"For Japan?" Hirobumi Ito laughed, "Interesting, hahahaha!" ”

"Your Excellency! You look down on me, but you can't belittle your country! Seeing Ito's madness again, Saigo finally couldn't help but erupt. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Your Excellency, now the Qing State is following the example of the Western powers, introducing Western learning, and setting up Western affairs. But their progress is very slow, it is because it gave the empire the opportunity to collect the Ryukyus, if it is not now that the Qing State is not fully awake, become strong, and defeat the Qing State, once the Qing State completes the expansion of the navy, it will inevitably become the hegemon of East Asia! At that time, the great cause that the reformers had struggled for decades would surely be destroyed! Saigo said excitedly.

"So the empire must preemptively become the leader of East Asia before the Qing state completes its naval construction, and to do this, the empire must first defeat the Qing state, right?" Hirobumi Ito replied.

"Exactly! Excellency! Saigo nodded hurriedly in agreement, "Your Excellency, the government is not sure of victory at present, and you can give the government confidence!" ”

"Me? ......", Ito Hirobumi suddenly smiled strangely, "what can I do to give confidence to the government?" I don't have any faith in myself! ”

"This ...... I don't really understand what Your Excellency means! Listening to Ito Hirofumi's words, Saigo couldn't help but be stunned.

"Saigo-kun, do you really think that Japan now has the strength to go to war with the Qing Kingdom?" Hirobumi Ito looked at Saigo with amusement, "Do you think Japan and Qing can really win the war?" ”

"The empire occupied the Ryukyus, didn't the Qing state dare to make enemies with the empire?" Saigo glared at him and said, "This shows that the Qing government also knows that its forces are weak and unable to start a war with the empire!" Why don't we take the opportunity to overwhelm them? ”

"But Japan is too poor!" Ito Hirobumi gently turned the porcelain cup in his hand, looked up to the sky and sighed: "A country that has no major industry except rice and silk cloth needs to import everything, and with just a few ships, a few guns and a few cannons, can it defeat a big country like the Qing Kingdom, the oldest country in East Asia?" ”

"Saigo-kun, you must know that Japan, a small backward agricultural country, is only a few tenths of the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and its population is less than one-tenth of that of the Qing Dynasty, and all the resources are almost completely blank. Hirobumi Ito turned his head and stared at Saigo Norimichi, "And since the Meiji Restoration, the dream of building a strong Japan has been the ideal of every Japanese citizen!" Everything in this country is just getting on the right track, and you, you want to use a war to interrupt its progress! ”

"So, if you want to build an army strong enough to crush the Qing and drain the last blood and sweat of the people of the empire, Saigo-kun...... I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you. Hirofumi Ito said word for word, "You must give up the wild dream of planting the sun flag on the land of Taiwan!" ”

"Your Excellency is also from 'Matsushita Village Juku', how can you say such a thing!" Saigo, whose face was already full of gloom, said angrily, "We have already done the first two steps!" Why can't you do the third and fourth steps?! ”

-- Conquer Ezo, annex the Ryukyus, and then make Korea pay tribute, then collect Taiwan, cede South Manchuria, occupy China, and rule India! ――This is the will of Yoshida Shoin, the "first person to be reformed at the end of the Edo period" who was secretly executed by the Tokugawa shogunate at the age of 29 and executed in Edo Denmacho Prison!

When Yoshida Shoin was 25 years old, he took over the "Matsushita Village Juku" founded by his uncle, and the talents of the Restoration such as Kido Takayo, Takasugi Shinsaku, Yama Prefecture Aritomo, and Inoue Shin all came from his disciples!

Yoshida Shoin was killed by the shogunate after the "Ansei Prison", and among the disciples who collected his body, there was also a disciple named Shunsuke Ito, and his name today is Hirobumi Ito......

"Knowing this fate, I want to stop but can't, this is the soul of Yamato." Hirofumi Ito whispered out the teacher's last words, "Saigo-kun, tell me why you think you can take the next step." ”

"As long as the Imperial Navy can defeat the Ship Master Fleet, then the soldiers of the Imperial Army can gallop freely on the land of the Qing Kingdom!" Xixiang Congdao looked extremely confident, "The Qing Kingdom claims to have millions of soldiers, but in fact, excluding those Eight Banners and Green Battalion soldiers that only exist on paper, what can really be regarded as an army is only the tens of thousands of Huai troops under Li Hongzhang!" And those guys are now fighting bandits in the northwest region, and in the coastal areas are just some guys who only know how to shoot targets and parade exercises, such an army, where is the opponent of the empire's excellent Yamato men? ”

"Regarding the situation of the Qing Army, you are right! It can be seen that you have put some effort into it. Ito Hirobumi sneered, "But you tell me, how can the Imperial Navy defeat the Qing Navy's shipyard fleet?" ”

"That's not a fleet at all! I have already sent someone to investigate in detail, and the warships built by the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau have been assigned to the coastal provinces of China for patrolling and arresting pirates. Gather together when you need to! Saigo said loudly, "How much combat effectiveness can such a fleet with a loose organization, inconsistent command, and no coordination training in peacetime have?" It's just a plate of loose sand! ”

"And the current Qing State simply can't afford to fight two wars at the same time! Zuo Zongtang's operations in the northwest region have consumed a lot of military expenditures of the Qing government, and the operating expenses of the shipping administration have been greatly reduced because of Zuo Zongtang's combat operations! Saigo said excitedly, and a pair of eyes shone brightly, as if a wolf had seen its prey, "The Qing people can't even guarantee the daily operating expenses of this fleet, so why should they fight against the Imperial Navy?" ”

"But the financial strength of the Qing Kingdom is not comparable to that of Japan! They will come up with the money if they need it! Ito shook his head disapprovingly.

"Even if this happens, they are no match for the Imperial Navy!" Saigo showed his hole card from the road, "The Imperial Navy has ironclad ships!" Qing Guo did not! ”

"We have the 'East' and the 'Longxiang'! Qing Guo did not! ”

"With only two ironclad ships in the Imperial Navy, do you think they can compete with the entire shipmaster fleet of the Qing Kingdom?" Hirobumi Ito laughed contemptuously.

"Absolutely!" Saigo said excitedly, "The ironclad ship is the main force of the navy!" We have! Qing Guo did not! ”

"Didn't you just say that the Qing Kingdom had purchased a cruiser from the British?" Ito Hirofumi was not as excited as Saigo Congmichi, but asked cautiously again, after all, he couldn't compare to Saigo Congdao in terms of understanding the navy.

"It's just an iron-skinned cruiser, too! China's largest warship 'Weiyuan' is also such a ship! They are all targets in front of the ironclad ship! Saigo said, "If the Imperial Government hadn't had the 'East' back then, how could it defeat the rebellion that fled to Ezo?" ”

"The Imperial Navy has been in operation for many years, and it has a foundation, and its combat effectiveness is far from being comparable to those old rotten sailors in the Qing Kingdom! That's why the imperial government took the Ryukyus, and the Qing State never dared to go to war with the empire! ”

After listening to what Saigo said from Congdao, Ito Hirobumi knew that his persistence had a certain point.

The Japanese navy existed in the shogunate or earlier, but it was only the private army of the princes, and it could not be called a navy in the true sense, but only a prototype. It can be said that the idea of true naval construction originated from the theory of open coastal defense at the end of the Edo period. The pioneer of this theory was Lin Ziping. He said in the book "Talking about the Soldiers of the Sea Kingdom": "What is the Sea State? The Sea Country is a country bordered by no neighbors and surrounded by the sea. Therefore, the sea state must have weapons commensurate with it, which is different from the Chinese art of war and the various military doctrines and ideas handed down by Japan since ancient times. Without understanding this, it will be difficult to build Japan's national defense. It should be known that the sea country has the weakness of being vulnerable to foreign invasion, and also has the advantage of being vulnerable to foreign enemies...... In order to defend against foreign invasion, it is necessary to rely on water warfare, and the key to this is artillery. By grasping these two points, we have grasped the key ...... of Japan's national defense. "In the Opium War of 1840, China suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the British, and the shogunate understood the limitations of coastal defense and realized that the power of the European and American powers would one day reach Japan. Two years later, the shogunate rescinded the order to drive out foreign ships.

It was the United States that eventually opened Japan. In order to obtain a port for the development of the whaling industry in the North Pacific, Perry's fleet sailed into Uraga and demanded that Japan open it up ("Black Ships Coming to Sail"). A year later, Perry's fleet finally forced the shogunate to sign a treaty, and the British, Russian, Dutch, French and other powers followed one after another, and Japan's 200-year-old isolation was finally broken, and the coastal defense of the closed country was also ended.

The shogunate had decided to open up, and the development of the navy was immediately put in the first place. In September 1853, the shogunate revoked the 1635 ban on the construction of large ships, and the Satsuma Domain at the southern tip of Kyushu was recruiting personnel to begin a plan to revitalize the Satsuma Navy (due to the geographical location of the Satsuma Domain). The shogunate hired military strategists such as Takashima Akiho and Taro Egawa Saemon to preside over the manufacture of foreign cannons and the training of personnel, and at the same time adopted the ideas of Sakuma Zozan's "Eight Strategies for Coastal Defense." In October 1853, it was decided to purchase warships from the Netherlands. The development of the Japanese Navy officially began. In 1856, the Dutch government accepted an order for two Japanese gunboats, the "Hamin Maru" and the "Chaoyang Maru", and at the same time, in the name of King William III of the Netherlands, the "Senbin" was given to the shogunate and renamed it "Kankan Maru", after the shogunate built a new two-masted European sailing ship "Phoenix Maru" in Uraga in May 1854. At the same time, the Satsuma Domain also built a 3-masted sail single ship "Shohei Maru". The first steamship built by the shogunate with its own strength was the Chiyodagata.