Great Zhou Republic, South Zhili, Xuzhou. On the 10th day of the first month of the twelfth year of the Republic.

Because the arrival of the Senate and the ruling government in the south of last winter restored the vitality of this imposing fortress city.

The streets of Xuzhou have become as bustling as they were before the flood. Merchants who moved from Kaifeng Prefecture or Tianjin City were surging shoulder to shoulder on the streets. The Shangyuan Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month has not yet arrived, and it is still theoretically a New Year's Festival. Therefore, people walking on the streets are dressed in decent clothes, and their faces are more or less festive.

Occasionally, a caravan of horses passed through the streets, and the knights above the caravan wore red flags on their backs. The horses have bells around their necks, which jingle as they move around, which is eye-catching. Everyone knows that this is the urgent delivery of the Military Aircraft Department of the Great Zhou Capital, passing important news back and forth. On horseback, they are all knights in service, and they all have estates in their families!

These healthy horses came all the way from the Haizhou Kyoto trading market, bringing news from the sea.

This is also the reason why the Senate of the Republic and the ruling government went south to Xuzhou in winter. The sea outside Tianjin will freeze in winter. The head of state of the Great Zhou Republic, which resides in Tianjin, will not be able to receive timely information from overseas for more than a month. This is not a good thing for a world empire that is on the rise and planning a war against Japan.

So after weighing it again, Wu Yijiu and Wu Haogu made a decision to use Xuzhou, the second capital, every winter - the area around Xuhai is classified as Nanzhili, which naturally means the southern capital!

Although this land was flooded due to the flood, it temporarily lost its former prosperity. However, the revitalization of Xu Hai is still the unwavering national policy of the Great Zhou Republic.

Because the Xuhai area is still the most ideal industrial and commercial capital in the Great Zhou Republic.

The area is open, the water transportation is developed, and it is close to the Central Plains, and has rich coal, iron and salt resources. In particular, the coal and iron mines in Xuzhou are almost next to each other, which can be connected by canals, and the cost of mining is not high.

Once the era of industrialization comes, Xuzhou is comparable to the existence of the Ruhr area!

Therefore, the Republic of the Great Zhou Dynasty now wants to turn Xuzhou into the winter capital, so that the wealthy businessmen and tycoons all over the world know their determination to revitalize Xuhai.

As for the cost of the Senate of the Republic and the ruling government going south, it is not very high. After all, the republic does not have the pomp and circumstance of an empire. Moreover, there is a maritime waterway between Tianjin and Xuzhou. Bulk supplies can be transported by water. The overland journey was only a convoy of horses and horses, a distance of almost 1,000 miles, which was completed in seven or eight days.

If in the future, once the "stone road" between Tianjin and Xuzhou is completed, it will not be a problem for the four-wheeled carriage to travel more than 200 miles a day, and it will be possible to reach it in four days on a 1,000-mile road.

At the same time, a water canal from Xuzhou to Yunzhou, then from Yunzhou to the Yellow River, and then all the way north to Tianjin, is also under renovation.

Among them, the section of Xuzhou - Yunzhou will borrow the river channel of the Yellow River flowing south. A huge water conservancy project will be built near Liangshanbo in Yunzhou. As the main valve for the management of the Yellow River and canals.

At the same time, the middle reaches of the Yellow River will also be comprehensively organized. The river channel that bends north from Puyang to the Daimyo Mansion will be abandoned and the old road that originally flows eastward will pass through the water conservancy hub next to Liangshanbo, and the Liangshanbo and Tongji River (Tongji Water) can be used for flooding during the annual flood season. Theoretically, it is enough to ensure that there will be no major floods in the area of Xu Haihuai!

And such a huge water control project can only be implemented by the joint efforts of the Great Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty, two countries that have crossed the threshold of capitalism.

The Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties in history, you don't have to think about it......

The ruling government and the Senate go south every winter, which is also conducive to negotiating with the Eastern Song Dynasty on the Huang, Huai, and Yun control projects.

However, what was delivered by the Metropolitan Military Aircraft Division today was news from Japan.

"My lord, the eldest brother didn't make it to Kyoto, but he found a way to capture Japan!"

In Xuzhou City, in a building belonging to the Senate, Wu Yijiu handed a military report to his father Wu Haogu.

Wu Haogu is now the president of the military and diplomatic branch of the Senate, and has the right to receive classified military reports.

He took the military newspaper handed over by his son and looked down.

Takeshi reported his visit to Japan in a military newspaper that he had not been able to enter Kyoto, but he met in Namba with the representative of Emperor Shirakawa, the monk Rimasa and Tadamori.

During the talks, Ping Zhongsheng also refused Wu Yiyong's request to lead a delegation to the northeast front to observe.

And the reason is that the road is closed by heavy snow!

Japan's Tohoku and Hokuriku regions have cold winters and heavy snowfall. The snow can often reach several feet, and even low houses can be submerged, making it impossible to pass.

In the cold regions of Tohoku, the snow season and the subsequent snowmelt season tend to last for several months. If Wu Yiyong wants to go to the Northeast, he must wait until the summer of the following year (the summer of the 12th year of the Republic).

Taira Tadamori and Linzheng's description of the climate in northeastern Japan made Wu Yoshiyong find an opportunity to attack Japan!

Later, he had the merchants of Namba inquire about the Nakasendo, Hokuriku, and Tokaido approaches to the Banto Plain. Later, it was discovered that during the winter snowfall, not only was the Hokuriku Road going south from Hokuriku completely impassable, but even the Nakasendo Road passing through Mino, Shinano, and Koshu was blocked due to snowfall. Only one of the Tokaido can be passed!

Therefore, Wu Yiyong's plan to attack Japan was to first attract the more powerful Eastern Samurai Regiment in Japan to the vicinity of Heiankyo or the more distant island of Kyushu.

Then transport 2 divisions of infantry in the fleet, and in winter go around to the Kanto coast for landing. Then quickly blockade the Tokaido. In winter, the snow will prevent the main force of the Tokoku samurai from returning to the Kanto region from Hokuriku and Nakasendo.

In this way, the invading Zhou army had a time difference of two or three months to use, and it was able to suppress and win over the local tyrant samurai who remained in the Kanto region, and at the same time strengthen the blockade of the roads leading to the Kanto region in Hokuriku, Koshin, and the East China Sea.

After successfully blocking the passage from the west to the Kanto, the Zhou army that invaded Japan had time to calmly pack up the samurai groups that remained in the Kanto. Either exterminate it, or co-opt it to become part of the Zhou State's army and knight system in Japan!

To quote the original words of Takeshi Yoshiyong in the report, it is necessary to first realize the samurai revolution and the samurai republic in the eastern part of Japan!

Therefore, after pacifying the Kanto region, Wu Yiyong's next target was not to attack and seize the Gyeonggi region of Japan from the sea at any time, but to the northeastern region, which was being attacked by the Bohai people.

As for the reason, Wu Yiyong also explained it in the military newspaper. Because he thinks that the Yuan and the Ministers who now rule Japan are simply a bunch of waste, they can't do anything, and they are not capable of leading a war with the Great Zhou Republic.

Therefore, it is more advantageous to leave them for the time being to blindly command the samurai of the Western Kingdom in Japan than to wipe them out immediately!

In addition, Takeshi Yoshiyu also suggested a strategy of political inducement to the Japanese imperial court in Heiankyo. Under the bait of canonizing the king of Japan, negotiations were opened with the imperial court of Heiankyo.

Negotiations were used to break the fighting spirit of the Japanese Imperial Court. Once the Japanese imperial court was willing to give up the eastern kingdom in exchange for the "protection" of the Great Zhou Republic, then the Great Zhou Republic would be able to gain a long-term foothold in the eastern part of Japan's main island of Honshu. It was a matter of time before Japan was completely annexed.

Even if the Japanese court saw through the conspiracy of the Great Zhou, they were unable to counterattack the eastern kingdom. After all, the Gyeonggi region of Japan and the western island of Kyushu were both under the deterrence of the garrison of the Zhou Kingdom on Hirado Island.

Therefore, the Japanese Expeditionary Corps could still calmly take the "Japanese Imperial Court" as its opponent, encroaching on the remnants of Japan's territory while carrying out military colonization of Japan's eastern region. At the same time, he managed to convert the attached low-level Japanese samurai into knights and government soldiers of the Great Zhou.

After five or six years of patience, Japan has almost become a part of the Great Zhou Republic since ancient times......

"Five to six years...... Can military spending be coped? Wu Haogu carefully read Wu Yiyong's military report, then looked at Wu Yijiu and asked, "If you want to pacify the whole of Japan, two divisions are not enough, why do you have to prepare seven or eight divisions?" ”

Seven or eight divisions, about 100,000 men, fought for five years...... Even the soldiers recruited could be paid with the Grange in the Kanto region, and military rations could be collected in the Kanto region.

However, the cost of equipment, rewards, pensions, officers' salaries, and the purchase of Japanese samurai still cost a lot of money.

In recent years, the ruling government of the Great Zhou Republic has not had a lot of money......

"I can handle it!" Wu Yijiu said with a smile, "It's nothing more than issuing more bonds...... And this war can't be fought without fighting! The First World War in the Central Plains made many good men on both sides of the Yellow River lose their land and family business. We don't have a imperial examination here, and if we want to turn over, we have to fight! If we don't fight, these restless people will have to make trouble with us. Instead of exerting effort to suppress internally, it is better to use troops externally. Recruited 100,000 sons in the Central Plains to go east to Japan, and won like this. 100,000 soldiers can always be settled, and the Central Plains can be a lot more peaceful. ”

This is the disadvantage of not having the imperial examination system and inhibiting annexation...... The people below don't have a safe and steady upward channel, and they will make all kinds of noise. And the country has to use military merits to appease the brave and strong people of the people.

If you don't listen to what you say, you really beat to the death to eliminate internal troubles, and win the battle to eliminate the enemy.

Therefore, when there is no imperial examination, or when the composition of the imperial examination is extremely low, the Central Plains Dynasty will never be stable, either external war or internal fighting.

Although the current Great Zhou Republic is not a dynasty, it still has to find a way for the brave warriors among the more than 40 million people.

From this point of view, the cost of attacking Japan was not a matter at all.

As for the Japanese people's will to resist Zhou...... Not a problem either! Anyway, there are civil and military elites here in the Central Plains who want to climb up, ready to dedicate their lives to the liberation of the Japanese people!