Chapter 3618
When the Kyushu Allied Forces launched an offensive against the Kanmon Strait, Tokugawa Ietsuna had just arrived in Kyoto. The journey was dusty, day and night, and the situation in Kyoto was always in his mind. It was not a pleasant journey for him.
Regarding the fierce battle at sea that took place thousands of miles away, Tokugawa Ietsuna has not yet received news from the front line. His priority now is the increasingly fierce calls for the collapse of the Kyoto area. When the shogunate's war situation is not going well, once these unfavorable public opinions spread and spread across the country, it may make the situation develop out of control.
Tokugawa Ietsuna's itinerary and purpose of returning to Kyoto were kept secret from the outside world. Therefore, when entering Kyoto, he did not use a ceremonial guard to show off the city, and secretly took a car directly to Nijo Castle.
Nijo Castle was a castle built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in Kyoto. The purpose was to provide a place for the Tokugawa tribe and his generals to rest and stay when they visited Kyoto.
Considering that the distance between this place and Kyoto Gyoen, the residence of the Japanese emperor, is less than two miles, Nijo Castle certainly also has the function of monitoring the movements of the imperial family. Once there is any disturbance in the imperial garden, the garrison troops in Nijo Castle can take corresponding actions as soon as possible.
Tokugawa Ietsuna did not go to meet the Japanese emperor first because he wanted to listen to reports from his subordinates first in order to grasp the latest local situation. A group of people assigned by the shogunate to handle various tasks in Kyoto were all present to listen to Tokugawa Ietsuna's inquiries.
In the few short days since Tokugawa Ietsuna arrived in Kyoto, the local situation was still deteriorating in a direction that was not conducive to the shogunate.
The ronin samurai who originally moved scattered in the Kyoto area are now showing signs of gathering into groups, often in groups of more than ten or twenty people.
These samurai circulated among the various refugee camps south of Kyoto, spreading various rumors about the shogunate. When the shogunate tried to arrest them, they encountered strong resistance. Once the opponent was defeated, they would immediately flee and hide in refugee camps.
Since the reputation of the shogunate had been affected by rumors before, these refugees who fled to Kyoto generally lacked a favorable impression of the shogunate and were unwilling to cooperate with the shogunate's arrests. Instead, they would use various means to prevent the shogunate from entering the refugee camp to search. .
The number of samurai stationed in Kyoto by the shogunate is limited, and almost all those who can really fight have been transferred to the Kyushu front line to participate in the war in the past six months. Most of the personnel left in Kyoto are old, weak, sick and disabled, and they are simply not equipped to carry out large-scale arrest operations. ability.
Therefore, although the shogunate personnel stationed in Kyoto organized several arrest operations, they did not achieve any actual results. On the contrary, they lost several people during the operation.
Without exception, these failed actions were used as new propaganda materials by the ronin samurai, saying that the shogunate had been deceiving the emperor and the people of the country with false victory reports. In order to prevent the rear from knowing the news of the defeat on the front line, they tried to use Catch them to silence them.
Such conspiracy theories are very popular in Kyoto today, because most of the refugees who fled here are from the Honshu side of the Kanmon Strait. If it weren't for the shogunate's army being defeated, how could the war spread to these areas controlled by the shogunate? If the previous good news were true, then the Kyushu rebels should have been destroyed, and shouldn't the war be over long ago?
Although there are many loopholes in these claims if you consider them carefully, ordinary people are not well informed and have no other channels to falsify them, so they are naturally more likely to hear and believe. Although the shogunate personnel are also trying their best to clarify, the effect is not ideal, because there is really no evidence to prove the superiority of the shogunate army on the front line. Tokugawa Ietsuna was furious when he heard this. He didn't expect that while he was fighting hard at the front, there were so many villains behind the scenes who were causing mischief and disturbing the people's hearts. If I don't come back in person, I'm afraid my house will be on fire.
"Who are the people who spread rumors in Kyoto under the instruction? Have you found out?"
Hearing Tokugawa Ietsuna's stern reprimand, the people reporting the situation lowered their heads. The person in charge told Tokugawa Ietsuna that since no one had been arrested so far, they could only infer from the known information that some ronin warriors should be from the Kyushu region.
Isn't this nonsense? Tokugawa Ietsuna was so angry that he wanted to kill someone. He felt deeply that the people he left behind in Kyoto were a bunch of cowards.
But now that he has to do things in Kyoto, Tokugawa Ietsuna doesn't have many manpower available for the time being, so he still has to rely on this group of people. He can only suppress the anger in his heart and ask the royal family how they react to the current situation in Kyoto.
Since Tokugawa Ieyasu established the shogunate in Edo in 1603, although the Kyoto royal family has always been a puppet in the hands of the Tokugawa shogunate, there is no guarantee that someone will have other ideas when the situation is unstable.
Tokugawa Ietsuna actually had some doubts about the role played by the imperial family in the chaos in Kyoto, but the local person in charge did not collect any definite evidence on this. At most, they allowed these ronin to spread rumors in Kyoto, at least not openly. provide them with practical support.
Before getting evidence, Tokugawa Ietsuna would not be able to take any special measures against the imperial family. After all, the current rumors outside are supporting the imperial family to regain power from the shogunate. If the shogunate takes action, these rumors will be confirmed. , making public opinion even more unfavorable to the shogunate.
There is another piece of information that the Tokugawa family has learned about, and that is the local forces that have recently come to Kyoto to contact the royal family. Especially those daimyo who came to Kyoto to see the emperor in person, no matter what their purpose was, in Tokugawa Ietsuna's view, they were very hateful.
This time, the local person in charge finally did not disappoint him again. He came up with a detailed list, recording the local daimyo who had appeared in Kyoto in the past month, a total of twenty-nine people. This does not include those cases where the daimyo did not come in person, but sent their trusted subordinates to Kyoto.
What made Tokugawa Ietsuna wary was that all of the twenty-nine local daimyo who visited Kyoto had been to the Kyoto Imperial Garden and met the puppet emperor in the imperial palace.
This seems to be no problem. When ministers arrive in Kyoto, it is their duty and etiquette to see the emperor. But the problem is that in the past, when daimyo came to Kyoto to see the emperor, they would greet the shogunate first, and then go to the Kyoto Imperial Garden after getting permission. As for the daimyo who appeared in Kyoto recently, not many of them came to Nijo Castle to say hello first, directly ignoring the existence of the shogunate.
There were three hundred feudal lords in Japan, and less than thirty daimyo came, which didn't seem like many. Moreover, on the list obtained by Tokugawa Ietsuna, I did not see any names of powerful feudal lords. But what he is worried about is that many people are secretly watching the shogunate's attitude. If there is no response, then more daimyo may come to Kyoto to contact the royal family.