Chapter 3623
Chapter 3623
Chapter 3623
At this time, Tokugawa Ietsugu was standing on the city wall of the east gate with a grim face, witnessing the entire process of the conflict outside the city.
He actually had nothing to blame for Sakai Tadakiyo's handling of the situation, and he did not interfere. But the failure of communication with the refugees and the rapid transition to armed conflict were hard for him to accept.
This means that the shogunate's unassailable position in the minds of the people has begun to collapse, and it has split into two opposing camps. In the future, it will probably be much more difficult to obtain support from the people in terms of personnel and materials than before.
The group of refugees causing trouble outside Nijo Castle was indeed dispersed, but Tokugawa Ietsugu knew that the problem was not solved. After this battle, the situation in Kyoto would further deteriorate in a direction that was unfavorable to the shogunate.
Of course, if the unrest was limited to Kyoto, the shogunate could use various means to suppress the mob and calm the situation as quickly as possible and get everything back on track.
But if what happened here spreads rapidly throughout the country, leading to imitators in more places, and then being exploited by some conspirators hiding behind the scenes, turning it into a new round of civil war, that would be a real big trouble.
The only thing to be thankful for is that these refugees in Kyoto do not have the ability to launch a siege and lack unified command. It is more like a riot to vent their dissatisfaction.
Although some explosives were thrown from the refugee crowd during the conflict, the damage caused was not too great. Tokugawa Ietsugu believed that it was the work of the mastermind behind the attack, but it was far from enough to shake the solid defense system of Nijo Castle.
The scenario that Tokugawa Ietsugu had worried about beforehand, "the enemy using refugees as cover to attack the city," did not happen in the end. He was also a little puzzled as to why the opponent did not take this opportunity to try a more powerful attack method. Could it be that they were really frightened by the defense of Nijo Castle?
He felt that things would not be so simple. The opponent had gone to the trouble of instigating such a riot, so it should not end so hastily. However, the shogunate was in the open, and the opponent was in the dark. Now it seemed that there was no other way but to deal with it.
Looking at the mess on the street, Tokugawa Ietsugu became more and more upset, and ordered people to clean up the outside quickly, arrest those who should be arrested, and bury those who should be buried.
Tokugawa Iematsu's worries were correct. This man-made riot was just the beginning of a greater chaos.
While the shogunate's army was busy dealing with the aftermath, new rumors had spread throughout Kyoto that refugees who had peacefully petitioned the shogunate had clashed when they were driven away by the shogunate's army. At least thousands of people had died in this one-sided massacre. The street outside the east gate of Nijo Castle was completely soaked in blood, and the smell of blood filled the area for miles around.
It is said that the shogunate will conduct a large-scale search throughout Kyoto in the name of suppressing the riots, and it is unknown how many innocent people will suffer during this period.
In fact, the number of refugees who died in the conflict was not that high, barely in the three digits, but more than a thousand people were injured for various reasons in the chaos.
However, at this critical juncture, Kyoto was in chaos, and no one could verify how many people were killed or injured outside Nijo Castle, let alone whether the shogunate army would go on a killing spree in Kyoto next.
Whether it was refugees or local people in Kyoto, they all fell into panic and began to look for shelter. Although Kyoto is large, the only places that can really provide shelter for ordinary people are usually Tofukuji Temple, Kiyomizu Temple, Nanzenji Temple, Higashiyama Jishoji Temple, Kinkakuji Temple, and Zen shrines such as Fushimi Inari Taisha and Yasaka Shrine.
Of course, there are now two more options. One is the royal family, which has clearly expressed its support for the refugee group. The Kyoto Imperial Garden, where the royal family is located, is very large. If the royal family nods, it will be no problem to accommodate tens of thousands of people.
The other place was the Donghai Trading Company, which was affiliated with Hai Han. Everyone knew that this was a semi-official agency stationed in Kyoto by Hai Han. Even the shogunate did not dare to touch it. If one could get the protection of Donghai Trading Company, then personal safety would be guaranteed.
Some people even believed that the Donghai Trading Company's trading post would be safer than the royal garden, because the royal family was ultimately under the control of the shogunate, and the Hai Han people would not have much scruples about the shogunate.
However, the area occupied by Donghai Bank is much smaller than that of Yuyuan. It can accommodate about a thousand people at most. If you go too late, there may be no room left.
Lin Qiu was prepared for the refugees who were pouring into the trading post like a tide. He had ordered people to set up several barricades outside the gate to block the flow of people. At the same time, he arranged for people to stand on high places and keep shouting, saying that the reception capacity of the East China Sea Bank was limited, so it could only temporarily accommodate women and children, and would not accept men over three feet tall.
Lin Qiu did this for a clear purpose. First, it was to make it easier to control the crowd that took refuge in the inn and prevent young and strong people from mixing in and causing trouble. Only a small number of people could be used to control the situation in the inn. Secondly, it could also provide an extra layer of protection for the inn. Those who had family members taking refuge in the inn would take the initiative to protect the inn and help maintain order outside the inn.
However, he somewhat underestimated the appeal of his own business. Soon after the conflict in Nijo Castle, tens of thousands of refugees came to seek asylum.
Despite the shelter conditions, the large number of women and children soon pushed the warehouse's shelter capacity to its limit. Except for a few important areas such as the warehouse, archives room, and telegraph room, other places in the warehouse became part of the temporary shelter.
Even the bedrooms that the inn had arranged for Yang Tianlei and Amakusa Hayabusa had to be combined into one so that they could squeeze into one room first, with one of the rooms being vacated to accommodate more than twenty infants and young children.
Seeing this, Yang Tianlei smiled bitterly and said, "Isn't this a bit too big of a fuss? Now we are almost getting involved ourselves!"
Amakusa Hayabusa was relatively calm: "We can only overcome this temporarily and wait for news from the royal family. According to the previous agreement, it is the turn of the Japanese emperor to act as a good guy and calm the situation."
When they planned this, they had already calculated that the refugees' behavior would only cause temporary chaos in Kyoto, and would not be able to put continuous pressure on the shogunate. Therefore, after the chaos, the royal family had to hurry up and come forward to make full use of this rare opportunity to establish prestige and gain the favor of the people.
The East Sea Line could certainly win the hearts of many people by taking in refugees, but at this moment, the refugees surrounding the trading post actually brought a lot of inconvenience to the East Sea Line. News from the outside was difficult to be transmitted back to the trading post in the first place, making it impossible for the people in charge to learn about the reactions of the shogunate and the royal family.
In addition, the people from the various feudal domains in Kyushu were still operating in the urban area at this time. Their connections with the trading posts were temporarily cut off due to the chaos, so they could only act according to the circumstances on their own.