Daming talker

Chapter 705: Both Fronts Encountered Difficulties (Seeking Monthly Tickets!)

It was the seventh day of the eleventh month of the twentieth year of the Wanli reign, exactly one month after Marshal Lin Tian led his troops into the DPRK.

Li Rusong, commander of the First Corps on the Western Front, heard in Kaesong, 150 miles away from the royal capital Seoul, that the Japanese troops were about to withdraw from the royal capital Seoul, so he decisively continued to march south.

After leaving Kaesong and marching along the road southeastward toward Seoul, Li Rusong had only walked a dozen miles when he suddenly felt something in his heart. He stopped his horse and asked the Korean guide, "Where is ahead?"

The Korean guide replied through the translator: "Daeseongdong is one or two miles ahead."

The most basic village-level unit in North Korea is either a dong or a ri, and the highest-level administrative district is a dao. General Li gradually got used to this.

As for the prefectures, states, counties and districts between Daohe Village, General Li still hasn't fully understood them.

What is even more confusing is that the Kingdom of Korea is so small, how could such complex and hierarchical administrative regions such as prefectures, states, counties and counties exist at the same time? I heard that there were also several large protectorates and protectorates.

Whenever I think of a saying that General Lin often said: "The smaller the temple, the more evil spirits there are; the shallower the water, the more turtles there are", it seems more and more appropriate.

The guards on both sides looked at Li Rusong and asked in confusion, "What's wrong?"

General Li showed a puzzled look on his face, pointing to the land under his feet and said, "When I was chatting with General Lin before, he said that he must build a house here and name it Panmunjom."

Many people close to him know that Lin Jiuyuan often utters some inexplicable words, which are like riddles and are very difficult to understand.

Li Rusong tried his best to figure out what Lin Jiuyuan meant by "Panmunjom".

As they continued on their way, while chatting with the guards on the left and right, someone speculated, "I heard that the governor can see through the secrets of heaven. Could it be that the place is the spiritual center of the Joseon Kingdom, so they built Panmunjom to suppress it?"

After much speculation, everyone concluded that this was the only possibility.

Li Rusong's second brother Li Rubai, who was following Li Rusong's central army, advised him, "Brother, please stop nagging me. This is very ominous!

I read in novels and storybooks that whenever a general kept paying attention to or repeating a place name during a march, disaster would surely follow! "

Li Rusong: "."

This is really fucking brothers! Can't we hope for something good, such as entering Seoul without bloodshed and retaking the capital?
That day, General Li led his troops to Paju, which was only eighty miles away from the royal capital, Seoul, and could be reached in an hour by riding at full speed.

Here we also received clear news that the Japanese troops had withdrawn from the royal capital, Seoul, in large numbers.

The next day, Li Rusong continued to use Zha Dashou as the vanguard, himself and Li Rubai in the middle, and Yang Yuan in the rear. A total of 7,000 cavalrymen quickly marched towards Seoul.

Because the supply of food and fodder was slightly better than in history, General Li also dispatched two thousand more soldiers this time than in history.

Regarding Li Rusong's idea at this time, he thought that he could take advantage of the Japanese soldiers' retreat to seize the royal capital, Seoul, and see if there was any food or grass in Seoul. This was what he had been doing all the way here.

Second, he was confident that with 7,000 elite soldiers, he could fight head-on even if he encountered tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers.

Third, he thought that even if the intelligence was wrong and the Japanese troops had not withdrawn 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, and could only retreat or defend.

But what Li Rusong did not expect was that this time the Japanese soldiers did not retreat southward, nor did they defend the city to the death.

Instead, after a military meeting, he assembled 40,000 Japanese soldiers and took the initiative to attack northward, seeking an opportunity to annihilate the Ming army in a field battle.

The intelligence report that the Japanese troops withdrew from Seoul did not mean that they fled south as General Li had expected.

No matter how much Lin Tailai warned, he could not change General Li's attitude of underestimating the enemy.

That night Li Rusong was stationed in Biti Pavilion. In the early morning, the vanguard Cha Dashou was attacked by Japanese soldiers, so Li Rusong led his troops to rescue them.

The Japanese soldiers not only refused to retreat, but also dared to come and fight with our heavenly soldiers! General Li probably had this mentality at this time.

But it snowed today, and the ground was slippery, limiting the mobility of the cavalry.

Under such circumstances, Li Rusong and thousands of soldiers were surrounded by 40,000 well-prepared Japanese soldiers. It was difficult for them to break out quickly, so they could only defend themselves and kill the enemy on the spot.

Although the Japanese soldiers gathered eight times the strength and completed the encirclement, they were still unable to achieve their goal of encircling and annihilating the Ming army, and their casualty ratio was not advantageous.

This indirectly proves that it is not unreasonable that Li Rusong looked down on the Japanese soldiers.

During this period, the Japanese soldiers organized their elite forces several times to attack Li Rusong's central army, but were repelled each time. In the most recent attack, the Japanese soldiers were only 200 steps away from Li Rusong, and the situation was a little dangerous.

The two sides fought bloody battles until dusk. The two thousand soldiers of Yang Yuan's column, which was originally the rear guard, fought hard to open a passage from the outside to help Li Rusong escape from the encirclement.

The exhausted Japanese soldiers dared not pursue any further and retreated back to Seoul.

This battle is like a fisherman setting out a net to catch fish, and a big fish has already been caught in the net, but in the end the big fish uses its strength to break through the net and escape.

Li Rusong retreated directly to Kaesong. After inspecting the troops, he found that among his 1,000 personal guards, more than half of them had suffered heavy losses or were killed or wounded.

General Li felt heartbroken because these servants were the private property of the Li family!
He couldn't help shedding tears of regret, and sighed to his second brother Li Rubai: "I regret not listening to General Lin's advice!"

Excluding the personal guards and servants, over a thousand Ming troops were killed, the heaviest loss since entering the DPRK.

In addition, Li Rusong's morale was frustrated, so the advance on the western front was suspended and the front line was maintained in Kaesong.

On the eastern front, because there was only fifteen days of food and fodder, Lin Tailai did not take more time to rest and set out again northward on November 5th.

However, he partially rotated his troops and asked Dong Yiyuan's Third Corps to rush over from Yongxing with some food and fodder to join the main force.

At the same time, Yang Dengshan, who was injured in the attack, was ordered to lead the troops of his column to garrison in Hamhung, and 5,000 troops were transferred from the Ma Gui Corps back to Yongxing for defense.

In this way, the troops who set out to Jizhou to attack Kato Kiyomasa's troops included 6,000 troops from the Third Battalion of the Jinglüe Army, 10,000 troops from part of Ma Gui's Second Corps, and 10,000 troops from Dong Yiyuan's Third Corps, for a total of 26,000 troops.

At this time, Jizhou was 300 miles away from Hamheung. On the march, everything along the way was in great devastation. Most of the villages had become ruins, and there were few living people. This scene was completely different from what was seen on the western front in Pyeongan Province.

Although the villages in Pyeongan-do are also poor and dilapidated, they can still barely maintain the minimum standard of living environment.

Even when marching through the 400-mile mountainous area, we could see villages functioning normally, which was much better than in Hamgyong Province.

This shows that the poor discipline of Kato Kiyomasa's army led to the situation of "no crowing of roosters for a hundred miles".

I also heard that Kato Kiyomasa's troops slaughtered civilians at will, probably to intimidate the people of Korea not to resist. This brutal thinking is exactly the same as the devils three hundred and several decades later.

It is said that even hundreds of years later, the peninsula still used "Kato Kiyomasa" to refer to dogs, and when killing a dog and eating its meat, people would say that Kato Kiyomasa was killed, which shows the peninsula's hatred for Kato Kiyomasa.

A few days later, the closer they got to Jizhou, the more tragic the situation became. Wherever the army went, it had already been turned into scorched earth, with not even a ruin left.

The ruins of the village, which was mainly made of bamboo and wood, could still be dismantled to produce some firewood, but if it turned into scorched earth, it would be of no use to the army.

Even Cui Wukui, the military interpreter, couldn't stand it anymore and couldn't help cursing, "This Kato is a beast!"

Lin Jinglie burned down cities or demolished houses in order to reduce casualties during battles or for other unavoidable reasons. He would not kill civilians or burn their houses when he had nothing to do. This beast Kato has absolutely no humanity at all.

As Lin Tailai looked at the barren land within his field of vision, he uttered another inexplicable riddle: "Four hundred years ago and now, there is a real connection."

This again caused the more educated followers on both sides to rack their brains to see if they could solve the riddle.

What was four hundred years ago? The Southern Song Dynasty? During the Southern Song Dynasty, it was called Goryeo, right? What is the relationship with the present? What is the situation that corresponds to the present?

No one could have imagined that the "four hundred years" that Lin Jinglie lamented about was not four hundred years ago, but more than four hundred years later.

In Lin Tailai's previous life, Jizhou was the place where North Korea conducted nuclear weapons tests.

Thinking of this and seeing the barren land in front of him, Lin Tailai couldn't help but want to complain a few words.

But after the entertaining complaints, all that was left was worry. He frowned and sighed, "It looks like we're going to run into a difficult situation."

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The vast expanse of barren land before him proved that Kato Kiyomasa had implemented the strategy of "fortifying the walls and clearing the fields", turning the outskirts of Jizhou into a scorched earth, leaving the Ming army without any help.

At the same time, Kato Kiyomasa is expected to stay in the city and rely on the city walls to defend to the end. This is the situation that Lin Tailai hates to encounter the most.

At this time, the army was approaching Jizhou, selecting the terrain and setting up camp, all of which were done by professional generals.

Lin Jinglüe, who was probably the first to reach the city, did not worry about setting up camp and went to the outskirts of Jizhou city with his personal guards to conduct an investigation.

Jizhou can be called a "zhou", which is second only to "fu" in the rank of Korea, and is not too low.

Among the big cities conquered by Lin Tailai, Pyongyang was one of the three capitals, and Hamhung was the place where the Joseon Dynasty rose and an important core town in the northeast, so the city was quite decent.

But considering the national strength of North Korea, it is impossible for all cities to be so well-prepared.

After circling Jizhou for half a circle, Lin Jinglue felt that this was just a slightly larger earthen wall. However, even a large earthen wall could cause great trouble to the Ming army.

For the Japanese soldiers, who are good at light firearms and are most afraid of cavalry charges, having or not having fortifications is two different concepts. A large earthen wall is enough for the Japanese soldiers to rely on.

Not to mention that Kato Kiyomasa was a trusted and direct descendant of the Toyotomi clan of Japan, and even a direct descendant of the direct descendants, and his followers were considered the elite in the Japanese army.

Take the number of muskets (teppo) for example. The number of muskets (teppo) equipped by Kato Kiyomasa's troops was much higher than that of other Japanese troops, and the proportion of musketeers (teppo foot soldiers) may be as high as 30%.

On the other hand, the Ming army was not in a hurry for food and fodder. As they had marched through the mountainous areas, they did not carry many heavy artillery and siege equipment.

Faced with such a situation, even if the enemy relied on a large earthen wall, it would still give Lin Tailai a headache.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that we can’t fight. If we really couldn’t fight, we wouldn’t come. The main reason is that Lin Jinglie didn’t want his side to suffer too many casualties and was unwilling to capture the city at the cost of heavy casualties.

This place is far away from the Ming mainland, and it is not easy to replenish troops. It is very important to preserve the manpower, so Lin Jinglie has always adhered to the principle of reducing casualties as much as possible, even at the cost of bearing some infamy for this.

At the same time, because military rations were limited and the city had to be captured within ten days, there was also time pressure.

After inspecting the situation in Jizhou City and settling down in the camp, Lin Tailai returned to the camp to eat and then listened to reports from the commanders of various corps and columns.

As for very useful suggestions, I haven't heard any so far. After all, the other generals don't know Kato Kiyomasa as well as Lin Tailai himself.

Then Lin Tailai summoned the biggest traitor, Ju Jingren, who was captured in Hamhung, and asked, "You are the only one among us who has come into contact with Kato Kiyomasa. What kind of person do you think he is?"

Ju Jingren thought for a moment and replied, “This man is full of contradictions. He behaves very cruelly, but he also likes to put on airs.

He has a high opinion of himself, likes to brag, and likes to solve problems by intimidating his opponents.

He has outstanding strength, but also has certain leadership skills, and is good at pretending, so he has a high prestige among the Japanese soldiers. "

Lin Tailai said thoughtfully: "It sounds like this Kato Kiyomasa is very pretentious in his behavior? He likes to show off?"

Ju Jingren silently digested the new words "very pretentious" and "pretending to be awesome", and gradually he was able to understand their meaning.

"The general's summary is brilliant, Kato Kiyomasa just likes to pretend." Then Ju Jingren gave another example, "Earlier in Huining City, I tied up the two princes, Linhaijun and Shunhejun, and presented them to Kato Kiyomasa.

Logically speaking, he should be rewarded, but Kato Kiyomasa first scolded the villain severely and accused him of being disloyal and unrighteous.

The point is that while he scolded me for being disloyal and unjust, he also continued to slaughter civilians and rob food. He burned, killed, raped and looted wherever he went, and even asked me to help him plunder in Hamgyong Province. So, do you think he is pretending, Duke Jinglüe?"

Lin Tailai did not find it strange and commented: "This is the habit of the Japanese pirates. Although they look like humans, they are still beasts in nature.

Just like wolves, tigers and leopards, they don't think it's wrong to eat people. The same is true for Japanese people like Kato Kiyomasa. His love of showing off is just an external manifestation of his animal nature."

Ju Jingren could only agree, "Jinglüegong has a good opinion."

Lin Tailai asked again: "The Linhaijun you kidnapped and presented to Kato is the eldest son of the current King of Korea, right? I also heard that the King of Korea has no legitimate son?"

Gu Jingren replied: "Yes, but the king prefers the second son Gwanghaegun and will definitely make Gwanghaegun the crown prince."

This is probably known to the entire Joseon Kingdom. When escaping, the Joseon King kept his second son, Gwanghaegun, with him, but sent his eldest son, Imhaegun, to the northeastern Hamgyong Province, which resulted in Imhaegun being captured by Kato Kiyomasa.

"Is Linhai Jun still alive?" Lin Tailai asked again.

Ju Jingren said with certainty: "Kato Kiyomasa has kept the important prisoners alive, and the two princes are imprisoned in the army."

Lin Tailai then said righteously: "Limhaegun is the eldest son, Gwanghaegun is the second son, and the order of seniority is in order.

When it comes to the issue of succession to the throne, how can the eldest son be deposed and the youngest be enthroned? This is against morality!

Wait until I rescue Linhai Jun first, and then negotiate carefully with your king."

Ju Jingren was speechless. It was obvious that you, Lord Jinglüe, were looking for excuses to interfere in our North Korea's internal affairs.

After talking about other things, Lin Jinglue said to Ju Jingren: "Also, our department wants to send you to the city to persuade Kato Kiyomasa to surrender, what do you think?"

Ju Jingren: “.”

Can I choose to refuse?
(End of this chapter)