This is the most tragic era, as far as the eye can see, there are deserted villages and Xiao Temple, ruins and broken tiles, rotting corpses, looming wild dogs, and the mournful cries of orphans in the distance are like sharp ape cries, which are simply not like the world.

This was the Kanto region of Japan in early September 1884, and all that remained of the land after the war was in ruins. Utsunomiya, Omiya, Urawa, Kanagawa and other places that were once densely populated and bustling were all reduced to empty alleys and rubble in the war.

This is really the bleakest era, Fukuzawa Yukichi sighed in his poem:

The flames of war have been repeated,

The oblique tilt is not over.

Only sigh the peaks and snow and smoke roads,

The flame lining the cherry blossoms is different red.

But the tragedy is still in the climax, the Japanese government army has been suppressed and appeased, and has been once known as hundreds of thousands of people "Heavenly Army", divided into fragments, one after another annihilated, the remaining three main forces finally parted ways: Takagishi Yoshiyoshi's army surrendered to the government army, Oi Kentaro's army was surrounded and annihilated by Kodama Gentaro, only Tashiro Eisuke's army was left to support hard, and it seems that it will not be long before the entire Kanto region will be pacified.

At this time, the "Free Army", which had the most resolute will to fight and vowed to overthrow the emperor's regime, was worried about the death of its lips and teeth, and at the same time wanted to capture Tokyo in one fell swoop, so it rushed down from the Tohoku region and joined up with Tashiro Eisuke's army to launch a counterattack against the government army.

Finally, on September 4, at Mt. Shirane, 200 kilometers north of Tokyo, government forces and rebels began a battle on an unprecedented scale.

This was the decisive battle that really decided the fate of Japan and the survival of the emperor's group since the outbreak of the Japanese Civil War, and Gentaro Kodama mobilized three divisions, while the rebels also gathered all the elite forces. The forces of both sides were equal, with a total of more than 100,000.

The rebels, holding aloft the red, white and blue tricolor flags, rushed towards the government forces as if they were dead. Red represents fraternity, white represents equality, and blue represents freedom, which is modeled after the ideas of the Western republics, who believe that only by overthrowing the feudal autocratic emperor system and establishing a new government of democracy and republic can Japan be saved from the autumn of its existence.

Government troops waved the Rising Sun flag and shouted "Long live the Emperor!" Fought valiantly with the utmost dedication. They also think that they are saving the country, and they cannot take half a step back when they are suffering from internal and external troubles, life and death. If they lose, the emperor will be finished, the cohesion of the country will be gone, and the Yamato nation will be scattered.

Both sides believe that they represent the right side and are fighting for justice, so the battle situation is also extremely tragic, and the battlefield is full of scenes of soldiers from both sides dying together.

The fierce battle lasted for several days, and the two sides rushed back and forth on both sides of Mt. Shirane, and the two sides were equal in strength and could not stand.

At this time, the tactical literacy and tactical discipline of the government army showed a great advantage, constantly mobilizing, responding, covering, detouring, maneuvering, and using various tactical actions to consume the rebels.

And over time, the advantages of regularization of the government army in terms of logistical supply have also become apparent.

The government stipulates that each person should prepare one liter of rice, a pinch of salt, and five spoonfuls of miso per day. When it comes to the transportation and deployment of rations, the government army uses pack horses, called "small lotus packs." The "Little Lotus" was responsible for distributing the day's rations to each soldier before the army fought. After the departure of the procession, the "small lotus caravan" followed the army until the next day's battle, when they distributed rations again, and the cycle continued until the end of the war.

Soldiers who received military rations had to hang food around their waists, so this kind of military rations were called "waist rations". Normally, the "waist soldier food" is filled with boiled and dried rice, fried rice, yams, and miso. When the soldiers eat, they simply put these dongxi into a miso soup boiled in clear water, add salt and stir and you're done.

Since the military rations are updated every day, the battlefield diet is fresher, more nutritious, and tastes better than that of the government army, which is greatly beneficial to the morale and physical strength of the soldiers.

On the rebel side, there is no complete system and system for dispatching military rations, and they can only rely on each locality to collect and dispatch military rations on their own. Because of the lack of transportation capacity, rice balls became the main form of rations for the rebels.

The biggest advantage of rice balls is that they are easy to carry and easy to eat, so you don't need any containers or chopsticks

Eat. Making rice balls is also very simple, just form a ball of rice by hand and press it repeatedly in the palm of your hand. A small plum is placed inside, and the more advanced ones are wrapped in small pieces of seaweed.

These rice balls are wrapped in long strips of dry food cloth, according to the standard of a rice ball to manage a meal, use a rope to tie a knot on the outside of the dry food bag, and finally tie it diagonally on the shoulders of soldiers, when you need to eat, as long as you pull the knot, you can take out and eat, this kind of cloth bag that carries military food is called "waist poop".

The rebels set out from the northeast, and now they have run out of food, and for a long time, many of the remaining rice balls have been spoiled, where can compare to the fresh and healthy diet of the government army every day.

As the army ran out of food, the rebels had to add salt to the inner bark and roots of various trees and the roots, stems and leaves of various grasses, and then boil them to satisfy their hunger.

By the end of the battle, the rebels were exhausted on all fronts, unable to sustain their energy and morale. By September 8, the rebel units could no longer hold on, and there were internal debates, some believed that they should temporarily retreat to the north and Xu Tu would come back, and some believed that if the decisive battle was lost, retreating would be waiting for death.

Finally, on September 9, the rebels were finally defeated, except for Uda Seiichi who led a part of the retreat to the north, the rest of the part fought to the death, the whole army was annihilated, and some of them were scattered, Tashiro Eisuke and Kono Hirota both died in the chaos.

In the whole campaign, 7,000 rebels retreated, nearly 20,000 were killed, and more than 20,000 were scattered. On the other hand, more than 10,000 people were killed in the battle, and the ammunition was almost exhausted, which can be said to be a crushing victory.

The Battle of Mt. Shirane decided the outcome of the Japanese Civil War, and although the north had not yet been pacified, the main force of the rebels was exhausted, and it was already the end of the crossbow, and the military rebellion that spread throughout the country finally came to an end.

By this time, the military threat to Tokyo had finally been fully lifted, and the strategy of the government forces had succeeded. In view of Kodama Gentaro's excellent command of the entire war, the Japanese government promoted him to lieutenant general and specially made him a baron.

You must know that the Japanese are very stingy with the title, even if the soldiers are promoted to the rank of general, it is difficult to get the status of the Chinese, and Kodama Gen is only a lieutenant general and is a Chinese, which can be said to be unprecedented. Also crowned were Ito Hirobumi, who became the hope of the Emperor Group to revive the empire.

According to Ito Hirobumi's plan, after a period of rest, the government army should launch a northern expedition as soon as possible in mid-September, suppress the remaining forces of the Free Army by the end of October, and completely put down the remnants of the rebellion throughout the country in November, so as to realize the ambition of "ending the civil war by the end of the year" ahead of schedule.

The drastic changes in Japan's domestic situation have also attracted the attention of European and American countries, and almost all Western media have believed that after the disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, Japan is facing huge reparations and experiencing a large-scale civil war, and the whole country has fallen into a bottomless abyss and has no hope of climbing up again.

Unexpectedly, in just half a year, the situation in Japan has stabilized, and the emperor's regime is still stable, which has made all political commentators fall through their glasses.

On 10 and 11 September, Japanese Foreign Minister Shuzo Aoki received diplomatic notes from Europe and the United States, hoping to strengthen economic and trade cooperation between them.

These sudden goodwill surprised the emperor and the newly formed Ito cabinet, and the so-called bustle of the world was all snobbery. Seeing that Japan was going to be finished, I didn't bother to deal with it, but now that I found that there was still a future for cultivation and use value, I immediately changed my face. The Japanese government seems to have foreseen the arrival of a large amount of foreign loans.

These subtle changes were quickly transmitted back to China by Wang Fengzao, the Chinese minister to Japan.

On the evening of September 12, Ding Yuntong looked at the report and couldn't help frowning. In fact, he couldn't say that he was surprised by such a change, but it felt like it was coming a little quickly. With the rise of China and its increasing activity in Asian affairs, European and American countries will naturally become suspicious, and the "China threat theory" and "yellow peril theory" have begun to appear in the Western media.

Under such circumstances, the Western powers will naturally be happy to support a Chinese enemy as a containment next to China. The reason why this was not done in the past was because, after all, it was during the war, and it was inevitable that China would be directly provoked, as evidenced by the "five-nation mediation group" that could not be resolved, and Japan lost too badly, so that the international community felt that there was no value in supporting it.

But now Japan is doing well at home, and although the Kwantung and Tohoku regions are still at war, many parts of the South have begun to resume production and rebuild their homes, showing an amazing ability to heal themselves, impressing the Great Powers.

It can be seen from this that the situation in Japan will be extremely complicated in the future, and will China have the ability to eliminate the interference of Europe and the United States and solve Japan alone?

This is a problem.

Fortunately, in terms of war reparations, China promised Japan a long-term phased payment, and did not give Western capital a chance to take advantage of it.

Ding Yuntong was thinking back and forth about this matter, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly reported a shocking news:

On September 11-12, Tsarist Russia suddenly dispatched a large number of marines to occupy the entire Northern Kuril Islands, which were previously controlled by Japan, from Kankanka to Tsefu Island!

Ding Yuntong didn't react all of a sudden, how could this be? Hasn't Russia been "warmly" supporting Japan all along? Wasn't Russia the only one that lent money to Japan during the Sino-Japanese War? What the hell is going on?

It's not that I don't understand, the world is changing fast.

The situation in Japan is getting more and more complicated, and Ding Yuntong suddenly finds it very funny.