Chapter 281 The Return of Japan (8) The Work of Princess Kafi
After settling the issue of the status of the Kuroda family, Gao Pragmatic finally no longer needs to stay in Sichuan and can leave for the Gimhae front line to command the Ming army nearby and launch the final battle against the Japanese army in Korea at any time.
According to the military orders issued by Gao Jingshi, Jinglue Xingyuan and Ma Gui's army should arrive at Jinhai almost on the same day, and Liu Wei should clear the area around Jinhai before then to create conditions for Jinglue Xingyuan to be stationed.
But in fact, Ma Gui, who was further away from Jinhai, arrived first. Obviously, Ma Gui's move was in line with the rules of Ming Dynasty officialdom - he could not let Gao Nanning and Gao Nanning go to Jinhai first to wait for him. For this reason, Ma Gui
The troops marched hurriedly and slowly, running faster than when the Japanese army made a surprise attack on Sichuan, just for fear of missing the time and breaking the rules.
Gao Pragmatic walked very leisurely on his side. During the march, he even had time to reply to letters sent from various places, and he seriously held an armed parade.
Speaking of letters from various places, Gao pragmatically responded to a letter sent from Japan, and the letter was written by Kai Narita.
Kafihime often traveled back and forth between tomorrow and tomorrow in the past few years. Before Gao pragmatically went to war in Korea, she spent about half of the year in the capital and half of the time in Japan.
During his stay in Japan, he was mainly responsible for the defense of the two cities in Kanto, and was occasionally involved in some espionage matters that were not very confidential. The two cities of Misaki and Tamawa have been built very solidly in the past few years, but the city defense systems of the two cities are completely different.
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Misaki Castle was built in a very "Kyoka-style" style, that is, it adopted a bastion-style structure. In fact, two fortresses were built - the Castle Island Fortress and the Misaki Castle Fortress.
Misaki Castle Island was basically a tourist attraction in Japan in later generations. The main attraction was the Horseback Cliff, and the island did not have a large population.
However, at this time, Castle Island was built into a fortress due to high pragmatic strategic needs. Its main function was to serve as a strategic fulcrum "just in case" to ensure that there was always a place in Beijing that could not be occupied by the Japanese.
Captured bridgehead.
This task requires two prerequisites. First, the fortress itself is strong enough and has sufficient supplies stored. Second, Jinghua's maritime strength always stabilizes Japan.
Regarding the latter, Kaihime has no power to interfere, so her focus is to supervise the construction of the fortress, especially to put forward construction requirements for common Japanese siege methods.
Kafihime was responsible for defending the city during the Battle of Ninja Castle when she became famous. It can be said that she is a famous city defender herself. Therefore, with her assistance, the castle island was built as an iron wall.
In order to demonstrate the impregnability of the city defense system and to deter the Tokugawa clan, Kaibi and Gao Yunping, Luo Yuan quietly invited Tokugawa Hidetada to visit Misaki Castle.
Tokugawa Hidetada was shocked by the solidity of Misaki Castle. He thought it was not inferior to Osaka Castle. Especially the fortifications formed by more than 300 artillery pieces and more than 1,200 musket firing ports.
The city's firepower network shocked Tokugawa Hidetada even more.
With the current weapons and equipment of the Japanese army, even if the corpses of 100,000 troops are thrown outside the city, they may not be able to capture the city. To capture the city, they must spend several years to besiege it for a long time.
Then he saw the Castle of Castle Island. At this time, Tokugawa Hidetada completely despaired of attacking Misaki Castle with force.
As a long island with rocky surroundings, Castle Island was originally difficult to land on. Nowadays, a towering city wall has been built, and the city wall has formed at least dozens of angles, with crossfire everywhere.
Looking at its firepower equipment again, dozens of Jinghua No. 1 Fortress cannons are set up in all directions. The huge black muzzles are like the cold eyes of death. Any ship that dares to peek at the island of the city will probably be able to do so.
His eyes were downcast and he was running away.
The ships didn't dare to approach the island at all, so why did they land on the island? Would they be turned into a hornet's nest if they swam over?
The island of Piancheng is neither far nor close to Misaki Castle on land. The giant cannon on the north side of the island can penetrate into Misaki Castle. However, there is only No. 2 cannon in Misaki Castle and cannot hit Castle Island. [Note:
But in fact, the accuracy of hitting Misaki Castle from Castle Island is very poor, and it can only be a covering strike.]
What does this mean? It means that even if Misaki Castle can be captured, it cannot be truly captured because the city is completely within the range of artillery fire from Castle Island. Even if the Tokugawa Army or any other Japanese army really captures Misaki Castle and moves in
, justice will soon be brought down from heaven, then such an attack will be meaningless.
The islands and continents are linked together, and the islands dominate the land. This is the Misaki Fortress that was completed under the supervision of Kaihime.
Kaihime's construction of the Narita family's Tamana Castle was more in favor of the traditional Japanese city defense system, especially the Western Japanese castle style. But because she was a highly pragmatic concubine, Tamana Castle unexpectedly had other features besides
Another kind of "Beijing style" besides the architectural appearance.
Tamana Castle is located in East Japan, but it was built in the style of a West Japan castle. This is obviously very special. Here we need to first talk about the differences between the East Japan castle style and West Japan.
Among the castles in East Japan, there are Ninja Castle built on the water, which is known as the "Floating Castle", and Ogaki Castle, which is built on the main transportation road to guard one side and has both transportation and military value. There are even extremely complicated structures that took 56 years to build.
Xinfatian City.
The appearance of the castles in East Japan is not as majestic and beautiful as Kinki, and the structure is not as solid as the castles in the West. However, most of the castles in the East are unique in style and do not stick to their inherent forms. Their practicality and diversity may be the most important in Japanese history.
It is extremely rare, and it is precisely this kind of thinking that emphasizes the practicality and functionality of the city that the Dongguo city presents a pattern of a hundred flowers blooming.
For most people, the impression of Japanese castles is basically composed of towering stone walls, water-filled moats and majestic castles. These are actually concepts derived from the modern castles of Western Japan.
Comparing the modern castles in East Japan with those in Western Japan, in fact, the castles in East Japan were mostly built with earthen ramparts, empty walls, and water banks arranged in a complex and exquisite way. There were very few strongholds with stone walls and castles. Although not all of them were like this, but some
As far as East Japan is concerned, the construction method of the castle is indeed unique among all Japan.
There are very few castles in East Japan with stone walls, especially in the Kanto region. The only ones with stone walls are Edo Castle and Odawara Castle.
In the original history, even Edo Castle, the residence of the Tokugawa shoguns and known as "the largest in Japan", only had a stone wall underneath the "Fushimi Tower" located on the right hand side of the famous "Nieju Bridge".
The middle part is almost entirely covered with earthen ramparts. Even Edo Castle Nishinomaru, where the shogun Shiji lived, mostly uses this kind of earthen ramparts.
Therefore, it is natural that there are no stone walls in the Kanto castle walls outside of Edo Castle. The reason is actually very simple, because the stones needed to build the stone walls are not produced in large quantities in Kanto.
If you have a geological map of the Japanese archipelago now, you will find that only Kanto is unique. It is a concentrated area of alluvial layers, so it will be difficult to obtain stones for the castle. The stones used for the stone walls of Edo Castle are
It was transported by ship from Izu country under the orders of the Tokugawa shoguns. As a result, even Mito Castle, which was the residence of the "Three Tokugawa families", could not use stone walls but earthen fortresses.
Although the Tohoku region is further away from the Kinki region, the core of Japan, than the Kanto Plain, Iwate Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture had a certain ability to produce stone in later generations. Even so, there are still only a handful of castles with towering stone walls. Only Morioka Castle,
Aizu Wakamatsu Castle and Shirakawa Komine Castle are several large castles built with stone walls in the Northeast. This shows that the popularity of stone walls is low.
Even these three famous cities are nothing compared to the majestic stone walls left behind by modern castles in Western Japan, but they are generally still regarded as stone walls.
Similar to the Satake clan's Kubota Castle and the Uesugi clan's Yonezawa Castle, there were almost no stone walls in the castles of the powerful lords. The Date clan's Sendai Castle and the Mogami clan's Yamagata Castle only built stone walls in important places.
In addition, only a few places such as Hirosaki Castle and Nihonmatsujo Honmaru have obvious traces of stone walls.
The lack of good stone is a problem of land endowment. Unless it costs a lot to transport it from other places, there is no way to solve it. But the fact that the Japanese can't solve it doesn't mean that Jinghua can't solve it either. Jinghua can either buy the stone or buy another one.
Find other ways.
It costs money to buy stone, and the people who make money are other Japanese famous people who sell stone, so Kaiji chose the latter without any hesitation - the "other method" is the iron bar concrete method that Jinghua Infrastructure is good at (steel bars are very popular in this era)
It’s too luxurious).
The Narita family was not originally wealthy, and they could not afford the cost of building a city with iron bars and concrete, but the largest shareholder of the Ming Fed was Jinghua, so Gao Pragmatic was naturally very interested in lending money to them.
As a result, the Narita family frightened and received a huge loan of up to 200,000 guan Yongle Tongbao - Japan used copper coins from the Ming Dynasty. This is mentioned earlier in this book. They especially liked Yongle Tongbao, which was on the military flag of the Oda Nobunaga family.
Yongle Tongbao was painted on it, so there was a gray business in the Jiangnan area of the Ming Dynasty that secretly manufactured Yongle Tongbao and sold it to Japan.
Of course, this deal has now been snatched away by Jinghua, because Jinghua's technology is more advanced, the quality of Yongle Tongbao produced by Jinghua is better, and it can more conveniently cooperate with the high-pragmatic economic control of Japan's grand strategy.
In short, the Narita family, who received a large loan, completely fell into the trap of being pragmatic, but they also built Tamana Castle into the second Odawara Castle.
After completion, the new Tamana Castle not only has stone walls and castles, but is also extremely tall and majestic. While the castles in East Japan generally only have ten oars, Tamana Castle actually has thirty-two oars, which is really extraordinary.
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And because it is backed by Kyoka, Tamana Castle also has twenty-four forts. Although it is much inferior to Kyoka's own Misaki Castle, if Misaki Castle is not included, it is the only one in East Japan.
The issue of Misaki Castle's garrison was not within Kahihime's purview, so during the construction of the city, she focused on improving the combat effectiveness of the Narita Army. [Note: Tamana Castle also has some of Kyoka's garrison, which was briefly mentioned in the previous article.]
Kaihime's two former generals, Shibazaki Izumi and Sakemaki Hamaki, were sent to lead the army. The money earned by the Narita family from specializing in some Kyoka products was quickly invested in army expansion and training.
Compared with the Battle of Ninja Castle, the Narita Army at this time was much stronger. The entire army had been organized into an infantry association according to Jinghua's organization, which was 4,038 people.
Although the number of four thousand troops has not improved much compared to the past, the improvement of the Narita Army mainly lies in weapons and equipment.
Because of Kaiji's relationship, the Narita Army obtained some of the equipment of the Thangryu Garrison and the Golden Port Garrison that were eliminated from Annan, and established the first professional artillery battalion in Japan. Similarly, they also received a batch of leftovers from the Kyoka selection.
Mongolian war horses and established two battalions of cavalry.
One artillery battalion and two cavalry battalions, this is a standard establishment. The artillery battalion is the first of its kind in Japan, needless to say. The two cavalry battalions based on Mongolian horses are probably more intimidating in the Eastern Kingdom than the artillery.
It's an exaggeration, because even the Takeda Chibi cavalry, which was so powerful in the Eastern Kingdom, did not have such excellent horses to ride.
Kafei Ji's own cavalry warfare is regarded as the best in the Eastern Kingdom, so she devoted a lot of effort to this cavalry. This cavalry used Wanli II-type lances and new sabers that were as elite as the six major garrison armies and the Ming army.
, but I didn’t get half of the Ming cavalry equipment.
For this reason, Kafei changed the cavalry's armor into cheap and light belly rolls suitable for cavalry according to her own preferences.
The abdominal roll can be described in one sentence: a tight skirt with suspenders - of course it is made of fine scale iron or copper sheets.
Just like the abdominal roll that Kaihime wore when fighting, the Narita cavalry's abdominal roll completely replicates the preference of Kaihime. The "Sakura Wei" associated with the scale armor is pink but not conspicuous. The body of the abdominal roll
It is black, and the outer fabric is dark red.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Black and red are the colors of iron and blood. However, because the Jinhaori is worn outside, it looks like a red cavalry from a distance.
In this way, it became "Akabei". So, when this cavalry of about a thousand people was trained, it was called Narita Akabei.
Narita Akabi is regarded as a direct descendant of Narita Kai, and is usually led by her confidant General Sakamaki Basa. It is said that Naomasa Ii of the Tokugawa Army is very concerned about this Akabi and has always regarded it as a competitor.
Of course, Gao Pragmatic felt that with Tokugawa Ieyasu's current attitude, the two of them might not have a chance to fight.
After Kaiji finished these tasks, she originally planned to stay in Japan and take charge of Kanto because Gao Pangshi was not in the capital. However, due to an incident not long ago, she planned to come to Korea to meet Gao Pangshi in person.
What is so important?
Date Masamune secretly contacted Kaihime, hoping to use her to purchase iron cannons from Kyoka that were more advanced than Japan's, as well as large barrels (artillery) that Japan was extremely short of.
The purchase of weapons itself does not matter. What matters is that in Japan, due to the general peace order issued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi earlier, unless the daimyo from various places are to be recruited to fight in Korea, they at least dare not to significantly strengthen their armaments blatantly.
Now Masamune Date has quietly contacted her to buy Jinghua's firearms, which is obviously a big problem.
What did Date Masamune want to do, whether these weapons could be sold, whether the Kanto Fleet and the Army Division should remain vigilant and vigilant about this... and other issues were all piled up together. Kaiji thought it was necessary to visit North Korea in person.
At this time, Gao Jingshi's letter proposing conditions to Tokugawa Ieyasu had been sent, but neither Kahihime nor Ieyasu had received it yet, so Gao Jingshi replied to Kahihime, allowing her to come to Korea.
All in all, by the time she received this letter from him, she must have already known about Gao Yan's adoption... I wonder if Ji Fei Ji would be dissatisfied with this? Gao Jingshi thought it would be a good idea for her to come, just in case she
If you are dissatisfied, you can easily persuade and comfort yourself.
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