Chapter 2126
Faced with the reality of the disparity in firepower, even if the Hirado clan army had the advantage of home field, it was still difficult to stop the advance of the Kaihan army. The special operations group did not even use artillery in the battle. Using only rifles, they quickly repelled the opponents who tried to block the official road leading to Hirado City.
Realizing that they could not achieve their goal, the Hirado clan army retreated angrily after leaving more than twenty corpses behind. Tagawasuke did not embarrass the frontline commanders because he himself watched the battle not far from the battle site.
Although there were certain predictions about the strength gap between the two sides before the war, the reality was still crueler than Tagawasuke's imagination. He found that his troops had almost no chance to perform in front of the Haihan Army, and even against them It is extremely difficult to cause effective damage.
He thought that when he heard the personnel from Shibazhi describe the strength of the Haihan Army, he was still a little skeptical. He was somewhat suspicious that these people were looking for reasons for their previous failures. However, it was only after he actually fought against the Haihan people on the battlefield that he understood the past. All the rumors he heard were true. Let alone defeat the opponent, it was difficult to even slow down the opponent's attack speed.
The combat plans formulated before the war, including dispatching naval forces to attack the opponent's maritime supply lines, now seem unlikely to be realized. Tagawasuke watched the artillery battle in Hirado Port for two days and had a clear understanding of the strength of the Haihan Navy. He could only secretly pray that the navy would be more careful during operations and not hit the opponent's main force.
But this kind of prayer seems to have failed to bear fruit. In the morning, he received the news that the naval fleet appeared north of the Hirado Strait, which gave Tagawa Suke a vague premonition, because this was not what he ordered to Wei Zhi. The combat order was obviously that Wei Zhi noticed that Hirado Port was in a bad situation and tried to do something to change the situation.
Seeing that the two large warships that had not been in action in the past two days unexpectedly rushed out of the strait at extremely fast speeds to confront the navy fleet, Tagawa Suke couldn't help but feel worried, worrying about whether the navy could withstand it. Such a big guy's attack. His worries became a reality in the afternoon. Several Anzha ships belonging to the Hirado Navy were sandwiched between the Kaihan warships and swaggered across the sea outside Hirado Port. It was obvious that they were deliberately pulled by their opponents after being captured. Come out and show off to undermine your own military morale.
The only good news is probably that there are no newly built Chinese warships among the captured ships. This at least allows Tagawasuke to continue to have a glimmer of hope for the navy. Maybe there will be better fighters for the navy in the future. play.
But whether it is at sea or ashore, the current battle situation of the Hirado Domain is not ideal, or to be more serious, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as losing ground. Although the retainers claimed to Tagawasuke that they had successfully shot and killed many Haihan soldiers during the battle, he did not believe too much in these battle reports that lacked evidence support.
According to some unconfirmed gossip, someone witnessed the Haihan Army executing Tagawa Kojiro near Boxiang Bay. This news also hit Tagawa Suke hard. There are not many senior officers under him who can lead troops in war, and if one dies, one will be missing. And with loyal dog subordinates like Tagawa Kojiro, he probably doesn't have enough time to train new ones.
The enemy troops in Onomura began to advance north, which meant that the opponent was about to launch an attack on Hirado City. Knowing that he only had one night left to deploy the final line of defense, Tagawa Jie ordered the recruitment of all young men in the city and began to dig trenches on the southern line to build a temporary defense line.
Hirado Castle, as the main local defense fortification, was burned down more than thirty years ago by the feudal lord who was eager to clear his name. After that, in order to gain the trust of the shogunate, the successive feudal lords did not rebuild peace. Castle fortifications like Tojo, not to mention the walls surrounding the entire Hirado Castle area. Whether it is to avoid the suspicion of the shogunate or to save money, in short, there are no decent fortifications in Hirado today, and how effective can the temporary defense line be in the face of powerful foreign enemies?
Hirado City is the main populated area on Hirado Island, accounting for more than 70% of the island's long-term population. However, these thousands of people have not accelerated the construction of fortifications. The troubles Tagawa Suke has to face are far away. Much more than just coming from the outside.
In fact, before Kaihan came over, Tagawa Suke had already ordered the recruitment of civilian men. While building a coastal defense fort at Hirado Port, he also had to build a defense line at the southern end of the city to defend against possible landing attacks by the enemy from the south. However, the civilians recruited could barely meet the needs of the port construction site, and the defense line outside the city was always just a paper plan. It was not until the Haihan people reached Fujiang Island that the construction of the south defense line finally started.
However, the construction process is still not going smoothly. The reason is that the complex composition of the urban residents makes it difficult for relevant arrangements to be implemented smoothly.
The people living in Hirado City are not all natives. On the contrary, most of the people who have settled here are immigrants, especially those engaged in business. Because of Hirado's unique trade environment, merchants and sailors from all over Japan gather here. These people are not farmers who can be ordered around casually. They have money in their pockets and various connections. , the most important thing is to have the insight that farmers do not have.
It was not easy for the Hirado clan to instruct these people to work. Even if it was a wartime situation in which foreign enemies invaded, it was still difficult to get them to dig soil on the construction site south of the city willingly.
These people didn’t know where they got the news, saying that the enemy Kaihan people who invaded Hirado were targeting the current feudal lord and his Han leaders, and were not intending to loot the Hirado clan. As long as they did not participate in the resistance, they would not invade. Liquidated after the war.
Based on such remarks, if you assist the official in building fortifications, it will obviously be regarded as participating in the resistance, and this seems to be a risk that is completely unnecessary for outsiders who are not natives of Hirado.
As for the strength of the enemy, the two consecutive days of artillery battle at Hirado Port may be very illustrative. The Hirado navy, known as Japan's number one naval force, did not dare to show up from the beginning to the end. Only the temporary shore defense forts built a few days ago were struggling to support it. More and more people are fleeing back from the south. It is said that thousands of enemy troops have landed in the south, and the feudal army has no effective strategy to retreat from the enemy.
Some foreign businessmen who were stationed in Hirado to fight knew the power of the Haihan Army, so they intensified their propaganda among the people of Hirado that the battle would be defeated. This made those people who planned to wait and see the situation unwilling to join the resistance.
For the Hirado clan officials, it was also difficult to forcibly recruit these people who were unwilling to contribute. Nowadays, the competition between Hirado and Nagasaki is becoming increasingly fierce. The shogunate is using various methods to pull business practitioners from Hirado to Nagasaki. In this environment, if the Hirado official offends merchants and navigation practitioners on a large scale, They will surely suffer the consequences after the war. Once it loses the support of its practitioners, Hirado's trading status will be severely damaged, which may further exacerbate the consequences of defeat. If this results in a significant decline in the scale of Hirado's foreign trade, that is certainly not a result that Hirado officials want to see.
As a result, officials inevitably find themselves in a dilemma. Without forcibly recruiting civilians, the labor force on the construction site will definitely be insufficient, and it will be difficult to build enough defenses before the enemy attacks the city. Forcibly recruiting civilians would inevitably offend a large number of outsiders, thus affecting Hirado's trade status. No matter which approach is chosen, the consequences could be devastating.
But in the end, Tagawasuke chose to protect himself first. As for the adverse effects this will cause, we will wait until after the war. If he is no longer the ruler after the defeat, it has nothing to do with the Tagawa family's future trading environment. There is no need to be merciful at this juncture.
When organizing construction work in such an atmosphere, one can imagine the morale on the construction site. Most of the people who were forcibly recruited were unwilling to contribute, and some people who worked honestly saw that many people were deliberately slacking off, and naturally they were not willing to do so. Want to be treated differently.
Therefore, although there were two to three thousand people working on the construction site in the south of the city, the construction efficiency was extremely low, and the progress of the project was far from meeting official expectations. There are even some businessmen who spend money privately to buy peace, give benefits to those responsible for recruiting civilian husbands, and ignore them; or they hide at home and spend a lot of money to hire people to do the work for them. In short, they try every means to escape this kind of situation. Wartime labor.
Even if Tagawasuke knew about these situations, he could only ignore their existence. He no longer had time to investigate those fishy things. The enemy might launch an offensive after dawn, so there was no need to be distracted by such trivial matters.
Although knowing that Hirado Port would also face great defensive pressure, Tagawasuke ordered Lu Yuanlong to transfer several artillery pieces from the port to the south of the city for deployment. If a few powerful weapons were not deployed on the southern defensive line, Tagawasuke was worried that this defensive line would not be able to withstand the opponent's offensive.
Even if the enemy cannot be retreated by this, it can at least delay the opponent's offensive and buy more time for the Hirado clan to organize a counterattack. Of course, the so-called counterattack is only a combat plan formulated before the war. However, the current war situation is quite different from the pre-war predictions, and most of the plans formulated at that time will not work.
Although Tagawasuke himself had a death wish, he also knew that he could not force his officers and soldiers to be like him. The only thing that could stimulate morale at this time was a heavy reward. He announced to his subordinates that two hundred thousand taels of silver would be taken from the vassal treasury and distributed to all participants before dawn. Even the peasants and soldiers recruited temporarily were rewarded with ten taels of silver each.
Those who perform outstandingly in battle or have a record of killing enemy troops will have the opportunity to receive more generous rewards. Tagawa Suke placed a heavy reward of one hundred taels of silver on the head of the Haihan Army. If it was an officer, the reward would be doubled.
Under such stimulation, the low morale finally recovered. There were also desperadoes in the vassal army. Seeing that there was a huge reward to be won, no matter who the opponent was, they started clamoring after receiving the money and wanted to kill them after dawn.
As the sky grew slightly brighter, the Haihan Army began to break out of camp and slowly advance northward. The East China Sea Fleet continued to follow the activity route of the previous two days, heading north from the anchorage near Onomura along the Hirado Strait to Hirado Port.
The Fujian Navy in charge of the west coast is still tasked with guarding Bo Xiang Bay today. Although Xu Yuzhuo also wanted to go to Hirado Port to show his face, but unfortunately a considerable part of the coalition's troop transports and supply ships were anchored in Boxiang Bay. After all, he had to find another anchorage in Hirado that was convenient for logistics ships to dock. It is not easy, and the Fujian Navy can only continue to serve as bodyguards to ensure that the Hirado Navy will not have the opportunity to sneak attack its own logistics ships.
However, Xu Yuzhuo learned yesterday's lesson and divided half of his warships in advance to ambush outside the bay. If the Hirado navy continues to conduct reconnaissance like yesterday, even if it cannot capture the main force of the enemy, it will at least keep the ships sent by the opponent to conduct reconnaissance.
However, at this time, Wei Zhi had already taken the remaining troops of the Hirado Navy to Madu Island, which is about fifty miles northeast of the Hirado Strait. Because the fleet led by Shota Ishimura collapsed yesterday, Wei Zhi was worried that the base on Shanda Island had been exposed and would be raided by enemy troops, so he moved to a farther place overnight.
But in this way, although Wei Zhi ensured the safety of the naval fleet, it was no longer possible to grasp the timeliness of the changes in the Hirado Strait war situation. If you want to send a ship to conduct reconnaissance near the Hirado Strait, you must keep a considerable distance - according to the group of people who escaped from the battlefield today, the fleet led by Shota Ishimura was attacked by the Kaihan battleship from several miles away. They caught up little by little at a certain distance and then called the ships one by one.
And if the observation point is too far away from the Hirado Strait, it will be difficult to play a reconnaissance role. We can only wait for the fireworks signal from Hirado Castle to send out a distress signal before we can attack. But this communication method, which would not be used unless absolutely necessary, can not only be observed from the distant sea, but also the Haihan people who are closer can also see it. When he leads the navy to rush into the Hirado Strait, I am afraid that his opponents will They have already made preparations for battle just like they did against Shota Ishimura's fleet.
So for Wei Zhi, he is also very confused now. If we lead the remaining naval fleet to the Hirado Strait for a decisive battle with our opponents, the result will undoubtedly be the annihilation of the entire army. But if the strength is preserved, perhaps this naval force will be the capital for Tagawa Nanzaemon to make a comeback in the future.
It wasn't that he was afraid of death, but he was worried that after he sent out the few men at hand to fight, Tagawa Shichizaemon hiding in Kyushu would face the dilemma of having no one available after the war. Not to mention whether the Kaihan people will continue to arrest him at that time, I am afraid that many careerists will come out from Kyushu to seize the rule of the Hirado clan.
(End of chapter)