The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 210 Making trouble

In the early Edo period, with the end of large-scale wars and unrest, the population of Taipei Japan grew rapidly, almost doubling within a century. In the eleventh year of the reign of the emperor (1726), according to rough statistics from the shogunate, the population reached more than 2690 million, second only to Qin and Qi in the entire Eastern world, and it was regarded as a regional power.

Although the huge population has greatly improved Japan's overall strength, it has also intensified the increasingly tense conflict between man and land, causing frequent domestic famines.

Not to mention the tragedy of famine that occurred in the third year of Yanbao (1675) - at that time, the famine broke out and coincided with the Qi-Japanese War. Osaka, Japan's "kitchen of the world", was captured by the Qi army, which also caused the entire Gyeonggi Province. The stagnation of food transshipments in the Kanto region increased the intensity of the famine that year - in the past forty years, almost every five to eight years, a famine with widespread spread would break out in Japan.

Abnormal climate, drought, lack of rain, typhoons, and large amounts of food exports will bring a serious food crisis to more than 20 million Japanese people, and then trigger a famine.

Due to the continued deterioration of the trade situation and the persistent trade deficit, Japan's feudal lords were in general financial difficulties, which forced most of the lords to borrow large amounts of money from Osaka merchants. Therefore, in order to repay the money and pay interest, they had to borrow money from Osaka merchants. Osaka delivers rice (lumi is also a currency in Japan). This behavior of ignoring the food needs of the domain and forcibly exporting rice has also caused man-made famine disasters many times.

Whenever there is a famine, hungry people in the Akita, Morioka, Sendai and other places in the Tohoku region believe that they can avoid starving to death by going to the Ming Dynasty Anding Prefecture (today's Mutsu region in northeastern Japan) or Unshu, which are rich in herring. , so a large number of people begged for a boat ride or smuggled across privately. Some people drowned in the pursuit of the sail shadow. There were even hungry people who fled on the mountain road to the border of Beiming. They were chased and killed by warriors in the domain, or were brought back to be tortured. Severe punishment.

When famine occurs in the Changshu, Fukuyama, and Hiroshima domains located to the north of Hengguan, the hungry people in the domain will cross the vast mountains and flee to Qi's territory in order to survive.

Except for some of the hungry Japanese people and refugees who fled to Hengguan, they were transferred by Qi immigration ships to the distant Yinzhou or the cold and desolate Beiling Peninsula (Kamchatka Peninsula) and Linzhou Polar Region (today's Alaska). They temporarily stayed in the area where Hengguan and Changzhou Domain met, and built dotted wooden houses and shacks, gradually forming a special settlement area called Fusang City.

"Nearly 40,000 Japanese refugees have gathered here, and they have been temporarily organized into more than 80 settlement teams. The main management personnel are all selected from the refugees to implement simple self-government. Over the past few decades, the government has organized them in the surrounding valleys one after another We have reclaimed 50,000 to 60,000 acres of arable land on the mountains and hillsides to meet the needs of the refugees. Of course, this small amount of land output will definitely not be able to feed so many refugees. For this reason, our Hengguan Governor-General had to get a large amount of land from North Korea and Yunzhou. Grain, give them some food subsidies so that they can beg for a living."

Li Yanliang and Fan Changchen, the governor of Hengguan, stood on a mountain ridge, overlooking the Fusang City in the distance. The densely packed shacks and simple wooden houses were arranged in disorder throughout the valley.

To put it bluntly, this is a huge squatter area, or a refugee camp or a slum.

However, Li Yanliang, who had just taken office, had other ideas about this in his heart. He believed that the strategic positioning of the Hengguan Garrison Command should not be so negative, but should be more positive and bold.

Groups of Japanese children, barefoot and wearing only a few pieces of clothing, or naked, chase and play in densely populated residential areas.

Some old people were sitting in front of dilapidated houses, seemingly enjoying the warm sunshine and feeling the presence of life. They did not care at all about the flies that kept buzzing around.

Although the garrison commander is concurrently held by the governor of Hengguan, the specific military deployment and wartime command powers and responsibilities are performed by the deputy garrison commander who holds military positions. However, the provision of various logistical supplies and daily supplies was inseparable from the support of the local colonial government. Both parties must maintain an attitude of full cooperation and mutual coordination, so as to maintain and stabilize the effective operation of the entire colonial territory.

In addition, Aoqiu Island (today's Hirado Island) and Anyuan Island (today's Iki Island) located on the west side of Kyushu Island are also under the jurisdiction of the Security Command and are responsible for the security and defense of the above two islands.

The entire garrison headquarters only has one battalion of the Army and one battalion of the local garrison, with less than a thousand troops. If it is attacked by Japan in a large scale, it can only defend itself and wait for rescue by external reinforcements.

At this time, it was mid-afternoon, and most of the refugees were probably working in the fields under the organization of government personnel, or were being taken to a construction site to build houses or roads, making the entire Fuso City seem relatively quiet.

Otherwise, you can also divide the "excess" money privately to enrich your own pockets.

This new deputy commander of security can be said to be the future star of the empire with a bright future.

Ten days ago, after Li Yanliang made a simple handover with the departing Cao Zhengjia, he officially assumed his duties as deputy commander of Hengguan Security and chief officer of the first battalion of the fifth regiment. But in the days that followed, he was invited to dinner parties by various colonial agencies, government departments, and wealthy businessmen in turn, and there was almost no chance of being separated.

As for whether to improve their living environment, I'm afraid it was not in the colonial government's plan at all.

These refugees, who did not receive any government help, built shacks one after another using wood, stones, grass mud and scrap wooden boards in this open space. Later, as the number of refugees increased, these simple shacks were built with one or two floors and expanded to the surrounding areas. Slowly, these houses were connected to the city, eventually forming what Fuso City looks like today.

To take a step back, if he wanted to achieve great results in Hengguan, he could not do without the strong support and cooperation of the local colonial government and colleagues in the garrison headquarters. He was not like a field force who only focused on killing and killing with bravery. If you are responsible, you will be able to handle the affairs properly.

However, given Qi's maritime deterrence in the region, no hostile force would dare to attack the above-mentioned colonial territories rashly and deploy military force purely to declare its sovereignty.

Obviously, these people were not included in the register of the Hengguan colonial government and were a completely ignored group of people. The reason why the local government never expelled them but kept them in captivity like this was probably to increase the local low-end labor force and also to meet the population needs of the Immigration Department and overseas territories.

It would be very unpolitical to not take the opportunity to build a good relationship with him and make some emotional investment in advance!
It had been nine years since Li Yanliang graduated from the military academy. His youthfulness and naivety had long since faded, and he had become more politically mature. Naturally, he would not hastily refuse banquet invitations from officials and colleagues.

With a royal background, His Majesty Yonglong was a military attache and close friend in the past. He had also been on the battlefield and had made military exploits. More importantly, he was still so young.

Precisely because Fusang City has a large population, poor environment, and complex personnel, it has become a key security location in Hengguan City. The Security Command has specially deployed one company of the army and two companies of garrison troops nearby, supplemented by a large number of police. , in order to suppress various violent incidents that may break out.

For them, it is not worthwhile to spend this money. It is better to invest the limited funds in the construction of the main city of Hengguan, or actively improve the roads and docks.

Although, with less than a thousand troops, it is not possible to create a large battle, but we must always make a difference, forge ahead with determination, and create more opportunities for ourselves.

A few days ago, while having a banquet with merchants in the city, he learned a lot about the Japanese shogunate and various vassal states.

In general, the shogunate still had a very strong desire to reform the national government. It wanted to use the background of drastic changes in the social form to carry out a broad-ranging and far-reaching "major political reform" in order to achieve the purpose of centralizing power.

To put it bluntly, the Tokugawa clan wanted to take over power and prepare to deprive local daimyo of their vassal power. They wanted to imitate the model of Qin and Homing and implement a "prefecture and county system" throughout Japan. All local governments were directly appointed by the shogunate to establish a real A "unified" country.

Naturally, the daimyo from various vassal states strongly opposed this.

Why, back then, if it weren't for the support of our vassal states, would you, the Tokugawa clan, have been able to obtain the title of general who conquered the barbarians?

Without our vassal state, could the shogunate rule the country in name only? If there were no vassal states and the lords could stand on their own, would this still be the world of the Wu family?

What's the matter, you Tokugawa clan want to take back our territory now, aren't you afraid of the "Warring States" rising again?

At that time, during the Battle of Enho (i.e., the Qi-nihi War), in order to raise war compensation of up to 15 million taels of silver, the Tokugawa shogunate even forcibly distributed most of the compensation to the daimyo of various places, according to the amount of stone they received. , each vassal country had to bear part of the compensation.

Several powerful vassals, such as the Kaga Domain, Sendai Domain, Satsuma Domain, and Choshu Domain, were "divided" from 700,000 taels to 400,000 taels of indemnity, and the smaller vassals with stone heights of only a few thousand koku also received a smaller share. Thousands of taels of silver were paid out, and even if they were repaid in thirty-year installments, the feudal vassals were still very angry.

Back then, the Satsuma clan provoked the Qi Kingdom without permission, and was beaten to a black face. Not only did they lose the Ryukyu they swallowed, but they were also blocked at the door of their house. More than ten thousand feudal clan troops were defeated, and they finally surrendered in humiliation.

You, the Tokugawa clan, did not learn from this lesson and took the initiative to avoid Qi State. Instead, they seized their merchant ship and killed the crew members, so that Qi State gathered a group of juniors to come and beat them.

Sure enough, as the war started, the shogunate's army was defeated again and again, losing tens of thousands of troops. Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto fell successively, and finally they were forced by Qi to the gates of Edo Castle. If the other side didn't want Japan to fall into chaos, they might have conquered Edo Castle in one go and overthrew your Tokugawa rule.

But after your defeat, the Tokugawa clan passed all the consequences on to the domestic vassals and shouldered the burden for you.

So ungrateful!
What makes the local daimyo even more jealous is that more than forty years ago, in order to reverse the domestic shortage of gold and silver - in fact, more to save the shogunate's finances that were on the verge of bankruptcy, the Tokugawa shogunate launched a financial reform of currency. change.

That is to say, the gold and silver currency circulating in the market is mixed with more base metals, reducing the quality of the currency.

Well, this was known as quantitative easing in later generations, also known as monetary flooding.

According to statistics, during the more than ten years of currency recoining, the total amount of recoining by the shogunate exceeded 35 million taels, which increased the amount of currency circulating in the entire society by 35%.

Through this strategy, the Tokugawa shogunate pocketed all the difference after the recasting. A rough estimate shows that the shogunate's income from the recasting alone was as high as 3.8 million taels in ten years.

During this period, the annual tribute of the feudal lands under the control of the Tokugawa shogunate did not increase at all, and even declined to varying degrees during the famine years. However, it relied on the profits from currency recasting to support the entire shogunate's fiscal budget. Forty percent.

Since then, for a long time, the Tokugawa shogunate often used this method to make up for the gap in the sharp reduction in annual tribute during the famine, and successively established a new army with an increasingly large scale and all firearms.

Relying on the reputation of "national justice", the shogunate can use such shameless means to collect money, but what can the many weak feudal lords rely on to alleviate their increasingly distressed finances?

In order to maintain the vassal government, in addition to squeezing the people in the vassal to the maximum, the vassal states in various places could only continue to borrow money from loan sharks, struggling to survive, and the interest rates kept increasing, making their finances more and more difficult.

In addition, the shogunate shamelessly relieved itself of the burden of repairing domestic river embankments, frequently collected "sponsorship fees" from daimyo, levied "state service fees" from farmers, and borrowed money in the name of developing wasteland and providing child support subsidies. Supplement public funds and obtain huge income in addition to annual tribute.

This series of measures has been called "explicit fiscal supplement policy" by many big names.

Under such circumstances, the Tokugawa shogunate, as the master of the world, did not want to actively assist the vassal state in trouble. Instead, it wanted to think about carrying out "major political reforms" to centralize power and acquire land to achieve true domestic unification.

You Tokugawa clan are trying to kill the donkey!

What else is there to say? If you don’t quickly and secretly develop force to protect yourself, why don’t you wait for the shogunate to send people over to forcibly deprive you of your territory and become an ordinary samurai family, or even become a helpless wild samurai who can only go overseas? Working for someone else?

"Governor Fan, according to information revealed by businessmen in Hengguan City, the Changzhou Domain across the street has formed a new army of more than 75 people. The weapons equipped by this army are all imported from Hengguan City over the years. There are even some powerful mm caliber land gun smuggled here." After chatting for a while about the security management issues in Fuso City, Li Yanliang pondered for a moment and then turned the topic to weapons smuggling.

"Oh, are Lieutenant Li going to improve border security and crack down on this kind of smuggling?" Fan Changchen's eyebrows jumped, and then he asked quietly.

By the way, basically everyone from top to bottom of the colonial government was involved in this smuggling, but we couldn’t just mess with everything in the name of banning weapons smuggling just because the courageous deputy commander of security had a hot idea.

This will make people hate you!

"The main responsibility of our Hengguan Garrison Command is to protect local security and maintain the empire's overseas interests." Li Yanliang said with a smile: "Combating smuggling should be the job of the local customs and police departments. I am only developing arms for the Changzhou Domain. I’m just a little curious.”

"Li Xiaowei is worried too much." Fan Changchen couldn't help but breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, "With the strength of Changzhou Fan, they don't dare to provoke our Qi State. There are only more than a thousand new troops, which is nothing to worry about." , I’m afraid Captain Li can easily defeat it with just the first battalion of soldiers.”

"Yes, there are only more than a thousand new troops, and they are not well trained, and their quality is uneven. It will not be difficult to defeat them." Li Yanliang said: "If the shogunate issued an order to deprive the Choshu clan of its territory, it would probably not be difficult. Dare to be strong and resist, which will inevitably make people sympathize with you!"

"Huh?..." Fan Changchen heard this and looked at Li Yanliang with some confusion, "What does Captain Li mean by this?"

"Governor Fan, Japan has more than 20 million people, and its people are tough and hard-working. There is also a thousand-year martial arts tradition. With a little integration, it will have the foundation of a great country and the foundation of a strong country. If the shogunate is allowed to centralize power and eliminate vassal states in various places, The separatist regime is a potential threat to both Beiming and Qi."

"What Lieutenant Li means is..." Fan Changchen suddenly had a bad feeling.

Damn it, this military leader seems to be causing trouble!

"Perhaps we can help the Changshu Domain." Li Yanliang said meaningfully.

(End of this chapter)