On the seventh day of the eleventh month of the twentieth year of Wanli, it happened to be a month before Lin Tianshuai led his troops into the dynasty.
Li Rusong, the commander of the First Corps on the Western Front, heard in Kaesong, one hundred and fifty miles away from Wangjing Seoul, that the Japanese soldiers were going to withdraw from Wangjing Seoul, so he decisively continued southward.
After leaving Kaicheng, they marched along the road to the southeast of Seoul. After walking for more than ten miles, Li Rusong suddenly felt something in his heart. He asked the Korean guide on his horse: "Where is ahead?"
The Korean guide replied through an interpreter: "One or two miles ahead is Daeseong Cave."
The most basic village-level units in North Korea are either caves or li, and the highest-level administrative divisions are roads. General Li has gradually become accustomed to this.
As for the prefectures, prefectures, prefectures, and counties between Dao and villages, General Li has not yet fully understood them.
What I don’t understand even more is how the country of Korea is such a big place, with so many provinces, prefectures, prefectures, counties, and counties, and so many levels of administrative regions existing at the same time. I heard that there are also several Grand Protectorate and Protectorate Prefectures.
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Every time I think of Lin Junmen's words that he often says: "The temple is small and the wind is strong, but the water is shallow and there are many bastards", it feels more and more appropriate.
The guards on the left and right saw Li Rusong standing still and asked inexplicably: "Is there something wrong?"
General Li showed some confusion on his face, pointed to the land under his feet and said: "When I was chatting with Lin Junmen earlier, he said that he must build a house here and call it Panmunjom."
Many people close to him know that Lin Jiuyuan often comes out with some incomprehensible words, like riddles, which are very difficult to understand.
Li Rusong couldn't figure out what Lin Jiuyuan specifically mentioned about "Panmenmen".
Continuing to move forward, while chatting with the guards on the left and right on the road, someone speculated: "I heard that the Governor can spy on the secrets of heaven. Could it be that that place is where the national energy of Korea is located, so Panmunjeom needs to be built to suppress it?"
After much speculation, everyone found that there was really only one possibility.
The second brother Li Rubai, who was following Li Rusong's military operations, advised: "Brother, don't talk about it anymore, it's very ominous!
I read in novels that when the general is always paying attention to or uttering the name of a place during the march, disaster will surely follow!"
Li Rusong: ""
This is really a real brother riding the horse! Can't we hope for something good, such as entering Seoul without any bloodshed and conquering Wang Jing?
On the same day, General Li led his army to Paju, which was only eighty miles away from Seoul, Wangjing, and could be reached in an hour at a quick pace.
Here we received clear news that the Japanese soldiers had withdrawn from Seoul in large numbers.
On the next day, Li Rusong continued to use Zha Damou as the vanguard, himself and Li Rubai in the middle, and Yang Yuandian in the rear. A total of 7,000 horsemen quickly marched towards Seoul.
Because the supply of grain and grass was slightly better than in history, General Li dispatched 2,000 more troops than in history.
Regarding Li Rusong's thoughts at this time, firstly, he thought that he could take advantage of the retreat of the Japanese soldiers to seize Wangjing Seoul and see if there was any food and grass in Seoul. This was what he did all the way here.
Second, I am confident that with 7,000 elite soldiers and horses, I can fight even if I encounter tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers head-on.
Third, they felt that even if the intelligence was wrong and the Japanese soldiers did not withdraw from Seoul, they could still seize the initiative with their strong mobility.
In Li Rusong's eyes, the Japanese soldiers had low combat effectiveness and were vulnerable in field battles. They would only retreat to defend or retreat.
But what Li Rusong didn't expect was that this time the Japanese soldiers did not retreat southward, nor did they defend the city.
Instead, after the military meeting, they assembled 40,000 Japanese soldiers and took the initiative to attack north, seeking opportunities to annihilate the Ming Dynasty official army in the field.
The Japanese soldiers withdrawing from Seoul as reported by the intelligence was not the escape southward that General Li had in mind.
No matter how much Lin Tailai warned him, he could not change General Li's attitude of underestimating the enemy.
That night Li Rusong was stationed at Byokjeokwan. In the early morning, the forward Cha Dashou was attacked by Japanese soldiers. Li Rusong led his troops to rescue him.
Instead of retreating, the Japanese soldiers dared to come and fight with our heavenly soldiers! General Li probably had this mentality at this time.
But today it snowed and the ground was slippery, limiting the cavalry's mobility.
Under this situation, Li Rusong and thousands of soldiers and horses were surrounded by 40,000 well-prepared Japanese soldiers. It was difficult to break out quickly for a while, and they could only defend and kill the enemy on the spot.
Although the Japanese soldiers gathered eight times their strength and completed the encirclement, they were still unable to achieve their goal of encircling and annihilating the Ming Dynasty official army, and the battle loss ratio was not advantageous.
This proves from the side that it is not unreasonable for Japanese soldiers to be despised by Li Rusong.
During this period, the Japanese soldiers organized elite troops several times and launched attacks against Li Rusong's army, but they were all repulsed. In the most recent time, the Japanese soldiers reached a position only 200 steps away from Li Rusong, and the situation was a bit dangerous.
When the two sides fought bloody battles until dusk, Yang Yuan's column of two thousand soldiers and horses, who were originally at the rear, fought hard to open a passage from the outside and assisted Li Rusong in jumping out of the encirclement.
The exhausted Japanese soldiers did not dare to pursue anymore and retreated back to Seoul.
This battle is like a fisherman setting up a net to catch fish, and the big fish has been caught in the net, but in the end the big fish broke through the net with its strength and escaped.
Li Rusong returned directly to Kaicheng, and after checking his troops, he found that one thousand personal guards had suffered heavy losses, with more than half of them being casualties.
For this reason, General Li was heartbroken. These servants are all the private property of the Li family!
He couldn't help but shed tears of regret, and sighed to his second brother Li Rubai: "I regret not listening to Lin Junmen's words!"
Excluding the personal guards and retainers, the Ming Dynasty's official army suffered over a thousand casualties, which was the largest loss since entering the dynasty.
In addition, Li Rusong was frustrated, so the Western Front suspended its advance and maintained the front line in Kaesong.
On the eastern front, with only fifteen days of food and grass in hand, Lin Tailai did not have time to recuperate, so he set off north again on the fifth day of November.
However, he partially rotated his troops and asked Dong Yiyuan's Third Corps to come over from Yongxing with some food and grass to join the main force.
At the same time, Yang Dengden, who was injured in the attack, was asked to lead his own column of soldiers and horses and stationed in Xianxing. He also transferred 5,000 soldiers and horses from the Magui Corps back to Yongxing for defense.
The number of soldiers who set off to Jizhou to conquer Kato Kiyomasa's tribe in this way was: 6,000 troops from the Sanbiao Battalion, 10,000 troops from Magui's 2nd Corps, and 10,000 Dong Yiyuan's 3rd Corps, with a total strength of 26,000.
At this time, Jizhou was three hundred miles away from Xianxing. On the march, what we saw along the way was extremely dilapidated. Most of the villages were in ruins and there were few living people. This scene was different from what we saw on Ping'an Road on the western front.
completely different.
Although the villages on Ping An Road are also poor and dilapidated, they can barely maintain a minimum living environment.
Even when marching in the 400-mile mountainous area, you can see villages that are functioning normally, much better than here in Hamgyong Province.
It can be seen from this that the corruption of Kato Kiyomasa's military discipline led to this situation of "no rooster crows for a hundred miles".
I also heard that Kato Kiyomasa's tribe slaughtered civilians at every turn, possibly in order to intimidate the Korean people not to resist. This kind of brutal brain circuit is exactly the same as that of the Japanese more than three hundred years later.
It is said that until hundreds of years later, the peninsula still used "Kato Kiyomasa" to refer to dogs. When killing dogs to eat meat, they said "kill Kato Kiyomasa", which shows the peninsula's hatred for Kato Kiyomasa.
A few days later, the closer we got to Jizhou, the more tragic the situation became.
Almost wherever the army went, it had been reduced to scorched earth in advance, leaving no ruins or ruins behind.
The ruins of the village, which is mainly made of bamboo and wood structures, can be used to dismantle some firewood, but if it becomes scorched earth, it will be of no use to the army.
Now even Cui Wukui, the military general, couldn't stand it and couldn't help but cursed: "This Kato is really a beast!"
Lin Jinglue burned cities or demolished houses to reduce casualties during battles or for other unavoidable reasons. Normally, he would not kill civilians and burn down huts when nothing happened. This beast, Kato, has absolutely no lower limits of humanity.
Lin Tailai looked at the scene of red earth in his field of vision, and another incomprehensible riddle came out of his mouth: "Four hundred years before and after, they really echo each other."
These words made the more educated followers on the left and right start racking their brains to see if they could solve the riddle.
When was it four hundred years ago? The Southern Song Dynasty? In the Southern Song Dynasty, it was still called Goryeo, right? What is the relationship now? What situation echoes the present?
No one would have thought that the "four hundred years" that Lin Jinglue lamented was not four hundred years ago, but more than four hundred years later.
In Lin Tailai's previous life, Jizhou was the place where Peninsula Beibang conducted nuclear weapons tests.
Thinking of this and seeing the red land in front of him, Lin Tailai couldn't help but want to complain a few words.
However, after the entertaining rants were over, all that was left was worry. He frowned and sighed, "It seems we are going to encounter a difficult situation."
The vast expanse of red land in front of him proved that Kato Kiyomasa implemented the strategy of "strengthening the wall and clearing the country", turning the outskirts of Jizhou into a scorched earth, making it impossible for the Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers to get any help.
At the same time, Kato Kiyomasa is expected to be unable to get out of the city again, relying on the city wall to hold on to the end. This is the situation Lin Tailai hates to encounter the most.
At this time, the army was approaching Jizhou, and they chose the terrain to set up camp. This was done by professional generals.
Lin Jinglue, who was probably the first to arrive in terms of professional skills, did not worry about setting up camp and took his personal guards to investigate outside Jizhou City.
Jizhou can be called a "state", and its level is second only to "fu" in North Korea, which is not too low.
Among the big cities that Lin Tailai conquered, Pyongyang was one of the three capitals, and Hamhung was the place where Li Dynasty thrived and the core town in the Northeast, so the city was pretty decent.
But with the national power of North Korea, it is naturally impossible for all cities to be so similar.
After walking half a circle around Jizhou, Lin Jinglue felt that this was a slightly larger earthen wall. However, even a large earthen wall could cause great trouble to the Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers.
For the Japanese soldiers who had sharp light firearms and were most afraid of cavalry charging into their faces, whether there were fortifications or not were two different concepts, and the large earthen fence was also a fortification that the Japanese soldiers could rely on.
Not to mention that Kato Kiyoshi was a direct descendant of the Japanese Toyotomi clan, and even a direct descendant of the direct descendants, and his tribe was considered the elite of the Japanese army.
Take the number of fire cannons (iron cannons) as an example. The number of fire cannons (iron cannons) equipped by Kato Kiyomasa's department is much higher than that of other Japanese armies. The proportion of fire cannons (iron cannon ashigaru) may be as high as 30%.
To be continued...