On January 15, the Tokugawa family's 120,000-strong army arrived outside Osaka Castle and surrounded Osaka Castle from three directions. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

The military generals of the Tokugawa family seemed to think that they had an absolute advantage in their forces, and did not consider the issue of Li Zhi going out of the city to meet the battle, so they chose to besiege the city with a big face.

The 120,000 Tokugawa army was like an endless ocean, gathering in the east, south and north of Osaka Castle, leaving only one west for the soldiers in the castle to "escape".

After all, only by leaving a gap will the soldiers in the city flee when morale is low. If it is surrounded on all sides, the encircled soldiers will fight to the death.

The 120,000 men were not all soldiers of the Tokugawa family, but there were soldiers from all over the country, but now they can all be called shogunate troops. The soldiers of the shogunate wore small flags on their backs with various family crests on them. Looking at the past from afar, tens of thousands of small flags of various colors fluttered in the wind, as if covering the entire land, very majestic.

Li Zhi stood on the castle wall, observing the Tokugawa family's soldiers and equipment with a telescope.

In fact, not all Japanese soldiers were standing soldiers, and a considerable number of them were half-peasants and half-soldiers. Japan had a large-scale standing army system during the Toyotomi regime, but with the end of the Toyotomi regime, this system was quickly defeated by the conscription system. In the Wa Kingdom, peasants in the countryside had the slightest ability to fight, and they could be drafted into soldiers.

The Tokugawa shogunate's pro-feudal daimyo and pedigree daimyo occupied the richest lands in Japan, and with their deep finances, these warlords kept many half-peasant and half-soldier "land servants". Since the martial spirit of Japan's Warring States period has not subsided, the equipment of these soldiers even exceeds that of the average Ming army.

Li Zhi looked through the binoculars and saw that most of the soldiers of the Tokugawa shogunate were dressed in light foot.

This is a type of light armor that was developed during the Warring States period in Japan. The foot is generally composed of a carcass, a straw fold and a hat. The vast majority of ashigaru goskushi do not have armor to protect the arms and below the legs, and due to the thinner thickness, their weight is significantly lower than that of samurai armor, and most of the full ashigaru goskushi weighs about seven or eight catties.

During the Tokugawa shogunate, the armor of Japanese soldiers was generally made uniformly by the daimyo and issued to the soldiers after the peasant soldiers were conscripted into battle. Therefore, these armors are also called "imperial loans". The front of these feet is often tattooed with the family crest of the daimyo and, together with the small flag on the back of the ashigaru, forms a distinguishing object of friend or foe.

After observing the soldiers of the Shimazu family and other allies, Li Zhi knew that such adequate cuirasses and helmets, that is, carcasses and hats, were often made of iron and had considerable protective power. Although the Japanese warlords were quite backward in terms of artillery, they had a certain advantage in terms of armor.

Of course, this thin iron armor couldn't stop Li Zhi's Minnie rifle. Lee Sik had tested it with the Shimazu family's ashigaru equipment, and the Mini rifle could easily penetrate these iron armors made of inferior iron pieces at a distance of 200 meters.

The shogunate ashigaru had relatively uniform weapons, mostly long spears. Li Zhi learned from his ally Ashigaru that the shafts of these spears were composite structures, made of oak and other woods as the core, and the outer bread was covered with bamboo chips, which were also painted like bows to prevent moisture. The length of the spears used by the armies of different daimyo families varied according to the preferences of the generals, and was usually about four and a half meters.

In fact, Ashigaru with a heavy spear could not charge quickly into battle, and this ancient weapon could not threaten Li Zhi at all. Li Zhi used a telescope to observe the army of the Tokugawa shogunate, and was more concerned about the iron cannons of the Wa Kingdom.

In the Japanese army, the proportion of iron artillery equipment is very high. In the Wanli Korean War, the Japanese army's iron artillery unit became the main force of the Japanese army, and even a Japanese military general wrote a letter to his homeland asking all soldiers sent to Korea to carry arquebuses with them and no other weapons.

About one-third of the soldiers in the shogunate's army were armed with iron cannons. This number was already staggering, and there were 40,000 arquebusiers out of 120,000 shogunates. Huang Taiji poured the power of the Qing Dynasty into equipping 30,000 arquebusiers. However, the Wa Shogunate only sent half of its troops to attack Osaka, with 40,000 iron cannons.

The effective range of these gunners was about a hundred meters.

It can be said that iron artillery is the most distinctive branch of the Japanese army and plays a decisive role on the battlefield.

The Tokugawa shogunate also had artillery in its army, and these cannons were concentrated on the east side of Osaka Castle. Li Zhi counted them one by one and found that there were fifty-four cannons in the shogunate army. Sixteen of these cannons were small cannons, presumably Japanese-made "large barrels". Thirty-eight more were heavy cannons, presumably bought from the Dutch.

Before the start of the war, the Tokugawa shogunate sent a tall samurai to Osaka Castle to call for battle.

Dressed in ornate samurai armor, the samurai rode 500 paces from the walls of Osaka Castle and jumped off his horse. He walked a hundred steps to the walls of Osaka Castle and shouted a lot in Japanese.

Li Zhi looked at the translator beside him.

That translator was Zheng Kaida's special translator, a Han Chinese living in Japan. Hearing the call of the Japanese, the translator sneered and said, "Grandpa Guo, this samurai said that if the Han people in the city surrender now, General Tokugawa will only kill Grandpa Kuni, and the rest of the soldiers can return home safely." ”

"The three feudal towns that fell with Grandpa will only reduce their seals, and will not take away all their territories. Changzong and my family only need to hand over one of the head of the family, and the rest will not be held accountable. ”

Hearing this translator's words, Zhong Feng clutched his stomach and laughed, as if he had heard the funniest joke. Li Laosi and Zheng Kaicheng glanced at each other, their faces were also full of funny, and they both felt that the warriors of the Wa Kingdom were a little confused.

Li Zhi waved his hand: "Shoot him!" ”

A hundred steps was already beyond the range of the Japanese iron cannons, and this samurai thought that he was standing in a safe place. But he did not know the effective range of Li Zhi's rifle.

The muzzle of a rifle on the city wall flashed, and a crisp sound of "pop" spread throughout the battlefield.

A flower of blood came out of the chest of the shouting samurai's armor, and his body jerked back. The samurai covered the blood gushing from the wound with his hands, stared at the rifleman who had killed him with wide eyes, lost his strength little by little, and finally collapsed weakly on the winter dirt.

In the Tokugawa family's main camp, the Japanese shogunate generals wearing armor were very excited to see this scene. They rushed to the front of their camp and glared at the section of the wall where the "messenger" had been killed.

Tokugawa Iemitsu looked at the samurai who had been killed, and was very angry. He raised the small fan in his hand and pointed sharply forward.

"Woo~"

A long horn sounded, and the shogunate began to attack the city.

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In view of the fierce opposition of the majority of book lovers, it is now decided to change the plot of Chapter 569 where Li Zhi marries Shimazu Chixia as a side room, and instead match Shimazu Chixia Xu to his subordinates. This change has no effect on other episodes, and readers who are interested in learning more can refresh the page to see the changed plot.