Sendai Port in a broad sense is actually a large port area that includes the four ports of Sendai, Shiogama, Ishinomaki and Matsushima. It is also called Shiogama Port Area. It is relied on by various inland cities in the northeastern region of the island country. Maritime traffic artery.
Among these four ports, the most important is undoubtedly Ishinomaki Port.
Beginning with the Matsumae Domain in Hokkaido, including the Hirosaki Domain, the Black Market Domain, the Morioka Domain (under the jurisdiction of the Hachinohe Domain, the Shichinohe Domain) and even the Shirakawa Domain, a close domain of the Tokugawa family, the import and export of foreign trade goods relied heavily on Ishinomaki Port. The rice and various seafood products (warmons) sold to Edo by each clan were put on ships from Ishinomaki Port and sent to Edo along the eastbound route.
The most important thing is that over the years, more than 70% of the rice sold in Edo Castle came from the Sendai Domain; and the shogunate opened a coin foundry in Ishinomaki to make Kanei Tongho.
Locking up Ishinomaki Port would be equivalent to locking up more than 80% of the island country's foreign trade in the Tohoku region. And Edo Castle, with a population of one million, would definitely have no rice to use.
Some people say that there is also Osaka? Don’t be ridiculous, the rice that Osaka transports to Edo is less than 5,000 koku per year, which is only one-twentieth of Edo’s annual needs.
So, do you know why Zhao Xin went to Ishinomaki Port? It wasn’t because of abalone and shark fins.
It was early morning on the fourth day of April in the fourth year of Tianming (1784).
After three long whistles were heard on the sea, brave fishermen discovered that the giant thunder boat parked on the sea drove away to the northeast. The "Devil from Hell" was finally gone. After hearing the news, The residents of Matsushima Town finally breathed a sigh of relief.
How far is the distance between Matsushima Town and Ishinomaki Port? Thirteen nautical miles. If the boat speed is fast, it will arrive in less than an hour.
Therefore, many people who rushed from Ishinomaki Port to Matsushima Port to watch the excitement the day before yesterday were stunned to see that mountain-like ship blocking the outside of Ishinomaki Port this morning.
Buddha and Bodhisattva! The devil is coming!
The news that more than 200 Date family samurai were wiped out yesterday morning had already reached Ishinomaki Port in the afternoon. Dozens of cargo ships docked in the port all lowered their sails and huddled on the pier, daring not to set sail. What if this happened? I was robbed by a barbarian boat on the way, and I had no time to cry.
(Zhao Xin brandished a pistol and rushed back to the boat and shouted, hand over all the shark fins and abalones, everything below the two heads is garbage! Illusion, hallucination.)
Thanks to the Tokugawa family's "Samurai Laws", the Date family's navy only had a few seki ships of no more than 500 koku and more than 20 small morning boats in Ishinomaki Port. Therefore, Ishinomaki Port followed a standard The foreign devil ships came to bombard Matsushima Town. The folding fan in his hand fell to the ground with a "clack", and he was trembling with fear.
This is not Matsushima, and a large amount of goods enter and leave the port every day. If something happens to Ishinomaki Port, the Date family will definitely have him caesarean first, and then whip the corpse a hundred times; then the Edo shogunate will continue to whip the body. .
"Sir, let the navy be dispatched! I would like to lead the warships out to sea to drive away the barbarian ships." Two feudal lords who did not know whether to live or die asked the executive officer for instructions.
"Go, go, go! Get out!" Ishinomaki Minato almost fainted with anger. The news that came yesterday shocked him so much that he was speechless. Not only did more than two hundred samurai die in the battle, but the demon ship was shot. Let half of Matsushima Town turn into ashes. How to fight this?
Moreover, I haven't given any instructions yet. If I give up, and start provocations without permission, I will end up having a caesarean section.
"Don't look, it's you, Shibata!" Fengxing picked up the fallen folding fan and pointed at the samurai sitting on the outermost side.
Shibata Kakuzo, who was in his thirties, felt that something was not good in his heart when he saw Lord Shibata calling him.
As a secret agent directly under the feudal clan, Kakuzo Shibata was sent to Ishinomaki Port to monitor whether there were any illegal activities in collusion with the Tokugawa family or other foreign clans, and to report directly to Lord Ishikawa of the feudal clan.
Report.
By the way, the Invisible Man has done a good job in the past few years, so why are they being named?
"Haha. Please give me your instructions." Shibata Kakuzo felt helpless and had no choice but to show an attitude of going forward.
"Get two people to go to sea with you as your entourage and see what the barbarians want to do. It's best to meet the barbarian shipowners and ask them where did the feudal clan offend them?" Although Ishinomaki is timid, he is not.
Fool. He doesn't worry about who he sends at this moment; since Shibata Kakuzo is sent by the chief steward of this domain, let him go first, and if anything happens, everyone will bear the burden together.
"Ah?!" Shibata Kakuzo felt thunder rolling above his head. Good things don't come to me, but this kind of bad luck happened to him. Could it be that he didn't go to the temple to burn incense recently, and the Bodhisattva blamed it?
"What? Shibata-dono, don't you want to go?" Ishinomaki Minato showed a sneer on his face.
"Ha ha!"
Shibata Kakuzo thought for a while, and since the word "Thunder God" was written on the barbarian boat, maybe the people on the boat could speak Tang dialect. So he asked Master Fengxing to appoint two of his deputies to accompany him.
One was a tax collector who had studied the Four Books and Five Classics in the Hondo Official Academy; the other was the owner of a business in Honmachi. This person often traveled to Edo for business, and had also gone to Osaka to run the maritime business.
Ishinomaki Minato agreed readily.
Soon, Shibata Kakuzo and his party boarded a small morning boat on the pier. Nine sailors had been arranged on the boat. After Shibata and the other two people were seated, a sailor sitting in the stern began to beat the drum under him.
, and shouted a trumpet; the other eight sailors rowed the oars vigorously. The small morning boat quickly left the dock.
On the Thor, which was anchored three nautical miles away from Ishinomaki Port, Liu Sheng looked at the small morning boat coming out of the port with a high-powered telescope, and said to Zhao Xin with admiration: "You were right, they sent someone here.
"
Zhao Xin said with a smile: "Sendai Clan cannot afford the consequences of Ishinomaki Port being blocked. It will happen sooner or later."
Wang Yuanfang looked at the small morning boat through the telescope and asked Zhao Xin: "How will we deal with it later?"
"Take them to the meeting room on the ship and have them prepare refreshments. Be polite first and then fight." Zhao Xin said.
As a result, everyone on the Thor had to wait for more than two hours. I really can't blame Ishinomaki Port for this. The limit speed of a small morning boat in the Edo period was one nautical mile per hour. If a ship was to be shut down,
You also have to move the big tube placed at the bow of the boat off the boat, which is too troublesome.
The tea in the conference room was re-made three times before the small boat approached the Thor.
"Everyone on the boat this morning, listen, please bring the boat over here." Zhao Xin's voice came out from the loudspeaker on the boat.
As soon as he finished speaking, the turntable platform on the ship deck began to rotate, and the thick chains and steel wires were slowly lowered from the side of the ship along with the gangway, and finally stopped close to the water.
Shibata and the other three people on the small morning boat and all the sailors were shocked. Fortunately, there were protective panels on both sides of the boat, otherwise someone would have been frightened and fell into the water.
After walking back and forth along the gangway to the deck, Shibata Kakuzo felt his legs were weak and couldn't help but slumped to the ground.
He didn't expect the ship to be so big. He turned around and looked at the business owner. He looked pale and shook his head. Shibata knew that he had never seen such a ship.
Touching the ground beneath him, Shibata Kakuzo discovered that the ship's deck was actually made of large iron plates, and he couldn't help but secretly marveled. After he stood up forcefully while holding on to the railing beside him, he discovered that the railing he was holding on to had cold tentacles, and it was obviously made of iron.
When he looked up, he felt dizzy at the tall white ship building in front of him. It was higher than the castle guard of the feudal city!
He turned his head and looked away, and two huge objects not far away caught his eye.
"Is that the big tube that blew up half of Matsushima Town? Isn't it too big?" Shibata Kakuzo suppressed the shock in his heart and could not show it on his face.
Only three thick brackets were seen supporting the entire gun body, with some sacks pressed on it. Shibata Kakuzo visually judged that the large gun barrel was probably more than a foot long, and the muzzle, which did not look thick, was facing the stone.
In the direction of Zhuangang; an extremely tall and sturdy man, with several men, was stuffing a cylindrical object with a pointed end into the barrel of the cannon.
Shibata Kakuzo noticed that the person holding the black pillar looked very strenuous. It was obvious that the thing was extremely heavy.
If all this made Shibata and the other two people feel novel and shocked, what shocked him the most was that all the people on the deck had oriental faces, and there was not a single foreigner in sight; and the few people talking around him were actually fucking
With a fluent Mutsu accent!
Who are the people on this boat?!!
Shibata Kakuzo's fear is justified. Because in the Sendai Domain territory at this time, the Date family's cruel annual tribute collection has made the farmers resentful, and the Ichikaku (peasant riot) has reached the verge of breaking out.
Since the disaster broke out the year before last, even though there was a large-scale harvest failure in the territory, the Date family has not exempted the feudal clan from paying annual tribute at all.
In the view of the Date family retainers, if a village is exempted from the annual tribute, then all the villages in the domain will come to request exemption. If food cannot be collected at this time and a rationing system is implemented, a large number of people will starve to death.
, it cannot be opened in this example.
The county magistrate initially implemented a slight reduction in the annual tribute for paddy fields, while for dry fields, a tribute of twelve taels of rice was required for every tael of income (two taels and one stone, totaling 130 kilograms). This annual tribute has actually been equal to the current rice price.
The skyrocketing market price has leveled off, which means the tax rate has reached 100%.
What kind of land do farmers have to plant? After the harvest, even a grain of grain will not fall into their hands. But not planting is not enough. It is so unreasonable that the county magistrate sends people down to arrest people in minutes. Do you want to go to jail?
You are so beautiful that you will not be able to earn a living while in jail.
The people who came to greet Shibata Kakuzo and the others were Katsu Kaishu and Rikichi. They said nothing and looked at the three people in front of them coldly, looking around like fools.
This was a beauty in Liji's heart. As a former farmer, he would never have thought that one day he would be able to stand proudly in front of a samurai master, with a mocking look on his face, and treat him like a fool.
It was not until Shibata Kakuzo and the others turned their glances to Katsu Kaishu and Katsu Kaishu that they bowed and saluted.
"I am a subordinate of Ishikawa-sama, the general manager of Sendai Domain, Shibata Kakuzo. These two are."
Sheng Haizhou's face was stern. He did not introduce himself or Li Ji. Instead, he said seriously: "My lord has been waiting for you in the cabin for a long time. Please come with me."
"Oh my God! This person actually speaks Kanto fluently! Who are they?!" Shibata Kakuzo turned around and looked at the two people behind him, both of whom looked surprised.