On April 16, 1895, when the main force of the Japanese army in Youpong, Yamasan, was fighting at the height of the front line in Nanjinggi Province, Korea, the defection of the Joseon royal family in Seoul in the rear was like a slap in the face, killing all the Japanese troops fighting on the front line at once. You must know that since the Japanese troops stationed in Korea were cut off from the mainland by the Sellis fleet, the ammunition and supplies in Seoul have long become the last hope of all Japanese troops.

At the same time, Jeon Junjun on the other side was also overjoyed after learning the bad news of the Japanese army, and hurriedly mobilized Daejeon's military forces to move north, and on April 19, he completely defeated the main Japanese force in the south of Gyeonggi Province.

In addition to the tens of thousands of Japanese troops who were annihilated and captured, there are only more than 2,000 surviving soldiers who escaped by chance. This part of the remnants of the Japanese army, led by the Japanese general Katsura Taro, began to retreat to the northeast of Korea, and at this time, the main force of the Donghak Party did not pursue because of the same heavy casualties in the previous battle.

The commander of this remnant Japanese army was none other than the Japanese officer Katsura Taro, who had been dismissed from his post by General Yama County in Seoul that day because of his failure to purge the Donghak Party.

It should be said that among the entire Korean Japanese army, Katsura Taro was the most sober about the war situation in Korea. As early as that day, when he led the army to clear the Korean People's Army and suffered a setback, Katsura Taro felt that something was wrong. A peasant rebel army, which was originally inconspicuous, at best, still had a bit of "cultural ideals", such a peasant bandit army would actually be equipped with European and American breech bolts in large quantities. Thinking of the fierce fighting of the imperial army on the northern front line of Korea at this time, from the very beginning, Katsura Taro smelled a strong smell of conspiracy from it. It is a pity that neither the Japanese army's top general in Korea, General Aritomo Yamagu, nor the base camp in Hiroshima, Japan, have adopted his views. Later, when the Donghak Party in Jeolla Province was gradually annihilated by his own army led by the county general, even Katsura Taro wondered if he was a little nervous.

But now the heavy price of reality has given the Japanese army a slap in the face.

At this time, Katsura Taro no longer had the heart to think about the past, and the most important thing at this time was how to save the surviving Japanese army in front of him. Due to the lack of ammunition, on the way to the north along the way, Katsura Taro always tried to lead his troops around the city to avoid conflict with the local forces in Korea. The original personal qualities of the Japanese soldiers played a positive role at this time, and although the previous battles were fierce enough, none of these remaining Japanese soldiers lost their weapons and fled on the road.

Along the way, relying on the few ammunition collected from all the surviving Japanese soldiers, the Japanese army relied on sneak attacks and looting villages along the way to obtain supplies, and reached the small border town of Cheongjin in Hamgyong Province in northeastern Korea.

Katsura Taro remembers that the Japanese command in Seoul, North Korea, had a unit stationed here in order to prevent the sudden intervention of the Russian Far East Army in the war. The hardships along the way did not disappoint Katsura Taro, and in this Kiyotsu Castle, the surviving Japanese troops were indeed supplied with a small but more valuable supply of ammunition. In addition, a brigade of Japanese troops originally stationed here can be regarded as greatly strengthening the strength of this Japanese army.

But all this still did not make Katsura Taro let go of the heart hanging in his heart, knowing that at this moment, the Japanese army in Korea was still under the blockade of the Seris fleet.

What to do? After settling his troops in Kiyotsu, the commander of the Japanese army, Katsura Taro, asked himself quietly. Although the ammunition and equipment have been replenished, with the current supplies, once the North Korean army attacks north, its own army will be wiped out sooner or later......

Perhaps God didn't want to see the Japanese army in front of him disappear, just when Katsura Taro was about to fall into despair because the troops could not get follow-up supplies, the other two forces on the Korean Peninsula at this time actually broke out again!

On May 13, 1895, the same day that Seris's army captured the Qing kingdom of Beijing. In Seoul, the capital of Korea, the Joseon royal government, which had received equipment and supplies from the Japanese army stationed in Korea after a counterattack, also began to organize an army to attack the Donghak Party, which had entered the Gyeonggi area.

Caught off guard, the frontline troops of the People's Army in Pyeongtaek, the front line of Gyeonggi Province, were suddenly defeated by the royal government forces of North Korea!

After that, both sides began to invest troops one after another, and although the Donghak Party and the People's Army were more abundant in weapons and equipment, many soldiers within the Nationalist Army still hesitated to fight against the royal government forces, and the battle lines of the two sides gradually stalemate at Cheonanseong City in Chungcheong-do.

At this time, taking advantage of the stalemate at the front, the royal government also began to send troops and officials to restore its rule in the northern part of Korea. After all, the Joseon royal family had ruled the peninsula for more than 400 years, and the people's reverence for imperial power was deeply ingrained, and it was not long before most of Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Hwanghae, Pyongan and Hamgyong provinces in the north returned to the rule of the Joseon royal government, except for Samdo in the south of Korea, which was still dominated by the Donghak Party.

In addition, the North Korean concubine Min began to raise the slogan of government reform among the people, and promised the people that they would reduce their tax burden. Gradually, even within the People's Army of the Dongxue Party, there began to be an unstable situation in the morale of the military.

For a while, the leader of the Dongxue Party, Quan Qizhun fell into a panic, and in the end, under the advice of Jin Mingde, the military advisor next to him, Quan Qizhun relied on the strong military strength of the Dongxue Party and the People's Army, and at the same time ruthlessly cleaned up a group of targets who disobeyed him internally, and the Dongxue Party gradually stabilized its position, at least there would be no more situations where the soldiers of the People's Army easily surrendered to the royal government army.

In the end, Jeon Hyun-joon of the Donghak Party simply took out the Ganghwado Treaty signed by the Joseon royal family with the Japanese to attack the royal government in a big way, and played the slogan of "the Korean royal government betrays the country", although these measures still have little influence on the people in the north of Korea, but at least they have stabilized the southern region of their own power.

In July, just when Chen Zeyu was already sitting in Beijing's Zhongnanhai office and began to consider mediating for the two local forces in North Korea, Hamgyong Province in northeastern North Korea changed drastically again!

On July 3, 1895, the Russian Far East Army stationed in Vladivostok attacked one of their border posts under the pretext that Japanese troops in Chungton, Korea, and brazenly crossed the border and broke through the only Japanese refuge in Korea at this time, Cheongjin Castle!

Interestingly, the surviving Japanese army, which was broken by the Russian army, did not surrender to the Russian army, nor did it flee to the south of Korea, but crossed the Yalu River under the leadership of the commander of this Japanese army and surrendered to the local garrison of Seris, which had been stationed on the border of the northeast Yanbian at that time.

According to the confessions of these surrendered Japanese prisoners, when they learned that their supplies to the mainland had been cut off by the Seris navy, the morale of the Japanese garrison had become extremely low, and the subsequent battle against the Togaku Party could be said to be their last blow. When they were attacking deep into Jeolla Province and suddenly heard the news of the fall of Seoul, the Japanese army suddenly became even more panicked and desperate, and many officers and soldiers had no desire to fight, and only hoped to return to the mainland as soon as possible. The Japanese troops stranded in northeastern Korea then asked the Russians on the east bank of the Ussuri River for reinforcements, hoping to charter their ships and return home, but the reaction of the polar bears was clearly beyond the expectations of all Japanese troops......

After Chen Zeyu received the report of the Jilin Military Region on this incident, he himself could not help but become interested in the commander of this Japanese army.

After learning that it was a Japanese army officer named Katsura Taro, Chen Zeyu shook his head with a wry smile again, it is really not ordinary people who can do this kind of thing. In addition to his rise to prominence during the Russo-Japanese War a decade later, it was a career as a politician that really made Katsura Taro, a Japanese officer, shine a few decades later. Others Chen Zeyu may not be familiar with it, but Chen Zeyu still has some impression of this Japanese politician who played with the Japanese Taisho Emperor in history.

Thinking of the diplomatic measures that the Republic was about to launch against Japan in the future, Chen Zeyu immediately hung up the phone to the Ministry of National Defense and asked the Jilin Military Region to take care of these Japanese soldiers who surrendered to his side to prevent the killing of prisoners of war in the army......

Just when the local garrison of Jilin in the Republic of Seris was "busy" for this group of surrendered Japanese troops, the Korean royal government, which was only a river away from them, fell into a panic in an instant!

Originally, when the Russians sent troops to destroy the Japanese troops in Cheongjin in early July, the Koreans actually welcomed them. But what they didn't expect was that the Russian army did not stop after conquering the border town of Qingjin, but once again used the excuse of the North Korean government's "inaction" and continued to attack in depth in the south of Korea.

On July 12, the Russian Far Eastern Army was still not satisfied after conquering the city of Kim Chaek in the central part of Hamgyong Province. After more than half a month, they successively captured Duanchuan, Liyuan, Beiqing, and Hongyuan, burning and looting along the way. By the end of July, the advance troops of the Russian army had already entered the territory of Hwanghae-do, where the city of Pyongyang was located, and the Korean royal government was immediately in a panic.

While sending people to the central government of Seris in Beijing to urgently ask for help, Concubine Min's royal government also actively began to negotiate with Quan Qizhun in the south.