Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1420 Shandong Severe Drought ([-])

October 1665, 11, early morning.

Chang Chun stood on the deck of the flute-shaped transport ship "Baobab Tree" with a sad expression, looking forward through the heavy night, but unfortunately he couldn't see anything, which made him hesitate, and he didn't know whether he should give the order or not. step instructions.

"There should be no problem, let's do it!" Hua Bende, who was wearing a leather armor, touched it quietly and said.

He had two 1633-model flintlock pistols hanging on his waist, a bow on his back, and a long knife in his hand.If the comrades of the Qing army in Chongming County saw him in this honor many years ago, they would have been too scared to recognize him. Without him, the difference is too great!It seems that the conquests on Ezodi Island in the past few years have made the leader of the Tianzhu Army make rapid progress, and now he has a faint aura of vigor.

"Then act, Lao Hua, you are the commander-in-chief of the former enemy, and I will be in the middle." When the matter came to an end, Chang Chun, the commander of the God's Blessed Army, stopped dawdling, took a deep breath, and ordered decisively.

And following his orders, a total of more than 500 men got off the boat one after another in the night, landed on the small boat shaking slightly on the sea, and then, led by the officer, headed to the shore at a leisurely speed. cross out.The 500 of them came from a variety of sources, more than half of them were "warriors" carefully selected from the Tianyou Army and the Tianzhu Army, and the remaining half came from the Ainu natives of Ezoji Island, ronin recruited by the Northeast vassals, and Korean soldiers. Surrendered soldiers and even some samurai from the Matsumae Domain.

It is worth mentioning that after being infiltrated by Wei Boqiu for more than ten years, the Matsumae clan has almost become a sieve. Many businessmen, samurai, and elders in the clan have become the spokespersons for the interests of Japanese companies on the east coast. To some extent, Ju Guang must be influenced by Wei Boqiu, so he must not act at will.Therefore, it is not surprising that some samurai from the Matsumae domain appeared in Changchun and Hua Bende's troops.

The weather doesn't look very good tonight, the night sky is covered by thick dark clouds, although the wilderness is not too dark, it is not a lie.Hundreds of people hurriedly landed on the beach, their weapons and armor clanging. If there was a troop waiting for work to strike them with a thunderbolt on the shore, it would have had a miraculous effect, but it's a pity No!Yaji Hashiguchi, who had already brought more than a dozen ronin ashore to meet him, ran over excitedly and told Lieutenant Warbender that everything was fine and the enemy was still asleep.

Hua Bende nodded when he heard the words, and then summoned the leaders of the teams who had just finished reorganizing their troops, and asked them to act according to the prior plan and attack various targets. The daring Kochi Fan—a few months ago, the Kochi Fan who secretly conducted smuggling trade with Japanese companies on the East Coast swallowed a large amount of goods and refused to pay, which made Wei Boqiu extremely annoyed.Therefore, after months of forbearance to let him relax his vigilance a little, Wei Boqiu ordered Chang Chun and Hua Bende to lead several transport ships and [-] soldiers to secretly go to the coast of Kochi Fan to carry out a landing and sabotage battle at the beginning of this month to let them Long memory, know who's goods can be swallowed and who's goods can't be swallowed!

The few months of peace and tranquility really made the whole Kochi Fan relax their vigilance. Perhaps it is a relatively remote rural area with weak defenses. Of course, the bigger reason may be that the strength of foreign daimyos like Kochi Fan is limited. , so the east bank army divided into several teams quickly entered these villages, and the battle went smoothly.

Holding a longbow, Huabender was walking around the pier anxiously. From time to time, soldiers came to report various news. Most of them were news that a certain team had broken into a certain village, killed one warrior, and plundered a certain amount of money and food. He felt a little relieved.However, he regretted not being able to go to the front line to fight in person, and the Ainu and Japanese wanderers who stood behind him as a reserve team also held the same opinion.These guys basically don't have any sense of integrity, especially those vagrants, who live in poverty on weekdays, and even dare to rob and kill businessmen in the feudal clan, not to mention that this will make them attack other feudal clans. As long as they have money, everything is fine. Trifle!

At three or four o'clock in the morning, the sound of fighting gradually weakened—in fact, the sound of fighting was not very strong at first, because the enemy's resistance was too weak. Huabend even felt that dispatching 500 people might be a bit of a big deal— ——And some of the transport soldiers with weak combat effectiveness have already started to retreat to the pier with a lot of spoils.It can be seen that they did not have enough means of transportation to transport the loot for a while, so many of the "Benmin", "Mizutun", and "Xiaoqian" of Kochi Fan were sent to help carry the supplies, and the scene was a bit chaotic for a while.

Hua Bende frowned, fearing that some local samurai hidden among these Japanese serfs would violently injure people and cause chaos, so he immediately dispatched [-] soldiers who were good at close combat from the reserve team to let them He stepped forward to maintain order and gave full powers, and those who disobeyed will be killed!In addition, he also asked his deputy to lead a hundred well-trained musketeers to the intersection, in case a support army suddenly appeared from somewhere.When marching and fighting abroad, one must be cautious and cautious, otherwise it is common for the ship to capsize in the gutter.

After arranging these, Hua Bende immediately ordered the sailors of several ships to come and fetch supplies without delay.Except for a little gold, silver, and cloth, the materials are basically food. This is probably related to the economic structure of Japan at this time, that is, Japan is a very divided and fragmented market. It can be seen in the writings of the Japanese.Hagyu Sorai once said in "Politics": "In the past, except for special circumstances, money was not used to buy things in various places, but rice and wheat were used...", so people from the east coast will rush into the rural areas of Japan After killing them, it turned out that they got nothing except a large amount of food, not to mention the degree of pain.

Fortunately, unprecedented drought and locust plagues have broken out in Shandong, and there is an extreme shortage of food. Therefore, it is a good thing that a large amount of food has been seized in the Japanese countryside. After all, this can be directly used to save lives, and gold, silver and copper coins cannot be obtained. Come eat!The only problem now is probably how to transport these grains to the big ship anchored at sea as soon as possible. You know, this is in Japan. I don’t know if someone escaped just now to report the news and stay on the shore for a while. There is a huge risk of being bitten.

Moreover, the grain seized this time was slightly more, because the lord of the Kochi Domain, Yamauchi Tadatoyo, just ordered a while ago that, in addition to the normal annual tribute, a lot of tribute was collected in the name of "exported rice" and "owed rice". , almost reaching [-]% ​​of the normal annual tribute.In addition, this tyrannical extortionist also collected more "small things" (also known as small annual tributes) from places near the sea, rivers, mountains, and grasslands in the territory, and also collected the share for two years in advance. I don't know what this guy wants to do. Therefore, the people on the east bank caught a large amount of food at once, saving the effort of searching around.Now, all they need to do is probably try their best to transport it as soon as possible, because God knows when someone with no eyes will come to "disturb" them.

The transshipment of food supplies started quickly in such a tense and hasty atmosphere.In order to speed up the transshipment, with the approval of Hua Bende, Yaji Hashiguchi led a group of wanderers to recruit some poor Japanese farmers to help, and promised to send them some money and food as rewards after the work was completed. This is very attractive. "Cao Fen" (those who reclaim wasteland), "Wu Gao" (poor, hired, and tenant farmers without land, including Shui Tun, Xiao Qian, etc.), "Ting Zi" (children born to slaves, who can business) came to help.

In addition, there are a considerable number of "filthy" and "non-human" (the lowest hereditary status left over from crimes, demotions and other reasons in history, belonging to the untouchable class), these people are even more active than the poor serfs in front of them. You must be high, and happily helped the people on the east coast transport food, and some of them even asked if they could leave with the big ship on the east coast, because they really would rather die under the current Japanese social system.

The tense food transshipment work continued until noon and it was just announced that it was over. Miraculously, the people on the east bank only encountered an inexplicable Japanese army and easily defeated it. There was no obstacle other than that, making a large amount of food Enron was transferred to several large ships.

And why is this Japanese army strange, because its number is only a few hundred people, but the proportion of samurai is extremely high, there are as many as 20 people, it seems that they intend to come here to temporarily call the militia to fight.It's a pity that what they encountered was the heavily armed east coast army. After the musketeers shot intensively, the team composed of more than 200 ronin warriors, Ainu barbarians, and soldiers from the second army of God Bless and God Bless were defeated in a short charge. This small Japanese reinforcement army killed its leader and feudal official Sasakiemon, and captured more than [-] people, including the samurai Arima Tadanobu in the village.

What is ironic is that the captured samurai Arima Tadanobu was afraid of being killed, so he kept begging for mercy through Hashiguchi Yaji, a ronin from the Kagoshima domain, and kept advocating that he knew the inside story of the Kochi domain. He is willing to help contact some "prisoners" (that is, vassals and samurai who have lost their lords. The Tokugawa shogunate has been rectifying the discipline of the feudal vassals over the years. Undoubtedly created a large number of ronin, which once became a serious social problem in Japan), "rangers" (banner slaves, town slaves), together against the daimyo of the feudal clan, and helped the people on the east coast to gain benefits-according to what he said, anyway, these The rogues usually have nothing to do, no food and clothing, and they will make trouble every three days. The big names of the vassals are troubled by this, and the suppression can't be suppressed. If the people from the east bank send elite warriors to attack and cooperate with them, they will break through It is not impossible for some cities and towns in the feudal domain, as that would be a lot of money.

After thinking about it for a while, Hua Bende felt that it was possible to do something, so he immediately took Hashiguchi Yaji and Arima Tadanobu on the big ship, and discussed with Changchun secretly. As a result, Changchun was forced by the reality of food shortage and agreed to them. The behavior is just to ask them not to expand the scope of the attack. It is best to operate in the Shikoku Island area, so as not to incur huge pressure from the shogunate, so that Kagoshima may not dare to do this smuggling trade with the east coast.

Ever since, under the guidance of the leading party, in the next half a month or so, the people from the East Coast will drive these large ships to land and attack various places along the coast of Kochi Fan, making Yamauchi Tadatoyo exhausted and exhausted. helpless.Moreover, what frightened the lord of the Shanuchi domain even more was that the ronin in the domain seemed to have received some news. They either flocked to the seaside to join the ranks of the people from the east coast one by one, or they made troubles, robbed, and killed people everywhere, and let the local judiciary The county magistrates and town magistrates are miserable.Even, in many places, Ometsu, who was in charge of local security and judicial trials, and the officials and samurai who were in charge of Mufu, were completely cut off by the troublemakers, and the local situation was once extremely corrupt.

Under such circumstances, one can imagine the extent of the chaos in Kochi Fan, and this undoubtedly facilitated the actions of people from the east coast to go ashore to plunder.As of mid-December, they had wreaked havoc in the Kochi domain and the neighboring Uwajima domain and Tokushima domain, and seized a large amount of spoils, with a total of more than 6 yuan of gold, silver and copper, [-] shi of grain, and some cloth and silk. Hemp and other miscellaneous goods are not easy to value, and in the end they were all given as rewards to the Japanese wanderers who followed them to make trouble.

By the way, I have to mention here that during the more than a month-long coastal landing raid, the people on the east coast were not without losses.At least once, they were each bitten by the main forces of the Kochi and Tokushima domains, and the combined losses exceeded 400 people.However, thanks to the cannon fodder supplemented by a large number of ronin, poor people and even untouchables, their number not only did not decrease, but even increased.When the operation ended in mid-December, the total strength of the two armies of Tianyou and Tianyou had expanded from the initial [-] to nearly [-]. Just relying on these thousands of desperadoes and the strategic initiative they occupy, the Kochi Fan is really difficult to deal with. After all, you can't set up a large number of troops to defend everywhere. How many soldiers can you have for you? squander?

On December 1665, 12, several ships loaded with goods and people left the vicinity of Shikoku Island and headed for Ezoji Island along the ocean current.This time, Chang Chun and Hua Bende were also a little uneasy. After all, this time they made things worse, and they don't know how their superiors will punish them.However, bringing back a large amount of spoils from Japan—especially the more than 17 shi of grain—may be able to ease the punishment for them, after all, it is the time when there is an extreme shortage of food.Moreover, through this tentative action, they learned the inside story of the feudal clans along the southeast coast of Japan. In the future, if there is no food to relieve the victims, mobilizing people to come here to grab food seems to be a way, but the top is not there. As a last resort, it probably won't be adopted.

(End of this chapter)