New Shun 1730

If you want the Kyushu domains to follow your lead, you have to win. Not only do you have to win, you have to defend the Shimonoseki Strait.

The order given to him by the shogunate was to defend Shimonoseki.

If he didn't defend it and ran back to Hagi Castle to avoid the war, it would be like selling out the domains related to the Shimonoseki Strait.

If the purpose of the Taishun was not to occupy Japan and the shogunate did not fall, the shogunate could legitimately hold the Choshu domain responsible for abandoning the Choshu domain without authorization and causing the Shimonoseki Strait to open.

The current situation of the Choshu domain is so disgusting.

To defend the strait, you must defend the artillery.

The navy was disgusted with the Taishun navy, but never thought of defeating the Taishun navy.

If the navy was really determined, it would have no problem blocking the strait at the cost of the loss of two ships.

Unless the Dashun Navy entered the strait and was under the artillery, and suddenly there was no wind at all, and then the windless weather lasted for three days, the Japanese navy relied on rowing to attack, and Amaterasu blessed them and burned all the Dashun ships - this is not impossible, but the Dashun Navy needs to consider this possibility, after all, most of the family assets are here, and the large sailing ships have no oars, while the Japanese ships have oars; the Kyushu Island vassal states will not pin all their hopes on this possibility, after all, all the family assets are in Kyushu Island, and they have gathered this small field force, and after supporting Choshu, the strait is blocked by others, and they can only watch Dashun practice siege and equal land and exemption of grain on Kyushu Island?

The shogunate sold them out, exposed all the flanks to Dashun, and slipped away.

The shogunate's slogans were loud and clear, and they were both national humiliation and shattered with honor. The lower-level samurai were excited and wanted to fight to the death for their country.

The shogunate's wishful thinking can still fool the lower-class samurai and the common people. However, it cannot fool the feudal lords who have learned the so-called "imperial studies".

Whether it is ceding land or occupying land, Dashun will not go far away to cede the shogunate's land. On Kyushu Island, only Nagasaki is directly under the jurisdiction of the shogunate. The rest are not even a hereditary daimyo, and almost all of them are foreign daimyo that the shogunate has always been on guard against.

The Kyushu vassal states have to consider themselves, and the Choshu vassal state has to consider itself.

In this situation, we can only bite the bullet and fight.

Yamagata Masada's suggestion is not the only available method, but it is the only way to get some military support from the Kyushu vassal states.

In this battle, according to what he thought, the key to the Dashun army's attack is the artillery near the Chofu vassal state. If the artillery is taken down, the strait can be blocked and the navy in the strait can be driven away.

After the navy was driven away, the warships of Dashun could enter the strait and bombard the Kushizaki Castle of the Chofu Domain, which would bring out the biggest advantage of Dashun: the navy.

Otherwise, it would be a land battle and the navy watching the show, always lame on one leg, which is not a tactic a wise general would choose.

In this case, the Kyushu domains can send some soldiers to help defend the front line of the artillery, and the main force of the Choshu domain can hide in the distance.

When the Dashun army attacks the artillery, they will attack from behind and surround and annihilate them.

The tactics have been decided, so some samurai are asked to closely monitor the movements of the Dashun army near Ayaragi Village, and the Choshu domain elder Nakasaka Tokimoto is sent to meet the shogunate's daimatsu Ino Masatake who coordinates the relations between the various domains in Kyushu.

One of the daily tasks of the daimatsu is to monitor the various domains. Starting from Yagyu Munenori, an intelligence network that monitors the various domains throughout Japan has been established. Otherwise, it would be impossible to implement the closed-door policy and samurai laws so strictly.

Ino Masatake doesn't know much about soldiers, but he knows about logistics and people's livelihood. The feudal lords in Kyushu Island don't actually have many soldiers now.

The Dashun Army is very good at attacking cities, and the navy can run around. Even if they use firefighting tactics, it is impossible to concentrate all the soldiers together.

The total force of the feudal lords in Kyushu is now said to be 120,000. As long as there is the word "claimed", there is too much water. Remove the water, there are only 70,000 or 80,000.

These 70,000 or 80,000 are not all field forces, and they have to be divided and stationed to prevent being stolen.

Most of the field troops are still logistics and baggage soldiers. Excluding several landing sites and artillery positions that must be defended, there are only more than 20,000 field mobile forces, and they have to be stationed in the north and south.

Not all samurai can be pulled out for field battles. The Kurume domain is making a uprising, and samurai are needed to suppress it.

The only one who doesn't have to worry about the uprising of the people is the Satsuma domain.

Because Satsuma Domain adopted the outer city system, low-level samurai were thrown into various villages, which was completely the management level of the fiefdom in the Spring and Autumn Period. Even if the people rebelled, they would be concentrated in the villages of the fiefdoms. The feudal system did not collapse or loosen at all, so it naturally maintained the stability of the Middle Ages.

However, this system is very suitable for internal feudal rule, but not for external warfare.

It is okay to summon these samurai outside the city to defend the city, but they lack training in field battles and cannot form a formation, so it is useless.

Moreover, this battle is aimed at Satsuma Domain, and Satsuma Domain will not agree to concentrate its forces in the north.

And the northern vassal states have too many places to defend.

Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Hirado... These places may be landed, especially Nagasaki and Hirado.

Hirado was the place where the great pirates Li Dan, Yan Siqi, Zheng Zhilong and others lived for a long time in the late Ming Dynasty. It can be said that if the Dashun side is interested, it can't be more familiar.

Nagasaki, before the war, the Dashun sea merchants came every year, and it was much easier to go there than to Tosa and Tottori.

Kokura also needs to be defended. If Kokura is lost, the strait will be exposed to the Dashun, and the navy will pass through unimpeded.

Fukuoka Castle is less than a mile away from the sea and is also within the range of Dashun's artillery fire.

These places may be landed. Landing thousands of people here is much easier than running to Obama, so we must defend it.

Put out the fire, put out the fire, you have to defend your home first before you can expect to be saved. The Honmaru is gone, is that putting out the fire? That's an armed parade.

The Honmaru of the coastal fiefdoms are all filled with a lot of guards. There are not many mobile forces that can be mobilized.

Masatake Ino coordinated for a long time, but the lords of each fiefdom did not agree to send troops across the sea to support Choshu.

The lord of the Shimazu clan has been living in Edo since three years ago because of hernia and has never returned. Now the Satsuma domain is very worried that the lord will be thrown to the Dashun as a bargaining chip by the shogunate, and it is even more determined to defend Kagoshima, thinking that going north is stupid.

The Kumamoto domain and the Saga domain also think that sending troops north to support the Choshu domain is very unwise. How do you know that the Dashun domain is not aware of the strategy of luring the tiger away from the mountain?

Today, the warships are assembled in Ayaragi, and it is thought that they will land in Ayaragi; tomorrow, Nagasaki is bombarded. Will the Choshu domain also transfer all its troops to Nagasaki?

It takes a whole day for a samurai to cross a strait several miles wide on foot, and it is a hassle to go back and forth, but Dashun can take a boat from Shimonoseki to Nagasaki and Saga in three to five days.

Saga Castle just caught fire a few years ago, and the city is only a few miles away from the coast. If there is no reinforcement at that time, won’t it be easily captured?

Each domain has its own interests. Anyway, the domains on Kyushu Island don’t care too much about the Shimonoseki Strait: too many lice don’t itch. Even if Dashun can’t take the Shimonoseki Strait, there are still many places to land on Kyushu Island. Taking the Shimonoseki Strait will only increase the possibility of landing.

The Shimonoseki Strait is very important to Japan.

It is not too important to the domains on Kyushu Island.

Therefore, they hope that the daimetsu Inoue Masatake, who is mediating here, can make a decision on behalf of the shogunate. Instead of supporting the Choshu domain, it is better to let the Choshu domain gather all its troops on Kyushu Island and hold on together. There may be a glimmer of hope.

However, Inoue Masatake did not want to disobey the orders of the shogunate. He was not the lord of Osaka Castle. Even if he was, he was only nominally qualified to mobilize the troops of the western vassal states, but he still had to report to his superiors.

The order given to him by the shogunate was not to defend the Shimonoseki Strait, but to coordinate the various vassal states on Kyushu Island to defend Kyushu Island.

If he did not mobilize troops and Kyushu Island could not be defended, it could be said that he was unable to do so.

But if he mobilized troops across the strait, and Dashun attacked from the east and landed on Kyushu Island, he would be held responsible.

Or if Choshu Domain gave up the Shimonoseki Strait and retreated to Kyushu Island, Choshu Domain would never agree.

After closing the country, the shogunate put all its energy on stability. The habit formed over more than a hundred years made no one dare to "overstep" and issue orders.

The system itself was for internal repression and stability, not for war.

At this time, the pain that Choshu Domain could feel also fell on Ino Masatake.

Saka Tokimoto talked a lot about the principle of lips and teeth being cold, and the vassal states on Kyushu Island refused to listen.

Ino Masatake took on a great responsibility and finally agreed to send 2,000 troops to help Choshu defend the artillery line.

The reason for 2,000 is that the ships in the strait can only transport 2,000 troops at most at a time.

These 2,000 people must be able to go and come back.

If they really can't defend, they will retreat to Kyushu Island.

Mori Munehiro knew that these 2,000 samurai were already the limit of the Kyushu domains, and it was better to have them than not.

He was worried that once the war started, these 2,000 people would see that the situation was not good and run away directly and run back to Kyushu Island, so he hoped that these 2,000 people could be used as field forces, and let the soldiers of the Choshu domain of the Choshu domain to defend the artillery line.

However, the military commanders who led the troops did not agree at all, saying that the task assigned to them by the lord and the lord was to defend the artillery, not to join the Choshu domain's troops in the field.

This is just like a replica of the late Ming Dynasty. Everyone's choice, from the overall perspective, is a problem in the brain; but for individuals, it is almost everyone's optimal solution.

Mori Munehiro had no choice but to gather all the samurai of the Nagafu clan, plus a part of the troops of the Choshu clan, and a total of 5,000 troops with the Kyushu clan, and set up formations and fortifications between the Kushizaki Castle and the artillery fort.

The rest of the main force hid in the north of Nagafu, preparing to lure the Dashun army to attack the artillery fort with a cowardly attitude.

The samurai near Ayaragi kept reporting that the number of Dashun's naval warships was increasing every day. The Dashun army that landed on the shore was capturing villagers and building some docks for defense and landing. It seemed that they were going to carry out a large-scale landing.

After seven or eight days of tossing, Mantou finally received Li Li's order, and the time for the army to assemble and move out had been set.

After calculating the date, Mantou gave up the landing site of Ayaragi, went south, and bombarded Kokura.

Dashun didn't know whether the soldiers of the Choshu clan were all in Shimonoseki, but they had been pretending to land these days. Even if they were not, they should be transferred to Shimonoseki at this time. It was almost time.

One day after shelling Kokura, they continued to move south and shelled Fukuoka Castle.

These actions made the feudal lords on Kyushu Island tense up.

Was the action of Dashun near Ayaragi Village a diversionary tactic, and was it actually going to land on Kyushu Island?

Or was Dashun really going to land in Ayaragi Village and shell Kokura and Fukuoka to make a diversion?

Unable to guess or figure out, the navy shrank in the strait and could only watch the Dashun army leave after the shelling.

The Satsuma clan was like a great enemy, constantly strengthening the defense of Kagoshima, worried that Dashun would shell Kagoshima.

However, after waiting for a long time, the Dashun army did not shell Kagoshima, but instead there was news from Hagi Castle that the main force of the Dashun army had landed in Hagi Castle.