The topography of Hokkaido resembles a giant king crab with a leg cut off, and it is separated by the Sea of Japan to the northeast of Vladivostok. The leg of this "king crab" that has not been cut off is facing south, and it is leaning on this side of the Sea of Japan, and the front end of the leg has a slit like two large pincers of a king crab.

Yu Zhong led his men to shore at the "joint" in the middle of the one-legged king crab.

……

The scenery on the shore is okay, because it is inaccessible and the vegetation is very prosperous!

Although Long Keduo and the group of noble children of Oro Dai were dizzy, they were immediately excited when they heard that the fleet had landed, and Oro Dai even grabbed a seat on the first ashore boat, and then jumped to the shore leisurely, lying on the grass and never wanting to get up again.

Yue Zhongqi was also the first to board the ship, and as soon as he got ashore, he immediately began to send scouts to explore the terrain and various conditions, which can be said to be extremely dutiful, but there is also a more intriguing task he assigned to the scouts:

"I heard that there are a lot of hot springs in Hokkaido, so pay attention to see if there are any ...... in the vicinity."

After that, Yu Zhong, Long Keduo and others also landed one after another! After such a "long" period of drifting at sea, the down-to-earth feeling moved the noble children of Long Keduo, and several of them even shed tears, which made the Vladivostok people led by Yu Zhong shake their heads.

……

"Junmen, how long are we going to stay here?"

After arranging everything that should be arranged, Yue Zhongqi found Yu Zhong again, and Long Keduo, who had always been more "modest and cautious", also resisted the desire to sleep on the grass and came over. And because of the two of them by Made's side, Murcha's group of generals who felt that their identity was not enough did not come over.

"Wait until we find a suitable location to build a port! ......," Yu Zhong replied.

"Wouldn't that take ten days and half a month?" Yue Zhongqi said.

"Ten days and half a month? We were able to walk around the island for a long time. As long as I build a pier on this island opposite our Vladivostok, it is estimated that it should be settled in seven or eight days. When the time comes, leave some soldiers and horses to garrison, and then go! Yu Zhong said.

"I knew that the last time we came, we should have taken a circle around this island......" Yue Zhongqi sighed.

"General Yue, have you been here before?" Long Keduo had been just listening, and couldn't help but ask after hearing Yue Zhongqi's words.

"yes. Last time, we went around the Tsugaru Strait in the south of the island to the east side, and then we went north, and we went back from the Soya Strait between it and Sakhalin Island in the north, and then we went back to Vladivostok! It was the farthest our sailors had ever gone to sea. Yue Zhongqi replied.

"Why go so far?" Roncodo asked again.

"In order to keep the enemy out of the country and defeat the enemy in the ocean!" With a non-existent smile, Yu Zhong stared at Long Keduo and said.

……

"Junmen, I caught a deer, I tasted some game!" Long Keduo was thinking about Yu Zhong's words, and Lu Buyi, a regular under Yue Zhongqi's fist, shouted loudly in the distance, and he was still holding a small deer in his hand, and an arrow stuck in the deer's neck.

"How can this deer have enough to eat? Since there are small deer, the big deer must not be far away, and maybe there are still deer herds. Dongmei, send more people to hunt some ...... After eating seafood for so many days, it's time to try the mountain delicacies! Yu Zhong stared at the deer in Lu Buyi's hand and said to Yue Zhongqi.

"Yes!" Yue Zhongqi answered, and immediately went to assign people.

*********

Matsumae Aomori rode on horseback and proudly marched towards Fukuyama Castle with two hundred ashigaru, and behind his team were the captives he had captured on this "expedition", a total of thirteen men, all of whom were native to the island...... Ainu.

These Ainu people look completely different from these "and people", the hair on the men's bodies is enough to choke, and the skin is white and thick, there are two old men among these thirteen people, and the beard is thick enough to cover half of their faces, these looks are already unbearable, but what makes people even more unbearable is that the women in the Ainu actually have tattoos on their mouths, and it would be good to see them without nightmares. (The Ainu are said to have Eskimo ancestry)

"It's really an inferior person, no matter how you look at it, you look like a lowly!" Matsumae Aomori glanced back at the thirteen captives and thought disdainfully.

……

Matsumae Aomori certainly had a reason for going on this expedition.

He came from the Daimyo of the Matsumae Domain, which was sealed by the Tokugawa Shogunate on Ezo Island. At that time, the Ezo region did not produce much grain, so although the area of the Matsumae domain was huge, it was only a small domain with only 10,000 kokuroku. Unable to distribute rice to their retainers, the Matsumae family's predecessors had divided the Ezo land into several pieces many years ago and given some of them to the main retainers to allow them to trade with the local Ainu. These places are called "places", and the retainers who own the "places" are the "masters of knowledge and action". The income from trade is the "knowledge and action" of these retainers, that is, the fortune.

In the beginning, the Lord of Knowledge went directly to the premises to trade. But later, a kind of "place please negative system" appeared. The so-called "place burden system" means that the merchant pays a certain amount of "transportation gold" to the owner of the knowledge in exchange for the control of the trade in the place. Originally, the Chi Xing Lords were glad that the merchants had been able to get rid of the hardships of trading with the Ainu in person. However, about 50 years ago, the system of local petitions began to become a cancer, and the merchants who controlled the trade began to ruthlessly exploit the Ainu, and even forbade the Ainu to learn Japanese in order to control the Ainu more easily. Originally, the Matsumae clan only regarded the Ainu as objects of trade, and did not interfere too much in their lives, and did not prohibit them from learning Japanese.

The system of place petitioning is becoming more and more extreme, and the merchants even have the power to kill and take the Ainu for life. In order to obtain the greatest profit, the merchants did not treat the Ainu as human beings at all, but served them like cattle and horses.

Eventually, the drawbacks of the place invitation system became more and more apparent, and more than thirty years ago, it led to the rebellion of the Ainu.

On that occasion, almost the entire Ainu people in Ezo participated in the attack on the Wazu. However, the Ainu were too few, and the entire Ezo region numbered only a few thousand people, and they were very scattered, so they were defeated one after another in front of the "great army" of the Matsumae Domain, and in the end they had to continue to submit.

This time, Matsumae Aomori's expedition was to exterminate an Ainu tribe who dared to ask for a businessman, so as to shock the Ainu who had not yet fully surrendered.

……

"Whoosh!"

Matsumae Aomori was riding a horse imagining how he would be rewarded by his head when he returned to Fukuyama Castle when a Ezo deer suddenly sprang in front of him, and the deer had a feathered arrow stuck in its buttocks.

"Baga, there are Ainu people around here, go and arrest them for me immediately!" Seeing this scene, Matsumae Aomori thought for a moment, and immediately ordered loudly to his subordinates. He had the impression that most of the Wazu people were gathered near Fukuyama Castle, the southernmost tip of Ezo Island, and the samurai who were qualified to carry weapons were extremely rare, so it must have been the local Orion Ainu who shot the deer just now.

"Hay!" One of the Ashigaru leaders shouted in response, and immediately ordered more than twenty Ashigaru to pounce in the direction where the deer had fled.

……

"I said stones, you kid is too useless. What about the sharpshooters...... It took a dozen arrows to shoot one, or the butt of the deer that was shot, are you embarrassed? Tao Zhuzi held a bow in his left hand and an arrow in his right hand, and teased Li Shishi while constantly hitting the back of Li Shishi's head with the feathers of the arrow's tail.

"Are you embarrassed to say me? No matter how bad I am, at least I hit one, what about you? You haven't even shot an arrow yet! In response to Tao Zhuzi's ridicule, Li Shishi sneered indifferently.

"I just saw a fox that shook for a moment and then disappeared. You help me keep an eye on it, and call me when you see it! Wang Laoliu, the third hardcore member of the "Dagukou Three-Man Party", also said. As a result, when the other two heard his words, they immediately expressed extreme contempt for him, this guy also had a bow and a pot of arrows, but they were all on his back, and Yagen had no intention of Carrier City.

The three of them also came out to hunt deer.

This Hokkaido is surprisingly large in deer. Under Yu Zhong's order, Yue Zhongqi took people to hunt back more than 20 in less than an hour, and this time, the violent factors in the hearts of many people were stimulated, and Li Shishi and the three of them also borrowed bows and arrows from a few soldiers with good friendships, trying to get over the addiction of hunting. However, it is clear that this hunter is not easy to be a good person, and the three of them finally found a deer, but they couldn't catch it. Li Shizi was better, he was busy shooting and piercing an arrow on the deer's buttocks, although Tao Zhuzi also took out a bow, but he always couldn't catch the opportunity to release the arrow, Wang Lao Liu was stronger, so he simply followed the side to watch the excitement.

And now, the deer has run into the woods and is gone!

"Forget it, rest and rest!" People definitely can't outrun the deer, and since they can't catch up, don't chase them. Wang Lao Liu sat down on the grass with his buttocks, picked up the kettle and poured it violently. There are also many rivers in Hokkaido, and they just came across a small river, the water is cool and thirst-quenching, and it is very delicious.

"Let's go back, I guess the 'all-deer feast' will start in a while, I haven't eaten venison in my life!" I don't want to miss it......" Tao Zhuzi said again.

"Alas, don't you say I forgot about it! Let's go, it's venison, you have to try it a few bites! Without waiting for Li Shishi to speak, Wang Lao Liu jumped up from the grass at once, pulled up the two old friends and was about to rush back.

And just as they were about to turn around, on the opposite side, the deer that had been shot in the ass by Li Shi fled into the forest where there was no trace, and suddenly rushed out a group of guys with spears in their hands and strange clothes, and one of these people saw them, and actually pointed at them with a spear, and then, beckoning behind him, shouted: "Baga, kill the chicken Gege......!" ”

"Kill chickens? What chickens to kill? ”

Li Shishi and the three of them looked at each other, and before they could react to this high-pitched but strangely sounded scream, they saw these people rushing towards them with their spears raised, and each of them had a gritted teeth on their faces, as if they had just been killed by the three of them.

"What's going on?" Wang Lao Liu asked inexplicably.

"What's going on? Viciously, we people want to kill! …… Come on! ”

Qi Qi screamed, and the three of them hugged their heads and ran away!

"Killing the Chicken ......"

More than 20 ashigaru shouted loudly behind and chased after him!

……

"Oh no, kill someone! ……”

The speed at which Li Shishi and the three of them escaped was not slow, but after all, they were originally a few idle soldiers in Dagukou, and they had just been absorbed by Yu Zhong not long ago, and they had not undergone any decent training, so they were worse than those "ashigaru" who were relatively "hard-working and hard-working". Therefore, the distance between the three of them and the more than 20 "fierce gods and evil spirits" is getting closer and closer, if it weren't for the fact that the other party only has spears and no bows and arrows, they are afraid that they would have surrendered on their knees long ago. However, even so, being chased by more than 20 guys who kept shouting loudly "kill chickens", the three of them were still scared enough. …… This situation did not change until they desperately fled to the vicinity of the camp.

……

There were nearly seven or eight thousand officers and men of the naval division that Yu Zhong brought to Taiwan, and half of those who stayed in Taiwan with Nian Qianyao were robbed by Kangxi and Lei Ru in Tianjin, and now there are less than 2,000 in total. However, these forces were already astronomical for the people of the Matsumae Domain in Hokkaido.

Therefore, when the twenty Ashigaru who "entered the enemy line lightly" realized that something was wrong and stopped "killing chickens" and wanted to flee instead, it was already too late. Under the oppression of the "great army", they had to obediently tie their hands and capture. Matsumae Aomori and nearly 200 other Ashigaru soldiers who were following them were also arrested.

Then, after being beaten badly, the men told everything they knew. After learning about the situation, Yu Zhong immediately ordered the whole army to divide into two groups, one by land and the other by water, and headed for Fukuyama Castle, the southernmost seat of Hokkaido.

……

"Military Gate, without the order of the Ministry of War, you are using troops to attack other countries without authorization." Long Keduo felt that Yu Zhong's performance was very reckless, and couldn't help but remind.

"There will be no disapproval of the king's order outside. Besides, it was me who they sinned first. …… Hmph, how can I bear this breath if you dare to try to kill my soldiers? Not to mention a small Matsumae Domain, even if his Japanese shogun came in person, I will also get this account back! Yu Zhongleng snorted.

"General, if you do this, if the court knows about it, you will be questioned." Roncodo persuaded.

"Something? Hmph, don't you fight back if you're beaten? If an official of the Ministry of War dares to talk nonsense, I will impeach him first for 'losing power and humiliating the country'! Yu Zhong replied stiffly.

This ...... "loss of power and humiliation of the country?" Roncodo was almost. In his concept, a few small soldiers were chased for a while, and they didn't even count as sesame-sized things, and they didn't kill anyone! What's more, this is just the private behavior of the generals of the Matsumae Domain, as long as you send someone to find the head of the Matsumae Domain and ask the other party to apologize, you will already have to save face. However, Yu Zhong did not hesitate to provoke the military revolution between the two countries for such a trivial matter, and even told those who obstructed him to "lose power and humiliate the country", which was obviously a deliberate attempt to confuse the matter. However, looking at Yu Zhong's appearance now, it is obvious that he is determined to fight that Matsumae Domain, he doesn't want to upset the other party about this, and it is not his turn to bear the responsibility anyway, so he simply makes a fortune in a muffled voice.

And Long Keduo didn't say anything, and the other "outsiders" didn't bother to say anything. After eliminating the discord in the ranks, Vladivostok's army approached the city of Fukuyama step by step. Since Yu Zhong did not let the troops hide their tracks, the news of the sudden appearance of a powerful army of unknown origin in Ezo reached the ears of Matsumae Tsunesuke, the current head of the Matsumae Domain.

Tsunesuke Matsumae was a relatively mediocre person, so he didn't feel that this sudden appearance of the army was much of a threat to him. Although many of the retainers of the Matsumae Domain were scattered throughout the Ezo region, the area around Fukuyama Castle, the seat of governance, had grown over the past 100 years to nearly 20,000 people. Although most of them were of civilian origin, and the number of samurai was pitiful, he believed that he could still organize a team of two to three thousand people based on these people. At that time, with several times the strength of the enemy's army, even if you can't defeat it, you can always defend the city, right?

After making such a plan, Tsunesuke Matsumae's heart became more determined. He soon ordered his retainers who remained in Fukuyama Castle to take action. While gathering those people into the city, they began to organize the Ashigaru army! In order to confront the troops in Yuzhong.

However, the truth is cruel. All of this proved one thing to Tsunesuke Matsumae in the end, and that was that his plans were just "wishful thinking".

After the arrival of the "army" on the two lines of Vladivostok, the hastily organized 4,000 ashigaru were easily dispersed by rows of muskets, and after that, Yu Zhong did not let the soldiers from the land attack, but only ordered the "Triton" to come with a salvo to bomb the wall of Fushan Castle near the sea. …… Of course, if that could be called a city wall!

Next, when Tsunesuke Matsumae was struggling to continue to hold out or surrender out of the city, Yu Zhong no longer continued to attack the city, but chose to besiege the city.

In this way, Tsunesuke Matsumae is even more bitter.

Previously, in order to "protect" his subjects from being injured by the war, Tsunesuke Matsumae gathered all his subordinates into the city, but Yu Zhong stopped attacking the city, and the war dragged on, and the food in Fukuyama City was not enough to eat. Although Hokkaido at this time did not produce as much food as it used to, there was still not much surplus food in Fukuyama Castle. So, within a few days, there was chaos in Fukuyama Castle, and Tsunesuke Matsumae and his retainers were simply unable to suppress this riot. So, in the end, it was not used to shout, and Matsumae Hengsuke walked out of the city and surrendered to Yuzhong by himself, and then, the Vladivostok army entered Fukuyama Castle.

Everything was so simple, smooth and easy, which stunned Long Keduo and the others who originally wanted to watch the return.

However, this is just foreplay, the speed of the development of things, the speed of the turn, while surprising Long Keduo and others, they can't even react at all.

At the beginning, Matsumae Hengsuke was coerced by Yu Zhong, and with great reluctance, he was forced to agree to sell Ishikari Bay of his territory for one or two pieces of silver to the Qing Empire (Ishikari Bay has Sapporo, the largest ice-free port city in Hokkaido), and agreed to the conditions of the Qing Empire's navy cruising in his territory; A day later, his attitude suddenly changed from forced to active, because Yu Zhong expressed his willingness to take one of his sons to Vladivostok and sent someone to send him to Beijing to meet the Kangxi Emperor, in the hope of obtaining the title of Qing Dynasty; After that, Matsumae Hengsuke once again expressed his willingness to become a vassal of the Qing Empire under the lure of Zhongzhong; Then, Matsumae Tsunesuke accepted the position of "Hokkaido Garrison" of the Manchurian Naval Division of the Qing Empire granted to him by Yu Zhong, and accepted ten artillery pieces and 300 solid shells from Yu Zhong, in addition to 30,000 taels of silver from Kangxi, which Yu Zhong gave him.

Eventually, Yuchu chose a location for the harbor in Ishikari Bay, leaving behind 500 elite soldiers and a warship there, while Matsumae Tsunesuke had already sent men to Honshu through the Tsugaru Strait to recruit laborers and unemployed samurai there. He did this partly to help Yu Zhong recruit labor to build the harbor, and partly to expand his power.

And Matsumae Hengsuke's actions soon attracted the attention of the Tsugaru Domain, which was across the strait from the Matsumae Domain. (I couldn't find a map of Japan at that time, so I had to use the map of Japan's Warring States period.)