The Japanese Civil War at the end of 1864 had many similarities with the historical situation in Japan, but it was also very different.

This difference is mainly due to the intervention of China, Britain and France!

Historically, the Shogunate War of the Japanese Dynasty was the result of the Shogunate Rebellion, then the Nagasu Domain and the Satsuma Domain being defeated and surrendered by the Shogunate, and then the Nagasu Domain and the Satsuma Domain united to begin the armed Shogunate Movement, which officially set off the Shogunate War, which is the Boshin War in history, in which the Shogunate was defeated, and finally the Shogunate established a new Meiji government and carried out various modernization reforms, that is, the Meiji Restoration.

However, now, because of the emergence of the Chinese Empire, the Chinese Empire first dragged the British to attack the Satsuma Domain, and fully supported the shogunate's armed new army to suppress and conquer the Changzhou Domain by force.

The shogunate did not give in to history, which led to an early alliance between the Nagasu and Satsuma domains, and the official start of the armed rebellion, which led to a full-scale civil war in Japan.

At this time, the Chinese Empire was still firmly supporting the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the British side also supported the Shogunate at first, and now, the British have also begun to stay out of it, and only diplomatically support the Chinese Empire and the Shogunate.

As for France, historically it was supposed to support the shogunate, but now that the biggest supporter of the Tokugawa shogunate has become the Chinese Empire, it is natural for France, which has serious conflicts with the Chinese Empire over the Vietnam issue, to turn around and support reformers such as the Nagasu Domain and the Satsuma Domain.

The enemy of the enemy is the friend, and this is normal international relations, and it has nothing to do with whether the French have a favorable opinion of the reformers and the shogunate in Japan. In fact, the French don't care about the life or death of the Japanese themselves, so they don't care whether the Japanese will complete the modernization reform. Their purpose was very simple, that is, to dismantle the Chinese Empire and Britain.

The intervention of China, Britain and France. This has led to an even more chaotic situation in the country!

And directly led to the outbreak of a full-scale civil war in Japan several years earlier than in history!

In December 1864, the four powerful feudal domains of the present day, including the Nagasu and Satsuma domains, as well as the Tosa and Hizen domains, announced that they would welcome the emperor's government and call on the Japanese feudal clans to send troops to Edo, remove Tokugawa Ieshige from his position as shogun, and abolish the shogunate system.

At the end of the month, Emperor Komei, who had been controlled and placed under house arrest by the Shogunate faction, suddenly died, and when the news reached the ears of the Imperial Minister in Japan, Li Bochang, he had summoned several powerful people from the Tokugawa family. However, Tokugawa Yoshiki, the actual ruler of the Tokugawa shogunate, faced Li Bocang's questioning, but firmly vetoed that it was the Tokugawa family who killed Emperor Komei.

It is nothing that Emperor Komei died, but more importantly, Emperor Komei just died, and Emperor Komei's son, who was only a teenager, Prince Muhito (later Emperor Meiji), had been missing for several days.

However, it was not long before Prince Muhito reappeared in Kyoto and, with the support of the Tokugawa shogunate, held an enthronement ceremony with great speed, conferring the title 'Meiji', or Emperor Meiji.

And not long after. A new emperor appeared in Japan, and the shogunate also announced that they had escorted Prince Muhito, the only son of Emperor Komei, to Edo, and with the support of the shogunate, he also ascended the throne as emperor and awarded the title of 'Tomohito'. It is for Emperor Tomohito.

However, even ordinary people know that Emperor Hyomei has only one son, Prince Muhito. Now, however, there are two Prince Muhito, and there is no doubt that one of them is fake.

However, it was true that the shogunate said that he supported Emperor Tomohito, who ascended the throne. However, the Shogunate faction said that the Meiji Emperor who was controlled by himself was the real one, but no one could tell whether this was true or false.

Li Bocang even asked Tokugawa Keiki in private. Is this Emperor Tomohito the son of Emperor Komei? Tokugawa Keiki immediately took Li Bocang to meet this Emperor Tomohito in person, and the result surprised Li Bochang, he had also met Prince Muhito before, and the Emperor Tomohito he saw now looked obviously the former Prince Muhito.

Coincidentally, because there were two Prince Muhito at the same time in Japan, and each of them ascended the throne as emperor, there is no doubt that one of them must be fake, and the French who supported the fall of the four great feudal clans were also in order to avoid making jokes themselves, so they also specially sent diplomats who had seen Prince Muhito to Kyoto to confirm, and the result was also quite impressive, because the Meiji Emperor that the French saw was also a nine-point resemblance to the previous Prince Muhito.

Needless to say, one of the two sides must have found a person who is very similar to Prince Mujin to pretend to him!

But who is true and who is not?

The two sides can't take out the two emperors for a face-to-face debate, so the two emperors are just two emperors, anyway, the emperor is just a banner for them, and they are used to fight wars!

Subsequently, both the Shogunate faction and the Shogunate received the so-called Emperor's Edict, and Emperor Tomohito demanded that the Shogunate completely annihilate the rebellious Nagasu Domain, Satsuma Domain, and other Shogunate factions, arrest the murderers of the Shogunate faction who plotted to kill Emperor Komei, and the puppet Emperor Meiji.

Emperor Meiji's edict demanded that the Shogunate faction form an imperial army, completely defeat the shogunate, abolish the shogunate system, and arrest the puppet emperor Tomohito.

After this series of events happened, Lin Zhe, who was in the country, was amazed, and the civil war in this day was becoming more and more interesting, and there would be two emperors.

But is that true or not? Lin Zhe is also a little uncertain, in terms of appearance, Emperor Meiji and Emperor Tomohito are both like twin brothers, Li Bocang insisted that what he saw was Prince Muhito.

And in terms of the names of the two eras, Emperor Meiji is obviously more credible, because there is such a Meiji Emperor in history.

But then again, who can say for sure that the Meiji Emperor in history is real? Instead of a replacement pulled out by the fallen faction such as the Cheung Chau Domain?

Lin Zhe didn't pay too much attention to which of the two emperors of Japan was really it, regardless of which one was true or false, and now that Japan's civil war is in full swing, the key is to fight.

In 1865, when the new armies of the various feudal clans of the Shogunate faction arrived near Kyoto one after another, announcing that on the eve of the Eastern Crusade, a new army of about 8,000 men had been assembled!

The Tokugawa shogunate was based in Osaka. With the army directly under the Tokugawa shogunate as the core, it cooperated with the soldiers of other feudal domains. In total, more than 15,000 troops were assembled, but only about 10,000 of them were directly under the shogunate. The others were old armies of the feudal clans that used old weapons.

In terms of the size of the army, there is no doubt that there are many more shogunate troops, almost one or two times as many as the shogunate army, but it is worth noting that the shogunate army is much stronger in training and quality in all aspects, and they have been using breech-loading rifles for a relatively long time, and they are still a new army that uses breech-loading rifles and artillery.

Although the shogunate army also urgently purchased a large number of new ordnance from China, and the nearly 10,000 people directly under the shogunate have all been reequipped with breech-loading rifles and front-loading rifled guns, only three or four thousand of them are old troops. The rest were all recruits who had been trained for less than three months, and as for the other armies that fought against the shogunate, most of them were old armies, and of course even the old army was equipped with muskets, mostly with muskets, and some mini rifles.

In addition, there is a very important difference in the fact that the Shogunate Army has a large number of officers who are civilians or middle and lower rank samurai, but although there are many soldiers in the Shogunate Army, the officers are all traditional samurai.

The most critical thing is. Most of these samurai did not have a modern military command education, because the quality of the officers on both sides was inferior to that of the shogunate.

The armies of both sides gathered in Kyoto and Osaka. They will fight around Osaka and Kyoto.

For the Shogunate Army, they were to capture Osaka so that they could defend the Kansai region. and the opportunity to enter Edo.

And for the shogunate army, take Kyoto as the political center. Then they want to enter Kansai and completely sweep away the Fallen Shogun.

In addition to the land forces of both sides. There is also a part of the naval force, and for the time being, it is half a pound and eight taels in this regard.

Previously, the shogunate did not have any advanced steam warships, but there were quite a few on the Satsuma Domain's side, but most of the steam warships of the Satsuma Domain had been sunk by the Sino-British combined fleet, so the current Shogunate faction did not have many warships, especially new steam warships.

And there were not many on the shogunate's side before, and there were only a few wooden steam warships ordered from China before, but the tonnage was very small, and the guns used were still front-loading smoothbore guns, and the combat power was worrying.

It was not until after the Empire and the Shogunate signed a loan contract that the Shogunate, which had obtained the funds, officially ordered a number of warships from the Empire, including a large-tonnage wooden steam warship.

As for the ironclad ship, the shogunate wants it, but the ironclad ship in this year is a militaristic weapon, and it will not be sold easily, especially in neighboring countries, and the Imperial Navy is worried that if the shogunate sells powerful ironclad ships to the shogunate, in case the shogunate is defeated or the shogunate's navy turns to the shogunate, won't it become an enemy of the imperial navy in the future?

Therefore, the Imperial Navy is resolutely opposed to the sale of ironclad ships to Japan and any neighboring countries!

In addition to the reluctance of the Imperial Navy, it is also related to the high price of ironclad ships, which are also two-thousand-ton warships, if they are wooden dark wheel steam warships with front-loading rifled guns, the price will be at most fifty or sixty thousand pounds, but if it is an ironclad ship of the same ton, and equipped with rear-loading rifled guns, the price will have to be doubled, not to mention that the price of warships is even more expensive if they are exported, and an ironclad ship of about 2,000 tons will be sold for at least 130,000 or even more than 150,000 pounds.

Therefore, the large-tonnage warship ordered by the Japanese side is still a wooden warship, especially since the Imperial Navy itself has not been equipped with a wooden warship of more than 2,000 tons, so it has to be specially designed.

In addition to the newly built large-tonnage wooden battleship ordered, the shogunate also ordered a number of wooden battleships with smaller tonnage, one of which was a wooden battleship of about 1,000 tons.

In addition, the shogunate was now in dire need of ready-made naval forces, and it would take more than a year to build new warships even if they were built quickly, so in addition to ordering the two new wooden warships, the shogunate also directly purchased a number of second-hand warships from the imperial navy.

Among them were two four-hundred-ton offshore gunboats of the Imperial Navy, which were originally intended to be used as armed transport ships, namely the Zhentai and Zhenjia, and then there were three small-tonnage river gunboats that were already ready to be decommissioned, the Xingwu-class gunboats.

Although these five warships are all old goods, they are obsolete warships in the navies of major powers, but they are still a pretty good choice for the Japanese shogunate navy, which has weak maritime power, at least to train sailors, and occasionally support and support the army in combat.

Anyway, the opponent of the shogunate navy, even the navy of the fallen shogunate faction, did not have any decent warships.

Everyone is half-hearted, and no one can say who is not.

In the face of this situation, Lin Zhe instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military to pay close attention to the situation and report the news of the civil war in Japan's army at any time. (To be continued.) )