Like Li Mu, Benjamin Harrison is not an honest person. In Cuba, Benjamin Harrison and Claudia have a hot fight. As far as Li Mu knows, there is a love crystallization between the two, which is much more than Li Mu.

At least, Carolin Scott was not hiding the matter between Li Mu and Chuxue from Gloria.

Some people may think that such deception is easy to accept for Carolin Scott, but in Li Mu's opinion, this deception can only be hidden for a while and there will be more hidden dangers in the future, so it is better to be open and honest at the beginning.

The spring of 1877 was mixed for Li Mu. Hayes successfully took office as president, and the Panama Canal Company also successfully acquired the Panama Canal. However, the breakdown of the relationship between Li Mu and Hayes also cast a shadow on the prospects of Li Mu and Junma Group.

Li Mu didn't care much about Hayes. As Rockefeller said, since capital can bring Hayes to power, he can also pull Hayes off the stage, so Hayes won't do too much, nor dare to do too much.

Everyone knows why Hayes was elected president of the United States. If it weren't for Li Mu's support behind the scenes, Hayes might not have won the party's primary election. So if Hayes dares to target the inside and the Junma Group now, Hayes's personality would have collapsed completely. This result would be disastrous for a politician with the label of "integrity and integrity".

The establishment of the Panama Canal Company is equivalent to the establishment of a capital alliance, in which Li Mu plays an important role. If Hayes dares to target the Panama Canal Company, it will be like an enemy of capital and similar to "severing oneself from the people". He would not dare to use Hayes' courage.

For the Japanese, the spring of 1877 was extremely cold.

In September last year, four gunboats from Ryukyu raided the Kagoshima military camp in Japan. Although Kagoshima had a shore defense turret, the caliber of the artillery on the turret was not as large as the main gun on the Ryukyu gunboat, so the artillery battle almost ended just now.

After the destruction of the fort, Kagoshima opened its arms to the Ryukyu gunboat. The Ryukyu gunboat ravaged Kagoshima for two hours. All the Kagoshima coastal defense turrets were destroyed. Subsequently, the Ryukyu gunboat shelled the Kagoshima military camp, killing more than 100 new recruits and injuring nearly 800.

Compared with the total number of people in the Kagoshima military camp, this loss is insignificant, but this shelling attack has had an extremely heavy psychological blow to the Japanese.

Unlike in the past history, Japan has not experienced the victory of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Qing and Japanese War, nor has the continuous blood transfusion of the puppet Manchukuo to Japan. It can be said that the governance and restoration has not yet seen any results. The Japanese are building their own country with their spirit. At this time, they are hit by American forces, and the blow to the confidence of the Japanese can be said to be devastating.

Although the gunboats are hung with Ryukyu flags, all Japanese people know that these gunboats have almost nothing to do with Ryukyu. All of these gunboats come from the United States, or some of them are specific, all from the American Junma Group.

That's right, it's the company with Chinese as its main body.

In fact, the concept of the Junma Group was conveyed to the Japanese by the Japanese government. After all, the Japanese government had failed in Ryukyu before, and at this time, a group needed to take the blame, either it was a "evil group" or it could only be an incompetent Japanese government.

The government will definitely not be incompetent, so the Junma Group from the United States has become the "burden" mentioned by the Japanese government.

However, in Li Mu's opinion, the blame is not very good, and the effect is appropriate. You should know that the Japanese are extremely inferior in their hearts. The Japanese have an irreversible slavery towards the strong in their bones. In the face of the strong, the Japanese will habitually choose to obey. Therefore, the Japanese government took the blame on the Junma Group, which not only did not arouse the awareness of the Japanese that they shared the same hatred and shared the enemy to fight against the strong, but instead made Japan's pessimism flood and defeatism prevail, causing panic and public resentment. This was something the Japanese government did not expect.

Of course, among them, the loyalty to the shogunate power of Tokugawa Ritsune played a great role.

In early October, the Ryukyu army landed on Kagoshima under the leadership of Ryukyu Marshal Bai Qi.

The new army, which the Japanese government has worked hard for half a year, finally came in handy. Nearly 60,000 Japanese soldiers and 15,000 Ryukyu soldiers fought fiercely in Kagoshima for half a month. In the end, 15,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, nearly 40,000 Japanese troops surrendered, and less than 5,000 Japanese troops withdrew from Kagoshima.

On this occasion of great victory, we should have made great progress and entered the Japanese mainland, but there were serious differences within Ryukyu regarding the use of nearly 40,000 Japanese prisoners.

According to Bai Qi's intention, the 40,000 Japanese troops will be used as hard labor, and fortifications and advance camps will be built on Kagoshima to prepare for the attack on the Japanese mainland.

But in the view of Pan Tingzhen and Tokugawa Ritsu, we should try our best to urge these prisoners to establish a Japanese vassal army to assist the Ryukyu army in attacking the Japanese mainland.

It must be noted that in order to attack Japan, the Ryukyu people did pay a huge price. Ryukyu, with a population of less than 500,000, was mobilized to prepare for attacking Japan, with a population of more than 100,000, which made Pan Tingzhen really unacceptable.

In the past six months, almost all Ryukyu people have been preparing for the attack on Japan. Young Ryukyu men are trained in the military camps, and they have to carry out uninterrupted labor during training intervals. Women and the elderly are also marshalled. They have to undertake high-intensity logistics work, not only preparing for the attack on Japan, but also providing services for the immigration camps built by the Junma Group on the Ryukyu island.

In this way, Ryukyu has no energy to develop the domestic economy at all, which has resulted in almost all the Ryukyu that has to be barely maintained by blood transfusions from the Junma Group.

This situation is certainly unacceptable in Pan Tingzhen's view. Although Pan Tingzhen does not resist the infiltration of the Junma Group, as the Prime Minister of Ryukyu, Pan Tingzhen must also consider the issue from the standpoint of Ryukyu and cannot rely on the Junma Group in everything. As an independent country, Ryukyu must at least have the ability to be self-sufficient, so that Ryukyu has the necessity to exist.

If possible, Pan Tingzhen hopes that all the troops led by Bai Qi will be composed of Japanese and that no matter what, he will not continue to draw blood from Ryukyu, whose human resources are almost exhausted.

As for Tokugawa Ritsu, his thoughts are not worthy of being spoken by outsiders. After all, no matter whether it is Bai Qi or Pan Tingzhen, it is impossible for him to become the direct ruler of Japan. Therefore, Tokugawa Ritsu hopes to increase his voice, so that he can gain more power in the future.

It is no problem to let Bai Qi fight head-on, but Bai Qi lacks some in organization and coordination, so the final result is a compromise. Half of the Japanese prisoners were treated as hard labor, and the other half was to form the Kagoshima First Division to prepare for the attack on the Japanese mainland.

This "First Division" is also very Japanese. According to the agreement between Bai Qi and Tokugawa Ritsu, Tokugawa Ritsu served as the division commander of the First Division. However, except for the position of "Second Commander", all the brigade commanders and corps commanders under the jurisdiction are all Chinese officers from the United States. Therefore, the commander of Tokugawa Ritsu, the mascot of the First Division, is the final decision of the First Division.

Starting from the end of September, heavy snow fell in Japan. Miyazaki, Kumamoto and other prefectures north of Kagoshima had a snow depth of up to 60 cm. Bai Qi was forced to terminate the onshore offensive and could only harass Kobe, Yokohama and other places by sea.

The heavy snowstorm has won a glimmer of hope for the Japanese government. For the whole winter, the Japanese government and the Ryukyu government are preparing for the battle to accumulate strength for the decisive battle in the coming year.

Relatively speaking, Ryukyu has a relatively large advantage. After all, Ryukyu can obtain continuous supply from the United States, while Japan is in a situation where ammunition and food are exhausted. All countries in the world do not think that the Japanese can win this war, so even if Japan wants to raise war loans with the whole country, it is still a drop in the bucket.

Money is a big problem, but the Japanese government does not. In fact, even if it is rich, it is useless. The three major weapons companies in the world, Junma Weapons and Krupp, were wearing the same pair of pants. Enfield was unwilling to get involved. He began mediating since the first day of the outbreak of the war, hoping to resolve the differences between the Japanese government and the Ryukyu government in a peaceful manner.

This regulation is destined to have no effect. The contradiction between Japan and Ryukyu is not accumulated in one day or two days. The freezing of three feet is not a day's cold, and the efforts of the British are destined to be futile.

This winter, the intelligence network that Tokugawa Ritsuyo worked hard to operate finally played a role. The forces loyal to the shogunate in Japan continued to come to Kagoshima by land or sea. In one winter, Bai Qi's regular troops reached nearly 150,000, and finally had the strength to fight head-on with the Japanese army on the front battlefield in terms of numbers.

Regarding the power of loyalty to the shogunate in Japan, according to Tokugawa Ritsuo, at least one-quarter of the Japanese people were sympathetic to the shogunate and hoped to return to the previous period of shogunate rule. Therefore, even if the Japanese government obstructed it in every way, it still could not stop the Japanese loyal to the Ki-fu from joining Kagoshima.

The Ryukyu army before was strong, but the number gap was huge with the Japanese army. After all, Japan is a country with a population of more than 20 million. If the Japanese government has sufficient financial resources, it is not impossible to expand millions of troops in a short period of time. However, with the Japanese government's financial and material resources, it is still willing to support the existence of millions of troops but not enough.

To put it bluntly, if the Japanese government forms a million troops, let alone the army preparations, even eating will be a problem.

The situation in Ryukyu is just the opposite. Although the Junma Group was backed by the Junma Group, it was innately deficient in people's hands. Even if the Junma Group armed all 500,000 Ryukyu people, it would not be able to compete with Japan in terms of population.

The rapid expansion of the number of troops directly affects the strength of the troops.

Compared with the Japanese army, although the current Ryukyu army is at a disadvantage in terms of number of personnel, the Ryukyu army and the Japanese army are not at the same level in terms of training and logistics supply. The Ryukyu army is now worth whatever they want. In order to support the Ryukyu army, the Junma Weapon Company even postponed the delivery time of other orders, which makes the Ryukyu army simply powerful and well-equipped. Not only are it equipped with the latest continuous-haired rifles, but it also has no shortage of heavy weapons such as machine guns, mortars, and large-caliber heavy artillery.

Compared with the Ryukyu army, the Japanese army can be called shabby. The Japanese government now has real money and cannot buy enough weapons. Because of Li Mu, Junma Weapons Company and Krupp will not carry out any form of cooperation with the Japanese government. There is only one Enfield. Although he is willing to trade with the Japanese government, Enfield is not very enthusiastic when the Japanese government does not get cash.

In early April, the ice and snow melted, the cold winter gradually faded, and the war finally rekindled.

"We have two choices now. On the one hand, we rely on Kagoshima to advance step by step. The biggest advantage of this is that we do not need to consider the interference of the Japanese government. We can slowly do so. As long as I give me enough time, I can guarantee that we can spend the New Year in Tokyo when Christmas is coming this year." At the pre-war preparation meeting, Bai Qi was full of confidence, and it seemed that he was preparing to end the war before Christmas.

"This method is certainly safe, but it lasts for a long time and may change over time, so we might as well go straight to Tokyo and take down Emperor Meiji directly, so that we can minimize consumption and end this war in the shortest time." Pan Tingzhen doesn't like fighting, and doesn't like it at all, so it's rare that it doesn't keep the same as Bai Qi.

"Prime Minister, please abide by the order of the meeting." Bai Qi was not polite, and in his own field, he did not give Pan Tingzhen the opportunity to interrupt.

Before coming to Ryukyu, Bai Qi and Pan Tingzhen had a clear division of labor. Bai Qi was responsible for military affairs and Pan Tingzhen was responsible for politics. The two did not interfere with each other and were not subordinate to each other.

Of course, Pan Tingzhen also has a military say. After all, attacking Japan requires Pan Tingzhen to coordinate and provide logistics, so Pan Tingzhen was able to attend the meeting.

But this person has no right to speak, so Bai Qi doesn't give Pan Tingzhen a chance to speak at all.

"There is a second choice. We might as well listen first-" It is still Tokugawa Tatsuya who can put his position right, trust Bai Qi absolutely in military terms and not participate in any opinions.

"Originally there was a second choice, but now there is no more. Now I'll order--" Bai Qi acted arbitrarily, and the generals in the conference room immediately stood up, and the atmosphere suddenly became solemn.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Pan Tingzhen only felt a little difficult inside, but she didn't interrupt again. This was the price of introducing foreign forces. Pan Tingzhen was mentally prepared, but she didn't expect that it would be so difficult when she was faced.

Fortunately, this foreign monk is also a Chinese, otherwise Pan Tingzhen would have to die.
Chapter completed!