Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 854 Ask Daming for Help

The shogunate army's strategy of repairing the plank road and secretly concealing Chen Cang finally succeeded.

For several days in a row, tens of thousands of peasants set up torches on the opposite side of the Guanmen Strait in the darkness, making a gesture of a forceful army crossing. The huge clamor and shouts could be clearly heard across the strait hundreds of feet away.

After urgent discussions with Matsupan Ikeki and Ito Sato, Ikeda Teruma mobilized all the troops to the narrowest part of the strait overnight, and set up a large number of obstacles on the wide beach to facilitate the destruction of the shogunate army after they landed at the beach.

In order to make up for the shortage of troops, Ikeda Teruma immediately sent his cronies to the territory of Yamauchi Quya and others who had left, and asked them to lead the army to reinforce as soon as possible.

However, the shogunate army took advantage of the fact that the coalition forces were concentrated in one place, and used the cover of night to transport more than [-] vanguard troops to Kyushu Island with dozens of ships of various sizes, and then moved forward to reconnaissance and advance to provide cover for the main landing. .

There are a thousand cavalry in the forward of more than five thousand people, which is also the trump card of the shogunate army against the coalition forces.

The commander of the shogunate army is still Wakenen Jisongheiichiro who was defeated by the coalition forces last time. Before this expedition, he swore in front of Tokugawa Iemitsu that he would definitely wipe out the gang of rebels on Kyushu Island. Will commit seppuku to thank the world.

Based on the experience gained from the failure of previous battles with the coalition forces, Ichiro Songhei came to the conclusion: the coalition forces have fierce firearms and cannot fight the enemy head-on, and must adopt other strategies to deal with it.

Since the landing site of the shogunate army was still more than 1 miles away from the defense of the coalition forces, and the attention of the coalition forces was on the opposite bank, until the next morning, when more than [-] main forces of the shogunate army landed on Kyushu Island, the forwards had already When they approached ten miles behind them, Ikeda Huizheng and others realized that they had been fooled.

At noon that day, the battle between the shogunate army and the coalition forces started again, but this time it was the coalition forces that lost.

Under the deployment and command of Songhei Ichiro, the shogunate army used [-] ashigaru to attract the firepower of the coalition forces, then used cavalry to assault the left flank of the coalition forces, and attacked the right flank of the coalition forces with [-] samurai.

As a result, less than a quarter of an hour after the start of the battle, the Ito Clan on the left wing of the coalition forces was broken through by the cavalry of the shogunate army. The main force of the army came to the front, and the two sides began to fight hand-to-hand. Only the iron artillery team of the Hirado Domain in the middle road used strong firepower to force the frontal shogunate army to be unable to approach.

The cavalry of the shogunate army played a vital role in this battle and became the winner or loser of the war situation.

After they defeated the 2000 people of the Ito clan's troops, they went in circles and launched a desperate charge against the more than [-] people of the Hirado clan in the middle road from the side and rear.

After the success of the Hirado Clan Iron Artillery Team's formation change, the shogunate cavalry braved the dense rain of bullets and uninterrupted shooting from longbows to launch a decisive assault on the middle road guarded by more than [-] people in the Hirado Clan, and lost most of them. Under the attack, the Hirado clan's iron artillery team and archer team were disrupted. Song Heiichiro took advantage of the situation and ordered the reserve team to press on and launched a full-scale attack on the coalition forces.

This fierce battle took less than an hour and ended with the defeat of the coalition forces.

The loss of the [-] allied forces reached [-]%. Fortunately, Ikeda Teruma was not in a mess in the face of defeat. He commanded [-] spearmen to resist the fierce offensive of the shogunate army, and used archers to carry out long-distance strikes to cover the Ito and Hirado domains. The defeated troops retreated to the southeast, which did not cause a large-scale defeat of the coalition forces.

The shogunate army temporarily lost the ability to continue to pursue because the cavalry was too damaged and the main force suffered a lot of losses in close combat with the coalition forces. They could only watch the coalition forces alternately cover and retreat.

As the coalition forces had to retreat all the way to the southwest due to unfavorable factors, the shogunate troops crossed the Kanmon Strait one after another and landed on Kyushu Island.

In order to completely wipe out the "rebels" on Kyushu Island, Tokugawa Iemitsu mobilized more than [-] troops from Honshu and Hokkaido this time, which can be said to have cost a lot.

After all the troops landed on Kyushu Island and repaired them for a whole number of days, Song Hei Ichiro waved his banner, and the [-] troops marched in three directions from the left, middle and right, and marched towards the southwest of Kyushu Island in a mighty manner.

Many weak foreign daimyos passing by the army along the way saw the signs of a reversal of the situation, so they offered money, food and young men to the shogunate army, and drew a line with the collapsed alliance with practical actions.

Although I don't know the actual situation of the battle between the two armies, the coalition forces just passed by here a few days ago, but anyone with a little brain can see that the morale of the coalition forces is extremely low. In addition, there are countless wounded people. This situation is completely opposite to the high-spirited situation when the coalition forces passed by before.

And now the shogunate army is unmatched by the coalition forces in terms of numbers and morale, which is enough to explain everything.

In the next month or so, under the offensive of the shogunate army, although Ikeda Teruma temporarily took over the position of the leader of the alliance, and once again reunited the original loose alliance forces, he did not lose the wind in the subsequent battles. However, the difference in the numbers of the two armies was too great, and the space for the coalition forces was gradually reduced to a small range, and the situation deteriorated day by day.

Fortunately, with the arrival of the rainy season, continuous torrential rains fell in the southwest of Kyushu Island, causing countless roads and bridges to be washed away, and the offensive of the shogunate army was forced to stop.

But Teruma Ikeda and the others knew in their hearts that the rainy season in Kyushu Island only lasted for two months. After the rainy season was over, the shogunate army resumed its offensive after being fully repaired. With the current strength and morale of the coalition forces, they don't know how long they can last. time.

As the situation was critical, different voices had appeared within the alliance. He had already heard that a foreign daimyo was secretly preparing to beg for surrender from the shogunate army. This extremely dangerous signal made the senior leaders of the Ikeda clan and the Hirado clan desperate.

Everyone else can surrender, except Hirado and Ikeda.

No matter what the consideration is, Tokugawa Iemitsu will never let the two of them go. Begging to surrender means laying down weapons and letting others be slaughtered. Rather than that, it is better to die in battle.

But the taste of waiting to die is simply unbearable. How should we survive from death?
At this moment, Yone Cang led his people to come up with an idea: to ask the Ming court for help, asking the Ming Dynasty to send troops to land in Japan, and after destroying the shogunate army, take advantage of the situation to help the coalition forces overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate in one fell swoop.

Yone Cang led people to tell Ikeda Huizheng and others bluntly that the purpose of the Ming Dynasty's military assistance was to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and establish a new pro-Ming shogunate. Under the current situation, only the Ming Dynasty quickly dispatched soldiers to save the crisis.

After much deliberation, in order to save their lives, Ikeda Teruma and others agreed to the proposal of Yonekura leading the people, and immediately contacted the relevant personnel of the Zheng family in Nagasaki.

(End of this chapter)