No one, not the Mori family of the Choshu Domain nor the remaining members of the Murakami navy, expected the sudden attack by the Chinese fleet.
That night, along the coast of Shimonoseki, thick smoke billowed and flames shot into the sky. The Mori garrison fort at Cape Kushizaki only had one cannon. After a brief resistance, it was silenced. Immediately afterwards, the fleet's artillery shells flew toward Maeda. .Hit the Maori garrison ammunition depot, causing three consecutive big explosions. Half an hour later, the main coast guard stronghold of the Choshu Domain was completely destroyed by the Chinese fleet. Fire and smoke rose everywhere, and the air was filled with thorns. The smell of gunpowder smoke filled my nose. All the Murakami naval vessels in the port were destroyed. The Changshu garrison scattered and fled. There was not a single moving figure on the position.
The sailor musketry team of the Chinese Army rowed a small boat and rushed to the coast shouting. They occupied various positions. They destroyed the three cannons, countless muskets, and swords abandoned by the Changshu garrison. They brought all the remaining gunpowder of the Changshu Army back to the ship. .
Early the next morning, the Maori Army Commander Otomo Yama Prefecture summoned a group of Maori samurai to sneak back to Maeda in an attempt to recapture some weapons. However, they incurred a fierce counterattack from the combined fleet. The cannon shells of the three Hiji giant ships hit Shimonoseki Town. The city street. The flying Thunderbolt rockets burned the Shimonoseki area to a white ground. The Chinese fleet advanced westward and occupied Hikoshima. All ships anchored here were burned, regardless of size. The sailor musketeers landed under the cover of fleet artillery and rockets. . Completely destroy the defense strongholds such as the disciple village fortress on the island one by one. The Chinese fleet's military operation lasted for two days. At a slight cost of killing 1 person and wounding 10 people, the Choshu Domain Mori family's painstaking efforts were destroyed. At Shimonoseki and other coastal strongholds, all remaining ships of the Murayama Navy were destroyed and a complete victory was achieved.
A few days later, the news reached the camp of the Northern Kyushu daimyo coalition forces that were gathering in the Kumamoto Domain. All the Kyushu daimyo who were following the shogunate's orders and planning to go to Satsuma were at a loss.
The Chinese fleet's northward march is equivalent to a stab in the back of the home bases of the Northern Kyushu daimyo. This is a strategy that has never been implemented in Japan since the Warring States Period: "Threaten the land from the sea."
Originally, the Kitakyushu daimyo gathered troops to fight for the Shimazu family in Satsuma. This was completely forced by the Tokugawa Shogunate's "Order to Aggressively Recover Satsuma Prefecture". Whether it was the Kato family in Kumamoto, the Kuroda family in Fukuoka, Tanaka Tadamasa in Kurume, or Ogawa Castle The Hosokawa family and other daimyo with an income of hundreds of thousands of koku. Or the Saeki, Nobeoka, Hirado, Kashima and other small daimyo with less than a hundred thousand koku. They have no interest in fighting the Chinese army. For one thing, they We have not yet recovered from several wars such as Korea and Sekigahara. Secondly, the Six Nations Nagasaki Complaint has been made public. The Battle of Kagoshima was entirely a disaster caused by the Satsuma Shimazu family. Everyone has a strong relationship with the Shimadzu family. He lacks goodwill towards such a powerful potential opponent and is not willing to help the Satsuma Shimazu family.
Now, the Chinese army is approaching the sea of Kitakyushu, and they can attack any daimyo whose territory is on the seaside at will. This gives the daimyo a reason to stop moving forward and shrink their troops to stick to their hometowns.
Therefore, one month after the Tokugawa shogunate issued an order to fight against the Chinese army in Satsuma, under Hitoyoshi Castle where the Kumamoto clan's northern Kyushu army was gathering, the number of the coalition forces not only did not increase, but also gradually decreased.
The envoy of the Satsuma Shimazu family, Shimazu Tadanagi, went to the camp outside Hitoyoshi Castle every day to pray to the Northern Kyushu daimyo to send troops quickly. However, all the generals sent by the daimyo were busy working and found various reasons to postpone the date of dispatching troops.
The longer the Chinese army stayed in the Shimadzu family's home, the more boring it became.
These days, Maitoku is responsible for supervising the construction of Kagoshima Castle and the defenses at the northern foot of Castle Mountain. Yang Dacheng, Luo Quanxiu and others are busy attacking various branch cities of the Oshimazu family and conducting a final and thorough search of the Satsuma Domain. The slogan is "Never let go of a grain of rice, never let go of a person, never let go of a treasure."
It has been two months since the occupation of Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Domain. Tofukuji Castle, Fukuma Castle, Isa Castle, Isaku Castle, Inner Castle, Heisa Castle, Kajiki Castle, Kokubu Castle, Demizu Castle, Necha Castle, Kiyomizu Castle, and Urabu Castles and other branches of the Shimazu family and the residence of important ministers. There were also residences of the Shimazu family branch families such as Ijuin, Qidain, and Irinain. They were all swept away by the Chinese army: some castles were broken, and all the population and property were plundered; some surrendered. Finally, he had to hand over all the valuable things in the city to redeem the city.
Yin Feng also personally led the artillery battalion and foreign mercenary sentries to march into Oguchi Castle and surrounded the Shinna family, the Shimazu family's important officials who refused to surrender. Finally, Oguchi Castle was attacked by foreigners after the city gates were opened by the Chinese army's artillery. The mercenary sentry was completely looted. The Shinna family persisted in resisting. More than fifty members of the whole family were completely exterminated. In the past two months, the Shimazu family had separated their Hatamoto samurai, mother-in-law samurai, and Ashigaru-gumi first-class samurai. The backbone of the class suffered heavy losses.
Kagoshima Port also held a goods auction. The main reason was that Yin Feng's plan to recruit local labor had achieved unprecedented success. Strong Japanese laborers who wanted to go to Taiwan to work as coolies were queuing up to get on the ship. Therefore, some houses were searched. The obtained goods had to be auctioned on the spot at Kagoshima Port to merchants from various countries. The news spread to Nagasaki and Hirado through Chinese merchants. Transactions at Japan's Foreign Trade Port have come to a halt. Merchants from various countries are holding back the goods and are unwilling to sell them. Waiting for the shogunate to respond to their paper accusing the Satsuma clan of crimes. Anyway, it is idle. Businessmen from all over the world took their own merchant ships and rushed to Kagoshima Port after hearing the news. Of course, they copied high-quality Japanese silver from the Shimadzu family's warehouse. The market price of Japanese swords and other goods was much lower than that of Nagasaki and Hirado. But Yin Feng still made a big profit again; these goods were copied from homes without capital.
Although Taiwan has been open as a port for 7 years, the development of plain areas has also begun to bear fruit. Although Yin Feng mobilized his men to recruit disaster victims from the mainland and spared no efforts in bringing refugees to work in Taiwan, the lack of labor has always been a major concern of the China United Company. .
Yin Feng felt that the cost of attracting mainland labor immigrants was too high. After occupying Tsurumaru Castle, he found piles of honest Japanese farmers in front of his eyes. He suddenly became enlightened. He issued an order to recruit local Japanese labor force. Of course, he also issued an order at the same time. He issued an order to recruit Japanese women, which gave Zeng Rui and others a headache.
At first, the Chinese military personnel obeyed Yin Feng's orders; they generally did not force Japanese people to board the ship. Sometimes they paid some remuneration in advance. It was pitiful rice or some corn, sweet potatoes, etc. Japanese farmers did not know much about it at the time. Food. Later, due to the increasing resistance and riots of the samurai class, and the Kitakyushu Allied Forces began to gather. The main force of the Chinese army was to build defensive positions in Shiroyama and Inari River. There were fewer and fewer Chinese people to manage the requisitioned labor force. Zeng Rui et al. People were really impatient to work slowly and efficiently, so they summoned the local overseas Chinese, gave them swords and spears, and asked them to manage the work. So, these overseas Chinese unscrupulously plundered the population, just like back then. The Japanese pirates treated them the same.
After hearing the news, Yin Feng hurriedly went to stop them. However, the Xu family who took the lead in the fight for survival argued plausibly: "...these Japanese like to force them to work like this. If we don't do this, they will not be used to it." This statement made Yin Feng choke. He was stunned. There was no answer for a long time. Missionary Lu Ruohan stood up and said: "I don't think these Japanese people will have any objection. Their habit is to never say 'no' in front of superiors and powerful people. ."
Yin Feng looked at the busy Chinese army officers and soldiers on the Inari River position in the distance. He knew in his heart that there was no extra manpower to take care of this matter. He had no choice but to acquiesce to the approach of the overseas Chinese.
In mid-September, the Chinese army relied on wandering Japanese hawkers and its own detectives to detect the news that the Japanese Kitakyushu Allied Forces had begun to move south.
The Chinese fleet cruised along the coast of Kitakyushu and Shikoku Island. Therefore, the shogunate did not send a large army to support. The basic strength of the coalition forces were all sent by the major names in Kyushu. The shogunate only sent the military supervisor Itakura Shigemasa and the deputy envoy Toda Clan Tedai. 800 Tokugawa samurai came to supervise the battle. The other Kyushu daimyo who were forced to send troops included 15,000 troops of Kashima Domain Nabeshima Katsushige. Arima Toyo of Chikugo Kurume led 1,500 troops. Hosokawa of Kokura Castle Tadayori led 10,000 people. Kengo Terasawa of Karatsu Domain led 7,000 troops. The rest were four to five thousand ashigaru sent by daimyo such as Kuroda Tadayuki, Ogasawara Tadayama, Matsudaira Shigenao. Among the leading generals, the most famous one was Munesege Tachibana, known as "the most courageous general in the Japanese army", also took part in the battle.
Tachibana Munesege was a famous Kyushu general. He was originally a subordinate of Otomo Sorin. He served as the nominal commander of the "Chikuzen Military Commander" in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Kyushu expedition. He led the vanguard army southward before Hideyoshi's main force and successively attacked Higo Nanguan and Yamaga. , Oshiro, Kumamoto, Sagara, Aso, Aishi Takezaki Castle, Akahoshi Kikuchi County, Utama Castle, Nitama County and other places. Later, he was the vanguard to march into Satsuma again to attack Izumi Castle that fell to Shimazu Tadatsu. Then he went south to Kawauchi. Defeat Shimazu Tadanagi. And rescued his younger brother Takahashi Nomaso and his wife who were captured as hostages. At this time, Shimazu Yoshihisa was defeated at the Battle of Hyuga Gen Shirasaka and went to Kawauchi Taiheiji Temple to surrender. Munesege went to Ijuin and Qidain on behalf of Hideyoshi. He came to the hospital to receive the hostages. He then took the lead in marching into Oguchi Castle to surround Tadashi Shinna, the Shimazu minister who still refused to surrender, and forced him to surrender. Kyushu was finally pacified. After the war, Hideyoshi gave Chikugo Yanagawa Domain 132,000 koku of territory for his meritorious service. From Otomo The clan became independent and became the direct daimyo of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In the 18th year of Tensho (1590), he participated in the Odawara expedition responded by Hideyoshi. He participated in the battle in the Iwako and Edo areas. After the war, Hideyoshi praised " To the east there is Honda Tadakatsu, a general who is unparalleled in the world. To the west there is Tachibana Tōtora, a general who is unparalleled in the world. To the east and west there is a pair of famous generals."
Tachibana Muneshige was also very famous on the Korean battlefield. He defeated the Ming Dynasty's Liaodong Army Cha Da Shou Division in the Battle of Bitokan. In the afternoon, after the assembly of Kobayakawa Takakage and other Japanese troops, the battle started again. At this time, he faced other generals such as the Maori Army. He requested to compete with Ukita's army to be the vanguard. Munesege agreed and said to his retainers: "No matter which army's victory is Japan's victory. There is no need to fight for such a false name." For comfort, he then moved his troops to hide on the right flank of the Ming army. On the mountain. Seeing the opportunity, they went to battle. They first fired rapidly with iron cannons, then drew their swords and attacked the Ming army. They marched to Li Rushong's original formation. He fought fiercely with the Ming army with Hidebako Kobayakawa who attacked the left wing of the Ming army and the famous Ukita general Tatsuyasu Togawa who was ambushing. All day long.
After the war, Hideyoshi expressed his feelings and praised Muneshige as a "natural warrior". When Kato Kiyomasa heard about the battle in Anbeon Prefecture, he also said that "the vanguard must be Tachibana Muneshige." In this battle, the Tachibana Army was in the second assault. Attendant General Ju Tokirenkyu. The Hatamoto samurai, the mother-clothed samurai, and the Ashigaru-gu first-class lower-level samurai with low salaries such as Ono Nariyuki, Ikebe Nagasaki, Kogushige, and Tsunehisa Anton, including miscellaneous soldiers, lost nearly 500 troops.
----------
I would like to apologize here. There have been accidents at home. My wife sprained her foot. My daughter’s cornea is inflamed. She has too many worldly affairs and is busy at work. I really don’t have time to update. In another month, my wife’s foot will heal and I will have time to write. Please Everyone forgive me.