A stack of Korean paper letters signed "General Liu who conquered the barbarians" was thrown into the fire.
Amidst the crackling sound of burning, Ping Liaohou's hope for peace talks turned into ashes.
"You bastard! How rude! How dare you call yourself the General of Conquering the Barbarians! How dare you threaten the shogunate! Are Shimazu and Nabeshima puppets? Or are they deliberately conniving with the bandits! Damn it!"
"General, Lord Nabeshima has died for his country. The barbarians chopped off his head and hung it on the top of Qiansu City. Lord Shimazu, he escaped!"
Edo Castle Honmaru Palace.
The real General Zhengyi rose up in anger and hysterically cursed Liu Zhaosun, who claimed to be the General Zhengyi.
The sword on the knife rest was shaken by the roar and made a slight clicking sound.
Asai Jiang of the imperial palace knelt down and sat on the tatami obediently.
The beauty lowered her head like a gentle kitten.
Kneeling all around were the daimyo who had come from Shikoku and Honshu.
They are about to be attacked by the Kaiyuan Army.
After presenting the peace treaty sent by the barbarians - which the barbarians called the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" - the shogun was furious.
Tokugawa Hidetada threw the letter of "General Conquering the Barbarians" into the fire, assuming a posture of fighting to the end.
"I want to occupy Kyushu! I want 30 million taels of silver, it's just a daydream!"
Nagato clan Mori Terumoto added:
"General, the thirty million taels is to compensate them for their military expenses. The compensation for the barbarians who died in the battle needs to be paid separately by us."
"enough!"
The Mori family was one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's most loyal supporters. During Hideyoshi's unification of the world, the Nagato clan contributed a lot.
When Hideyoshi sent troops to invade Korea in the first year of Bunroku (1592), Terumoto Mori also led a detachment to participate in the battle.
Seven years have passed since the fall of the Toyotomi clan, and Mori and the shogunate are still seemingly inseparable.
When they attacked Korea, Maori dispatched 15,000 troops.
They are panicking now.
The daimyo looked at the letters burning in the stove with different eyes.
"General, December 30 is the deadline given by the barbarians. If their demands are not met or there is no reply by then, the flat armored ships will cross the Bungo Channel, attack Shikoku Island, and then land in Edo... "
"Rebirth of the Great Era of Fighting Waves"
Tosa Domain Lord Yamauchi Toyocho couldn't kneel down and his voice trembled:
"If peace is not negotiated, the barbarians will continue to massacre the city. Their envoy said that the next step will be to massacre according to the number of troops sent by each vassal that year..."
There were exclamations all around.
It should be noted that Toyotomi Hideyoshi led nine legions, totaling 150,000 troops, to attack North Korea.
All vassals basically participated in combat operations against Korea and the Ming Dynasty.
In other words, the barbarians now want to kill 150,000 Japanese.
Terumoto Mori, who was nearly sixty years old, recalled the fierce battle that took place more than twenty years ago and whispered:
"The Higo clan sent out 3,600 men. After the barbarians captured the main city, they chopped off 3,600 heads."
"Beast!"
Tokugawa Hidetada was furious:
"They want to attack Edo, so don't pay attention to their wishful thinking! When the food is exhausted, they will naturally retreat."
Edo Castle is still thousands of miles away from Kyushu Island.
The middle sea area is active with British and French barbarian merchant ships.
The Westerners promised that they would "maintain the normal order of Japanese commerce."
In other words, if barbarians attack Honshu, foreigners will intervene.
Therefore, the shogunate is confident that it will continue to fight the barbarians.
"Winter is coming, with heavy wind and snow, and when the food routes are cut off, the barbarians will be destroyed. You must persevere!"
The two feudal lords, Tosa and Nagato, looked at each other, obviously not agreeing with this view.
The two vassals were adjacent to Kyushu and were under threat from the Kaiyuan Army.
Especially the Nagato clan, which was only a few hundred steps away from the barbarians.
There is only the shallow Kanmon Strait between them.
As long as this fake general conquers the barbarians is willing, his army, which makes Kyushu fearful, can kill the Nagato clan at any time and slaughter 15,000 people.
More than 20 years ago, the Mori clan followed Toyotomi Hideyoshi and sent out 15,000 people, who did many bad things in Korea.
If the peace talks failed and the barbarians crossed the strait, the Nagato clan would be devastated.
News of the tragedy of the Hizen Domain has spread throughout Japan.
The cities of each vassal lord were slaughtered by the barbarians. Those city lords who did not send troops out of Korea were safe.
Everyone knew that this was a ruse by the barbarians, but there was nothing they could do.
Because Tokugawa Hidetada sat on the sidelines, the Kyushu daimyo completely lost trust in Edo.
When Tokugawa finally dispatched the shogunate army to assist Satsuma, Shimazu and other daimyo actually refused entry to the shogunate army.
The slogan of Kyushu Domain is:
"I would rather give in to foreign barbarians than Tokugawa monkeys."
This is strikingly similar to how Empress Dowager Cixi later measured China's national strength and the country's happiness.
It can be seen that history just keeps repeating the cycle.
"Who is the barbarian leader? So arrogant!"
"His name is Liu Zhaosun. He was born as a servant. Like the fishmonger Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he came from a humble background and was very ambitious!"
Shogun asked curiously.
"Whose servant?"
"Liu, Liu Wei."
Lord Maori shivered when he heard the name Liu Zhaosun's adoptive father. When he was in Pyongyang, North Korea, he was besieged by Liu Wei for seven days and had to drink horse urine to survive.
Tokugawa waved his hand, interrupting the fear of Lord Maori.
"What's the current war situation in Kyushu? Can the barbarians completely occupy this place with just tens of thousands of troops?"
Mouri Huiyuan coughed lightly and continued:
"All the masters of Kyushu Domain collapsed at the first touch and have fled into the mountains. Only Nabeshima-sama bravely resisted."
In addition, the daimyo also took the opportunity to shout:
"General, Kyushu wants to divert the trouble eastward! Otherwise, how could the barbarians march in so quickly and fight all the way to the Kanmon Strait, clamoring to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki at the Qiufan Tower in Shimonoseki."
"What? The Treaty of Shimonoseki?"
Tokugawa Hidetada looked ferocious.
This is unbearable, even the location for signing the covenant has been determined. This is simply a huge insult to the Yamato clan!
"Since October, the barbarians have migrated farmers from Busan, Korea, occupied Tsushima, Iki and other islands, and given them tax exemptions for three years. Next, they will immigrate from Liaodong to Kyushu..."
Tokugawa Hidetada exclaimed:
"There is not much land in Kyushu that can be cultivated. How will they survive when they cross the sea? Do they want to imitate the Shimazu clan and become pirates?"
"No need to learn, they are just robbers."
Several famous people looked at each other and finally said together:
"General, the current situation is critical. If it continues, the thieves will invade other domains. The adults dare not negotiate peace on behalf of the shogunate, so I ask the general to decide whether war or peace will follow? For peace talks, you can send Mr. Hasegawa. He is good at it. and……"
Tokugawa Hidetada looked at everyone with bright eyes, and when he saw the embarrassment on everyone's face, he couldn't help but lower his head.
At this time, the sound of a woman coughing was heard on the tatami, and Xiuzhong quickly looked at Ajiang.
The most powerful woman in Da'ao slashed the air with her hand and whispered to her husband:
"war."
Xiuzhong gritted his teeth:
"I will go to Kyoto to pray to the emperor and assemble the army of the Eastern Kingdom. Just like my father did in the Battle of Sekigahara, we will drive out the barbarians and kill the Liu bandits. You should work together!"
In December, a group of pioneers - as the Koreans called them - passed through the Tsushima Strait and occupied Tsushima and Iki Islands.
The Koreans invaded the coast of Kyushu and occupied all the land that could be cultivated.
Like ants, they carried away all the food and supplies of the Japanese.
The strength of the Kyushu vassals still exists, but no one is willing to fight anymore.
This tactic of massacring the city at every turn made the Japanese soldiers feel frightened.
This kind of warfare only existed in the distant Mongol Empire era.
In fact, the barbarians' burning, killing, and looting in Kyushu caused panic to the enemy that was far more frightening and real than Kublai Khan's Eastern Expedition.
The "General Conquering the Barbarians" used Koreans as the vanguard and fought from Hizen to Chikuzen. If there was any resistance, they immediately massacred the city.
The number of people slaughtered was strictly based on the number of troops sent by each domain during the Bunroku Keicho Battle.
For example, in the Hizen Clan, the Nabeshima Daimyo sent out 1,600 men, and the barbarians cut off 1,600 heads and hung them on the city wall.
North Koreans are passionate about revenge.
What the Japanese troops did when they landed in Busan is now being repaid to Kyushu by the Korean soldiers.
The masters of the Korean soldiers - barbarians from Liaodong in the Ming Dynasty - acquiesced in the killings.
Neither for nor against.
They will only provide assistance when the servants' military strength is insufficient.
The war raged across Kyushu.
The daimyo of Kyushu's feudal lords led their samurai retainers to retreat to the Higo and Bungo mountainous areas, and defended themselves in the deep mountains and wild forests.
They did not take the initiative to attack, but hoped that the Kaiyuan Army could pass through Kyushu and attack other daimyo eastward.
The envoys sent by the Kaiyuan Army to Shikoku, Honshu and other places made the contents of the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" public to the public, so all the vassals knew about Liu Zhaosun's ambitions.
After witnessing the tragedy in Kyushu, other daimyo began to reconsider their relationship with the Kaiyuan Army.
At least peace talks are an option.
Against this background, the Iyo Clan on Shikoku Island and the Nagato Clan on Honshu Island began to put pressure on the shogunate.
Everyone hopes that the shogunate can negotiate peace with the Kaiyuan army.
Whatever the final terms are, what needs to be done now is to stop the war.
