Chapter 469 The Fusang people definitely don’t know how to prevent the Guandu War
Author: East Zhejiang Pifu
Chapter 469 The Fusang people definitely don’t know how to prevent the Guandu War
It is not unreasonable for Zhang Mingzhen to pursue the rapid annihilation of more effective forces of the Fuso Allied Forces. He even ignored his own naval superiority and preferred to land on the Mutsu Peninsula on the other side of Ezo Island.
Because although the Ming army was absolutely overwhelming in terms of combat effectiveness, it was still a cross-sea battle, and the logistics were very difficult. The food brought with the ship was only enough to feed the army for one and a half months, which was the limit of a 1,500-mile cross-sea voyage.
In fact, considering that we have to leave ten days of rations on the way back and forth, the combat rations for the land war window are only twenty-five days, or at most one month.
Zhang Mingzhen must quickly solve the problem of raising food on the spot during this initial period. Otherwise, he will have to cross the sea to supply. Even if he is not overwhelmed for the time being, once it reaches the sixth month of the lunar calendar, a typhoon may occur at any time in late summer, and sea shipping will be affected.
may be threatened.
It had already taken several days to capture Matsumae Port City and other places, as well as to besiege Hakodate. It took another four or five days to prepare for the three feudal lords of the Oyu coalition. Therefore, there was only fifteen days left for him to raise food.
Oh my god.
Therefore, in order to prevent accidents, Zhang Mingzhen, less than five days after the troops were unloaded, after Hoshina, who had severely damaged the Aizu Domain for the first time, tried to escape southward by stealing the Tsugaru Strait.
After confirming that the warships of the Fuso people in the Northeast were of poor quality and had no experience in naval warfare, he decisively divided most of the surplus ships and sailed back to Vladivostok to prepare for another shipment of military supplies and ammunition to prevent the army from running out of supplies. Returning ships
Sailors are all allocated according to the minimum requirements. Try to keep as many personnel as possible to reduce the load, so that you can pack more supplies when you come back next time.
In Zhang Mingzhen's plan, this should be the last time he raises grain and grass from the local direction, just as a safe backup. If all this batch of grain is eaten and he has not won a decisive victory in the northeastern region of Fuso, he will be shameless.
Jiang Dong's father is old.
In addition, according to Zhu Shuren's plan before the war, while Zhang Mingzhen repatriated the grain transport fleet, he also asked the general responsible for escorting the transportation to bring back a message confirming that the Fuso people had chosen to resist in Ezo and Mutsu and were stubborn and ignored the Ming Dynasty.
He sent me a note so that Zheng Chenggong could start on time on his way.
Before the war, Zhu Shuren had ordered that the Ming Dynasty should be courteous before fighting. If the Fuso people immediately gave in after their defeat in Ezo and ceded territory to pay compensation, then the Ming Dynasty would have no excuse to attack Ryukyu and Kyushu again. Otherwise, it would appear that the Ming Dynasty had no credibility.
The diplomatic conditions offered may be reneged on at any time, which is not conducive to disintegrating the enemy's will.
Now this situation has not happened, and the Fusang people still resisted resolutely, so Zheng Chenggong's journey can be regarded as a real example of success.
Taking into account that it takes a lot of time to communicate via sea route, Zhang Mingzhen must send a message back in mid-March. It can be sent to Vladivostok in late March, and then passed on by land through North Korea. Zheng Chenggong's fleet can attack from Busan in mid-April.
Tsushima, and then attacked Kyushu.
Zhang Mingzhen must leave time for Zheng Chenggong, because the time for Zheng Chenggong to launch his army will be at least one and a half months later than Zhang Mingzhen, and it may be two months at most.
The risk of typhoons in the Fuso area increases in the sixth lunar month. Zheng Chenggong only has 40 days from mid-April to late May to gain a foothold in Kyushu. He may also face the interruption of domestic shipping at any time in the future.
…
The plan has been linked up, and all that is left is strict execution. Zhang Mingzhen knows that he cannot afford to delay, so his execution ability is very high.
On the tenth day of March, they crossed the Tsugaru Strait, and under unexpected circumstances, the Fuso-Ou Allied Forces took the initiative to land and launched an attack on Oura Castle on the Mutsu Peninsula on the south side of the strait.
Oura Castle is the territory of the Hirosaki Domain and the main port on the south bank of the Tsugaru Strait. It is also the territory of Tsugaru Nobunobu in "Taiko Ritsushiden" and "Nobunaga's Ambition". Now it has been passed down to the third generation. The current feudal lord is Tsugaru Nobuyoshi.
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The Hirosaki Domain is not considered a powerful domain, and it is not among the three major domains of the Ou Allied Forces dispatched by the shogunate. When Tokugawa Ieyasu first enthroned him half a century ago, the Hirosaki Domain only had a total territory of 100,000 koku. After more than half a century,
To open up wasteland, farm, and recuperate, it only costs 230,000 dan now.
The reason why the Hirosaki clan suffered this time was simply because they were unlucky and the location where they grew up happened to block Zhang Mingzhen's path. Zhang Mingzhen felt that it was the most suitable place to lure the Ou coalition forces here, so he took over Oura Castle.
Fuso's army was unprepared, so the Northeastern Three Feuds had no time to rescue them. Zhang Mingzhen had already completed the siege of Dapu City. It only took one and a half days from crossing the sea to marching ashore to complete the siege.
After the siege, Zhang Mingzhen's generals advised him to immediately use the cavalry and light artillery with the army to bombard the city and strive to break the city as soon as possible. In this way, when the allied forces of the three northeastern vassals arrived, the Ming army could defend the city and rely on the geographical location to fight.
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However, Zhang Mingzhen directly vetoed this proposal from his subordinates. He gave strict orders to keep the troops under siege, preferring to wait one more day for the heavy Hongyi artillery to be slowly unloaded from the dock and brought to the front line before deploying.
Anyway, the fortress part of Oura Castle is not that far from the seaside port area, so one day is enough for the whole trip.
Upon seeing this, the subordinate generals anxiously persuaded: "General! These Fuso people's shabby cities, the cavalry cannons accompanying the army are enough to blast the city gates! What's the use of a bull's knife to cut a chicken? It's not good to have one more day to deploy defenses in the city to deal with enemy reinforcements.
What?"
Zhang Mingzhen explained sternly: "Using cavalry cannon is like cutting a chicken with a knife! After the past ten days of fighting, a certain person has discovered a blind spot in the Fuso people's combat - they have never seen a cavalry cannon, and they don't know the maneuverability of this weapon.
Sex, if you hide this, you can leave an ambush for our army to use as a killer move! How can you expose it so easily?
We just need to use the clumsy and slow-moving Hongyi artillery to slowly destroy the city, so that the enemy will underestimate our ability to attack in the future!"
The subordinates thought about it for a while, and quickly admitted that this idea was good. Anyway, it was more than enough to capture Oura Castle. Pretending to be slow would not miss the big event.
…
In contrast, the Tsugaru Shingi clan in Oura Castle was very nervous when they first saw the Ming army siege the city. With a territory of more than 200,000 koku, he could only recruit a standing army of up to 4,000 people, even if it was temporarily recruited
The peasants and soldiers had little fighting power. The strength of the Hirosaki clan was less than half that of the opposite Kishi Matsumae clan.
However, after the Ming army besieged the city, they were unable to launch an artillery attack immediately. Instead, they only used new rifles to fire oars at the castle tower, and the castle tower randomly fired guns to suppress it. Tsugaru Nobuyoshi's nervousness gradually calmed down.
He thought that the Ming army lacked heavy siege weapons, or at least the siege weapons were slow and could only be suppressed from a distance. So he just asked the warriors, archers, and iron gunners to hide inside the oars and not show their heads unless
Only when the Ming army charged could they reveal their heads and fire arrows and guns.
In his heart, Tsugaru Nobuyoshi only hoped that the allied forces of the three Northeastern vassals would come to rescue him as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, of course he could not wait for this day. The Ming army only allowed him to live for one more day. The Northeastern San Francisco Allied Forces still did not arrive the next day, but the slow heavy artillery brought by the Ming Army from the port arrived first.
The largest land gun of the Ming Dynasty was still one or two grades smaller than the naval gun. After all, mobility had to be taken into consideration.
Nowadays, the final iron bullet for naval guns is sixty kilograms, and the heaviest land gun is forty kilograms. If you use blooming bullets, because the charge is much lighter than solid iron, the heaviest is only twenty-five kilograms.
But even twenty-five kilograms of explosive bombs and forty kilograms of iron bombs were far beyond what Fuso people had ever seen. Half a century ago, Tokugawa Ieyasu's "National Collapse" when he bombed Osaka Castle was actually only 18 pounds.
A Dutch cannon can be broken down to less than fifteen kilograms.
Osaka Castle was already the largest city in Fuso at that time, and the Oura Castle in front of us was just a small fish and shrimp.
The first round of shelling by the Ming army stunned Tsugaru Nobuyoshi. After a simple calibration, the third round began to hit the earthen walls and walls, directly blasting several holes in the gates and earthen walls.
By the fifth round of bombardment, an explosive bomb and a 40-pound iron bomb directly hit the castle tower, which was only three stories high. The castle tower was directly bombed and collapsed, and the feudal lord Tsugaru Nobuyoshi was directly killed because of the collapse.
Buried alive and crushed to death.
However, the Ming army had not launched a charge at this moment. They still waited for the ten rounds of artillery fire to be completed according to the drill, and then charged tentatively to confirm that there was no decent resistance before swarming in. If the resistance was still strong, the first barrage would be launched.
If the defenders on the defensive line still do not retreat, then the Ming army will continue to bombard ten rounds according to the drill. But this situation has no chance to happen here.
After the first wave of ten rounds, the Ming army rushed in. Hundreds of warriors and thousands of ordinary soldiers of the Hirosaki clan fought in a chaotic manner, and were quickly destroyed by the advancing Ming army.
The Ming army already had new rifles lined up to shoot and kill. Those who dared to use long spears or bows and iron cannons to fight in formation were just delivering food and could not enter the range of the Ming army. Only a small number of warriors charged directly with samurai swords.
There is a chance to get close to the Ming army,
But they soon discovered that even if they escaped the hail of muskets and bullets, they could not get an advantage in front of the bayonet array with just their samurai swords.
The most skilled samurai in the whole Hirosaki clan, that is, he fought fiercely to exchange lives for lives. At most two or three Ming army soldiers were killed in exchange for death, and then they were turned into a hornet's nest by random blades, and more could only be exchanged for death.
A small soldier of the Ming army might be killed in vain on the way.
Although the scene was not as dramatic as the movie "The Last Samurai" depicting the end of the Tokugawa period, it was almost tragic and had great artistic value.
…
The Hirosaki clan's four thousand warriors and more peasant soldiers were wiped out by the Ming army in one day. The difference in weapons was overwhelming, and bravery and numbers could no longer bridge the gap.
The only blame is that the Fuso people have been offline for too long. I don’t know how far the East Asian monster house has escalated in the past few decades against the background of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, technological progress and arms races.
The Tsugaru family was also killed by the Ming army in a chaotic battle, which was regarded as establishing their authority.
It took more than half a day before the vanguard of the three vassal alliances in the Northeast arrived. However, seeing how fierce the Ming army was, their few cavalry troops did not dare to advance easily. Instead, they planned to gather their forces first and delay the stalemate.
Zhang Mingzhen had people pursue him for a while, using his rifle team to kill hundreds of Fusang cavalry. In the end, he was unable to catch up due to lack of mobility, so he took back the city as soon as possible.
After all, the Ming army came across the sea and had to sail on the sea for ten consecutive days. Therefore, the first batch of cavalry was very small and it was difficult to transport war horses across the sea.
The Fuso people suffered two or three consecutive defeats, and the three northeastern feudal lords had no choice but to further increase their mobilization intensity and ask for help from the Edo shogunate, trying to use the human sea tactic to swamp the much smaller Ming army.
After discussion with all parties in Fuso, they felt that this was the only way. Because Fuso’s human resources were still very sufficient in this era, and the only thing that could be used was human life——
Many Chinese people in later generations have a misunderstanding about the historical interpretation of China and Japan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They believe that the population of Fusang people has only been a few percent of that of the Ming Dynasty, but this actually depends on time periods.
If it was the Wanli period, during the Japanese Rebellion of Imjin, Fusang's total population fluctuated between 600 and 8 million due to continuous wars during the Warring States period. At that time, there were more than 100 million people in the Ming Dynasty, which would indeed be at least Fusang's.
Fifteen times.
But with the wars of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the natural disasters that lasted for twenty to thirty years in the late Ming Dynasty, the population of the Ming Dynasty dropped to over 40 million at its lowest point. Now, despite the butterfly effect of Zhu Shuren, there are only over 50 million left at the lowest point.
, now it has taken several years for peace to return, and it has only climbed back to 60 million.
As for Fuso, the population recovery was the fastest in the first 50 years after the end of the Warring States Period. At the end of the Warring States Period, there were 7 to 8 million people, by the end of the Tokugawa Period there were 40 million people, and at the time of the First World War, there were 70 million people.
In the 260 years of the Edo period, at least half of the population growth was completed in the first half century after peace was restored. When the third generation shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu died, the population was about 22 million
, Tokugawa Ietsuna has not yet made any statistics, but it is estimated to be around 24 million, which is already three times the number at the end of the Warring States Period.
The Ming Dynasty had 60 million people, and Fusang City had 2,400 people. Fusang's population is now actually 40% of that of the Ming Dynasty! So in terms of population alone, Fusang should not be underestimated.
This is why Zhu Shuren did not want to become a fat man in one go. It would be very unwise to directly launch a general war against a nation equivalent to 40% of the population of the Ming Dynasty.
Now that the Fuso people have been defeated in a row, they still don't want to give in. They also realize that the weapon generation gap is too serious, so they can only kill people and destroy troops. They won't be convinced unless they give it a try.
Only by truly crushing and beating them in all directions can they be made to give in like their American father who will surrender in future generations.
The Tohoku Three Domains, plus the surrounding servants who were trapped, were still more than 4 million stone high, mainly because the Sendai Domain was relatively large, plus some direct support from the Edo Shogunate.
The Fuso people quickly organized a force that was ten times the size of the Ezo garrison and twenty times the combat strength of the Hirosaki clan garrison, which was about 70,000 to 80,000 people, as well as countless reserve peasant soldiers who could be expanded to capture strong men at any time.
Come and fight Zhang Mingzhen's mere 10,000 Ming army water and land soldiers.
Zhang Mingzhen had previously left Hakodate Castle on Ezo Island unconquered, but only surrounded it without attacking, in order to lure the Fuso people into reinforcements. Now that reinforcements have arrived one after another, the arrow has to be fired, so there is no need to leave the bait.
It’s on.
On March 22, the twentieth day after Zhang Mingzhen's landing operation, the Ming army suddenly launched a strong attack and completely defeated Hakodate City. All 13,000 Japanese troops in the city were defeated, thousands of them were killed directly, and the rest were either captured or captured.
Escape.
The remnants of Hakodate who broke out of the encirclement were afraid of the Ming army, so they had no choice but to go north, burn, kill and loot, and enter the territory of the Ezo people to survive. This aroused the hatred of the Ezo people, and they and the remnants of Fuso killed each other, and the war further spread to Ezo Island.
Large-scale vendettas between the Fuso people on the Tsugaru Peninsula in the south and the Ezo people in the vast northern area consumed tens of thousands of people.
In fact, even if the Ming army did not come to punish the people, historically the Eni people would have launched an uprising that lasted for several years in 1669 under the leadership of their chief Xiangku Xianying.
It’s called “Kanbun Ezo’s Beginning”.
Now it is just to let the dissatisfaction of the Ezo people against the Fuso people break out a few years in advance. As long as the Ming army cuts off the reinforcements from Fuso Honshu Island and comes to Eni to suppress the rebellion, then the Fuso people of the Matsumae Domain and the massive Ezo people will be allowed to fight each other.
, the common people of Matsumae Domain could not resist.
At that time, the entire Ezo Island had a population of less than 200,000 Fuso people, but there were as many as 500,000 to 600,000 Ezo people, a population ratio of at least three times.
After Zhang Mingzhen completely destroyed the rule of the Fuso people on Ezo Island, he allowed the common people of Ezo and Fuso to eat their own chicken. He was able to gather the entire Ming army, a total of more than 12,000 people, to the surrounding areas of Oura Castle and fight with Fuso.
The allied forces of the three vassals were in a stalemate.
After the Fuso San Francisco Allied Forces assembled their forces, they launched several strong attacks on Oura Castle.
Zhang Mingzhen did not expose all his firepower from the beginning, but hid it, seducing Fusang people to invest, killing more people and consuming more lives.
As expected, the Fusang people were killed in the fortified area like a stormy wave, and thousands of them were shot and killed.
After two disastrous defeats, the Fuso Allied Forces finally learned their lesson and had no choice but to besiege rather than attack. They relied on the Ming army to cross the sea to fight, and were unable to supply military supplies. In the end, they were besieged and starved to death.
At the same time, as the war stalemate entered April, the three northeastern vassals repeatedly requested the direct troops of the shogunate in Edo to send more reinforcements, especially to transport grain to the northeastern front.
After all, raising 70,000 to 80,000 combat troops and more ready men would require an astronomical amount of food. In Fuso's history, only the Battle of Kanhara, the Battle of Osaka, and the cross-sea expedition to Korea had such large-scale logistics and food arrangements.
The Edo shogunate could only do its best to provide the food and grass requested by the front line, but at the same time stated that there was really no reinforcements, so they could only let them catch strong men on the spot.
The three vassals in the Northeast were confused. In the end, they found out that it was because the Fuso shogunate dared to resist the reasonable demands of the Ming Dynasty that Zheng Chenggong from Kyushu also invaded. The shogunate wanted to send reinforcements to Kyushu, so the Northeast had to let the local daimyo solve the problem on their own, and the shogunate could only give
Money, food and ammunition cannot be given to the soldiers.
…
It was confirmed that the battle had entered a stalemate stage, and the Fuso Allied Forces wanted to rely on the front line to stockpile supplies and encircle the Ming army for a long time and exhaust the Ming army that had crossed the sea. Of course, Zhang Mingzhen had a way to break the situation.
He had been hiding it before, so as not to expose the Ming army's cavalry artillery combat capabilities. Wasn't it just this moment that he had been waiting for?
Therefore, while he continued to seize the city calmly, he sent out the special agent Xu Tuzhi to inquire about the enemy's situation and find out where the Fuso Allied Forces were stationing grain.
The hard work paid off. The Ming army used sentry boats and fine crafts on both land and water, and soon found the grain garrison of the Fuso coalition.
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PS: Try to end the story on Fuso within two or three days, it won’t be delayed.