Zhou Zhiguang continued: "If my Guangxi garrison in Hainan takes the initiative to retreat to the Haikou line, not only will Hainan be exposed to the 200,000 troops of the Qing court, but also a situation of fighting against the water.

Moreover, the French army in Vietnam had already begun to move, the British Far East Fleet had begun to move closer to Hainan, and the Japanese West Sea Fleet had also begun to make urgent preparations for war.

Then, our Hainan is really embattled. Therefore, I believe that Guangxi's army should not move closer to Hainan on all fronts, but should divide the large army into east and west, as General Qi Gang conceived, so that the strength of the Qing army can be contained and divided, and at the same time, the entire battle situation can be transformed, and Hainan will gradually grasp the initiative in this war situation. ”

Li Chuang said: "What General Zhou said is very reasonable. However, there is a problem here, that is, if our Hainan army in Guangxi faces the Qing army to the east and west, they are Su Yuanchun and Wang Zhichun respectively.

The current Wang Zhichun Division, if it does not pursue the army that I inserted into Guangdong, but directly joins with Su Yuanchun's troops to encircle our troops moving westward and carry out various annihilations, in this way, General Qi's strategic concept will lose its meaning, and in the end, our army in Guangxi may be divided and surrounded, and each will be broken, and the Qing army will encircle and suppress Hainan, it should be a matter of time. ”

Xiao Yang agreed with Zhang Tong's view, advocating that most of the troops should be concentrated in Hainan and a strategy of holding Hainan should be adopted to deal with the enemy attacking from all sides.

For a time, in the military conference hall of the Hainan Palace, the discussion on the war in Guangxi was extremely intense.

At this moment, the headquarters of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Heihachiro Togo, and his staff were also talking about the Japanese side's attitude towards the incident at the Far East Post Station in Hainan.

Heihachiro Togo was angry that he was too slow to deal with the matter at home. They believe that Hainan, the rebel land of the Qing Dynasty, used extreme means to kill Japanese foreign affairs personnel, which is a blatant provocation and makes the majesty of the Japanese Empire completely lost, and they strongly advocate that they immediately send troops to take revenge and attack Hainan.

Heihachiro Togo sent a letter to Admiral Yuhiro Ito, the head of the military command department of the Russo-Japanese War base camp, asking the empire to send a fleet to cooperate with the Japanese troops in Taiwan to carry out a devastating attack on Hainan.

Admiral Ito Yuhiro adopted the advice of Heihachiro Togo and decided to order the Japanese governor in Taiwan, Gentaro Kodama to organize forces and prepare to send troops to Hainan.

Due to the fierce battle between the Japanese Combined Fleet and Russia in the northeast this time, the Japanese army could only transfer ships and personnel from the old West Sea Fleet to temporarily form the new West Sea Fleet, and the commander-in-chief of the fleet was Rear Admiral Ito Xiangzen.

Rear Admiral Tozen Ito's second son, Yuhiro Ito, graduated from the Etajima Naval Academy at an early age.

Deeply influenced by his father, Ito was obsessed with the navy since he was a child, and is currently one of the best naval commanders in Japan.

Speaking of Admiral Ito, this person was the commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet in the First Sino-Japanese Naval War, and on July 16 (Meiji 27), the Japanese Imperial Council decided to start a war against China, and on July 18, according to the plan proposed by Yamamoto Gonbei Daisa, the chief of the chief cabinet of the Military Command Department, the garrison fleet and the standing fleet, which had been renamed the "West Sea Fleet", were formed into a "combined fleet".

On 23 July, Ito, under the command of the base camp, personally led 15 warships, 6 torpedo boats, and 1 reconnaissance boat from the Sasebo Military Port to the west coast of Korea.

On the 25th, the 1st Guerrilla Fleet was dispatched to launch the undeclared Battle of Toshima by means of a surprise attack, provoking a Sino-Japanese war. On August 1, after China and Japan formally declared war on each other, Ito actively sought a decisive battle with the Chinese navy in order to seize sea supremacy, in accordance with the "general operational policy" of the base camp.

After a fierce battle, on January 23, 1895, Ding Ruchang, the commander of the Beiyang Naval Division, led the people to retreat to Weihaiwei, surrounded by Japanese ships, and at the end of the road, he received a letter of persuasion from the Japanese commander Ito Yuhiro. The letter was sent to Ding Ruchang by Ito Youheng on behalf of the British ** ship "Sevan" in the waters off Weihaiwei.

The letter of surrender begins:

"I have the honour to submit a letter to Your Excellency Admiral Ding: How unfortunate it is that the change of circumstances has caused the servant and your Excellency to be hostile to each other! However, today's war is a war between countries, not a personal feud. The warmth of friendship between the servant and your Excellency is as good as yesterday. ”

Ito said that the successive defeats of the Chinese army and navy were by no means the fault of a single monarch and minister, but the reason was the drawbacks of sticking to the old politics. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan abandoned the old politics and gradually rose to prominence. In the end, Ding Ruchang was persuaded to flee to Japan in order to make a comeback.

"Your country once had the shame of being a snow meeting, and it set a precedent for becoming a great ambition. In our country, Vice Admiral Enomoto and Privy Counsellor Oshima, although he raised the flag of rebellion, was finally pardoned, and he was in a prominent position, and he was unyielding. The defeat is the result of the old politics and is not your responsibility. There should be room for him to ...... in the future."

Of course, Ding Ruchang did not listen to this kind of advice, and sent the letter of surrender to Li Hongzhang in Tianjin intact. 19 days later, Ding Ruchang committed suicide and martyrdom, and the Beiyang Navy was completely annihilated.

At that time, Vice Admiral Ito Youheng, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, wrote a letter of persuasion to Ding Ruchang, the commander of the Beiyang Naval Division of the Great Qing Dynasty, but the American, who was the messenger, boarded Liu Buyun's "Dingyuan" battleship and presented the letter of surrender to Liu Buchan.

This is not a very important thing for Lieutenant General Ito. Although Ding Ruchang is the supreme commander of the Beiyang Naval Division of the Qing Dynasty, in the eyes of a professional soldier like Ito Youheng, the real opponent in naval warfare is Liu Buyun, who once studied at the London Naval Academy in England, and it is Liu Buchan who impresses and admires Ito the most.

Ito Youheng has been fond of Liu Buyun for a long time, and when he met Liu Buyun for the first time in Weihai, the rumors of the past were confirmed. Ito even thinks that Liu Buyun is very similar to them Japanese, shrewd and capable, strong-willed, but never revealed to others.

He was even disappointed and frustrated by this, thinking that with a group of naval talents such as Liu Buyun in China, would the efforts of his generation be in vain, and would the mainland dreams of Japanese soldiers come to naught?

Liu Buyun, this name, is deeply engraved on Ito Youheng's heart, his figure often comes to Ito Youheng's mind, he knows that one day, they will meet at sea, not for romance, but for a duel.

Whether it is Liu Buchan or Ding Ruchang, it is meaningless to surrender or not, and the destruction of the Beiyang Fleet is predestined. The naval forces of the Great Japanese Empire were nearing completion of their goal of capturing Weihai and destroying the Beiyang Naval Division, and writing a letter to persuade them to surrender was just a gesture and a show, leaving a dazzling page in the naval history of the Great Japanese Empire.

Vice Admiral Ito, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, finally set foot on Liugong Island. At this time, Liu Buchan died in battle, Ding Ruchang committed suicide by drinking bullets, and the rest of the generals of the Beiyang Naval Division surrendered.

When Ito Yuhiro led Togo Heihachiro, Tsuboi Hangsan and other generals into the hall of the Beiyang Navy Division's yamen with high spirits, their eyes were immediately attracted by the five coffins placed side by side.

Among the five coffins, Ding Ruchang is lying in the middle, Liu Buyun and Yang Yonglin are on the right, and Zhang Desan and Dai Zongqian are on the left.

There was no one to hold a vigil for them, and no one to weep and mourn. With a solemn and solemn face, Ito led his generals to walk slowly around the five coffins, solemnly placed a pillar of incense in front of each of the five spirits, and then bowed reverently.

The next day, Ito Youheng selected the old third-class ship "Kangji" from the surrendered ships, ordered the cannon to be dismantled, converted into a merchant ship, piloted by the original warship personnel, and carried the coffins of Ding Ruchang, Liu Buchan and other five people to Yantai.

When the "Kangji" slowly sailed away from the dock, people saw that the Yellow Dragon Banner of the Qing Empire and the handsome flag of the Beiyang Naval Division were still fluttering on its mainmast.

The band arranged by Ito to see him off played a grief-stricken music, and a 12-gun salute was fired from the batteries and the Japanese ships......

Ito Yuhyung did not expect that ten years later, there would be a tragic naval battle with China in his son's generation.

At the end of the earth, the storm is rising again!