Part 18: The First Sino-Japanese War
(small note on history vs. the game; in Victoria 2, the capital of Japan is represented as being in Edo (modern day Tokyo), due to the fact that that was the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the de facto rulers of Japan at game start. However, until the Meiji Restoration, Kyoto was officially the capital of Japan, being the seat of the Emperor. Tokyo only offically became the capital of Japan after the Meiji Emperor moved court to Tokyo in the wake of the Meiji Restoration)
A grand invasion army and fleet was rapidly assembling in southern Korea. The 1st, 2nd, and 9th divisions would all take part in the invasion together. And a newly expanded Qing navy would ensure its save arrival.
Finally, all was ready.
As the Qing fleet arrived on the Japanese coastline, the Qing Emperor in Beijing formally issued a decree of war upon Japan. Isolationist Japan didn't hear of the decree until after the invasion commenced, but that was hardly the Emperor's concern. The goal of the war was to take the Japanese capital Kyoto, and the surrounding regions of Kansai. Doing so would split Japan in two, and drive the newly empowered Emperor from his capital.
General Hesehn Shangzhi led the first landing, catching an unprepared Japanese garrison by surprise. The Japanese had been wary of foreign invasion, but they had expected nothing more than a small Western expeditionary force from the Americans or the like, not to be outnumbered by a full scale invasion of 39,000 Chinese.
The Battle of Nagasaki was an absolute slaughter; over 12,000 Japanese soldiers died, with only a few thousand Chinese deaths. The Japanese had rapidly reintroduced widespread usage of firearms in their armed forces after the appearance of the Americans, but they were ultimately still a traditional army of Samurai. They had not the discipline or tactical training of the Chinese forces, nor the more modern firearms that all the invasion forces were armed to the teeth with. Worse, they'd been caught off guard and outnumbered.
Hesehn Shangzhi pursued the broken enemy army relentlessly, and finally cornered them in Yamaguchi, forcing them to surrender without any shots fired.
Yamaguchi quickly fell to the Chinese invasion forces, and Hesehn continued on towards Kyoto, even as more Japanese divisions piled onto the mainland. Soon, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Kumamoto also fell.
However, the Japanese rapidly brought up reinforcements and laid siege to Yamagushi. While the Chinese navy guarded against any Japanese crossing at their rear, Hesehn moved to break the siege. The Chinese, however, found themselves outnumbered after further Japanese reinforcements arrived, and General Hesehn was forced to call for reinforcements - the Japanese had learned quickly from Nagasaki, and fought fiercely to repel the Chinese assault.
In the end, the superior Chinese discipline won the day, but it had been a narrow victory, with far more Chinese than Japanese dead. But as always, the Chinese Empire could better afford the losses.
Oboi Xiangying meanwhile had much better success, annihilating a Japanese army utterly and decisively; once again proving his great skills as a general.
The Japanese were unperturbed by their defeat, relentlessly mounting another attack upon Yamaguchi. This time, though, the Chinese generals did not fall for the bait; instead they surrounded the Japanese forces, allowing them to successfully retake Yamaguchi only to find themselves surrounded by rapidly reinforcing Chinese armies. With the Chinese navy dominating the seas, the Japanese were faced with a hopeless choice - either attempt a breakout against one of the Chinese armies only to be flanked on all sides by the other two, or sit and wait until the limitless supply of Chinese reinforcements left them hopelessly outnumbered..
The aging Daoguang Emperor was pleased to hear the bulk of the Japanese army was trapped. He was also pleased to hear that his land reform program was having the expected results, as farmers and peasants increasingly started taking advantage of designs for agricultural implements common in the west, making their own replicas and putting them to use. Fruit and grain production both increased significantly.
After another month passed with the Japanese trapped, the Chinese generals finally felt they had gained enough reinforcements to be sure of victory, and Hesehn took command of the assault, while another division of the New Model Army guarded against any further surprise rounds of Japanese reinforcements.
The victory was an incredibly bloody one, but the Chinese Empire could much better afford the horrific casualties than Japan; despite the Chinese losses being larger, there were less than half as many Japanese survivors.
Fu Shangzhi meanwhile had won a crushing victory against a Japanese relief force, sent to save the entrapped army.
Hesehn and Fu coordinated a furious pursuit into Matsue, and once again the Japanese armies were left so disorganized by their earlier defeat that they put up little fight. The survivors fled once more, but the Kōmei Emperor had finally had enough of the horrific suffering of his people.
The bulk of the Japanese army had been wiped out, and China had access to a seemingly limitless supply of reinforcements. The Japanese Emperor could see the inevitable fate, and knew he must negotiate before the whole country fell and the Chinese expanded their wargoals. The Chinese Emperor demanded Kyoto was handed over before any ceasefire was agreed to, and the Kōmei Emperor reluctantly fled to Edo, former seat of the Shogunate, as Chinese occupation forces took over the Japanese capital without a shot being fired. The Chinese formally agreed to a temporary ceasefire, pending formal treaty negotiations.
Western powers descended on the defeated Japan like wolves, demanding further concessions from Japan, but China rebuffed their attempts to take over the negotiations. Eventually, after much political maneuvering, China and Japan signed a peace treaty in Kyoto under the following terms, with many Western diplomats as co-signatories:
1. Kyoto would be formally ceded to China in perpetuity.
2. Japan would formally send an emissary to Beijing to perform the kow-tow every year, acknowledging Qing superiority. Language implying that Japan would be a tributary or vassal of China was removed at the demand of the Western powers, so the kow-tow would be purely ceremonial. Japan would also accept the presence of embassies from all the European great powers, establishing a Legation Quarter similar to China's.
3. Japan would permanently end Sankoku Law, and all of Japan's Unequal Trade treaties with Western Powers would be re-enforced. China, however, did not seek to be included in these treaties, as the whole concept was foreign and largely abhorrent to the Daoguang Emperor. Concepts like "treaty ports" were nonsensical to the Emperor - Kyoto would not be a "treaty port", it would be a part of China's sovereign territory. Concepts like extraterritoriality were meaningless to a China that had long considered citizens who left the country to be deserters, and China still had little interest in international trade, being largely self-sufficient other than food and weapon imports.
4. Japan would pay extensive reparations for all the foreign property and people harmed or inconvenienced by the forceful expulsion of Europeans they had conducted during the Kōmei Restoration.
The treaty was named the Kyoto Convention, and it would define Japanese foreign relations well into the future.
The Kyoto Convention proved to be the culmination of years of Chinese modernization efforts and diplomacy, as the European barbarians finally began to perceive China as a "civilized nation"; China's decisive action in Japan had made it clear to all that its presence in international affairs could no longer be dismissed, and that the West could gain much from accepting China as an equal. (and stand to lose much if they failed to do so)
(and yes, spoilers, I will hit the Westernize button with the next update, now that I've wringed nearly 10,000 research points from Japan)
Last edited:
.png){kind=avatar}
