Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 697

Although the Tokugawa shogunate enjoyed a period of peace at this time, many generals who had experienced the battle of conquering the dynasty were still alive. The war machine of the Sichuan Shogunate can still run smoothly.At this time, under the governance of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan as a whole is on the rise. The wounds caused by the century-old war are being healed little by little. Therefore, the prestige of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan is very high. With an order, The Kanto feudal lords mobilized quickly, and armies from all walks of life gathered one after another, and gathered towards Edo.And the Banner Samurai under the command of the Tokugawa Shogunate even polished their samurai swords, wiped off the rust spots on the blades of the cross spears, brought dry food, and assembled impatiently, screaming to teach the Ming army a lesson, Some impatient ones went on the road in groups without waiting for the shogunate army to dispatch. It seems that for them, the Ming army is not a terrible enemy, but piles of money that can move and move. The bad news that Fan was beaten to annihilation did not dispel their arrogance.

The shogunate is not so chic.Although Tokugawa Iemitsu is more realistic, the order he issued was only to mobilize 1000 banner samurai and 4 ashigaru, a total of only 20 people. With the strength of the Tokugawa shogunate, this is not a difficult task, but the [-] The army has to eat along the way, the transfer of food and grass, and the allocation of a large number of weapons, all of which require a lot of manpower, and the mobilized civilians also need to eat... These two thousand and one thousand troops plus the Kanto. The total strength of the assisted troops is no less than [-]. If you want to support a [-]-strong army for long-distance field battles, you need at least [-] civilians to help build bridges, pave roads, and transfer supplies. Otherwise, something will happen, or the army has not yet arrived. He was exhausted and starved halfway, or he would learn from Kong Youde, or he would be reversed halfway, and the battle was not won, but instead he caused a lot of harm to his own people.Fortunately, the autumn harvest has long since ended, and the grain has been put into storage, so the Tokugawa shogunate can confidently and boldly enlist the peasants. If it is two months in the morning, I am afraid they will not be able to make up their minds—unless the rice for a season is gone!Thanks to the fact that Japan has just ended the war, the Japanese are not yet unfamiliar with the war. Although all this is a bit hectic, the arrangements are still relatively proper. The army can set off with confidence, and there will be a steady stream of supplies to arrive later.

On October 21, under the command of Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate army left Edo in a mighty way and headed southwest. Along the way, the feudal lords, big and small, led their own samurai to join them. This army snowballed continuously. When they crossed the sea and landed on Kyushu Island, the strength of this army had increased to [-].This is an astonishing number. Even in the Warring States Period, battles involving such a large number of troops were rare.

Going forward, they began to see a large number of refugees with their families coming in like a tidal wave. Among them were samurai who had lost their scabbards while holding samurai swords.They looked terrified, and as long as they had the strength, they ran away with all their strength, as if some scourge was chasing and biting them.Seeing the shogunate army, their expressions of fear did not diminish, which made Tokugawa Iemitsu's heart sink—this can only show that these refugees have lost confidence in the shogunate army, and even such a large army can no longer Give them any sense of security.These refugees screamed at the vanguard of the shogunate army: "Ming Kou! Ming Kou is destroying our homeland, we can't beat them!" And that's all they know. Which troops are at war with the Ming army, they can't answer, even if they can answer, it is a mess. Some people say that the army is attacking Kumamoto, some say that the army is besieging Nagasaki, and some people have big brains and vowed to explain the main force of the army. We have already boarded a ship and headed for Edo by sea.The scouts were overwhelmed by the messy answers, and fell into the state of "the amount of information is slightly too large to analyze".

After walking for another two days, they encountered a defeated army. After asking, they found out that it was from the Kumamoto clan.The leader of this defeated army was Hosokawa Tadashi, the second son of the Kumamoto clan lord - his eldest brother had been bombarded to pieces by rocket artillery under Osumi Castle.As soon as this man saw Tokugawa Iemitsu, he knelt on the ground with a bang from a distance. The sound made everyone's knees feel inexplicable pain.He hugged Tokugawa Iemitsu's thigh and cried loudly. The image of a samurai was thrown into the Pacific Ocean by him. Now he was like a child who had suffered enough grievances and finally saw his mother. He cried heartbreakingly and screamed: "My lord." , you are here! You must avenge our Hosokawa family!"

Tokugawa Iemitsu helped him up vigorously, comforted him a few words, and asked him to pay attention to his image.When the man's crying was a little quieter, he asked, "How is the situation now? How did you get here?"

Faithful Hosokawa burst into tears again, and wept bitterly: "Kumamoto Castle... Kumamoto Castle is gone! The son of our Hosokawa family is about to die! Master, if you are one step late, the domain will be expelled from Japan! "

Tokugawa Iemitsu was taken aback, and Sakai Ryuji was even more horrified. He grabbed the unrepentant guy and yelled: "Kumamoto Castle was built by the old general Kato with painstaking efforts. It is surrounded by mountains and seas, with copper walls and iron walls. Even if it is besieged by millions of troops day and night, I'm afraid that the corpse will not be able to attack if it is even with the city wall, so how can you say that it is gone? What is going on here?"

Hosokawa faithfully beat his chest and cried loudly: "It's not just our Kumamoto Castle, Kagoshima Castle, Osumi Castle, Hagi Castle, Nagasaki, Chikuzen...these famous cities are gone! They were all razed to the ground by the damned Ming bandits! "

When he cried, Tokugawa Iemitsu suddenly burst into tears. The old lords of Fukuoka, Changzhou, Satsuma, Kuroshima and other vassal states who stayed in Edo as hostages all beat their chests and cried loudly. .Counting with fingers, it seems that the famous coastal cities on Kyushu Island were basically razed to the ground by the Ming army, and none of them escaped. These cities are the foundation of these feudal states, and now they are uprooted , How can they not be sad from it!Tokugawa Iemitsu just felt dizzy, his body swayed slightly, and his complexion was frighteningly pale.He had thought of killing people with a knife and using the opportunity of the Ming army's invasion to weaken the strength of the southwestern feudal clans, but his original intention was to make the southwestern feudal clans lose their support and be more respectful to the shogunate, but he never thought of letting the Ming army smash the entire Kyushu to pieces!He muttered to himself: "How is it possible? How could Ming Kou capture so many fortified cities in such a short period of time? This is absolutely impossible!"

In fact, according to common sense, it is indeed impossible for the Ming army to capture so many cities in a short period of time. Strictly speaking, even if they concentrate on attacking Kumamoto Castle in this short period of time, they may not be able to do anything to Kumamoto Castle. .Kumamoto Castle was built with painstaking efforts by Kato Kiyomasa, a famous general of the Western Army. Every time they bumped into the city with their heads broken and bloody, they returned home without a feather, and finally had to acquiesce in the existence of the remnants of the Western Army. How could such a fortified city be easy to fight?The only way to deal with such a fortified city is to use ten times more troops to blockade it both by land and sea, and make a protracted siege. It will take months or even years to starve and thirst the people in the city, or buy the internal staff with a lot of money. Breaking through this fortress from the inside, if you insist on filling it with human lives, who knows how many people will have to fill it in!
However, the Ming army did it.

The reason why the Ming army was able to burn and plunder all the famous cities on Kyushu Island in just one month is that they did not attack the city at all!
I'm not joking, there is really no siege.

There is a Japanese saying that there are four most frightening things in the world: earthquake, fire, thunder, and daddy, among which fire is the scariest.No way, Japan is a country with frequent earthquakes. When you are happy, you will be shaken a few times. When you are not happy, you will be shaken a few times. When you are in a normal mood, you will have to shake a few times. I don't know how many people had to be buried under the rubble.In order to save their lives, the Japanese build wooden houses as long as they have the conditions. As for the walls, they can be pasted with thick paper, and the roof is covered with bark, which is cool and light. Even if the house is shaken by an earthquake, it will not crush people .It’s just that this kind of house is easy to catch fire, and once it catches fire, the whole block or even the whole city is often in flames, and it is impossible to save it. Therefore, fire prevention, theft prevention and old father protection have become the top priority of the Japanese.It's just that no matter how high their fire prevention work is, they are helpless when they encounter a group of arsonists, and the Ming army is just a master of arsonists.

The first to suffer was Ogi City, the home of the Choshu clan.Wu Sheng led thousands of elite soldiers to land at the pier without anyone noticing, and after taking the pier in one fell swoop, they began to attack the city. As a result, the city walls were filled with guns and bullets were fired like rain. After one round of attack, not even a single brick was knocked off. More than 400 people were killed or injured.Upon seeing this, Wu Sheng ordered the attack to stop, and asked the artillerymen to move sixteen long-barreled mortars to the seaside fort, and fired yellow phosphorus bombs at the city from a high position.Rows of artillery shells exploded in the city. The yellow phosphorus burned violently and flew everywhere, burning wherever it hit. The paper-bark and bark houses were on fire. The Japanese army was shocked and tried to save them. However, the shells kept flying in. The explosion lit up each fire. Soon, the unlucky ones who put out the fire found that even they themselves were surrounded by large cannons.Under the bombardment of cannons, the whole Dicheng city turned into a big furnace, with thick smoke billowing and flames soaring into the sky.Then a landslide-like explosion almost collapsed the city wall, tens of thousands of catties of gunpowder stored in the Dicheng firearms depot were detonated, and several blocks were wiped out instantly, and the fire even rose several feet immediately!The soldiers and civilians in the city poured out from the gates frantically with expressions of fear, trampling on each other and causing countless casualties, and the dead almost blocked the gates... However, even if they escaped from the big furnace, they might not be safe. Therefore, thousands of elite soldiers of the Ming Army are waiting for them. They must either surrender or be massacred. There is no third option!

After the fire was extinguished, the Ming army launched an attack again and took Dicheng without any effort, because there were not many living people in the city—the dead would not take up swords and guns to resist.

Yang Menglong did even better. After killing the main force of the Kumamoto and Fukuoka domains, he led an army straight to Kumamoto Castle, took the commanding heights with a round of fierce attack, and then set up a rocket launcher to bombard the city, hundreds of rockets smashed into it, The whole city was shrouded in thick smoke and fire. Tens of thousands of people were burned to death or suffocated to death. The strategic reserves of food, gunpowder, weapons, etc. that the Hosokawa family had built up with great difficulty were burned.The most despicable thing is that after burning all the family's belongings, he made a wish to the surrendered Japanese samurai: "The whole family of the first to climb the city will be free!" With an order, all the prisoners were red-eyed and went to Kumamoto with their lives. Chengchong, they don't seem to be going to fight, but they seem to be looking for death, even if they die, they will die on the walls of Kumamoto Castle!The main force of the Kumamoto Clan has been completely wiped out under Osumi Castle. There are not many warriors in the city who can fight, and they were burned by a fire. How can they resist such a desperate attack?In just one day, Kumamoto Castle was captured, the feudal lord was killed along with thousands of samurai and his family members, only Hosokawa Tadashi and more than a thousand samurai were able to fight to the death, they ran [-] miles overnight, and finally escaped.

Yang Menglong kept his word. After the battle, he really freed the hundreds of warriors and their families who took the lead in climbing the city, and gave them a lot of property.Just like the labor camps, the Japanese samurai who had not yet been freed screamed and rushed towards Nagasaki under his command. Then, they set fire first, and then stormed regardless of casualties. With one drum, the prosperous port city of Nagasaki became It became a piece of scorched earth... And every time a city is captured, some warriors will regain their freedom, but at the same time, they will also send more prisoners of war to Yang Menglong. After attacking the city and plundering the land, Tokugawa Iemitsu's army was growing like a snowball, and Yang Menglong's army was also growing like a snowball.

If the fight continues like this, Yang Menglong will soon have a large army no less than the shogunate army in terms of strength and quality, and will fight Tokugawa Iemitsu head-on, like an erupting rock that will turn the whole of Japan into a red land.It's a pity that God didn't intend to give him such an opportunity. The unexpected situation in Liaodong forced Yang Menglong to give up his plan to compete with the shogunate army and withdraw his troops back home. It's time for the next round.

(End of this chapter)