A tour of Japan's Warring States Period

Chapter 210 14. The river of death

While Koheita dispatched capable manpower to replace the various forces scattered outside back into his own formation, he also gathered the Yumiya Ashigaru to replace his fifty iron cannon ashigaru.

The army has surrounded Kakegawa Castle at this moment. It is obvious that the city has long received a report that Koheita unilaterally tore up the alliance and attacked the castle of Toe Imagawa. With the death or surrender of all the castles belonging to Imakawa from the Makino Plateau Ogasanoyama to Oigawa, Kakegawa Castle no longer had a branch city that could be relied on.

But the biggest reliance of Kakegawa Castle has never been on these. It was built on the Makino Plateau, which is not a particularly dangerous terrain.

First, let’s introduce the platform. It generally refers to the stepped landforms distributed in strips along the banks of the river valley or the coast. A mesa is a raised flat terrain with a large area and low altitude. The mesa has a gentle slope in the center and steeper edges, rising upright from the surrounding lowland hills. Some people think that a platform is a type of plateau, but generally speaking, large areas of flat land with lower altitudes are called plains, and large areas of flat land with higher altitudes are called plateaus. The mesa is somewhere in between, with an altitude of between one hundred and several hundred meters.

Due to the topography of the platform, the Kakegawa River surrounds the city, and the upper reaches of the Oigawa River are deep in the valley. It is impossible to build a dam to cut off the water source. After all, the 100-meter-high dam was just something to think about during the Warring States Period.

Moreover, due to the gentle slope of the platform and its vast area, Kakegawa Castle had a lot of equipment and various buildings and oars were densely distributed. A variety of urban defense facilities are used to make up for human weaknesses in unfavorable terrain. At the same time, huge granaries and treasuries can be built throughout the city to store enough food and supplies for the entire city to survive for more than half a year.

These are all the advantages of Kakegawa Castle itself. Kakegawa Castle also has an even greater advantage. With Kakegawa as the center, there are rolling hills and slopes covered with tea trees. If you want to take advantage of your military strength and attack the castle from all sides, you must destroy these tea trees.

If it were a samurai named Matsudaira from the Mikawa countryside who was not very well-educated, rough and brainless, he would definitely give a damn and shovel them all for me first. Then next year, he will find that he has worked so hard to build such an important town that controls the distant river, but he can only collect a few thousand kilograms of grains a year, which is not enough to pay for the dead warriors.

This has a lot to do with the terrain of Yuanjiang Country. There are small plains for planting rice in coastal and river areas, which is good. But the northern part of the country has undulating mountains, so why is it still wealthy? What he relies on is the large-scale tea plantation that can earn more than 10,000 yuan a year.

This thing is not rice or wheat. It is planted in the first half of the year and harvested in the second half of the year. It is harvested endlessly every year. Tea tree essence is expensive. If you cultivate it well and plant it properly, you may not be able to make money in three to five years. It will take ten or eight years to be considered successful. Moreover, the tea tree does not produce tea forever. Like a normal tree, it will grow old, get sick, and die.

Therefore, even during the chaos in Huacang more than ten years ago, no brainless fool would destroy the tea forest. After all, the profits of more than 10,000 yuan a year were all in hard currency Yongle money! As long as you don't have a bucket of paste in your head, you won't do it. (Yes! I’m talking about some brainless Matsudaira turtle, and he shoveled it!)

Of course, Koheita was very conflicted at the moment. Kakegawa Castle was well-defended, and there were about 2,000 soldiers and farmers mobilized in the city. The military strength was very sufficient for such a mountain city. In addition, the Asahina family of Tooe has been in business for a long time and the people are attached to it. In the absence of the castle lord, Asahina Taitomo, everyone supported his wife and a son who was still nursing. The actual people in charge are Asahina Carpenter and Asahina Zaemon, both samurai from the Asahina Taichao. As samurai who have been rooted here for hundreds of years, they will fight to the death to defend this strong city.

The right time, favorable location, and harmony, Xiaopingtai only occupies one time now. After all, the city lord is away and Yiyuan is killed in the battle, which has a huge impact on the morale of the city. The other two are on one side of the city.

After the siege camp was set up, uncle Tsunayoshi and Iwase Motomasa successively led their troops. Now there were a few cobblers in the shogunate of Koheita's Caotai team, and everyone began to discuss ways to attack the city.

Murakami Yoshimitsu made a basic description of the general situation, and drew a sketch of Kakegawa Castle and hung it on a wooden board. We also pointed out the defensive buildings that can be clearly seen from the outside, such as Kakegawa Castle's Soimaru, Hotami Tower, Arrow Tower, and Juju Gate.

The word "rat-killing weapon" really describes it well. With more than 10,000 tea trees growing every year, and the actual need to quickly conquer the city and send troops to Suruga, it is really difficult for people to choose.

Uncle Tsunliang's first thought was to persuade him to surrender. There were nine thousand soldiers outside the city and two thousand men inside the city. Everyone could see that there was a huge gap in military strength. The city soldiers defended until the end, but both sides were injured and the game was over.

But it is difficult to use the bargaining chip to persuade others to surrender. To persuade others to open the city, one is life and the other is territory. These two things must be preserved for others before they will consider it. But in the face of the biggest piece of fat in Yuanjiang at present, Xiaopingta agrees, can Yamauchi Yoshiharu agree?

Uncle Tsunayoshi remained silent. Iwase Motomasa was so brave that he first asked Koheita if he had ever tried to attack him. He definitely hadn't. When have you ever seen Xiaoping Tai willing to attack the city with human flesh? The siege method is so poor that if too many people are killed, the gain will outweigh the loss.

So Iwase Motomasa took the initiative to ask to go up and give it a try. Most of the people in the city were temporarily mobilized farmers, and their fighting ability might be very poor. He succeeded in testing it.

Everyone thought, yes, no problem, so Koheita gave him the support of his fifty iron cannons and Ejiri's fifty iron cannon ashigaru. Make a three-stage formation of a hundred-man iron cannon, shoot in turns, and provide him with cover.

Iwase Motomasa was indeed a famous samurai for generations, with strong martial arts skills. Under the cover of iron cannons, he led his men to rush into the Sotomaru Otemon gate of Kakegawa Castle. Good guy, a bow is far away and a spear is close. It is inextricable to fight with the Asahina soldiers in front of Ban Peng.

But after all, there were too few soldiers to invest, so we retreated. The main reason is that the attack surface is not wide, and the internal strength of the city is really not high. If we attack from all sides, we will definitely be able to defeat the city in a few days with our superior strength.

Koheita then thought not to rush, he could try to open up several mountain climbing roads and attack in separate areas. At the same time, he would use his most elite 300 troops and Ejiri's 500 standing troops as the final decisive assault force. As long as a fighter opportunity appears at any point, they will immediately pounce on it to expand the results of the battle. In the end, the soldiers will swarm forward to determine the outcome of the battle.

At this time, Yamauchi Yoshiharu's main team finally arrived at Ejiri.

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