Chapter 109: The Japanese Conspiracy

The news that France had provided a large number of low-interest loans to the Kingdom of Lanfang made the world powers extremely angry, especially Britain and Japan. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info The British Foreign Secretary directly approached the French ambassador to London and roared: "You are a crime, this is a suicide, you are cultivating competitors, the French Indochina colony will be taken away by the Lanfang Kingdom sooner or later, don't you know that the main body of the Lanfang Kingdom is Chinese?" ”

The Japanese have always regarded the Chinese as their worst enemy, and now the rise of the Lanfang Kingdom has made them feel extremely uneasy. After all, Japan still occupies the island of Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands and the Korean Peninsula have become colonies of the Japanese Empire, and after the Russo-Japanese War, they have obtained the interests of Tsarist Russia in the southern part of the northeastern region of the Qing Dynasty, and there is no reason why the Chinese should not hate the Japanese Empire.

Now the naval fleet of the Lanfang Kingdom frightened the Japanese, and such an advanced battleship was simply not something that the current Japanese combined fleet could defeat. Especially after the Lanfang Kingdom sent a fleet to visit the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese spies circled the battleships of the Lanfang Kingdom every day, hoping to obtain useful information from them, but only sent back information about the shape of the battleship and the configuration of the main guns, so that the Admiralty officials dismissed the plan to attack the Lanfang fleet.

Now Germany and France have successively provided large loans to the Lanfang Kingdom, which makes the Japanese envious and jealous, and fearful of Lanfang's smooth rise. We must find a way to suppress the development momentum of the Lanfang Kingdom.

Since you can't storm it, outsmart it.

The Japanese are best at two strategies, the first is sneak attacks, and the second is to organize espionage.

Now the sneak attack is different, and it starts to engage in espionage activities.

The Japanese military department entrusted this difficult task to Major General Nobujun Aoki. Aoki Xuanchun is the originator of Japan's espionage industry and the first "China expert" in the Japanese military department. Aoki Nobuyumi first approached the Chief of Staff Kodama Gentaro for help, and after explaining his plan, he hoped that Kodama Gentaro would write a letter to the Governor of Taiwan, Sakuma Zomathew, allowing him to recruit Chinese spies in Taiwan. Gentaro Kodama was very satisfied with Aoki's plan, and if the plan could be successful, its influence would exceed the combat effectiveness of 10 Japanese divisions, and not only wrote a letter, but also ordered his right-hand man when he was in Taiwan, Goto Shinpei, to fully cooperate with Aoki Xuanjun's work.

After Aoki Xuanchun arrived in Shanghai, he first organized the ronins in Shanghai, trained them simply, and provided financial support, so that they could recruit beggars in Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangsu and other places, and then let these beggars preach among the Qing Dynasty refugees that the immigrants who migrated from the mainland in the Lanfang Kingdom were sold as slaves, and these people lived a life that was not as good as pigs and dogs in the Lanfang Kingdom, and advised everyone not to go to the Lanfang Kingdom if they wanted food, otherwise they would not have their lives to come back alive. It is hoped that through this propaganda, the immigration activities of the Kingdom of Lanfang will be disrupted.

These ronins are the lowest people living in Japanese society, and now they are very honored to be received and trained by the major general, and with the stimulation of money, the training and work are particularly hard. And the recruited beggars, no one themselves cares about their life or death, and now they can have money to eat their stomachs, so they don't care what is right or wrong, let them say whatever they want, as long as they give money.

Then he preached among the Qing Dynasty leaders in Beijing that the immigrants of the Lanfang Kingdom were to form an army so that they could counterattack the mainland in the future.

and personally visited Sheng Xuanhuai, hoping that Sheng Xuanhuai could stop the immigration of the Lanfang Kingdom. In view of Sheng Xuanhuai's influence and appeal in disaster relief activities over the years, if Sheng Xuanhuai can come forward to stop the immigration of the Lanfang Kingdom, then the immigration plan of the Lanfang Kingdom will be in vain, and the Qing Dynasty will be miserable because of these disaster victims.

Due to the indifference and delay of local officials in the disaster relief work, a large number of people have been displaced, and hundreds of people in the Qingjiang and Shuyang areas starve to death every day, and the situation is very urgent. Because the government disaster relief funds allocated by the imperial court for the first time were only 100,000 taels of silver, it was far from enough.

At this time, the Lanfang Kingdom was able to transport a large amount of grain, set up relief porridge sheds in various places, and actively transfer the affected people to the Lanfang Kingdom, so as to avoid these people from having no food and clothing in the future, which should be a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people. Moreover, in the future, the Lanfang Kingdom will organize an army to counterattack the mainland, and that will be a matter of the future, and the current difficulties must be overcome first. Besides, even if the Lanfang Kingdom can defeat the Eastern Fleet of the British Empire and annihilate the Dutch Army in the South Seas, even if it wants to counterattack the mainland now, it is not something that the Qing army can resist. Therefore, Sheng Xuanhuai resolutely vetoed Aoki Xuanchun's proposal, continued to support the immigration work of the Lanfang Kingdom, and strongly recommended that the victims of the disaster immigrate to the Lanfang Kingdom, which is also a Chinese country, and will definitely not treat the people in their hometown badly.

Duanfang, the governor of Liangjiang, was not interested in Aoki Xuanchun's proposal, the immigration and relief work of the Lanfang Kingdom was a great favor for him, and he couldn't delay it now, if he let these victims stay here, the final result would be starvation. However, the rest of the Qing court was wary of the Lanfang Kingdom.

Aoki Xuanchun still did not give up, and sent people to spread a series of rumors one after another: the Lanfang Kingdom slaughtered the local natives, sold Chinese slaves, and brutally oppressed the local people.

As a result of these rumors, some people have given up on immigration because of fears of the unknown. Now that there are so many people affected by the disaster, it has not had much effect on the immigration of the Lanfang Kingdom, but the Lanfang Kingdom has left a bad impression on people.

At the end of May, Aoki Xuanjun arrived in Taiwan with a letter of introduction from Chief of Staff Kodama Gentaro, and with the support of Taiwan's Governor Sakuma Zuoma, he began to recruit spies among the traitors in Taiwan, and received strong support from the Keelung Yan family, the Banqiao Lin family, the Wufeng Lin family, the Lukang Gu family, and the Kaohsiung Chen family in terms of manpower and funds.

After enlisting the help of the Taiwan authorities and the Taiwanese gentry, Aoki Xuanjun significantly accelerated the speed of recruiting spies, and it took only 10 days to recruit more than 500 people. After all the vetting was carried out, and it was confirmed that these people were staunch supporters of Greater East Asianism, they began to be trained in obtaining intelligence, assassination, and explosives. Training spies is Aoki Xuanjun's best job, besides, he has a great understanding of the psychology of the Chinese, known as China expert, which makes the training progress very smoothly.

Every month, a group of best-trained spies will be selected and sent to Singapore, Saigon Hanoi in Vietnam, Manila in the Philippines, Myanmar and other places in different capacities, with the support of local Japanese intelligence officers to carry out sabotage, assassination and other activities, and then send people to spread the blame to the local Chinese, hoping to trigger the contradictions between the Lanfang Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty and the world powers; The world powers would certainly not believe that these sabotage activities were carried out by the Qing Dynasty, and the final responsibility must be borne by the Lanfang Kingdom.

Since July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Lanfang has often received diplomatic protest telegrams from Britain, France, the United States and other countries.

In addition, a group of Japanese ronins were also trained, and they were arranged into the territory of the Lanfang Kingdom, actively contacting the local indigenous forces, hoping that they could resist the high-handed rule of the Lanfang Kingdom by force, and promised that as long as they were willing to cause trouble, the Imperial Japanese Government would provide them with weapons and military training for them.

The Japanese ambassador to the great powers worked closely with the Dutch government to publicize everywhere the dangers of the rise of the Lanfang Kingdom, which will inevitably break the balance in the Nanyang region, is the main culprit in undermining the peace in the Nanyang region, and is the biggest obstacle to the great powers from carving up the interests of the Qing Dynasty. All countries were shocked by the strong naval strength of the Lanfang Kingdom, and they were unwilling to make a head, which made Japan's plan come to naught.

At the behest of the British, the Japanese top brass also actively contacted Tsarist Russia, hoping to turn hostility into peace, unite to consolidate the rights and interests gained in the northeastern part of the Qing Dynasty, and jointly resist all other countries and forces that wanted to enter the region.