In the face of the Japanese civil war, Lin Zhe hopes that the best result is that the two sides will continue to fight, and they will never be able to tell the winner, but this possibility is not very likely, after all, the war will always be divided into winners and losers, in this case, Lin Zhe naturally hopes that the shogunate army can win.

But considering the fiasco of the shogunate army some time ago, Lin Zhe also had to consider that it would be difficult for the shogunate to win the war by itself.

Once the shogunate was defeated, Lin Zhe would have to consider changing the policy toward Japan, but how to change it is still debatable.

It is not realistic to directly send troops to kill the Fallen Curtain faction, so that too many troops need to be transferred, and the scale of the war is too large, for the Chinese Empire, which is currently centered on economic development, any large-scale war needs to be avoided, and small-scale conquest is at most to obtain some tactical advantages, and it is difficult to completely defeat the Fallen Curtain faction.

But it certainly won't work if you sit idly by!

What should be done in the future, Lin Zhe does not have a clear plan now.

For Lin Zhe, the best outcome was that the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan would be able to win and block the attack of the shogunate faction no matter how bad it was.

When a full-scale civil war broke out on that day, after four years of war, the civil war between the North and the South in the United States had come to an end.

According to the information transmitted by the Imperial diplomats in the United States, in late 1864 and early 1865, the American Northern government forces relied on absolute superiority in strength to defeat the Confederate Army in several large-scale battles.

Today, the life of the American Confederation is coming to an end.

This can be seen from the reactions of various countries!

Britain and France have successively announced the suspension of any trade with the Confederation of the United States, and have seized many ordnance and even warships ordered by the Confederation.

Following Britain, France and other countries, the Chinese Empire did not hesitate to abandon the Southern Federation of the United States. In February 1865, the Empire seized a shipment of ordnance that had been ordered by the Confederates for millions of dollars. And detain the second ironclad ship ordered by the American Confederate Confederate.

The second ironclad ship ordered by the United States was the USS Washington, which was the successor of the Confederate Confederate of the United States, because they were quite satisfied with the Washington. At the end of 1863, a second ironclad ship was ordered, and the overall design still followed the Washington, but the tonnage was as high as 2,200 tons, the speed was faster, and the armament and protection were stronger, which can basically be seen as a smaller version of the Pangu-class ironclad.

Construction began on the ironclad ship in 1864 and has yet to be outfitted.

And now, under the pretext of neutrality, the Reich has directly stopped the construction of this ironclad ship. Of course, the deposit paid by the Southern Union will definitely not be returned.

If nothing else, this ironclad ship that has not yet been named may be accepted by the US Northern Government Navy, but this is unlikely, once the US Civil War ends, the Americans will definitely carry out a large-scale disarmament, and a large number of existing naval ships will be decommissioned and sold in large quantities, and naturally they will not come up with a huge amount of money to continue to purchase such an ironclad ship from the Chinese Empire.

In the end, the ship will either be ordered by other countries at a high price, if it really can't be sold. In the end, the Imperial Navy had to take over and fund the construction and commissioning of this ironclad ship.

The same situation happened not only on the side of the Chinese Empire, but also in Britain and France, and you must know that the Southern Federation of the United States also ordered warships from them. It will definitely not be able to be delivered now, and how to deal with it will be a big problem when the time comes.

At the beginning of 1865, the countries almost completely abandoned the Confederate States. This also hastened the collapse of the Confederation of the United States.

In such a situation, the reunification of the United States is inevitable. And the unification will be completed in a very short time in the future.

This was not a good thing for the Chinese Empire, the end of the American Civil War. It means that the Imperial Defense Industry has lost its largest ordnance export market, which will deal a certain blow to the currently rapidly developing Imperial Defense Industry.

In order to cope with the possible industrial contraction after the loss of the huge arms market of the United States, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce on the one hand guided the three major domestic arms companies and other related heavy industry enterprises to find other foreign markets, such as Japan, Southeast Asia, and other regions, but the results of these efforts are expected to be limited, because these countries have limited financial resources, they prefer cheap and practical second-hand 1858 Linde rifles and old artillery, and these are products that the military has a large inventory of.

However, although it is impossible to directly let the three major weapons companies obtain a large number of foreign orders, if the military can successfully sell the second-hand 1858 Linde rifle and other old weapons in service, it will be able to return funds to accelerate the service of the 1864 Linde rifle and the rear-loading rifled gun field gun, which is still very important for the three major domestic weapons companies.

After 1865, arms traders from China could be seen running around almost the world, and in traditional Southeast Asia, and even in the Americas, the Middle East, and other regions, there were merchants with the "Pacific Trading Company" on their heads.

In the past few years, as the scale of its arms trade has grown, the Royal Assets Management Office has simply spun off this subsidiary from the Shanghai Textile Company, put on the name of the Pacific Trading Company, and set up offices and branches in hot spots around the world to promote Chinese ordnance products.

The company is also the only company in the Chinese Empire that has an arms import and export trade license, and it is an absolute monopoly enterprise, and all the arms trade between the empire and other countries is handled through this company.

Due to the company's special nature, the company is also the only company in the empire that is directly regulated by the military, and every arms transaction requires military approval before it can be carried out.

The Pacific Trading Company sold weapons such as the 1858 model, front-loading rifled guns and even ironclads around the world, and even took the initiative to sell them at lower prices in order to compete with the rear-loading rifles of Britain and France.

A brand new rifle from the 1858 Linde rifle purchased by the United States. Prices range from about 12 to 14 pounds, and the later the price gets, the cheaper it gets.

And now. The second-hand 1858 Linde rifle sold by the Empire was basically between £8 and £10, and even offered military loans in some special cases.

Such a massive sales pitch. It also brought a lot of orders, the Thai military ordered a lot of 1858 Linde rifles in the early years, and after accumulating enough experience, they were also ready to fully replace the rear loading rifles, at this time, the empire sold second-hand 1858 Linde rifles on a large scale, the price was so low that it was only eight pounds, and it also said that it could provide military loans, and Thailand could repay it with rice, spices, rubber and other agricultural products.

As a result, the Thai military purchased 10,000 front-loading rifled guns for the 1858 rifle at one time, and it is worth noting that Thailand also ordered two steam warships from the Empire.

Of course. Although the Thais wanted to buy the ironclad ship ordered by the Southern Federation of the United States, the empire did not intend to refuse at first, after all, the principle of freedom of trade was pursued in these years, and if the Thais could not purchase warships from the empire, they would turn around and purchase warships from Britain, France, and even the Netherlands, the United States and other countries.

The Empire rejected their offer for only one reason: their bid was too low!

As long as there is money. Nothing is impossible to sell, but if you don't have money, you don't have to talk about it!

The ironclad ships were too expensive for them to procure, so they retreated and ordered two wooden steam warships. It is similar to the thousand-ton battleship ordered by the Japanese himself, and there is only one advantage: the price is cheap!

The Empire's large-scale marketing of the 1858 Linde rifle also allowed the military to return a lot of money. This allowed the Imperial Military to speed up the entry into service of the 1864 Linde rifle.

The refitting of the 1864 Linde rifle, the development of a breech-loading rifled field gun and the plan for service. At the same time, there are also a large number of plans to build ironclads, which will continue to support the continued development of the Imperial defense industry.

It's just that the high profits of the previous years are definitely gone. It will not be easy for an order from the Imperial Military to feed and maintain the existing scale of the defense industry.

In addition, the reorganization plan of the imperial military in recent years has also come to an end, and the empire has been organized into a total of 36 integrated infantry divisions, and the previous fixed mixed brigade establishment has been abolished again.

In addition, it was organized into three cavalry divisions, a number of independent cavalry regiments, and cavalry battalions, and if we count by cavalry companies, a total of more than 200 cavalry companies were formed, with a total of about 40,000 cavalry. This number of cavalry is limited to field cavalry fighting independently, excluding divisional cavalry and cavalry of garrison troops.

If we add the thirty-six cavalry regiments to which the thirty-six integrated infantry divisions belong, each of these divisional cavalry regiments contains four cavalry companies, which is one hundred and forty-four cavalry companies, with a total of about 28,000 cavalry.

The division and independent cavalry combined, the total number of cavalry companies is about 350, and the total number of cavalry is about 68,000 cavalry!

In addition to the artillery regiments of the divisions, there are also many independent artillery units, including three independent artillery brigades and eight independent artillery regiments, which are generally equipped with more heavy artillery, such as large-caliber mortars, large-caliber howitzers, cannons, etc.

The above-mentioned units are the front-line field units of the Imperial Army, but the Imperial Army does not only have first-line field troops, but also a large number of local garrison units.

These local garrisons were set up more or less in accordance with local conditions, mainly infantry or cavalry, with a total of about 200,000 people, including tens of thousands of garrison cavalry.

The total strength of the Imperial Royal Army has swelled to nearly 700,000 with the addition of field troops and garrisons, and then some civilian personnel.

Then on the side of the Imperial Royal Navy, not to mention the warships, the strength of the navy includes sailors, marines, coastal defense forces, etc., adding up to a total of about 40,000 people.

In other words, the total strength of the empire's naval and land armies combined reached 740,000.

The army is in the process of replacing its 1864 rifles and preparing for service with breech-loading rifled guns, while the navy is fully implementing the ironclad program and purchasing ironclad ships every year.

This will lead to the imperial military will purchase a large number of ordnance and equipment every year, although the profits of these orders can not be compared with export orders, but they cannot stand a large amount, with sufficient orders, the domestic defense industry may not be able to expand as large as in the past, but it is still possible to maintain the current scale.

And when the empire carried out its own military reform and led the transformation of the defense industry, the news of the end of the war finally came from the United States.

In April, Lin Zhe received a telegram from the Imperial Minister to the United States, saying that the commander of the U.S. Confederate Army, Robert ? Edward? Li was surrounded by the Northern Army and was forced to surrender to the Northern Army after running out of ammunition and food.

With the surrender of Lee's troops, it was also announced that the Southern Union of the United States had entered a period of official destruction, and soon after, more than 100,000 remnants of the Southern Union also surrendered one after another.

Interestingly, however, only a few days later, the Imperial Minister in the United States sent back an urgent telegram saying that President Lincoln, who had just achieved reunification, had been assassinated!

Lincoln died, but it did not affect the unity of the United States in the slightest!

And with the complete unification of the United States, this is bound to change some of the existing foreign policies of the empire as well! (To be continued.) )