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If it is said that Liu Zuo and the two want to stabilize Taiwan, then Liu Xian can use so much force. Only the strength of the Chu army, if it is said that it cannot defeat the three or four thousand soldiers of Japan, Li Hongzhang will not believe it. As for the Japanese fleet, the strength is indeed not weak, the East [Wooden Ironclad Ship], Long Xiang [2500-ton Iron Wakiki Wooden Shell], Tsukuba, Yunyang, Nisshin [Wooden Ironclad Ship], Fengxiang and other six main warships, and several gunboats like Meng Chun, as well as transport ships, notification ships, training ships, Imperial Summoning Ships (Emperor Yachts) and other miscellaneous ships, a total of 17 ships.

It is indeed difficult for such a navy to be dealt with by the shipmaster and the navy alone.

After Zuo Zongtang teamed up with Liu Xian, and added the Qin-Chu combined fleet with four ironclad gunboats, the strength suddenly surpassed the Japanese fleet at this time.

It doesn't seem like anything remarkable to look at this way, and someone else would do the same. The four ironclad gunboats of the Qin army are the only ones in the current Great Qing Kingdom.

Li Hongzhang smelled a different meaning from it. Because, the basic plate of Zuo Zongtang and Liu Xian is compared with the entire Japanese fleet and the battle situation between the two sides......

Zuo Zongtang's personality is so arrogant that he is almost withdrawn, and Liu Xian, a rising star, is not good at stubble, the two joined forces, and Li Hongzhang had to think bigger......

"It seems that there is more than one Taiwanese ......"

――

Look back at Taiwan.

In the afterglow of the setting sun, Akamatsu Zeliang looked at the port of Dagou. It won't take long, at most five days, and the infantry of Saigo Congdao will be able to subdue all the Hengchun Shengfan. Then it will be time for the Imperial Army to enter here.

A small boat came out of the dog harbor and quickly approached the Nisshin. The man inside was none other than the staff officer he had sent to the port. Dagou Port is an officially opened port of the Qing Dynasty, with not only customs, but also consulates of Britain and the United States.

Akamatsu Norira does not need to consider the attitude of the Qing people, but he must find out the attitude of Western countries such as Britain and the United States. The sudden change in the attitude of the British before almost made the conquest of Taiwan come to an end.

"Your Excellency, General." A lieutenant officer came up to Norira Akamatsu.

"How's things going, Uesugi?"

"Your Excellency, there seems to be a new shift in the attitude of the United Kingdom. Mr. Consul, who was stationed in the dog, did not resist our army's entry into the dog. He said it was a matter between Japan and the Qing Kingdom, and that the British Empire remained neutral. ”

"Hehehe......" Akamatsu Norira's eyes lit up and he laughed happily. Whatever the British think, as long as he does not oppose it, it is in the best interest of us for now. ”

"Send someone to relay the news to His Excellency Saigo at once. He's going to jump up with joy. Akamatsu Norira slapped the side of the ship hard. Finally, the Imperial Athlete was finally able to get out of the ghost place of Hengchun. The damned land of life, insects and ants breed, diseases are rampant, and at least a dozen soldiers go to see Amaterasu every day. The war had only begun for half a month, and leaving there had become the greatest expectation of everyone in the army.

The excitement soon spread over the entire Japanese Navy officers and men on the Nisshin. Now they don't know the fate of Meng Chun at all, and they don't know that Nobuo Ishikawa and his thirty soldiers and officers have sunk to the bottom of the sea.

As night fell, the Risin anchored outside the port of Dagou. The steaming lights on the ship can be seen clearly from the port of Doggo.

Local officials, such as the officials of the customs office of Reiwa Port in Fengshan County, did not have the courage to send people to expel the Japanese warships, but they had a premonition that something bad would happen, but it was a real thing. A few days ago, the Japanese army landed in Gunliao and attacked the Shengfan tribe in the Hengchun area, and Fengshan County Commander and other officials only felt that a catastrophe was coming. In the past ten days, there has not been a moment when I have not been sitting on pins and needles, trembling, and uneasy.

Today, the officials of the dog port, and even the lower-level officials and errand servants, no one is half sleepy. Either they were worried that the Japanese were going to attack and that their lives were in danger, or they were worried about their own money bags.

Although Dagou Port is not a commercial port, it is also supervised by foreigners, but there are still great opportunities for a customs office to make money. If the Japanese come in, won't their lives and jobs be insured?

It was this group of "patriots" who couldn't sleep at night and were "worried about the country and the people" that when they suddenly heard the roaring explosion in the middle of the night, they immediately shouted and ran, took their mother-in-law and children and packed up their soft belongings, and rushed out of the door. So much so that some people's 'running' also caused a riot in the dog port.

Of course, not all of my officials in the Qing Dynasty were vegetarians. There were still a few calm, and when they went out to look at it, they quickly recognized that the explosion was not fired by the Japanese ship, and the shells did not fall in the port of Dagou. On the contrary, it is the little devil himself who is in trouble. I don't know if their warship was attacked, or if it exploded on its own. It's on fire anyway!

Akamatsu Norira was suddenly shaken, and he fell from the bed to the ground, almost falling and couldn't get up.

"Enemy attack" and "enemy attack" ......, and there were shrill shouts and noisy noises outside.

"Your Excellency General—"

Akamatsu Noriyo had just gotten up from the ground, and he hadn't even worn his clothes, and he hadn't even wiped the nosebleed on his face. The adjutant rushed into the room eagerly. "Where's the enemy? Is it Qing Guoren? How many warships are there in them? ”

Akamatsu hated the officers and soldiers on duty in his conscience, the enemy was so close, they didn't even notice it, they really should have a seppuku!

"There were no warships, just three small boats not far away, and there was nothing on them. The enemy is a diver. ”

"Yaga!" Akamatsu Norira screamed angrily, and his clothes were no longer worn, and he rushed out of the room.

The panic outside did not subside in the slightest, and Akamatsu could clearly feel that the Nisshin was tilting. "Yaga. Captain, where is the captain? "The captain of the Nisshin who was rapidly shrinking around him didn't even notice where the people were. Akamatsu Noriyo's anger bubbled upward.

"Your Excellency, Captain Ishii has fainted." Akamatsu Noriyo's howl attracted the second mate of the Hishin.

After hearing the answer, Akamatsu's anger immediately calmed down, and he asked more concernedly: "Is that life-threatening?" "After all, the captain of one of Japan's only two ironclad ships, Ishii, who has the rank of Nakasa, still has some weight in the navy.

"Your Excellency the General cares more. There is no danger to life. Captain Ishii hit his head on the bulkhead......"

"Yo Xi." Akamatsu Norira, who was like a toad, calmed down, exhaled and said to the second officer: "Immediately let people check the damaged condition of the ship and repair it as much as possible." The boiler burned, and the gunner was in position. Always ready to fight.

Tell the soldiers, we still have two hours, and when the first rays of whiteness are revealed in the east, we must move—"

As a qualified soldier, if Akamatsu Noriyo couldn't guess the bad situation facing the Nisshin, he would have lost the rank of major general on his shoulder. This was a premeditated sneak attack by the Qing army, and civilians would not have such a powerful gunpowder.

At dawn, if the Rijin is still in place, what awaits him is a siege -

Akamatsu Noriyo looked at the open sea of the black flag, north? Or in the West, there is a fleet of Qing people hidden in the black. "Zuo Jun? Yo West. He is worthy of being a cadre of the Qing State! ”

Japan, which has just undergone the Meiji Restoration, is far from being able to carry out some espionage operations against China compared with those 20 years later. The Japanese are just getting started. However, for Zuo Zongtang, the opponent that he may need to face in this battle to conquer Taiwan, Akamatsu Zeliang still has an understanding.

However, without the aura of the Northwest Expedition, Zuo Zongtang is just a local leader of the Westernization faction in the eyes of the Japanese. Zuo Jinliang's arrogance is even more of a personality defect in the eyes of the Japanese.

Just like an arrogant person, when he has made enough merits to support his arrogance, arrogance has become self-esteem and self-improvement, and it has become not in the company of the ordinary. But the current Zuo Zongtang has not yet done that step, pacifying the Taiping army in Zhejiang, and going south to pursue Wang Haiyang and Li Shixian, such a feat can not be recognized by the Japanese. After all, the culture of the Three Kingdoms is very widespread in Japanese society, and Zhuge Liang's name is not inferior to the recognition of the Chinese people in Japan.

Whether it is Saigo Congdao, Akamatsu Norirashi, or Army Major General Gu Gancheng, in the eyes of the three giants of the Japanese Navy and Army who attacked Taiwan this time, Zuo Zongtang is no different from Li Hongzhang and Liu Changyou. Zuo Zongtang's personality is very different from Li Hongzhang, and they don't really realize it.

The Japanese army and even the new government thought of the possibility of fighting Zuo Zongtang, but they only thought that it would be under the condition of 'above board' and when Beijing had issued a definite declaration of war, Zuo Zongtang would fight with them. At that time, the Japanese Navy and Army, which had already gained a firm foothold in Tainan, were really arrogant and believed that they would not be defeated by the Qing people.

After all, Japan has foreign aid. At the beginning, Britain, France, the United States, and other countries all supported their conquest of Taiwan.

Since the opening of Taiwan's port in the 60s of this century, businessmen from Britain and the United States have imported opium and other products to Taiwan on the one hand, and on the other hand, they have cheaply exported tea, camphor, sugar, coal, and other products, plundering Taiwan's resources. Britain is the big brother of the Taiwan market, and tea, camphor, sugar, coal and other products have brought him huge benefits.

This determined that when the British discovered that they were not the only godfather to Japan, after the expected success of Japan's attack on Taiwan, their own monopoly on the market was shattered, and naturally, the attitude of the British changed 180 degrees. However, even if the British changed their attitude for fear of harming their own interests, Japan still has two godfathers, France and the United States.

Under the condition that they did not worry about military spending, Saigo and others really looked down on themselves, and they also took the weight of France and the United States too seriously, thinking that they could finally force the Manchus to admit the loss of Taiwan.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty's attitude towards foreign affairs and a series of practices in recent years have been clearly seen by Japan. There are two godfathers behind, but they just think that Zuo Zongtang will not dare and will not 'fight without declaring'. Sending Meng Chun to the north is not so much to monitor Penghu, but to see if the Chu army will allocate troops to increase Taiwan now...... How could you have thought that an iron fist would be smashed over!

"Yaga! Meng Chun ......: "Chisong Zeliang's body suddenly stiffened. (The novel "Crossing 1862" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will be 100 lucky draw gifts for everyone!) Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner to "add friends", search for the official account "qdread" and follow, hurry up! )R1152