After all, it is difficult to blockade the entire island of Kyushu in the true sense of the word, especially since many of the waters adjacent to the island are not very wide and have been widely connected in history, and a large number of refugees who fled from Kyushu Island through Kitakyushu and other directions to other places, and even the terrorist news from Kitakyushu quickly shook the shogunate.

In fact, when he first got the news of the invasion, Tokugawa Iemitsu was not unaware of everything that had happened in the west in the past few years, thinking that the Central Plains Dynasty was still the Fira continent where there was no China after the cliff mountain, and the Japanese ronin could wait for the opportunity to move. After the Battle of the South Seas, the strength of the great power in the west was known to many people. Tokugawa Iemitsu and even most people in the shogunate believed that if faced with the invasion of a powerful enemy, as long as the foreign enemy could temporarily endorse the security of the Edo regime, then even the Songjin clause of one million taels of silver per year would not necessarily be comparable to the unattainable Tallinn, plus Iwami Ginzan and the original territory of the Satsuma Domain, this was the upper limit of the shogunate's concessions in the worst and most extreme circumstances, at least after the opponents could understand the strength of the enemy in a small-scale foreign war.

It was only when the peace envoys personally sent by the Tokugawa shogunate learned that these powerful enemies from the west did not ask for the Songjin terms, but that the annual price of 10 million catties of grain was equivalent to almost half of the financial resources and harvest of all the daimyo in the country and the shogunate itself as an annual supply, and that they also had to garrison troops to supervise disarmament and occupy the whole of Kyushu, the opinion of the main war faction immediately prevailed.

"Now that the whole nation has reached a critical point of life and death, we must make them understand that our nation can compromise, but it cannot perish!"

"Yes, I also want to tell those daimyo that this time the fleet of the strong enemy in the west did not go straight to Edo, but went straight to the strong domain and even the Kyushu region, that is, to encroach on various places step by step...

Tokugawa Iemitsu did not hesitate too much at this time, especially when he learned that although the strength of the strong enemy was strong this time, it was not particularly large, and the main force was still in the process of clearing the entire Kyushu.

In this way, with the Samurai of Banner as the core, the daimyo from all over the island of Honshu formed an alliance under the threat of a huge foreign enemy, making the land and sea forces reach as many as 140,000 for a while, and these 140,000 people are not the main force that mobilized the peasants in the Wanli Aid Dynasty era, including about half of the warriors and very experienced ashigaru gunners, which can almost be said to be the essence of the entire Dongying.

Almost at the same time, in order to prevent a strong enemy from invading various places from the sea, a huge war preparation was also mobilized as quickly as possible in the case of the local daimyo overdrawing money and food.

Although more than 20 years have passed since the Warring States Period, and the level and quality of military readiness have declined, the organizational and mobilization capabilities have been greatly consolidated by the further recovery of the population and economy in this generation. The feudal lords and daimyo in various places also stockpiled a lot of grain, and compared with most places in the interior of the Central Plains, the logistics of troop mobilization were much easier to solve.

Although Dongying at this time was more closed than in the Warring States period, it was still difficult to hide the turmoil in many places, especially when ships in many places began to be requisitioned.

Of course, Chen Xin and even Li Yuan and others expected the shogunate's possible counterattack to a certain extent, but they still did not expect that the scale of the counterattack would be so huge, and when the hot air balloons attached to the battalion battle group stationed in the Kitakyushu area observed the enemy situation, the number of troops gathered in the Shimonoseki area had reached an estimated 50,000 or 60,000 people, and it seemed that it was still further improving and growing.

Fortunately, after many years of wartime, the whole team still established a relatively perfect communication mechanism by using telescopes, signal fireworks, and hot air balloons, and in a very short period of time began to move around the direction of Xiaguan, and the first to be mobilized was, of course, the main force of the fleet.

The fierce water confrontation also started at the first time. The shogunate fleet did not expect that the enemy would be so powerful, and almost in a round of confrontation, those warships with the ability to sail far seas were almost wiped out, and the way of fighting at sea and even the efficiency of firepower seemed to have changed fundamentally compared with a few decades ago, and there was hardly much room for broadside battles.

In the event of an annihilating blow to the fleet of large ships, there were still quite a few small boats arranged for sailing, and many fireships were prepared. There were hundreds of fireships carrying only incendiary materials, and thousands of small boats capable of carrying tens of thousands of troops also took the opportunity to attack the fleet.

Obviously, although the main fleet showed fierce combat capability in the operation, it still did not deter the opponent who had the advantage of strength in the operation relying on the strait and coastal waters, especially when the wind direction was still very unfavorable for the large ships. In previous combat experience, in such sea conditions and weather, and when the enemy's large ships have targets that have to be defended, the fireship tactic has a good chance of success.

And just like that, fierce melee combat soon ensued. Because of the lack of tens of thousands of officers and men of the Marine Corps accompanying the ship, the problem of insufficient manpower of the main fleet led by Li Yuan and Chen Xin also began to manifest itself at this time, and the ability of the entire ship to maneuver freely began to be greatly affected when it was necessary to exert its firepower with all its might. At the same time, a lot of the ship's firepower was also dispersed to the ground troops, and only more than 100 light mortar guns and even more than 1,000 three-tael guns and more than 100 200-pound barrels were equipped with each ship.

Of course, even these fires showed terrifying firepower and power when the enemy ships approached, the violent and accurate explosions, and the guns that could pose a threat to the planks of the small boats were almost inmissible at a distance of about fifty or sixty paces, and soon the hundred or dozens of enemy ships that came to attack were hit in a short time and burst into flames or sank into the water.

After seeing that the enemy ships were not easy to provoke, some of these small boats began to retreat and flee, but many of them went further to the shore at this time, trying to annihilate the ground force on the opposite bank, which had been confirmed by investigation to be only about seven or eight hundred men in total.

After all, the strait around Kitakyushu was a little too short, and eventually more than 5,000 brave samurai began to approach the shore from other directions in more than 200 small boats, and gathered one after another to move closer to the intended target.