The Lunar New Year is the grandest festival of the Tang people, and before the end of the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month, Tang families are immersed in a strong festive atmosphere, government departments are on vacation, and most factories and enterprises are also closed for vacation.

A heavy snowfall on the third day of junior high school made the taste of the fifth year of junior high school even stronger.

Just as the whole country of the Tang Empire was celebrating the Spring Festival of 1870, in the State Guesthouse, the Tokugawa Shogunate and other members of the Tokugawa Shogunate, such as Lord Sekihaku Nijo Saikei and General Mototakeyo, faced a table full of delicacies but had no intention of swallowing them.

Its roots

It is now that the civil war in Fusang is everywhere and lasts for a long time.

Tens of millions of Fuso people were involved in the war and displaced, and the extremely tragic "Boshin War" was a ruin from Kyoto in the central part of the country to the southwest half of the country, and the farmland was deserted, and refugees fleeing the famine were on the way.

The war-induced nationwide famine has intensified, leaving millions of people dead from starvation and unrest.

Three years have passed since the Boshin War, and there is still no hope of a complete solution.

The Shogunate Army and the Shogunate Army each suffered heavy casualties in the war, and now they are like two exhausted samurai fighting in the mud, unable to fight any longer.

In the original history

In 1867, Emperor Fuso Takamei died, and Emperor Meiji ascended the throne.

On January 3, 1868, Emperor Meiji issued a secret edict entitled "Imperial Government Retro Trumpet Decree" with the intention of abolishing the shogunate, and the shogun, Tokugawa Yoshiki, was bold but reckless, which radically exacerbated the conflict.

If you want me to die, then you can see the real chapter under your hands.

The shogunate was not without the power to fight back, and on January 8 and 10, Tokugawa Yoshiki outlawed the "Imperial Decree" in Osaka.

On January 27, 1868, the 5,000-strong Imperial Army, led by the Isaac and Nagagawa feudal domains, fought a fierce battle with 15,000 Shogunate troops near Kyoto, and Tokugawa Keiki was defeated and left Edo, beginning the Boshin War.

The Emperor's military expedition forced Tokugawa Yoshiki to surrender Edo Castle on May 3, 1868, and put down the rebellious feudal domains in the Tohoku region in early November.

In the spring of 1869, the Emperor's army marched into Hokkaido, and on June 27, they captured Goryokaku (in Hakodate City), the last stronghold of the remnants of the shogunate, and the Boshin War ended.

But today's history is completely different

The Tokugawa shogunate, which relied on the Tang Empire as its suzerain, received strong military aid, secretly trained 68,000 new troops equipped with advanced weapons and two artillery divisions in Beihai Province, and waited for the rebellious southwestern feudal domains to jump out.

The beginning of the Boshin War

The 68,000 new troops trained in Beihai Province took the merchant ships provided by the Tang Empire to the south, surrounded and broke through Kyoto, where the army of the "Fallen Shogun" faction was entrenched, and took crazy revenge on the army and the townspeople of the Fallen Shogunate, and washed the city of Kyoto in blood......

With the support of the Tang Empire's funds and military instructors, the Wuchen War was much larger and more intense than in the original history, and the scope of influence naturally expanded.

Shogun Tokugawa Yoshiki, who won a great victory in the first battle, fell into a fanatical blind arrogance, believing that "the four strong feudal clans in the southwest are strong and middle-class, and the clowns who just jump off the beam are just like that" and "they should be leveled down in one fell swoop".

After the shogunate's army rested, on May 11, 1868, the army marched south in three directions.

Shogun Tokugawa Yoshiki was shocked by the reality, and the initial move to divide the troops could be described as extremely stupid, and while weakening his own strength, the war was extremely difficult in the face of the fortified fortresses that had been operated by the powerful feudal clan in the southwest for hundreds of years.

In the case of life and death

The four powerful feudal clans of Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen mobilized their entire ranks, and took advantage of the high mountains and dense forests and geographical advantages to fight the shogunate army endlessly, and received support from other daimyo domains, as well as large arms and food supplies from the British, gritted their teeth and fought the war.

After nearly two years of bloody battles, both sides were defeated.

The Satsuma Domain was disabled, the resistance of the Tosa Domain was basically wiped out, Choshu and Hizen were still struggling to support, and the new army trained by the Shogunate Army suffered most of the casualties and basically lost its offensive ability.

In order to support the "Boshin War", the Tokugawa shogunate successively borrowed three war loans from the Tang Empire to purchase a large amount of grain and weapons, totaling 16.5 million Tang Yuan.

It's not ...... The money is out again.

"For the sake of today's plan, the only way to ask the Tang Empire to mediate and unite with the British to mediate the war will be over. More people will starve to death this year, and no relief will be available anyway. Nijo Saikei-sama said with a bitter face, and then poured a glass of white wine into his mouth, the spicy liquor made his whole face wrinkle.

After a short pause, he slowly exhaled a strong smell of alcohol.

General Ben Wuyang nodded silently, this is the current consensus of the shogunate, and if it continues to fight, it will really be "Fusang Lu Shen".

The performance of the strong feudal clan in the southwest to the end made the shogunate army a little jealous. The war is fought with money and food, but these two barren Fuso Islands are lacking, how can borrowing money to fight a war last?

General Ben Wuyang picked up a piece of braised pork belly with chopsticks and put it in his mouth, closed his eyes in enjoyment and chewed it slowly, the thick fat filled his mouth, and the delicacy made him let out an uncontrollable sigh of "ah......".

He said;

"Lord Guan Bai, what I have seen and heard in the Tang Empire these days makes me feel a deep sense of powerlessness, the grain here is piled up into mountains, the herds of cattle and sheep are as endless as the clouds in the sky, and the vast land is extremely imaginative.

It takes 23 days and nights to travel by train from Panama in the south to Vancouver in the north, across tropical rainforests, desert rocks, endless pastures and farmsteads, bustling metropolises to the white mountains and black waters of the north.

And this is only 1/3 of the territory of the Tang Empire from south to north (including South America, Yukon and Alaska), how should God favor the Tang people?

Even if our Yamato nation has 1% of its resources, it will not be reduced to such a state of exhaustion? ”

Qi Jing Guan Bai couldn't answer this question, and there was nothing else in his heart except for a deep envy and admiration, he said while eating;

"General, I'm afraid you haven't been to the backyard yet, have you?

In the backyard of the State Guesthouse, the woods are filled with salted pork, salted pork legs, salted duck, salted goose, salted fish, sausages and other meats, the number is too numerous to count.

This shocked me so much that I asked the officials of the State Guesthouse about it.

The officer replied;

This year, there are more than 80 tons of salted meat, tens of thousands of salted ducks and geese, and there are about 267 tons, plus fresh beef, mutton and fish sent every day, which can basically meet most of the demand.

It is a tradition of the Tang people to marinate these meats, and at the end of each year, they also have to marinate hundreds of catties of salted meat and pour dozens of catties of sausages, which can basically be eaten until early summer.

The Tang Empire could not eat enough grain, so township farms were encouraged to raise fat pigs.

According to newspaper reports;

During a Lunar New Year festival in the Tang Empire, more than 17 million fat pigs were slaughtered, as well as 850,000 cattle and millions of sheep to meet the needs of urban and rural residents. ”

Speaking of which

Guan Bai Erjo Qi Jing shook his head and smiled bitterly, these unimaginable numbers were beyond his cognition, and he envied the happy life of these Tang people from the bottom of his heart.

You must know that pigs have to eat grain, and pigs without grain to eat are not fattened and cannot be raised, and they are raised for two or three years, at best, eighty or ninety catties, and there is very little fat and meat.

People don't have enough food to eat, where can they be extravagant to raise pigs?

Because of this, fat pigs are an extremely rare resource in the Fuso Islands, and the slaughter of more than 10 pigs requires the approval of Lord Sekihaku, and being able to eat a piece of meat is as happy as the New Year.

Like the subjects of the Tang Empire who ate meat with their bellies open, the daimyo of the feudal lords of the Fuso Islands did not dare to be so extravagant, no...... The emperor did not dare to be so extravagant.

In the Tang Empire, most of the pigs fed were wheat bran and soybean meal, and these good things were broken and mixed in rice balls in Fusang Kingdom, and the townspeople in the towns ate this, but the people in the poor fishing villages couldn't eat it!

It's more rice balls mixed with wild vegetables, and the few rice grains are pitiful, and no matter how hard you squeeze them, they don't form them, and they spread out when steamed.

Fuso people often say; It is a very happy thing to be able to eat a rice ball.

The rice balls they refer to are actually kneaded out of rice, not rice balls made from wild vegetables mixed with rice bran, wheat bran and soybean meal.

The rice fields of Fusang are intensively cultivated, and the yield per mu is about three or four hundred catties in the absence of chemical fertilizers, which is already very high compared to the yield of wheat.

However, due to the large population and the need to leave rice seeds, and the large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the livelihood of ordinary farmers and townspeople is quite difficult, and there is little food to eat, and malnutrition is a common situation.

"The Heavenly Empire is rich in natural treasures and resources, which is something we can't envy. Or think about how to solve the headache of the civil war? After the Spring Festival, I estimate that it will be early March at the earliest, and the Tang Empire will come forward to mediate. ”

"The beginning of March is the beginning of March, it's always troublesome and unsettling."

"Lord Guan Bai, do we want to take out another loan on this trip? There is no food in the country, and a large amount of food aid is urgently needed, at least 4~50,000 tons or more to survive the current worsening famine! ”

"Don't be delusional, the food of the Heavenly Empire did not fall from the sky. This amount of food aid is unlikely, and it is thankful that it can be purchased at a reasonable price, not to mention that the money also needs to be loaned. When I think about praying for help, I feel uneasy! ”

People are poor and short-minded, and horses are thin and long-haired.

Sekibai Nijo Qi Jing feels like a flower who wants to eat, every year he has to hold a broken bowl and cross the ocean to pray for help, his inner self-esteem and self-confidence have already been shattered by reality, and only a thick shame remains.

Today's civil war in Fuso has shattered half of the country, displaced millions of people, and created a staggering wave of refugees, countless people have died on the road and in the dense forests of the mountains.

Praying for food aid during the spring famine was one of the main purposes of the trip.

Due to the severe famine in the Fuso Islands, not to mention 4~50,000 tons of grain, even 300,000 tons of grain may not be enough.

The aid of the Tang Empire will give hundreds or thousands of tons of grain, and the rest will have to be purchased with money.

Then it comes to the second purpose of the trip, to request a huge loan.

10,000 tons of grain is worth about 4~50,000 Tang Yuan in the Tang Empire, and it can be transported to the Fusang Islands for at least 12~130,000 Tang Yuan, and the transportation cost is higher than the value of the grain itself, because the road is too far away.

If 100,000 tons of grain are purchased, then it is 1.3 million Tang Yuan.

Sekihaku Nijo Qi Jing estimated that the daimyo of the domain under the shogunate had almost 100,000 tons of grain to survive the spring famine, and these grains were just boiling some gruel to hang their lives, and it was impossible to eat a full stomach.

As for the rebellious feudal clans in the southwest and northeast, the shogunate did not care whether they lived or died, and the people were like grass mustard, cutting off a stubble and regenerating a new stubble.

(End of chapter)