Chapter 3624
The day after the bloody incident at Nijo Castle, reinforcements from several feudal lords near Kyoto arrived one after another, allowing the shogunate to finally have men at its disposal. Tokugawa Ietsuna ordered the Kyoto area to enter a state of martial law. At the same time, he punished the wanderers who had recently caused trouble and spread rumors. The samurai conduct a manhunt.
This undoubtedly further aggravated the tension in Kyoto. In order to avoid being affected, some of the refugees began to flee Kyoto, while others chose to go to various local shelters, hoping to avoid this round of chaos.
The lives of local people in Kyoto have also been greatly affected. Most of the shops and workshops have chosen to close their doors. There are also fewer pedestrians on the streets, and the city is full of depression.
The guards who went to the refugee camp to carry out the search mission were Tokugawa Ietsuna's Guards. They were the elite of the shogunate army. Although they were small in number, they were well-equipped. They were all shogunate samurai, and their combat effectiveness and loyalty were unquestionable. .
However, when this elite team arrived at the refugee camp in the south of Kyoto, it was empty. The camp that originally housed tens of thousands of refugees now only has about a hundred or so people.
There are only a few injured and sick people who have difficulty moving around here. Anyone who is healthy and able to walk has heard the news that the shogunate wants to arrest the refugees and took the initiative to leave the refugee camp in advance.
The task that was originally expected to take at least two or three days to complete was now over. Moreover, the situation here makes it impossible to just grab a few people and go back to work. Even a fool will not believe that it is such a group of old, weak, sick and disabled who are causing chaos in Kyoto.
It is certainly not difficult to know where the refugees are going. If you go to these special locations to search for targets, you will definitely encounter some resistance. You can only report the situation first and ask for instructions on the next step.
Tokugawa Ietsuna heard that the latest gathering places for refugees were mostly places such as temples and Zen shrines, and he couldn't help but feel a little headache. What's more, there were also inconvenient places like the Imperial Garden and Haihan Store.
But now that the posture has been established, you can't raise it high and put it down gently. You can only bite the bullet and let the troops under your command continue to carry out the search mission. However, you need to avoid the two sensitive locations of Yuyuan and Donghaixing for the time being to avoid unnecessary trouble.
It was easy for Tokugawa Ietsuna to give orders while sitting in Nijo Castle, but those temples and Zen societies were not easy targets to deal with.
In order to maintain their image of compassion, these religious institutions must provide asylum to refugees, not to mention the serious bloodshed that occurred yesterday. Even if they are just pretending, they still have to stop the shogunate troops who come to carry out the search mission.
The instructions received by the shogunate army did not allow them to go on a killing spree, but instead required them to control the situation as much as possible, avoid intensifying new conflicts, and minimize casualties during the mission.
Therefore, the manhunt operation quickly turned into a confrontation between the shogunate army and the monks and priests. It is certainly not difficult to use force to subdue these unarmed people, but this will inevitably cause more serious conflicts. After all, the appeal of these religious institutions among the people , probably much larger than the shogunate.
Of course, just the level of confrontation is far from enough to satisfy those who instigated this incident. For things to continue to develop, conflicts must continue to occur.
A new round of bloody conflicts soon broke out in Tofukuji Temple, Yasaka Shrine and other places where refugees gathered.
Due to the chaos, the cause of the conflict could not be verified, but the accounts circulated among the people afterwards were very consistent. They all said that the shogunate army fired first and shot the clergy who blocked them from entering the refugee gathering area. They were then attacked by some angry people. Fight back. Whether it was the shogunate troops who opened fire or the ronin samurai hiding in the dark is no longer the focus of the matter.
After the shogunate troops heading to Tofukuji Temple broke through the monks' blockage, the chaos continued to expand. The refugees who were panicking were stampeded, and hundreds of people fell to the ground.
The situation at Yasaka Shrine was similar. A stampede caused by chaos claimed at least hundreds of lives.
The shogunate troops on the hunt were not without any casualties. During the hunt at Cisho Temple in Dongshan, they actually ran into a group of ronin warriors hiding here. At least 20 shogunate troops were killed and injured in the fight between the two sides, and the ronin After being surrounded, all the samurai died fighting hard, and no one was captured alive.
Now, the thousands of refugees staying at Dongshan Cizhao Temple with the ronin samurai were all forced to bear the suspicion of rebelling against the party, and none of them could be let go.
Although people can't leave, the news can't be blocked. In all places where bloody conflicts occurred, relevant news spread quickly.
At this time, the shogunate was still busy dealing with the aftermath and had no time to announce the results of the operation, which once again left a huge space for all kinds of rumors that were filled with fuel and jealousy.
As a result, new rumors became more and more serious, even reaching the level of sensationalism, saying that the shogunate army carried out massacres in many refugee gathering places, even monks and priests were not spared.
Others claimed that thousands of people inside and outside Dongshan Cizhao Temple were killed, and no one was left alive. They said that they had noses and eyes, and they used the local area as a complete blockade by the shogunate army as proof - if not all the people were killed, why Are you going to seal the place completely and no one is allowed to come in or out?
It is difficult to tell whether these rumors are true or false, and it is difficult for the shogunate to prove their innocence. If no one died in the conflict, no one will believe it. After all, it is impossible to block the news 100%. But if you want to defend yourself by saying that in fact not as many people died as rumored, then the effect of this clarification may not be as good as pretending to be dead and not responding.
This undoubtedly put the shogunate in an extremely unfavorable situation. On the one hand, the war against Kyushu was intensifying at this time, and on the other hand, the shogunate massacred the refugees who had fled their homes and fled to Kyoto. So, the shogunate and the so-called Kyushu rebels , I am afraid that it is no longer the unilateral decision of the shogunate to decide who is the just party.
At this juncture, the battle report from the Kyushu front line finally reached Kyoto.
Although the detailed battle process is still a military secret that can only be seen by the top shogunate, the result that the shogunate army was defeated and lost the Kanmon Strait soon spread from Nijo Castle.
This just confirms the local rumors in Kyoto a few days ago. At that time, many people still did not believe that the shogunate army was defeated. But now that the battle report has come out, in addition to making people sigh with regret, many people also thought of another rumor at that time, that is, the shogunate army was defeated. It is planned to transfer money, food and manpower from Kyoto to reverse the defeat on the front line.
Previous rumors stated that the shogunate would recruit young men from refugees to supplement its troops, but after two consecutive days of bloodshed, it may be difficult to implement this plan.
But if the refugee group cannot provide the soldiers needed by the shogunate, then this task will probably have to be transferred to the local people in Kyoto.