Dragon Sea Empire

The first charge of the Nanmen Shimadzu Army only reached 200 steps from the fortress. Just when they entered the range of the muskets, the charge team was beaten to pieces by the cannon.

The Shimadzu Army in the east was originally a diversionary attack. Under the cover of the houses in the city, they rushed to a place 100 steps away from the fortress. After the main force collapsed, the Shimadzu Army in the east had no choice but to retreat.

In ten minutes, the first official battle between the Shimadzu army and the Chinese company army ended. Only three Chinese were slightly injured by stray bullets; .

The Japanese casualties were not large, but the shock was not small. The essence of the Shimadzu Army has lost a lot in the battles of Korea and Sekigahara in the past ten years. Knowing the real situation of firearms combat, they retreated after being hit by a cannon.

When the cannon boomed, Hirata Masamune jumped up in the triple castle, his face changed drastically.

"What is this? Is it...impossible? Where did the Chinese merchants get the cannons?" In the pre-war intelligence, it was only said that the Chinese merchants had muskets, but they never knew that they had cannons. Huashan, a retainer of the Shimadzu family After Yuuki went to Taiwan, he reported that there are dense cannons around the port of Taiwan, so it is not surprising that the Shimadzu Army has cannons in the Chinese company, but when the Chinese business hall in Ryukyu secretly placed cannons, the Satsuma domain has nothing at all. Know.

At that moment, he sent Kono Odori to the south gate with 100 sailors as reinforcements, transferred most of the troops in the city's assisting direction, and Lai Tian Heihachi, a retainer of the Hirata family, set up a formal square formation. It is said that most of the Japanese army at this time used the "preparation" as the basic tactical unit. The 900 main force of the Hirata Department of the Shimadzu Army in the direction of the south gate of the Zhonghua Commercial Hall is currently using the "preparation" as the unit. In the front, the archers team is next, the gunners team is behind, and the flag team is at the end. Hirata Masamune himself ran outside the south gate and supervised the formation in front of the flag team.

An hour later, Hiratabe launched a second charge with all the main force.

As soon as the Shimadzu army's charge began, they were successively bombarded by Chinese rockets and artillery. In the end, only the four cannons in the southeast corner, southwest corner watchtower, and south gate tower were fired from the Zhonghua Commercial Hall. The firepower density was not enough. The lethality of solid shells is also limited. Driven by the captains at all levels, the ashigaru rushed into the range of 200 steps from the target. Both the iron gunners and the archers began to shoot, suppressing the musketeers on the wall of the Chinese business hall.

The musketeers of the Chinese company have reached the level of conditioned reflex in operating flintlocks, and can fire two bullets per minute; while the iron gunners of the Shimadzu Army have not used flintlocks for a long time, and can only fire one round in a minute, but the Shimadzu Army More than 1 iron gunners and more than 300 archers were concentrated in the direction of the south gate. Relying on the superiority in numbers, the firepower on the wall was gradually suppressed. was also forced to stop.

Hirata Masamune took a breath, but felt faintly uneasy in his heart: the behavior of this Chinese company shop was too unexpected, and there was no guarantee that it would not hide behind.

The Shimadzu army had already entered within 50 steps of the wall, and the Chinese musketeers fired very sporadically on the wall to the south.

The gunmen behind the Shimadzu Army's archers began to speed up, overtook the front team, and approached the wall of the village, preparing to take a ladder to forcibly ascend the city.

At this moment, a lot of broken bricks suddenly fell from the lower part of the south wall at about half a person's height, and six small windows one foot square appeared on the wall every 10 steps or so.

There are a total of fourteen 30-pound cannons, two 3-pound small field cannons, and two sky cannons that fire explosive bombs in the shop. Except for the eight cannons on the watchtower and gate tower, the other six 30-pound cannons are all It was equipped with a gun carriage, and now the six guns were filled with shotgun shells, and the muzzles protruded from the six gun windows that had just been opened. Chen Zhongji played the role of artillery commander, and the six guns fired almost simultaneously at the same time.

"Boom----" The guns rang out, and the shotgun shells with a total weight of about 200 catties were full of iron sand and iron fragments, mixed in the gunpowder smoke, and covered the open land within a hundred steps near the south gate.

The members of the Shimadzu Army Gun Team rushing to the forefront were knocked down by the shotguns in large numbers, and many members of the Iron Cannon Team and the Bow Team were also beaten into hornet's nests.

The Shimadzu Army’s disaster was not over yet. There were two dull bangs and bangs in the trading hall, and two huge black objects lifted into the air from the inside of the trading hall. The parabolic trajectory that could be clearly distinguished by the naked eye fell on the The center of the iron gunners and archers team, and then there was a flash of fire, thunder bursts, smoke filled the sky, debris flew, and the huge impact was mixed with sand and stones. Even Hirata Shinmune, who was 500 steps away from the scene, could feel the heat wave on his face.

This is the first application of the sky cannon invented by Zhonghua Company under the leadership of Yin Feng in actual combat.

Two thin iron shells weighing 40 jin each were fired with mortars and landed in the crowd of Shimadzu soldiers. The simultaneous explosion of 80 jin of black powder was so powerful that the members of the Iron Cannon Team and the Bow Team disappeared immediately. In the gunpowder smoke, many people's limbs and broken bodies were flying in the air. Hirata witnessed his subordinates being enveloped in thick gunpowder smoke from the rear. After a while, the gunpowder smoke dissipated slightly, but he saw corpses all over the field, wounded soldiers all over the ground, and ghosts crying and wolves howling. sound; the Shimadzu Army soldiers who were stupefied were either dumbfounded on the spot, shrank into a ball and trembled, or turned around and ran back. Lai Tian Heihachi, a retainer of the Hirata family who rushed to the front, was beaten into a bloody ball by the shotgun. More than a dozen team leaders at all levels commanding the battle died on the spot.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the guards, who had been crushed by the iron cannons just now, stood up and fired their guns at the bottom as quickly as possible. The soldiers of the Shimadzu Army bombarded by artillery fire fell down again.

Hirata Masamune, who was stunned for about a minute, was awakened by the sound of the cannon. He jumped up and grabbed the equally stunned attendant around him, and shouted: "Retreat, retreat, send the order to retreat,"

Before the Chinese launched the second bombardment, the remnants of the Shimadzu Army had already scrambled and ran back to the starting point of the attack. They were still attacked by shells on the way, and a large number of people fell to the ground. They were too close to the flower bombs and were shocked to death by the shock wave. Even if they fled to the main formation where Hirata was, the long-range thunderbolt rockets could still attack them. The rest of the troops hid in the triple city.

In the shotgun attack, the gunmen of the Shimadzu Army were killed more than 30 people at the same time because they were only less than 100 steps away from the muzzle. Of the 900 Shimadzu troops, 300 were killed and more than 200 were injured. Hirata's Shimadzu army had lost more than half, and basically lost its offensive capabilities.

The Shimadzu Army's tactical unit "Bei" is the same as other daimyo armies at the same time. It is a military organization formed according to the established arms and divisions. It has its own independent combat, command, logistics and other units. Therefore, in tactics The flexibility in use and adaptation to the battlefield environment, compared with the battalion of the Ming Dynasty and the European large square formation, allows commanders to have such a high flexibility and choice of use. This is where Japan's "preparation" is relatively excellent, but it is also Due to the mixed formation of "preparation", its limitations are exposed when it is used in large formations in large-scale joint battles; when the mixed formation of "preparation" cannot be broken, the various arms cannot be used in a centralized and unified manner. Deployment, even if it breaks the mixed deployment and centralized use, will cause great confusion due to factors such as the command coordination and training differences between different equipments due to the centralized single military department, which is simply a battlefield commander's nightmare.

Although the proportion of hot weapons and equipment of the Shimadzu Army is relatively high compared to the level of the Ming Dynasty army, and the weapons are well-trained and well-trained, the general firearms ratio reaches more than 26%. After deducting non-combat service personnel, a basic Japanese combat unit The proportion of firearms can be as high as about 40%, which is quite high in this case. During the same period, only the northern frontier army trained by Qi Jiguang in the north of China's Ming Dynasty had such a high proportion. Although the ratio of firearms is astonishing, they are all composed of iron cannons equipped with muskets. In addition, they are not equipped with large-caliber long and short cannons. Therefore, the Shimadzu Army's attack firepower and impact power are obviously insufficient in large-scale field environments and sieges.

The concentrated and intensive use of artillery by the Chinese company guards was completely beyond the expectations of the Shimadzu Army Hirata Masamune; the use of flowering artillery shells was unheard of and unimaginable by the Shimadzu Army. After this fiasco, The remaining soldiers of the Hirata Department huddled in Sanchong City and Xiaohama and other places, shutting themselves out, lacking the ability and courage to attack the Zhonghua Merchant Hall again.

For several days after that, the soldiers of the special battalion of the Chinese company continued to attack the Shimadzu army's personnel who went out to collect food. The Japanese attacked the Shimadzu Army's food convoy.

When the Shimadzu army arrived, many residents of Naha Port who fled to the mountains also came back one after another. They regarded the Chinese Commercial Hall as a savior and offered to help the Chinese Commercial Hall to strengthen the fortifications and dig the moat.

……

It took only four days for the Haihun to arrive at Jilong Port in Taipei, and the day it arrived happened to be the day Chen Zhongji defeated the Shimadzu Army of Hiratabe in Ryukyu.

As soon as the Sea Soul sent off the passengers on board, a group of sailors rushed to the deck to carry all kinds of equipment onto the ship, and 150 fully armed escort soldiers were also ready to go on the shore where the ship was docked.

Yin Feng personally supervised the battle, and the work of loading goods and "people" started as soon as they docked in the port, so no time was wasted.

This time, the soldiers supporting the Naha Hong Kong Chinese Commercial Center were the elite selected from the whole army. Yin Feng specially appointed Yan Siqi as the post commander, because more than 150 of the 40 people were "boy scouts" soldiers who learned from the army.

They will bring food supplies and a large amount of ammunition to the Chinese business house, as well as 5 small field guns and a number of rockets.

Although the news brought by the Sea Soul said that the Ryukyu Army was quickly defeated, none of the 150 soldiers flinched.

Yin Feng was very worried about the battle situation in Ryukyu. The Ryukyu side collapsed too quickly. I am afraid that Chen Zhongji will fight the Japanese pirates soon, but the wind direction on the sea has not changed. It is still impossible to go north to support Ryukyu on a large scale.