The Gospel of Happiness (2)
Free trade was justice. It was virtue. And anyone who obstructed free trade was evil that had to be eradicated.
Even if that evil had brutally murdered and humiliated innocent white men, no one could stand in the way of the British Empire.
May 1863.
The Anglo-American joint fleet, launching its preemptive strike several months earlier than in the original timeline, approached the coast of Kagoshima and opened fire in unison.
**BOOM!**
“Show those insolent bastards exactly who they’ve provoked!”
“This is the taste of a barbarian’s cannon, you monkeys!”
The sky above Kagoshima Bay burned crimson.
The fierce typhoon and towering waves that would have tormented the British fleet in the original history were nowhere to be found.
As if the spiteful heavens had taken the side of the Western powers, the sea lay calm as a lake. Thanks to that, the steady naval guns delivered precise strikes straight into the heart of Satsuma.
“The, the Shuseikan! No! The factory is collapsing!”
“Stop it! Put out the fire! No! The machines…!”
The Shuseikan—Satsuma’s proud symbol of modernization, built with blood and sweat by domain lord Shimazu Hisamitsu in his determination to defeat the West.
The vast complex housing blast furnaces, glass factories, and spinning mills crumbled to ruins under direct hits from Armstrong guns.
And that was not all.
“The ships… the ships are sinking!”
“Get them out to sea! At least let them fire their cannons!”
“It’s impossible! If they approach, they’ll be caught in the bombardment!”
The three Western-style warships purchased at enormous cost were turned into kindling while still moored in the harbor, without even a chance to resist.
It was overwhelming.
Satsuma’s vaunted coastal batteries could only fall silent, ravaged by shells fired from well beyond their range.
“Do not touch the civilian districts. Remember that we are not murderers, but executors of civilization.”
At Admiral Cooper’s command, the gun barrels targeted only government offices and military installations with surgical precision.
Of course, stray sparks could not be entirely prevented, but it was the minimum measure to avoid the stigma of indiscriminate slaughter.
In less than half a day, the Kagoshima shoreline had been reduced to a smoking ruin.
Yet the fury of the Anglo-American forces did not end there.
“Lower the boats! Prepare to land!”
They had not come all this way merely to exchange cannon fire.
The goal of this operation was to inject primal terror into the bodies of these insolent people, just as they had done in Qing China.
The moment British marines in red coats and their American counterparts set foot on shore, the cornered Satsuma samurai flipped their eyes white with rage and charged.
“How dare the foreigners set foot on the divine land!”
“Now that they’ve come ashore, they’re within our reach! Let us show them the soul of Satsuma!”
“Cheeeestoooo!”
Samurai who had resolved to throw away their lives drew their blades and rushed forward with ferocious momentum.
The Shinto-ryu swordsmanship that had earned renown across the archipelago for its one-strike kills.
Their spirit, honed over lifetimes devoted to the blade, was truly magnificent. Unfortunately, the era had already abandoned them.
**Bang! Bang! Ratatatat!**
“Gaaah!”
“The, the sword… it can’t even reach…”
The battlefields of the nineteenth century had long since rendered bayonet charges obsolete relics of a bygone age.
Against poorly trained soldiers it might have worked, but their opponents were British troops seasoned by countless colonial wars and American forces who, though the war had been short, had experienced the brutal clash of hundreds of thousands in a civil war.
**Ratatatatatang!**
“Gaaaahhh!”
“Spare… spare me…”
Before the disciplined, concentrated rifle fire, the sword-wielding samurai collapsed like wheat before a scythe.
Even so, Satsuma refused to surrender.
Instead, hundreds of elite warriors, spurred on by the deaths of their comrades, formed a desperate suicide squad and charged through the smoke toward the American lines.
“Die, you foreign bastards!”
“We just need to reach those strange machines! Break through!”
The sharp blades closing the distance.
But the American commander watching them did not panic. He simply let out a quiet sigh and raised his hand.
“It’s time to demonstrate the new weapon we brought from home. Open fire!”
“Fire!”
**Drrrrrrrrrrk.**
The American wonder weapon that allowed a few to dominate many with absolute power.
The invention of Richard Gatling, which in the original timeline would have been shelved in a warehouse due to the war ending too soon, made its spectacular and brutal debut against Satsuma’s samurai.
* * *
The news that Satsuma’s blades had been shattered and the Shuseikan reduced to ashes spread across the archipelago in the blink of an eye.
Under normal circumstances, terror would have driven everyone to prostrate themselves.
Indeed, most of the powerful domains turned deathly pale upon learning that Satsuma had been pulverized without even mounting a proper resistance.
But the warriors of Choshu domain, across the sea, reacted differently.
“Kukuku, those Satsuma fools. All brawn and no brains, as expected.”
“To tuck their tails after just a few cannon shots! What a disgrace to all samurai!”
The difference between balloon-muscle Satsuma and battle-hardened Choshu was fundamental.
The near-revelation that, with Satsuma defeated, they alone were the last true samurai capable of protecting the imperial nation.
“For the Emperor! Exterminate the foreigners!”
“We shall show the shogunate that surrendered to the barbarians who the true warriors of the divine land are!”
As if to prove they were nothing like the lowly Satsuma, Choshu opened fire on any Western merchant vessel passing through the Shimonoseki Strait—regardless of nationality—burning with anti-foreign zeal.
“Look! The foreigners’ ships are fleeing!”
“A true successor to Yoshitsune! This is the spirit of Choshu! We shall save the divine land!”
But what they had chased away were unarmed merchant ships.
What returned was the Anglo-American joint fleet that had just finished burning Satsuma to the ground.
“Those are the ones. They sent a threatening letter saying they would attack the legation.”
“They really are pushing their luck. This time we’ll uproot them completely.”
Britain and America, along with France and the Netherlands—who had long ground their teeth over Choshu’s piracy—were more than happy to look the other way.
“Crush them. That’s not a local government; it’s just a den of pirates.”
International consensus was reached.
**BOOM! BOOM-BOOM!**
The coastal batteries of Shimonoseki spat fire, but they crumbled like sandcastles before the counter-battery fire from the American warship USS Wyoming and the British fleet.
The disparity in firepower was absolute.
Only then did Choshu’s samurai realize the gravity of the situation. They drew their swords and rushed to the shore, only to be met by the same dull, tearing roar that had haunted Satsuma’s nightmares.
**Drrrrrrrrk!**
“Gaaahhh!”
“Wh-what the hell is this…!”
As the invisible rain of death poured down, the warriors who had been lost in delusions of being Yoshitsune’s successors could not even scream before they were turned into lumps of meat.
Glorious charges? The soul of the samurai?
Before a Gatling gun that spat out hundreds of rounds per minute, they were nothing more than clumsy practice targets waddling forward.
In less than half a day, every battery in Choshu had fallen silent and its proud elite forces were annihilated.
And the ones who enjoyed this carnage the most were none other than the shogunate in Edo.
“Serves them right. My heart feels so refreshed.”
The shogunate’s senior officials cheered with glee.
The thorns in their side—who had constantly challenged the shogunate’s authority and waved the “revere the Emperor” banner—had been beaten so badly by Western barbarians that they would never recover.
The thought of the concessions they would lose to Britain and America made their heads ache, but when they considered it the price of crushing Satsuma and Choshu, it suddenly seemed like a fair trade.
If the shogunate had tried to fight Satsuma or Choshu directly, it would have required mobilizing the full army. Committing that much force might have destabilized the shogunate itself.
Therefore, using the barbarians’ strength from the very beginning to crush Satsuma and Choshu was, by any calculation, no loss at all.
This was the paradigm shift only the true master of the archipelago—the shogun—could conceive!
The shogunate immediately rushed to the imperial palace in Kyoto with the news.
“Your Majesty, behold. The ignorant and reckless behavior of Satsuma and Choshu has turned the divine land into a sea of fire. If left unchecked, Western armies may march all the way to Kyoto.”
“……”
“They are traitors who abused Your Majesty’s name to satisfy their own greed. You must render judgment.”
Emperor Komei turned his head, his face pale.
Though he had cried for the expulsion of foreigners, he had no desire to see the country destroyed.
Above all, hearing of the West’s overwhelming military power had filled him with terror.
“I… never ordered such reckless actions.”
“Then may we regard their actions as unilateral and independent?”
“…Do so. The imperial house has no connection to this matter.”
True to his title as the living god of the archipelago, Emperor Komei completed his situational assessment at the speed of light.
Both Satsuma and Choshu had confidently shouted about expelling the foreigners, making it seem like a fight worth having—yet they had been smashed to pieces the moment war began. They were utter trash.
In fact, it was clear they had blinded the Emperor’s eyes and ears, plotting to endanger the very survival of the nation.
Yes, the Emperor was also a victim!
“Your Majesty, since the safety of the divine land is at stake, may we immediately proclaim Your Majesty’s will?” “Proclaim? Absurd. I shall issue a stern imperial reprimand.”
To prove he had not the slightest connection to the incident, the Emperor personally took up his brush.
My will has always been to bring peace to the people and preserve the ancestral shrines, not to plunge the nation into crisis through reckless provocation.
The factions of Satsuma and Choshu have falsely invoked My name to arbitrarily open hostilities, murdered innocent foreigners, and dragged the dignity of the divine land through the mud. This is not loyalty, but treason that disrespects Me and constitutes open rebellion. Therefore, I command the shogunate and the shogun to immediately hold these arrogant and insolent factions strictly accountable and restore order to the imperial nation.
The Emperor’s abandonment of Satsuma and Choshu was exactly as expected.
Having lost all moral justification, they could no longer even cry “revere the Emperor.”
The shogunate promptly sat down at the negotiating table with the Anglo-American joint forces.
“We in the shogunate have also suffered headaches because of those rioters. We fully understand your nations’ feelings.”
“We appreciate your understanding. Then please take care of this invoice.”
The document presented by British Minister Neale contained a staggering sum.
Indemnity: 150,000 pounds sterling
An enormous amount that would be difficult to repay even if the shogunate squeezed its entire annual budget.
Yet the shogunate official did not bat an eye as he picked up his pen.
“Of course we must pay reparations. However, since the incident was caused by Satsuma and Choshu, shouldn’t they be the ones to pay?”
“…Oh?”
“I shall issue the order in the shogunate’s name. All reparations for this war shall be borne entirely by Satsuma and Choshu! If they cannot pay, their domains shall be confiscated!”
Satsuma and Choshu naturally protested.
Their factories had burned, their armies annihilated—where were they supposed to find the money?
150,000 pounds was a colossal sum that, given their economic strength, would take more than a decade to repay even if they devoted everything to it.
Military expansion? Reform?
Catching up to the Western powers had become an impossible dream.
“In return, we will immediately sign these additional clauses as well.”
The shogunate gladly offered the gift James Serget had hinted at.
1. The upper limit on tariffs for cotton textile imports throughout Japan shall be uniformly fixed at 5%.
2. Domains including Satsuma and Choshu, as well as other powerful regional domains, shall face no restrictions on the import of British cotton textiles and Southern raw cotton for the next twenty years.
3. The construction of textile mills across the archipelago using Anglo-American capital and technology shall be permitted.
They had eliminated their competitors without dirtying their own hands and silenced the troublesome Westerners at the same time.
For the shogunate, it was a victory without equal.
The complete opening of the cotton textile market.
While Satsuma and Choshu took their first firm steps toward the guillotine, the shogunate secured its ability to remain firmly in the present rather than the future.
America had gained a new market of tens of millions to consume its cotton, and the shogunate could continue to enjoy its power.
Was this not, after all, a happy ending for everyone?
James Serget had kept his promise once again.