Chapter 14, Twenty-seven moments in the four years of Chongzhen (14)
The Fourteenth Moment: The Shogun’s Cry
AD 1631, the fourth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty, December of the seventh year of Kan'ei in Japan, Osaka Castle, Sakai Port
Anyone who has played the Japanese Sengoku game will usually know the name of the free commercial city "Sakai".
Sakai Port is located at the junction of Settsu Province, Kawachi Province, and Izumi Province, hence its name. Since the Heian period, Sakai has been an important seaport for merchants from Kyoto and Nara. But the city's real prosperity came after it was designated as a trade port for China during the Muromachi Shogunate era.
From then on, this trade hub developed rapidly in troubled times, and eventually became Japan's leading autonomous commercial city, symbolizing prosperity, wealth, trade and enjoyment, as well as a window to overseas countries.
During the war-torn dark age of Japan's Warring States Period, Sakai Port was almost the only "light place" in Japan. It had Japan's most prosperous business, the richest businessmen, and the most outstanding tea ceremony masters of that era: Tsuda Muneki and Imai. Munehisa, Sen no Rikyu...
However, with the domination of the world by Toyotomi Hideyoshi Taikaku and the arrival of the Azuchi-Momoyama era, the Sakai Port that arose due to the troubled times also declined with the end of the troubled times. After gaining Japanese hegemony, Toyotomi Hideyoshi built the Sakai Port near Sakai Port. Osaka Castle, as the ruling center of the Toyotomi family, due to the capital's natural attraction to wealth, the prosperity of Sakai Port was largely transferred to Osaka. Many wealthy businessmen also moved to Osaka's castle towns to live. By the following Edo period, Sakai Port merchants had completely transformed into Osaka merchants, and Sakai Port itself became a port and warehouse attached to Osaka.
(Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Osaka Castle robbed the foundation of Ishiyama Honganji Temple and then further expanded it with extensive construction. Therefore, the Oda army’s siege of Honganji Temple and the Tokugawa army’s siege of Osaka were actually two wars against the same city.) < br>
But even so, as the most important satellite city of Osaka, Sakai Port during the Edo period was still bustling with merchant ships.
However, at this time, Sakai Port had changed beyond recognition - the once bustling streets were now full of broken walls, smoke lingered from the collapsed roof beams, there were still a few sparks on the charred wood, and there was a slight crackle from time to time. The sound of trumpets was heard, and there were still large and small craters scattered on the ground. There were less than a few people... And in the wilderness outside Sakai Port, you can see the fallen Tokugawa flag, discarded swords, broken artillery, blood-stained armor, and the charred ground everywhere. The piles of corpses of men and horses fully prove that a tragic and bloody battle once took place here.
In fact, rather than saying it was a bloody battle, it would be more appropriate to say it was a massacre...
——The 12,000 troops sent by the Tokugawa shogunate to regain the lost territory had just been completely defeated and routed by unknown enemies at Sakai Port.
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Not far from Sakai Port, Osaka Castle is directly under the shogunate
Under the gloomy sky, the strong north wind carried goose-feather-like snowflakes, fluttering and scattering them on the ground. Looking down from the top of Osaka Castle's castle tower, everything in the field of vision was white, and only a few people came out despite the heavy snow. Most of the pedestrians hurried along with their heads down. The wooden clogs made an unpleasant squeaking sound on the snow, and the knee-deep snow made the servants transporting supplies and the ashigaru on patrol all complain for a while.
In the majestic castle tower, inlaid with gold and copper, all the elders and generals of the Tokugawa shogunate looked at each other with their hands clasped together and frowning. Although the furnace in the castle tower was burning red, the mood of the important ministers of the shogunate was still... Just like the winter outside, it was cold and cold - no one dared to say a word, and they also didn't know what else to say in the face of such a situation. In the end, they just kept sighing.
In the main seat at the head, a handsome young man in fine clothes was holding a battle report that had just been compiled. Looking at the shocking loss figures above, especially the news of the death of his half-brother Masayuki Hoshina, his expression was serious. He was as gloomy as water, and the anger in his eyes was about to burst out.
——He is the supreme ruler of Japan today, the third-generation general of the Edo shogunate who conquered barbarians, Tokugawa Iemitsu.
In the original history, as the "Three Generations of Aoi" who succeeded the Edo shogunate, Tokugawa Iemitsu was a very capable hero. According to the comments of later generations, he is almost the personification of Japanese family politics. He inherited the scheming and caution of the Tokugawa family, the stubbornness and conservatism of the maternal Asai family, and the domineering and decisiveness of his maternal grandfather, the Oda family... During his reign, the Edo shogunate's rule over Japan was completely consolidated, and all anti-shogunate forces were basically eradicated. Finally, in the era of his son Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the most prosperous "Genroku Age" of the Edo shogunate ushered in .
But in this time and space distorted by so many travelers, everything has been changed beyond recognition.
——Tokugawa Iemitsu, who was only twenty-seven years old, had not had time to show off his talents, but the foundation of the Tokugawa family was already on the verge of collapse.
What is the reason for all this bad luck and disaster?
When did the Edo shogunate and the Tokugawa family turn from prosperity to decline?
General Tokugawa Iemitsu couldn't help but fall into long memories with a few copper coins hanging on the corner of the pen holder as decoration.
——Before the Edo Shogunate period, due to poor metal casting technology, Japan had been using Chinese copper coins for commercial trade and basically did not mint its own coins. For example, during the Warring States Period in Japan, merchants all over the country used Yongle money from the Ming Dynasty. In the Azuchi Momoyama period, after the war broke out, Toyotomi Hideyoshi minted a batch of gold and silver coins, but he did not mint his own copper coins. The Japanese had already used Chinese copper coins for hundreds of years, and they had already developed a habit. If There were no particularly big changes, and no one thought of casting their own copper coins.
Then, this incident triggered a huge chaos, and the Ming Kingdom quietly appeared across the sea.
——Since the Hongzhi Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty, all copper coins have been stipulated to be seven copper and three lead, and copper coins should weigh one penny. The Wanli Dynasty changed it to six copper coins and four lead coins, and each copper coin weighed one penny and two cents. However, since the Tianqi Dynasty, the greedy Donglin Party hypocrites took control of the Nanjing Mint Department. From then on, the copper coins produced in Nanjing were worse than the previous year. By the second year of Tianqi, the copper coins minted in Nanjing had dropped to three copper coins. The lead is seven and the weight is eight. By the third year of Tianqi (1623), a new batch of copper coins released in Nanjing was already one copper and nine lead, and the weight was unprecedentedly reduced to one quarter.
Such low-quality copper coins naturally triggered a widespread boycott among the Chinese people and made court officials very anxious. Subsequently, under the guidance of an unknown smart person, the Ming Dynasty adopted the strategy of "drawing trouble from outside" - dumping all these low-quality broken copper coins to Japan through various channels: this was a very profitable business. Generally speaking, one ounce of Ming Dynasty's inferior copper coins can be exchanged for about two taels of silver in Japan, and then converted into copper ingots that are abundant in Japan and shipped back. These Japanese coppers can produce at least five ounces of inferior copper coins. . Even excluding the cost of navigation, the transfer of Japanese businessmen, and the need to bribe Japanese local officials, the profit from the money exchange is still at least 100%.
As a result, the Donglin Party government of the Ming Dynasty successfully got rid of a powder keg, and everyone celebrated. The underwriters also made a lot of money, and even began to mint fake money on their own in order to organize the supply of goods. However, Japan suffered extremely terrible losses, and soon it reached a point where it could no longer sit idly by: no matter how many copper mines there were in the Japanese archipelago, they could not withstand the Ming Dynasty and various counterfeit money manufacturers. Make it!
At this point, some knowledgeable people in the Tokugawa shogunate finally saw the importance of casting their own money, and pushed the shogunate to start casting their own copper coins "Kan'ei Tongbao" and gold and silver coins from the early years of Kan'ei. Expelled Spanish silver coins and Ming Dynasty copper coins from the Japanese market.
But the problem is that this important policy of monetary autonomy was not implemented smoothly for some reason. Although the Tokugawa shogunate knew from the beginning that merchants with the ability to import or counterfeit copper coins would not be small guys, it gave a strong warning to major merchants before starting currency exchange. But even under the severest threat of force, bad money from the Ming Dynasty continued to pour into the Japanese market. On the contrary, the Kanei Tongbao put on the market by the shogunate quickly disappeared, leaving the shogunate with constant exchange pressure. If it cannot be lifted, the financial losses will be huge.
In desperation, the Tokugawa shogunate had no choice but to continue this kind of exchange work that was losing money every day, and at the same time began to search for suspicious individuals in the country, hoping to eliminate the source of bad money production and import, and finally noticed the Choshu Domain - it turned out that all this was It's this Japanese traitor from the Maori family who did it!
The angry Tokugawa shogunate immediately issued the most severe warning to the Choshu Domain, but the Maori family of the Choshu Domain still turned a deaf ear and continued to get a large amount of bad money from the Ming Dynasty, and then resold it to the mainland of Japan, making astonishing huge profits from it - all Everyone knows that as long as the hole of the Choshu Domain is not blocked by the Japanese shogunate, bad money will naturally drive out good money. The currency reform of the shogunate turned into sending money and blood transfusions to the Choshu clan: How can you tolerate such a thing?
In this way, the relationship between Choshu and the shogunate quickly became tense. In the past, the shogunate stipulated that the lords of each vassal should go to Edo every two years to be hostages and stay for a few months or even a year, but that year The Maori Show ( The first generation lord of the Choshu Domain, the son of Mori Terumoto, the general of the Sekigahara Western Army), not only did not come to Edo to report, but also built a series of forts and fortresses on a large scale on the border of Choshu, clearly threatening to start a rebellion. meaning.
Therefore, in order to maintain the prestige of the shogunate and gain his own martial arts, the young and energetic Tokugawa Iemitsu resolutely issued the "Marshal Order" in February of the third year of Kanei (1627), mobilizing about 60,000 soldiers in one go. The shogunate army also ordered the other princes to send troops to assist in the battle and launch a westward expedition to the Choshu Domain.
Then, the nightmare of the Tokugawa shogunate finally began:
The border forts built by the Choshu clan under the guidance of Ming Dynasty officers were very effective in holding back the armies of the shogunate and Japanese princes coming from several directions. Faced with endless violent bombardment and seemingly indestructible fortresses, the main force of the shogunate army, mainly equipped with bows and arrows, bamboo spears and samurai swords, after a month of hard fighting, still stopped at the border of Choshu Domain, unable to do anything about those strange fortresses. We can only hope to capture it through a long siege.
At the same time, the Maori family's elite new army and the Ming Dynasty's reinforcements, as mobile troops, relied on sea routes to continuously attack the southwestern vassals of Japan, using force and artillery shells to "persuade" them to withdraw from the shogunate army camp... After successfully defeating these originally After defeating the "Gaigai" daimyo who was not determined to fight, the Mori family, which was victorious, immediately concentrated all its main forces and launched a decisive battle with the shogunate army led by Tokugawa Iemitsu on April 8th.
Then, Tokugawa Iemitsu tasted failure for the first time in his life.
——The Choshu Army is composed of three thousand modern troops as the core and nearly 10,000 local farmers who have high morale because of defending their homes and the country; the Shogunate Army is composed of more than 50,000 farmers from Kanto and thousands of soldiers wearing armor. "Master of Swordsmanship", and they have been fortifying the city for two months. Under such comparison, the result of the battle is self-evident. Under the bombardment of field artillery, the Tokugawa shogunate's army quickly collapsed. Although facing overwhelming artillery fire, some Hatamoto samurai continued to charge, attempting to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy to offset the long-range firepower advantage of the Choshu Army. But when the Changzhou New Army and the Ming Dynasty reinforcements used terrifying chain bullets and shotguns, the shogunate banners also began to flee, and in the end they were beaten into colanders by firecrackers...
Tokugawa Iemitsu no longer remembers clearly how he commanded that battle at that time, but he vaguely remembered that his own formation first suffered an unknown number of artillery shells, and then was completely defeated. He himself was swept away by the tide of rebels and fled the battlefield. He ran dizzy all day and night, and was almost caught by the Maori army's forwards several times. One after another, they died or disappeared. Finally, they were lucky enough to grab a fishing boat on the beach and escaped all the way back to Himeji Castle, and then to Osaka, finally out of danger
But of the 60,000 shogunate army that marched out from Osaka two months ago, only a few thousand people escaped in the end - according to the record promoted by the Mori family, they beheaded more than 10,000 people that day and captured more than 20,000 prisoners. . In addition to the thousands of people who successfully escaped back to Osaka, there are still 20,000 shogunate troops whose whereabouts are unknown. It is estimated that they have fled somewhere along the way... and the retainer group left by Daimeme Ieyasu to the Tokugawa clan has also been lost. More than half.
Such a humiliating and humiliating defeat seems to have never happened before in the history of the Tokugawa family. It has been compared to the Takeda family's Changyou battle in the Warring States Period. Tokugawa Hidetada, the second-generation shogun "Grand Imperial Palace" who had retired at the time, vomited three liters of blood on the spot after hearing the news and was furious to death.
Since then, Japan has ended the dual political tradition since the Heian period in which the emperor listened to the emperor, Kanbai listened to the Taige, and the shogun listened to the imperial palace. This kind of old man listened to the government behind the curtain. In fear and confusion, General Tokugawa Iemitsu, despite being called a "prodigal son" and a "faint king", began his career of ruling with great power. However, at this time, the situation of the Tokugawa family was really bad, and the core direct armed forces Almost all losses were lost, and there was an avalanche of prestige and deterrence. However, the Maori army, which had won a great victory, was arrogant and fighting. The ambitions were high, and the call to "attack Kanto and burn Edo" was very loud for a while: According to the pessimistic calculations of the shogunate ministers at the time, if the Choshu Army attacked in a large scale, all the vassals in the Western Kingdom would probably rebel against the shogunate, and the Tokugawa family would have no choice but to give up. Kyoto, with no danger to defend, concentrated on holding on to the Osaka Cage Castle, trying to buy time for the shogunate to reorganize the army in the rear of Kanto.
Fortunately, the war situation at that time did not develop to such a sad level - the Maori family seemed to be very aware of their limited strength and had no intention of prolonging the war. Instead, they showed the demeanor of a mature politician and stopped fighting after the victory. Released all the shogunate prisoners and took advantage of the Katsu proposed a reasonable, well-founded and measured peace terms... At that time, when the shogunate army suffered a devastating defeat and all the feudal lords in the world were ready to move, in order to prevent the Choshu clan from going back on its word, the Tokugawa shogunate was almost in a hurry The armistice treaty was signed without waiting, and peace was restored to Japan again.
When the war subsided, the situation initially returned to calm. General Tokugawa Iemitsu, who had returned from the defeat, learned from the pain and decided to strengthen military construction no matter what. This was also the unanimous consensus of the entire shogunate - the Tokugawa shogunate was known as the "Eight "Ten Thousand Flags", but in fact, the total number of Hatamoto samurai and imperial family members was less than 10,000. We have to count the peasants and soldiers, and the number of ashigaru could only be about 80,000. This time, the Choshu Domain lost tens of thousands of peasant soldiers and thousands of warriors in one fell swoop. Even their spines were really broken. If we don't rearm our armaments, will we have to wait for the wave of collapse to begin?
But although the determination has been unified, how to raise funds is still a big problem - since ancient times, war has been a waste of money. This time, tens of thousands of people were mobilized for the war, which had already emptied the shogunate's inventory. . Next, in order to negotiate a truce with the Choshu Domain, the Tokugawa family had to cede several shogunate territories in Kansai. Even the Iwami Kuni Noginzan, which they had finally snatched from the Maori family, was also taken away from the Maori family this time. The family was taken back again, and the attitude of the other vassals toward the generals was not as good as before, causing the shogunate's fiscal revenue to decline year after year.
Last year (1630), another important source of wealth for the shogunate, the Gold Mountain on Sado Island was attacked by pirates again. The mined gold disappeared without a trace, along with almost all the mining slaves and supervisors. According to several insane survivors, The reporter claimed that it was several incredible large iron ships and a group of strangely dressed ghosts that sacked Sado Island... No one would believe such crazy talk, but it is an indisputable fact that the shogunate's finances suffered another heavy blow. In short, the Tokugawa shogunate took a breather for two years after the war before trying every means to raise funds for rearmament.
However, just having money is not enough. The Tokugawa family also needs more powerful arms and modern combat methods.
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Through his personal experience of the disastrous defeat of the "Seucho War", General Tokugawa Iemitsu has fully realized the desperate difference in combat effectiveness between the traditional feudal army of the Tokugawa shogunate and the new Choshu army of the Maori family. ——Except for a few professional Hatamoto samurai, most of the soldiers in the shogunate army were ashigaru who were hastily organized before the battle. However, before the outbreak of the March War, Japan had not fought a war for a whole generation. Therefore, unlike the Ashigaru peasants and soldiers who were accustomed to fighting in the Warring States Period, today's Ashigaru army has never killed anyone. They were peasants and had never received any decent military training. Their combat effectiveness was comparable to that of military households in the Ming Dynasty, and their performance on the battlefield was naturally predictable.
Although the Hatamoto samurai who were supported by the shogunate were indeed professional soldiers who practiced swordsmanship throughout their lives, most of the martial arts they practiced were only useful in individual combat, and they seriously lacked training in coordinated combat - imagine it. , although the "Shinsengumi" at the end of the Bakumatsu had outstanding swordsmanship and were very good as security police, but if they were allowed to fight the regular army, how could that kind of casual style that only emphasized personal martial arts work?
What's even worse is that, except for a few old men, even the Hatamoto samurai, most of them have never seen the battlefield, and at most they only have experience of fighting in taverns. Compared with the Changzhou New Army, which had followed the generals of the Ming Dynasty for training in battle, fought many battles with Jurchen slaves and Minnan pirates, and witnessed many big scenes, the difference between a rabbit and a hungry wolf is simply the difference between a rabbit and a hungry wolf - even Even in single combat, the Hatamoto samurai cannot defeat his opponent!
In addition, the Changzhou Army has been equipped with a large number of metal breastplates, new muskets, fortress artillery and field artillery, and can be arranged into a quite neat military formation. The shogunate army is still using weapons left over from the Warring States Period. Most of them have no armor, and the number of artillery is pitifully small, and the quality is worse than the Korean artillery. They dare to boast about the "collapse of the country". On the battlefield, a considerable number of inexperienced shogunate soldiers really regarded the war as a large-scale group fight: even in these days, there are still people who want to engage in a "one-horse fight" (a one-on-one battle between generals) with the enemy. )of!
Such all-round backwardness is simply despairing, but no matter how desperate it is, the shogunate must seize this fleeting precious time and try to pull out an elite force that can compete head-on with the Choshu clan without falling behind. New Army——Otherwise the Tokugawa family’s world will be over!
In view of the fact that the Choshu Domain obviously received strong support from the Ming Dynasty officials (in order to "hold the Ming Dynasty in order to respect itself", the Choshu Domain carried out exaggerated propaganda in Japan to intimidate opponents from all walks of life), General Tokugawa Iemitsu instead asked The "Southern Barbarians" helped and placed a huge order for artillery and military instructors from the Dutch. The Dutch lived up to the general's high expectations and soon sent a large number of powerful artillery and dozens of experienced military instructors. The iron cannon craftsmen of the shogunate also successfully made a batch of self-made flintlock guns with a heavy reward and a number of captured objects.
As a result, with the full support of Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate successfully formed a new modern army with a total strength of 5,000 people. Relying on the careful guidance of Dutch instructors, the Spanish grand square and bastion were quickly established. , artillery tactics and other new tricks were learned in a stylish way. The various classic battle cases on the European battlefields explained by the Dutch instructors in class also gave the ignorant Japanese samurai a refreshing feeling.
All in all, through the above-mentioned efforts, the shogunate army finally gradually began to change from a feudal-era army to a modern army.
However, this kind of peace of mind in running the army and practicing martial arts did not last long. A series of sudden unexpected changes forced General Tokugawa Iemitsu to hastily use this "prototype" of a modern army that had not completed training to bring this "prototype" of modern troops into action. An army entered the battlefield in advance:
In the spring and summer of this year, the Choshu clan, which had basically digested the fruits of its last victory, finally began a new round of large-scale military expansion. With the strong assistance of the Ming Dynasty reinforcements, the Maori army launched an attack on Kyushu. In the invasion of the island (from the perspective of the Tokugawa shogunate, everyone has their own ideas as to who is in charge), they defeated and surrendered Shimazu of the Satsuma Domain, known as "the strongest soldier in Kyushu" in one fell swoop. Home!
This bad news shocked the entire Tokugawa shogunate - since the failure of Kanei's three-year campaign and the devastating blow to the direct army, the Tokugawa shogunate's deterrent power against the vassal states west of Kyoto has been greatly reduced. Basically, It was already difficult to give orders out of Osaka, and they could only sit back and watch the Choshu clan gradually expand in the Western Kingdom. Through various civil and military means, they annexed and surrendered the Kansai clans, and gradually restored the Maori family's most prosperous territory at the end of the Warring States Period.
According to the opinions of the important officials of the shogunate, the reason why the Maori family has not yet sent troops to Beijing to "go to Luo" and realize the goal of their ancestor Maori Yuanjiu is that the Choshu clan has become powerful in the world and dominates both Sanin and Sanyo. The main reason for the ambition was that there were a series of powerful vassal restraints behind it, such as Satsuma Domain, Fukuoka Domain, Higo Domain, Saga Domain of Kyushu, and Tosa Domain of Shikoku. If when the Maori family sent out an overwhelming army to fight the shogunate in Kinki, these vassals were persuaded by the shogunate to come and take advantage and stab the Chosu clan in the back, then the Maori family's hegemony would be in danger of collapse in an instant.
Therefore, before the Choshu clan and the shogunate compete again, the Maori family must first clarify the backyard of the Western Kingdom to ensure a worry-free future. In particular, the Shimazu family of the Satsuma clan, which had ruled Minami Kyushu since the Heian period, was the number one opponent of the Maori family in unifying the Western Kingdom. Tokugawa Iemitsu originally believed that although the Choshu clan had recently grown in strength, the Satsuma clan was by no means weak. , the battle between Changzhou and Satsuma will inevitably be protracted. Unexpectedly, the Ming Dynasty actually broke its promise to list Japan as a country not subject to conquest, and personally sent troops to the east (when it was conquering Japan, Huangshi still used the banner of the Ming Dynasty Funing Army), dispatching their most legendary and famous generals who are good at fighting. The most elite army of hundreds of battles, crossed the sea in large numbers to assist the Choshu clan in conquering Satsuma! After such a heavy bargaining chip was taken to the side of the Choshu Army, no matter how tough and skilled the Satsuma warriors of the Shimazu family were, they were still defeated and had no choice but to surrender to the Maori family's Kaicheng
The other vassals on Kyushu Island were even more frightened after hearing the news, and secretly sent surrender envoys to the Maori family. They were about to betray the Tokugawa shogunate!
As a result, not only the shogunate's strongholds such as Nagasaki and Hirado in the Western Kingdom were isolated behind enemy lines, but even Kyoto and Osaka were in danger!
——What’s even more frightening is that according to the gossip from Kyoto, even some officials of the imperial court seem to have signs of “secret communication with Changzhou”...
This news simply made Tokugawa Iemitsu sit on pins and needles: he clearly remembered how Ashikaga Takauji, the great general who founded the Muromachi shogunate, and Kusunoki Masashige, the "Military God of the Southern Dynasties", used the emperor's imperial edict and the influence of the ministers to set off a vigorous nationwide revolution. The sexual collapse craze, the past that defeated the Kamakura shogunate in a very short period of time. Today's Choshu Domain itself is difficult enough to deal with, let alone the behemoth of the Ming Kingdom behind it. If the imperial court also adds insult to injury to the Edo shogunate and grants the Mori family the right to collapse... the consequences will be simply unimaginable. ah!
Therefore, in order to stabilize the situation in Kinki and deter the imperial court from any changes, Tokugawa Iemitsu had no choice but to mobilize the Tokugawa clan and shogunate Tenlords in Kanto at the end of October this year, regardless of the fact that the new army had not yet been trained, and assembled 40,000 troops to send troops to Luo. Showing the force of the shogunate to the court and princes - but the result was that the mobilization of warehouses However, the planning was not appropriate enough, and the entire march was broken into several pieces as it walked. The new shogunate army as the first line had passed through Sekigahara and arrived at Kinki. The traditional old army and the allied forces of various vassals behind were still slowly moving along the Tokaido. Wait, some of the pro-vassal soldiers have not even crossed Mount Fuji...
Then, just after Tokugawa Iemitsu held a small-scale military parade on the outskirts of Kyoto and presented the new shogunate army that he had painstakingly built in front of the minister of Kyoto, he received an urgent notice from Osaka about a surprise attack on Sakai Port by foreign pirates. Report... Tokugawa Iemitsu was not too worried at first. Instead, he felt that this group of foreign pirates would be the right target for the shogunate's new army to establish their power in the first battle, and their heads would be used to prove that the sword of the Edo shogunate was still sharp.
Therefore, General Tokugawa Iemitsu himself stayed in Kyoto to prepare for an audience with the emperor, and sent his most trusted half-brother, Masayuki Hoshina, as the general general, along with 5,000 new shogunate troops and 7,000 newly arrived banner warriors and pro-domestic troops. A total of 12,000 people rushed to Sakai Port in a mighty manner.
However, what General Tokugawa Iemitsu didn't know was that the so-called "exotic pirates" who attacked Sakai Port were actually the Vladivostok Far East Company's "food collection team" - so, at best, they had just reached the tenth level in terms of equipment. The advanced "semi-modern" shogunate's new army in the seventh century met head-on with the Soviet imperial war weapons of the twentieth century in an unobstructed wilderness behind snow:
Japanese Anzake and Kohayabune VS Crocodile-class landing ships;
Early flintlocks and matchlocks VS Deshka anti-aircraft machine guns, AK47 automatic rifles, and PK machine guns;
Bronze front-loading field smoothbore gun VS Soviet 122mm howitzer, RPG rocket launcher and Chinese "civilian" rocket launcher;
Musketeers, Lancers VS various types of Russian and homemade armored vehicles;
……
——With such a desperate contrast, the outcome of this battle is obviously self-evident: 5,000 new shogunate troops suffered a devastating blow on the outskirts of Sakai Port, and the remaining 7,000 old-style troops fled without a fight. The general of the shogunate army Hoshina Masagi was defeated and died, and most of the Dutch instructors were also blown up to pieces...
When Tokugawa Iemitsu finally learned of this unbelievable bad news and hurried to Osaka to supervise the battle, all he could see were the corpses strewn on the outskirts of Sakai Port and the rubble strewn in the city - that After easily annihilating the shogunate army, the group of "pirates" emptied the warehouses and warehouses in Sakai Port at an extremely fast speed, kidnapped the remaining residents, then set a fire in the market, and then sailed away. .
Therefore, while General Tokugawa Iemitsu was suffering from the grief of losing his brother, he also felt mentally broken by the incredible content of the battle report: "...a big iron ship floating on the water? A sharp firearm that can destroy dozens of miles with one shot? What kind of thing is this that can run so fast without an ox horse? Are we fighting monsters? Is it similar to what happened on Sado Island last year? br>
But the above questions are actually no longer important. What is really important is that the Tokugawa shogunate was caught off guard and suffered another devastating military defeat... Next, the shogunate relied on the demoralized and broken weapons in their hands. Military strength, how to resist the possible Shangluo War launched by the Changshu Domain, and how to suppress the dissident princes from various places have all become unsolvable problems. Thinking of this, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally couldn't help but burst into tears, "...God! Why do you punish my Iemitsu like this? Is it true that the world of my Tokugawa family is going to perish in three generations?!" < br>
When the ministers heard the sound and saw the general crying so sadly, they all felt something in their own hearts, and for a while they all burst into tears and broke down in sobs. However, the bad news for the Tokugawa Edo Shogunate was the good news for the Maori Nagashu Domain. Therefore, while the shogunate's main force in Osaka Castle was gloomy and mournful, the Mori family of the Choshu Domain looked proud and smiling...