Chapter 2116
There is a clear gap in performance between the weapons used by the two warring parties, and there is a huge gap in combat experience. This allows the special operations group to relatively easily form fire suppression on the resisters hiding in private houses without spending too much time. This fragile line of defense was defeated.
But this is the place where the Hirado clan produces artillery. There is no way that there is a black muzzle behind the window of a private house in front. The special battle group who is concerned about this does not dare to rush in, but disperses the troops on the firing line. , slowly encircling the target area in an arc.
Sun Zhen walked to the outside of a private house, gestured to his men on the other side, then stood up, kicked open the door, and rushed in with a gun. The men from the other direction also rushed into the room with him, and worked with him back to back to complete control of the space in the room. Then several more Haihan soldiers filed in, making sure that no corner of the private house was missed.
In fact, Sun Zhen, who has been promoted to captain, has never experienced such a front-line combat mission. However, he is used to personally leading the team to fight on the battlefield. It is really hard to wait for him to sit in the rear and command. Well, after asking Gao Qiaonan for a fight, Sun Zhen appeared on the line of fire again.
There were a few locals in the house, but they had been hit by incoming bullets in the previous battle. By this time, they had long since fallen to the ground. Although they had not yet died, they had lost the ability to struggle and resist. Only a few load-bearing column heads and beams inside and outside of this kind of shack are made of wood. The rest of the shack is made of bamboo, straw and other materials. There are only a few wooden boards, which cannot stop bullets at all.
Based on Sun Zhen's experience, it is not difficult to see that these shacks are temporary structures built recently. Otherwise, with such a fragile building structure, once the typhoon season arrives, such shacks will be uprooted and blown into the sky.
Sure enough, after some inspection, they found that this house was not a place for people to live. Most of the space was piled with various raw materials such as coke and limestone used to smelt steel. It seemed that it was only used as a temporary warehouse. The similar shacks around them should also be given the same function.
The fact that the resisters hid in such a place to fight Haihan's army showed that they lacked a basic understanding of Haihan's fighting methods. This may be because they have never fought against the Haihan Army before, or these people are not real soldiers at all.
It was not difficult to verify this issue. Sun Zhen quickly confirmed the identities of these resisters after asking his Japanese-speaking men to question the dying prisoners.
As expected, these people were not the vassal troops of the Hirado Domain, but local residents of Kagawa and craftsmen engaged in smelting work. The vassal troops who were actually responsible for guarding this place had been transferred to Hirado Port in the morning. Since the vassal army was temporarily transferred away, these young men were called up to serve as guards. Although these people who were given the task of staying behind were also assigned some weapons, they were purely laymen on how to fight.
Facing the sudden attack of the coalition fleet, these people had no choice but to abandon Boxiang Fishing Port and retreat inland, hoping to hide in the valley to avoid Haihan's offensive. However, they did not expect that after landing, the opponent did not go directly to the Hirado City area in the east, but went straight into the valley and headed towards Kagawa River. In a hurry, these people could not organize a decent defense, so they had no choice but to hide in the shack and fire off one shot at a time.
Such resistance was naturally difficult to stop the experienced special operations group, and these armed personnel resisting outside the village were defeated in a few strokes. However, according to the prisoners' confession, there may be several artillery pieces in the weapons warehouse deep in the valley to the south. I don't know if anyone has used these heavy weapons at the moment.
This information immediately attracted Sun Zhen's attention. He immediately adjusted the combat plan, canceled the frontal assault arrangement, divided the offensive troops into left and right groups, and slowly surrounded the weapons warehouse to the south from the high altitudes on both sides of the valley.
According to the intelligence, the artillery manufactured here in Jingchuan are relatively primitive Western-style cast iron cannons with heavy and bulky bodies and poor maneuverability. There is only one road leading to Boxiang Fishing Port in Jingchuan to transport the artillery, and then transport it to the deployment destination by sea. Even if Hirado Port is only a few miles away, because the two places are surrounded by mountainous terrain with poor traffic, the most convenient way to transport the built artillery to Hirado Port for deployment is to take a trip from the sea. .
Now that the Haihan Army has occupied the northern seaport of Jingchuan, the artillery stored here can no longer be transported out. The narrow terrain in the valley also means that the artillery can only be deployed in the shooting direction towards the northern entrance. Therefore, the special battle group first goes around to the high places on both sides of the valley to effectively avoid the firing range of the artillery, and returns from the hillside. Being able to observe the movements of enemies in the valley, the risk of launching an attack on the target building is much smaller.
Sun Zhen's arrangement soon bore fruit. Although some remaining resisters in the valley tried to use artillery as a last resort, they were unable to use artillery with limited firing angles to deal with enemies from high places on both sides of the valley. A few of them panicked and filled the gun barrel with too much gunpowder. After lighting the fuse, the barrel exploded, causing the resisters without combat skills to fall into chaos.
The soldiers of the special operations group advanced slowly along the hillside to the bottom of the valley. Anyone who tried to rush out for a last-ditch effort was shot mercilessly, and the clearing of the valley was quickly completed.
The first thing Sun Zhen did after arriving was to inspect the weapons warehouse here. However, the result was that he was very disappointed. Except for the three small cannons that had been moved outside by the resisters and put into battle, there were no other artillery in stock in the warehouse. , but there are still a lot of raw materials such as saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in stock for making gunpowder. Sun Zhen took a general look and found that there were at least two to three thousand kilograms of each item.
Such a discovery did not make Sun Zhen feel relaxed. Instead, he realized that the Hirado Domain had moved the cannons and gunpowder elsewhere, such as deploying them to the area near Hirado Port. This may also explain from another perspective why the Hirado clan did not deploy troops to guard the warehouses in Kagawa.
At this time, Tagawasuke, who was in Hirado City, had just learned the news that the enemy had landed at Boxiang Bay on the west coast. This was indeed somewhat beyond his expectation.
The intelligence received before this showed that the Xu family army from Fujian landed on Fujiang Island, with a strength of more than a thousand people, while the main force of the Haihan fleet went directly to Hirado Island. Under such circumstances, Tagawasuke and his staff all believed that Kaihan would concentrate his forces to attack Hirado Port. After all, their purpose of crossing the sea this time was obviously to target the Tagawa clan and the Eighteen Shiba Yu Party, Hirado Port and nearby areas. The urban area should be the primary target chosen by the opponent. Under this premise, Tagawasuke decided to concentrate his armed forces on the Hirado Port area to resist the enemy's landing in Hirado Port as much as possible. Such a deployment of troops would require temporarily abandoning the defense of the west coast of the island, which would inevitably entail greater risks. However, Tagawasuke believes that Haihan is not that familiar with the geographical environment of Hirado Island, and may not have enough troops and ships on the island. Hirado Island once again divided its forces. Concentrating its forces at Hirado Port had a better chance of repelling the enemy's attack than spreading its defenses around.
However, the information sent back from Fukue Island via flying pigeons was unclear. Otherwise Tagawasuke should have realized that the enemy was no stranger to the situation on Fukue Island. The chosen landing point and subsequent attack targets were very targeted. Obviously, they had already Got some local information. And places like Fukue Island have not escaped enemy reconnaissance, and Hirado Island is even less likely to be an "unfamiliar territory" in the eyes of the opponent. Naturally, there may be alternative battle plans besides the main attack direction.
But even though he was aware of the fact that the enemy had landed on the west coast, Tagawasuke could not help but have some lucky thoughts about the situation. After all, a fierce battle was going on in Hirado Port today, and the Haihan people obviously treated this place as the main battlefield. The landing from the west coast was more likely to be an unintentional move by a small enemy force, or it was an action to attract firepower so that the Hirado clan could not concentrate its forces to respond to the offensive on the east coast.
Tagawasuke made serious mistakes in his judgment of the situation, which also made his subsequent response measures unreliable. He immediately summoned Tagawa Kojiro and asked him to lead 500 feudal troops to the HakÅ fishing port on the west coast to retreat from the enemy. In order to ensure that he could fight the landing enemy troops, Tagawa Suke not only allocated one hundred musketeers to Tagawa Kojiro, but also allocated twenty samurai from the feudal army to him. These warriors were equipped with armor and Samurai who can charge on horseback can be regarded as the strongest individual force of the Hirado clan.
And Tagawa Kojiro was able to gain such trust, in addition to his previous good performance, it was also because he was originally a member of the feudal army samurai, and had a good relationship with the samurai assigned to him by Tagawa Suke, which also facilitated his ability to fight in battle. use this special armed force.
After receiving the order, Tagawa Kojiro immediately ordered all the troops and set off from Hirado City in a hurry. He basically has no chance to fight in the current land and sea battle in Hirado Port, but the enemy situation on the west coast is an opportunity for him to make meritorious deeds.
Tagawa Kojiro did not think that the Haihan Army was really as powerful as those Han leaders claimed. He felt that this was just a group of Han people making excuses for past failures, and at the same time using this to make Tagawa Suke believe in their so-called strategy.
Tagawa Kojiro had dealt with the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch before, and he did not think that the Western colonists who could make muskets and artillery were very powerful. What's more, now the Hirado Domain can also make its own firearms, train musketeers and artillery, and even the maritime armed fleet has begun to take shape. The Hirado Domain already has the ability to defend itself, and there is no need to be too afraid of a distant country. .
So what if the Haihan Kingdom has the ability to conquer across the sea? Tagawa Kojiro also watched the battle near the port area today. Although the Haihan warship has fierce firepower, isn't it also helpless in the face of the shore defense firepower deployed in advance at Hirado Port? If this fighting situation lasts for ten days and a half, even if the enemy's food and grass have not been exhausted, can they still make cannonballs and gunpowder on the ship out of thin air?
Tagawa Kojiro's understanding of the current battle situation is somewhat similar to Tagawa Suke's. Since the enemy cannot get through from the front, it is reasonable to send a team of people to find the way out of the Hirado Domain. But the troops sent out to carry out this kind of sneaky mission must not be powerful characters. Tagawa Kojiro was so hot that he wished he could rush to Boxiang Bay immediately, kill all these enemies, and then take away their heads and enemy flags. Return to Hirado Port and hang high to see what the enemy forces at sea think.
Of course, things were not as simple as he imagined, and he did not expect that the enemy he would face would be the most elite army unit of the Haihan Kingdom.
Not far from the Boxiang Fishing Port, Tagawa Kojiro's troops ran into the Second Battalion of the Special Forces Regiment, which was preparing to march towards Hirado City. When he had just issued the military order for his troops to stop and deploy their battle formations, the opponent had already opened fire without hesitation. This was completely different from what he understood as a gun battle.
According to what Tagawa Kojiro learned before, the musketeers need to form a formation before starting the battle, and then complete a series of steps such as loading, aiming, firing, and changing positions in standard actions under the command of the officer, so as to ensure the intensity of the firepower output. and hit rate within the shooting range.
Although Tagawasuke only allocated one hundred musketeers to him, this happened to be the establishment of a hundred-man musketeer team. Fighting in a formation of five rows and twenty people, it was basically able to maintain a stable frequency of rotational shooting. This tactic is enough to deal with more than five times the old-style infantry. Tagawa Kojiro also feels that it should be able to fight the invading enemy, so even though he sees that the opponent's force does not seem to be less than his own, he still decides to fight here. Encounter battles to test the quality of the enemy.
But the Haihan people on the opposite side didn't play their cards according to common sense at all. They didn't waste time forming a formation, but opened fire on the feudal army in a skirmish formation. At first, Tagawa Kojiro thought this was a sign of the opponent being too panicked. It would be difficult to guarantee a hit rate with such sporadic shooting, not to mention that the opponent's firing distance was too far, and the bullets might not even be able to fly here. .
But he soon discovered that something was not right. After firing a shot, the opponent's soldiers did not stop and slowly reload ammunition. Instead, they continued to raise their guns to aim, and then quickly fired the next shot. This shooting interval was even longer than The rotational shooting tactics he knew were much shorter. The shooting distance was beyond his imagination. Some soldiers in the front row had already fallen down, but this distance was far beyond the effective range of their own muskets.
It would actually be too late to turn around and escape at this time, but Tagawa Kojiro would not back down so easily. He still ordered the soldiers to quickly form a fighting formation, trying to engage in a head-on firefight with the Haihan Army on the opposite side.
(End of chapter)