan, the Ryukyuan people did pay a great price, and the population of the Ryukyus, which has a population of less than 500,000, was mobilized to prepare for the attack on Japan with a population of more than 100,000, which was really unacceptable to Pan Tingzhen.

For nearly half a year, almost all the Ryukyuan people have been preparing for an attack on Japan, with young Ryukyuan men training in military camps with non-stop labor between trainings, and women and elderly people being organized to undertake high-intensity logistical work, not only to prepare for the attack on Japan, but also to provide services for the immigration camps built by the Shoma group on the main island of the Ryukyus.

As a result, Ryukyu simply did not have the energy to develop the domestic economy, and as a result, Ryukyu now almost all rely on blood transfusions from the Shoma Group to barely survive.

Although Pan Tingzhen does not resist the infiltration of the Ryukyu Group, as the Prime Minister of the Ryukyus, Pan Tingzhen must also consider the problem from the position of the Ryukyus, and cannot rely on the Ryukyu Group for everything, and the Ryukyus, as an independent country, must at least have the ability to be self-sufficient, so that the Ryukyus have the necessity to exist.

If possible, Pan Tingzhen hoped that the army led by Bai Qi would be composed entirely of Japanese, and that in any case it would not be able to continue to draw blood from the Ryukyus, whose human resources were almost exhausted.

As for Tokugawa Liyan, his mind is not enough for outsiders, after all, neither Bai Qi nor Pan Tingzhen can become the direct ruler of Japan, so Tokugawa Liyan hopes to increase his voice so that he can also win more power in the future.

It was no problem for Bai Qi to fight head-on, but in terms of organization and coordination, Bai Qi was lacking, so the final result was a compromise, half of the Japanese prisoners were used as hard labor, and the other half was to form the Kagoshima 1st Division, which was prepared for the attack on the Japanese mainland.

According to the agreement between Bai Qi and Tokugawa Liyan, Tokugawa Liyan served as the division commander of the First Division, but in addition to the position of "division commander", all the subordinate brigade commanders and wing commanders were all Chinese officers from the United States.

Since the end of September, heavy snow has fallen on the Japanese mainland, and the snow depth in Miyazaki, Kumamoto and other prefectures north of Kagoshima has reached as much as 60 centimeters.

The heavy snow for several days gave the Japanese government a glimmer of life, and throughout the winter, the Japanese government and the Ryukyu government were working hard to accumulate strength for the decisive battle in the coming year.

Relatively speaking, the advantage of the Ryukyus is still relatively large, after all, the Ryukyus can get a steady stream of supplies from the United States, while Japan is in a situation of running out of ammunition and food, and all the countries in the world do not think that the Japanese can win this war, so even if Japan wants to raise war loans with the strength of the whole country, it is still a drop in the bucket.

Money is a big problem, but the Japanese government does not have it, in fact, even if it has money, it is useless, the world's three major arms companies, the Horse Arms Company and Krupp wear the same pants, Enfield is unwilling to get involved, from the first day of the outbreak of the war began to mediate, hoping to resolve the differences between the Japanese government and the Ryukyu government in a peaceful way.

This adjustment was destined to have no effect, the contradictions between Japan and the Ryukyus were not accumulated in a day or two, and the freezing of three feet was not a day's cold, and the efforts of the British were doomed to be futile.

This winter, Tokugawa Tachiyan's painstakingly managed intelligence network finally came into play, and the forces loyal to the shogunate in Japan came to Kagoshima by land or sea, and after a winter, the number of regular troops in the hands of Hakuki reached nearly 150,000, and finally had the strength to compete with the Japanese army in terms of numbers.

With regard to the forces loyal to the shogunate in Japan, Tokugawa estimated that at least a quarter of the Japanese were sympathetic to the shogunate and wanted to return to the previous shogunate rule, so even if the Japanese government tried every means to obstruct it, it still could not stop the Japanese loyal to Kifu from defecting to Kagoshima.

After all, Japan is a country with a population of more than 20 million, and if the Japanese government has sufficient financial resources, it is not impossible to expand the army of one million in a short time, but with the financial and material resources of the Japanese government, it is not enough to support the existence of millions of troops.

To put it mildly, if the Japanese government were to build an army of one million, let alone the armament of the troops, it would be a problem to even eat.

The situation on the Ryukyu side is just the opposite, although it was backed by the Shoma Group before, it must have been congenitally deficient in human hands, and even if the Ryukyu Group armed all 500,000 Ryukyuan people, it would not be able to compete with Japan in terms of population.

The rapid expansion of the number of troops has a direct impact on the strength of the troops.

Compared with the Japanese army, although the current Ryukyu army is at a disadvantage in numbers, but in terms of training and logistics supply, the Ryukyu army and the Japanese army are not at the same level at all, and the current Ryukyu can be said to have what they want, and the horse weapon company has even postponed the delivery time of other orders in order to support the Ryukyu army, which makes the Ryukyu army simply strong and well-armed, not only equipped with the latest repeating rifles, but also machine guns, mortars, large-caliber heavy artillery and other heavy weapons.

Compared with the Ryukyu army, the Japanese army can be called shabby, the Japanese government is now taking out real money, and it can't buy enough weapons, because of Li Mu's reasons, the horse arms company and Krupp will not carry out any form of cooperation with the Japanese government, only one Enfield, although willing to make a deal with the Japanese government, but in the case that the Japanese government can't come up with cash, Enfield's enthusiasm is not high.

At the beginning of April, the snow and ice melted, the cold winter gradually left, and the war finally rekindled.

"We now have two options, one is to rely on Kagoshima to move forward step by step, so that the biggest advantage is that we don't need to think about the interference of the Japanese government, we can take it slowly, as long as I am given enough time, I can guarantee that we can spend the New Year in Tokyo when Christmas arrives this year." At the pre-war preparation meeting, Bai Qi was full of confidence, and it seemed that he was preparing to end the war before Christmas.

"This method is certainly safe, but it will be protracted and I am afraid that it will change over time, so we might as well go straight to Tokyo and take down Emperor Meiji directly, so that we can minimize consumption and end this war in the shortest possible time." Pan Tingzhen doesn't like to fight, not at all, so it's rare that she doesn't keep in line with Bai Qi.

"Prime Minister, please follow the order of the meeting." Bai Qi was unceremonious, and in his own field, he didn't give Pan Tingzhen a chance to interject at all.

Before coming to the Ryukyus, Bai Qi and Pan Tingzhen had a clear division of labor, Bai Qi was in charge of the military, and Pan Tingzhen was in charge of politics, and the two did not interfere with each other and did not subordinate each other.

Of course, Pan Tingzhen also has a say in the military, after all, attacking Japan also requires Pan Tingzhen to coordinate and provide logistics, so Pan Tingzhen was able to attend the meeting as an observer.

But this attendee has no right to speak, so Bai Qi did not give Pan Tingzhen a chance to speak at all.

"There's a second option, we might as well listen to it first-" Or Tokugawa Liyan can put himself in a correct position, absolutely trust Bai Qi militarily, and do not participate in any opinions.

"Originally, there was a second choice, but now there is none, now I order-" Bai Qi acted arbitrarily, and the generals in the conference room immediately stood up, and the atmosphere suddenly became solemn.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Pan Tingzhen only felt a hardship in his heart, but he didn't interject again, this is the price of introducing foreign forces, Pan Tingzhen was mentally prepared, but he didn't expect that when he really faced it, it would be so difficult.

Fortunately, fortunately, this foreign monk is also Chinese, otherwise, Pan Tingzhen is really dead.