Satsuma Country, Kagoshima Castle.

Mitsuhisa Shimazu, the grandfather of the lord of the Satsuma clan, Shimazu Tsunaki, is now known as a recluse, but in fact he still holds great power, even more than when he was the lord of the clan.

Because when you are a feudal lord, you have to go to Edo regularly to serve the Tokugawa shogun. And Edo is too far from Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma country, so the time Mitsuhisa spends on the road and living in Edo is far more than he does.

It takes a long time to handle government affairs in Kagoshima Castle.

At that time, Japan's domestic communication conditions were very poor. There was no postal system, and it would take several months to send messages from Satsuma to Edo. Therefore, when Shimazu Mitsuhisa was in power in the name of the feudal lord, his control over the feudal kingdom was not as strong as it is now.

Woolen cloth!

However, no matter how powerful he controls the Satsuma Domain, he cannot change one of Satsuma Domain's basic "domain sentiments": too many warriors!

Samurai have a double definition in Japan today, one is status; the other is profession.

As long as a man comes from a samurai family, as long as he does not become a monk, he is a samurai. No matter how poor he is, he is still a superior samurai with the right to bear a sword and a surname. If a civilian offends a samurai, the samurai still has the right to kill people!

Of course, having the right to kill people does not mean that you can kill them at will. Because civilians also have masters, and you have to look at the master when beating a dog, let alone killing a person? Generally speaking, unless it is one of your own subjects, there will be a problem after killing it.

A lot of trouble. The lord of the civilian who was hacked to death will definitely come to cause trouble. If the lord of this civilian is unlucky to be a general, then the samurai who hacked the person will be tied to the official residence, waiting for the verdict of the noble warrior who was killed.

The five flowers were tied up and captured, waiting to be punished. Maybe they would be allowed to be visited by others. How shameless would it be?

If the civilians who were beheaded belonged to a powerful but hard-to-talk vassal, then the samurai who beheaded them would most likely be hacked to death by the vassal warriors sent by the vassal. If the civilians who paid taxes to the lord were beheaded, how could the lord take it back?

Tax?

Moreover, the feudal lord also wants to save face. If the civilians below are casually chopped off by outsiders, what will happen to their face? If they don’t be chopped back, then they won’t be a laughing stock.

In short, it is possible to cut down on human rights, but it is best to think carefully before doing so, so as not to end up having to cut your belly to apologize, which will be painful!

Another definition of a samurai is a profession. The Japanese samurai was originally a profession, just as the servants of the ministers. It was only later that they counterattacked and took power, overturned the public affairs, and seized political power, and they became arrogant. After becoming arrogant, in order to solidify their class

, there is a threshold for becoming a samurai through reincarnation. But there are always more people who can reincarnate than those who can become samurai!

Because the number of samurai is limited, and samurai families do not engage in family planning, they are free to have children!

In addition, samurai still have some privileges, look quite majestic, and have more opportunities to rise to the top, so few people are willing to quit the group.

Therefore, there is a trend of more and more samurai (referring to status) in all Japanese lords. However, the salary that each lord can send out and the territory that can be allocated are limited. Generally speaking, the number of people employed by each Japanese lord is limited.

The number of samurai is linked to the height of the stone. Usually, if the height of the stone is 10,000, it can support up to 250 warriors. This is only the theoretical maximum! Because the domain has many places to spend money, it is not possible to raise all samurai, and

The feudal lord himself has to spend money too!

Even if the feudal lord can make pickled vegetables for meals every day, the feudal lord's pomp and the cost of attending the pilgrimage cannot be saved.

In addition, the salary of samurai must be high and low, not average. A samurai who gets less money can only get twenty or thirty koku of brown rice every year, while those who get more can get several thousand koku!

Therefore, a 10,000-koku stone can usually support only a few dozen warriors. Taking the Satsuma Domain's 725,000-koku stone as an example, it would be enough to support 3,400-4,500 warriors.

But in Satsuma Domain, there are too many people with samurai status!

Because the Satsuma Shimazu family was once prosperous during the Warring States Period. During the reign of Shimazu Yoshihisa, the 16th generation head of the Shimazu family, the Shimazu family almost unified Kyushu. Later, they had to surrender due to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Kyushu conquest.

At the price, the Shimazu family's territory was reduced to 605,000 koku. Later, due to the dispatch of troops to Ryukyu, the Tokugawa shogunate converted the Satsuma clan's rights and interests in Ryukyu to 120,000 koku, for a total of 725,000 koku.

.

Compared with the situation when the Shimazu family was in its heyday, when almost all Kyushu was owned, the Satsuma clan's current family business is in miserable decline.

But this is not the worst thing. The worst thing for the Shimadzu family is that Toyotomi Hideyoshi can reduce the Shimadzu family's territory, but the Shimadzu family cannot cut off retainers at will, let alone deprive others of their samurai status!

The size of the retainer group during the Shimazu family's heyday was very large. It was not large and could not occupy most of Kyushu's territory!

These retainers all followed Shimazu Yoshihiro, who was the hero who conquered the world. You can't just lay off people just because you want to lay off people! Even if you can lay off some of them, you can't deprive them of their samurai status!

Therefore, since the establishment of the Satsuma Domain, there has been a problem of too many samurai warriors. There are many domain warriors with salary, and there are many rural warriors without salary (without salary, samurai who have the right to sword and samurai status are allowed to engage in agricultural production and do not have to pay annual tribute.

)More.

Among the five to six million people in the Satsuma Domain, there are as many as hundreds of thousands of people with samurai status! Among them, there are at least tens of thousands of samurai who are strong, can serve as officials, and have the ability to kill people!

Among the tens of thousands of samurai who can be hired, there are only three or four thousand warriors who can become feudal lords. The so-called strong Satsuma clan is actually strong (there are many people!) but weak (losing money). The finances are in deficit every year.

Able to borrow money to survive.

And those samurai who have no chance to be hired are mostly in a difficult situation, and they are looking forward to one day becoming an official!

The dream of this group of samurai can only be realized under one circumstance, that is, the Satsuma clan launches a war to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and challenges the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate.

As long as the Satsuma Domain can successfully counterattack, everyone will be able to receive generous salaries and become a leader with no worries about food and clothing!

If it fails, haha

After Shimazu Mitsuhisa returned to the feudal clan and lived in seclusion, the Satsuma clan's finances not only did not improve, but suffered a greater deficit due to the shrinkage of Ryukyu trade. The 120,000 koku that the Satsuma clan received from Ryukyu was not the output of the land, but the use of it.

Trade income is converted. Now that the Ming Dynasty was founded, Japan has also stepped up its efforts to open up, so Ryukyu controlled by the Satsuma Domain has inevitably declined, and Satsuma's foreign trade income is close to drying up.

Under this situation, the Satsuma Domain had to find ways to tighten expenditures, and the tightening caused the income of the lower-level feudal lords to drop. Therefore, the Satsuma Domain lords who were originally satisfied were now starting to make moves. Not only did they not help Shimazu Mitsuhisa suppress the lower class, but they also

Many people were influenced by the so-called Toyotomi legacy and began to have dreams about the fall of the world.

Every once in a while, someone with a weak mind would write a white letter to Shimazu Hisamitsu, suggesting that he contact the Chosu Domain who hated the shogunate, and summon the loyalists in the domain to raise the banner of overthrowing the emperor.

Just when Shimazu Hisamitsu was in dire straits due to financial problems and a group of confused feudal lords and countrymen, his nephew Nie Kiyoo suddenly arrived on the bay outside Kagoshima City on a Spanish sailing ship, and

It also gave Shimazu Hisamitsu a bolt from the blue!

The Spanish had just expelled the Ming Dynasty's business supervisor in the Ryukyu Kingdom. The Ryukyu Kingdom is now shared by the Satsuma Domain and Spain!

"My lord, there is nothing we can do!" Mitsuo Kiyo, a member of the Shimadzu family and the elder of the family, knelt in front of the stunned Shimazu Mitsuhisa and said with tears, "Now you just jump into Kagoshima Bay outside the city.

I can’t even clean it!”

"Can't you wash it off?" Mitsuhisa Shimazu pretended to be calm, "What should I wash off?"

"Of course he is suspected of colluding with the Spaniards to collapse."

"I, I am innocent, I have not colluded with the Spanish, and I do not believe in Catholicism!"
Chapter completed!