Katsu Kaishu, serving the shogunate as a senior army and naval official, negotiated the surrender of Edo to Saigo Takamori in May 1868. Yoshinobu then lost his titles, lands, and power, but the Tokugawa political surrender did not dissolve every military coalition. Northern domains centered on Sendai and Nagaoka fielded about 50,000 troops and forced the imperial coalition to fight its way north. The forces called 'imperial' were still largely troops from Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa. The Boshin War can therefore be understood as several connected wars: first against the remaining bakufu government, then the northern coalition, and finally the Ezo Republic formed by the shogunate's military remnant. That sequence bridges the fall of Edo with the naval campaign for Hokkaido.
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Edo surrendered, but the civil war moved north
Katsu Kaishu negotiated Edo's surrender, yet forces from Sendai, Nagaoka, and other northern domains continued the war before the Ezo Republic opened its final phase.