On November 13, 10,000 Toranoshi sailed across the Seto Inland Sea and landed on the island of Honshu to encircle Osaka Castle. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Osaka Castle is one of the largest castles in Japan. In 1583, Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle on the original base of Ishiyama Honganji Temple, and completed the Honmaru (main country) in about a year and a half. Until Hideyoshi's death, the construction of fortifications such as Ninomaru and Sannomaru continued, as well as multiple defences such as moats and canals.

In 1615, Osaka Castle was destroyed in battle, and Tokugawa Ieyasu occupied Osaka and expanded it. The expanded Osaka Castle Tower is 17 feet tall and 4 feet tall and has eight floors.

Osaka Castle Castle is a defensive fortress consisting of Honmaru, Ninomaru, and Sannomaru. The outer perimeter is a defensive layer consisting of a large number of stone walls and mizuhori, and the interior is a labyrinthine passage consisting of curved roads and shooting holes. The outermost part of the castle, Sannomaru, is 14 "towns" from east to west and 9 "towns" from north to south, which is about 1,600 meters long and 950 meters wide when converted into later generations of weights and measures.

Underneath Osaka Castle is a thriving bazaar and arguably the most important city in western Japan, with a population of around 100,000. According to Zheng Kaida, the castle town of Osaka is one of the central cities of Japan, which is a distribution base for Japanese goods.

But after Li Zhi's army surrounded the city, the panicked citizens immediately abandoned the city and ran away with the softness. The whole city is now empty.

Standing on a small mound to the east of the castle town, Li Zhi used a telescope to observe Osaka Castle Castle five miles away.

This is a very large castle, even larger than some small county towns in Daming. It is protected by layers of moats, moats, and walls, and the castle tower stands high in the middle. On the castle wall behind the castle Sannomaru stands a Japanese ashigaru with an iron cannon. According to information from the Shimazu family, the defenders inside the castle were armed with 7,000 iron cannons.

The entire castle can not be said to be poorly defended - in 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu led 200,000 men to surround Osaka Castle, but in the end it could not be defeated, so it could only be used for peace talks.

However, the so-called tight defense is only for Japan's military technology.

In the middle of the XVII century, Japan's military technology was already behind the times. Due to the poor technology of the smelting and casting industry, the development of artillery in Japan was very slow. By 1643, when Li Zhi led his army, Tokugawa Ieyasu did not have enough artillery for the Osaka castle walls.

Li Zhi observed through the binoculars that there were only 16 cannons on Osaka Castle. These cannons seem to have been bought with the Dutch. Li Zhi took a closer look and felt that these cannons were "half-length cannons" of the Dutch, and the shells weighed thirty-two pounds.

Sixteen cannons were enough to deter feudal towns and peasants trying to rebel throughout Japan, which was already a heavy defense in Japan, where artillery was generally lacking.

For the Japanese, Osaka Castle is an impregnable fortress.

But in front of Li Zhi's tiger master, who was often equipped with a hundred cannons, these sixteen cannons were a little shabby.

Li Zhi's cannon was a hundred years ahead of this era, and a full two hundred years ahead of Osaka Castle's sixteenth-century defensive thinking. Two hundred years of technological leadership has brought about an effect that cannot be described by the word "advantage".

Li Zhi's 10,000 Tiger Warriors unloaded one hundred and sixty eighteen-pounder cannons from the ship, and the artillerymen and infantry pushed the cannons and stopped six miles away from Minomaru in Osaka Castle.

The defenders on the walls seemed to be nervous, and opened fire at a distance of six miles.

The Tokugawa family seems to have learned the technique of gun carriages from the Dutch, and the cannons on the walls were able to move in the direction of the enemy's main attack. Li Zhi crossed the sea from the west, and all the sixteen cannons in the castle moved to the Sannomaru firing table on the west side and fired at Li Zhi's gun carriage.

Naval guns on ships are generally chosen for cannons. The Tokugawa family bought cannons from the Dutch, apparently also naval guns. But the cannon of the seventeenth century had a short range, which was good as a naval gun, and a little difficult as a fortification artillery.

Compared with Li Zhi's long gun, the cannon barrel is shorter, and the barrel is only 15-28 times the caliber. And the barrel of the long gun is 25-44 times higher than the caliber. As a result, the cannon was able to hit targets at a greater distance. Li Zhi's eighteen-pounder cannon had a direct firing range of more than three miles, and a projectile could hit ten miles. And the firing range of the general cannon is not even one mile, and the maximum projectile distance is also five miles.

The cannon on the city wall fired at the Tiger Division's artillery carriage six miles away, but it couldn't reach the side of the Tiger Division's cannon at all. The shells fell a mile in front of the Tiger Division's cannons, and smashed into the dirt "through" and "through".

Six miles away, Li Zhi's eighteen-pounder cannon began to charge and load. Li Zhi actually had 12,000 soldiers who disembarked this time, of which 10,000 were soldiers of the Tiger Division, and 2,000 soldiers were originally artillery members on the ship.

These fleet artillerymen were also highly skilled, clearing, drugging, and reloading in one go, and the loading was completed quickly. The artillerymen used a gauge, a ruler and a moment gauge to calculate the dosage and angle of the medicine. One hundred and sixty flowering shells were loaded into the chamber and aimed at the Japanese artillery six miles away.

"Boom!"

"Boom! Rumble! Rumble! ”

In the deafening sound of artillery fire, the ground shook, and one hundred and sixty cannons spewed out tongues of fire. One hundred and sixty shells were like a terrible storm, drawing more than 100 perfect curves in the sky, and smashed towards the forts on the walls of Osaka Castle.

A projectile from six miles away, the accuracy of the eighteen-pounder gun was also poor. But the number of artillery pieces that could not hold Li Zhi was too much, and there would always be a few shells hit.

Most of the 160 shells hit the stone wall, shattering a thick layer of boulders and lime defenses before falling into the mizubori. Or they slammed into the wall above the stone wall, and smashed the wall against the iron cannon.

Three shells hit the cannon in the middle of the city wall and smashed into the cannon's body, leaving the cannon out of the battle in one fell swoop. The barrel of the cannon that has been hit by the shell is deformed, and the shell may get stuck in the barrel, causing the explosion and boring, and it can no longer be used.

Two more shells landed next to the cannon and exploded with a bang. The iron projectiles in the shells sprang out in all directions, mercilessly taking the lives of the cannon artillerymen - it was the first time that the artillerymen who operated the cannons saw the flowering shells, and they did not know how to dodge the shells when they saw them falling nearby, and they were all hit.

The artillery was killed, and the cannon was inoperable. With just one shelling, Li Zhi's artillery scrapped five cannons six miles away.

A minute later, another 160 shells were fired at the batteries in Osaka Castle.

This time, the cannon fine-tuned the angle according to the landing point of the shell, and the hit rate was higher.

The rumble of flowering shells exploding sounded from the fort above Osaka Castle, and one cannon after another was discontinued. Seven or eight Japanese artillerymen were overturned by the air wave stirred up by the explosion, and they fell out of the city wall and into the moat beneath the city wall.