After Shi Diwen made his attitude undisguised, Zong Yizhen finally realized that whether he wanted to or not, Tsushima could not avoid being forcibly dragged into the Japanese civil war by Haihan.
For Tsushima, which relies entirely on transit and re-export trade, the outbreak of civil war is definitely bad news, which is bound to interrupt the current good development momentum.
If the war situation does not go well, or if it continues for a long time, it may even involve all of Tsushima's family fortune.
But Zongyi really didn't dare to refuse Shi Diwen, because doing so would only put Tsushima on another more risky path of no return.
If you follow the arrangements and join the war, you may have a good chance of becoming a member of the victor. But if you go against Kaihan, it will be a dead end. The Hirado clan, which is only a hundred miles away from Tsushima, is a lesson learned from the past.
The original Hirado Domain was far superior to the Tsushima Domain in terms of trade scale and armed strength. However, just because it offended Kaihan, the once prosperous Hirado Domain was razed to the ground by the war.
Soyoshi really doesn't think he can be any better than the Tagawa family of the Hirado clan. The wisest way out for Tsuima clan is to avoid making the same mistakes again.
So under Shi Diwen's pressure, Zong Yizhen finally had no choice but to compromise and agreed to join Haihan's plan.
Shi Diwen then promised him more benefits. For example, the area that Tsushima could capture in Honshu included a coastline spanning more than a thousand miles from the Shimonoseki Strait to the Noto Peninsula.
Of course, such a big cake cannot be digested by the Tsushima family alone. There will be other Kyushu forces sending troops to this area. As for who can occupy the best territory, it depends on their own abilities.
In the afternoon of that day, Shi Diwen took the initiative to request that he and Zong Yizhen review the armed forces of Tsushima.
Zong Yizhen originally had this arrangement and asked Shi Diwen to take a look at the results of cooperation between the two parties in the military field in recent years. But now Shi Diwen proposed to launch a war against Ma Fan, which meant sending the new army he had finally assembled to the battlefield, which inevitably caused some mixed feelings.
The other party proposed to inspect Tsushima Domain's troops. This was obviously an attempt to see the goods first and then assign corresponding tasks to Tsushima Domain in the subsequent war.
Zong Yi really had a very contradictory mentality. Of course he didn't want his men to be used as cannon fodder on the battlefield. It would be best to receive some tasks such as logistical supplies, so that they could fight in name only and preserve their strength to the maximum extent.
It's just that according to Haihan's style of conduct, if the Tsushima clan slips away on the battlefield, they may not be able to make any profit when the cake is divided after the war.
But no matter what, Zong Yizhen didn't dare to hide his secrets in this kind of situation.
Currently, the backbone of the new army formed by the Taima clan is sent to the Sasebo base for training. The main weapons and equipment are also purchased from Haihan. Coupled with the local official Haihan agency, the information about the army is very important to Haihan. It was almost transparent, and it was absolutely impossible to hide his strength in front of Shi Diwen.
On the small school ground in Jinshi City, the main combat troops of the Tsushima clan were assembled. The strength was about six to seven hundred people. According to the establishment of the Haihan Army, there was about one battalion.
These soldiers are called "Ashigaru", and their whole body equipment is provided by the government. The upper body is a simple protective armor, with a grass fold around the waist, and a pointed helmet called a formation on the head. The protective power provided by these protective gears on the Ashigaru is actually very limited. The formation hat on the head is even made of cowhide or multiple layers of paper. At most, it can only provide sun protection and rain protection. When fighting on the battlefield, It's basically just a decoration.
Before the military cooperation with Haihan, Tsushima's army was mainly composed of peasant soldiers. They worked as soldiers during peacetime and war. The standing force only had a few twenty warriors and more than a hundred armed guards.
Even in wartime, the temporary expansion of the army can only add about four to five hundred peasant soldiers and roughly the same number of civilians accompanying the army. As for the combat force at sea, there are only a few armed merchant ships, which can at best deal with sporadic pirates.
The combat arms in the army are mainly divided into pikemen, archers and a small number of musketeers. The reason why musketeers had the smallest proportion and failed to become the main force in the army was not because Tsushima had no money to buy muskets, but because the matchlocks purchased from Western countries at that time were extremely complicated to use and had low combat efficiency. Their only advantage was Musketeers are just easier to train.
It was not until the cooperation with Kaihan that Tsushima's samurai officers began to receive formal musketeer training and had the opportunity to use flintlock muskets.
Today, the proportion of musketeers in this unit has increased to about 60%, and they serve as the main combat force in the army. The ratio of archers to pikemen has been reduced, and there are more than twenty artillerymen responsible for operating several artillery pieces purchased from Haihan.
Of course, the most important thing is that the main composition of this army is no longer the peasant soldiers of the past, but full-time, full-time soldiers. In terms of its combat effectiveness, it is no longer the same thing as the Tsushima army in the past.
You get what you pay for, and Tsushima feudal lord has spent hundreds of thousands of taels of silver on this new army in exchange for the neat military appearance it has today.
In Mune Yizhen's view, although the strength of this force cannot be compared with the shogunate or other strong feudal lords in other places, it is enough to provide protection for the Tsushima clan itself.
But if this force is to be dragged out to attack cities and conquer territories, and to fight in unfamiliar areas hundreds or even thousands of miles away, it seems that the capabilities are still lacking.
After the review, Shi Diwen unabashedly expressed his feelings to Zong Yizhen: "The training level of Ma Fan's elite troops is good, but they lack actual combat experience. They still need to find opportunities to train on the battlefield. A moment. A troop that has never experienced actual combat can never develop real combat effectiveness.”
Zong Yizhen said yes repeatedly. Since Shi Diwen had already agreed to send troops, there was no point in being pretentious at this time.
Seeing that his attitude was correct, Shi Diwen continued to give instructions: "The existing troops are definitely far from enough. Mr. Zong must arrange recruitment as soon as possible and strive to train a group of usable troops before the end of the year."
Zong Yizhen asked cautiously: "I don't know, Mr. Shi, how many troops do Tsushima think is appropriate?"
Shi Diwen said: "Then it depends on how big Mr. Zong's ambition is. The larger the territory you want to occupy, the more troops you will need. My suggestion is that the more the better. Considering the population of Tsushima, There must be at least three times the number of troops to be suitable for the expedition to this state.”
three times? Zong Yizhen couldn't help but secretly complain after hearing this.
Of course, Tsuima Fan could do it with two to three thousand young men, but in this case, the labor force engaged in production would be greatly reduced, which would inevitably affect tax collection. Moreover, after such a large number of soldiers are recruited, the military expenditures to be spent will be a huge amount, which may have to empty the Tsushima domain's treasury.