As the supreme commander who decided to launch this siege battle, Li Chenfang actually didn't have much confidence in his heart. It was too well fortified in Osaka Castle, and the manpower he could use was too weak.

It was his greatest expectation at the beginning, that is, to attack the castle town in the castle, to teach the shogunate a profound lesson, and then to leave the name of Tokugawa Tadanaga. This wise and martial His Royal Highness, who was praised by some Japanese, was simply not worth mentioning in Li Chenfang's eyes, and compared with His Majesty the Emperor, he was just a milky child who was not involved in the world.

Li Chenfang felt that if His Majesty the Emperor and this Tokugawa Tadashi were in a different place, they would either endure it and wait for the three generations of generals to offend all the great names in the world before taking action. Either they should be prepared to send troops to the shogunate when they go to the Kuno Shandong Shonomiya shrine on the edge of Sunfu Castle for the spring festival, and if they win, they will enter Edo, and if they lose, they will retreat to the Ming Dynasty, instead of hesitating as they are now, and let the shogunate continue to spread his various deceitful deeds, which will disappoint the people of the world.

So Li Chenfang decided to use Sanada Daisuke's plan to help Tokugawa Tadanaga. Even if Osaka Castle can't be captured, this is almost certain, and it can give the shogunate an excuse to attack Tokugawa Tadadenaga. Tokugawa Tadanaga, who did not want to be imprisoned by the shogunate, would have to act after hearing the news of Osaka. Then, Satsuma, Choshu, and Kumamoto, who had never dared to erect the banner of the downfall, had an excuse to raise troops.

Compared with the overall situation of the war in Japan, the gold and silver in Osaka Castle are a small section. However, what he didn't expect at all was that the citizens of Osaka were already so resentful of the shogunate that he only lit a fire, and the citizens of Osaka turned it into a fire.

Almost none of the shogunate officers and soldiers in the city were right in their response to the turmoil, and Li Chenfang thought they were more like a group of civilians with swords than a trained army. Adventure after adventure, let them attack Ninomaru. By this time, the officers and men of the 2nd Coastal Defense Battalion, including Li Chenfang, had already risen to the highest confidence in capturing Osaka Castle.

Therefore, Li Chenfang left the back road, led a large group of men and horses into Sannomaru and Ninomaru, and personally led his troops to attack Ninomaru's * warehouse and weapons depot. Blocked from the road leading to the Honmaru Sakura Gate, Li Chenfang's attack on the * warehouse and weapons depot to the north was very smooth, the arrow tower on the side of the road was empty, and a lot of weapons and armor were discarded on the road, apparently the soldiers guarding here began to flee after hearing that Otemon had fallen.

When Li Chenfang rushed to the courtyard where the arsenal and the * warehouse were located with four squadrons, he only saw that the courtyard door was open, the courtyard was in a mess, and the personnel here were gone. When Li Chenfang ordered his subordinates to take inventory of the treasury and distribute the weapons to the volunteers in the team, the two teams that had gone to the north to explore the road sent back to report to him that the gate at the entrance of the Jing Bridge in the west had been opened, the defenders were missing, and the passages leading to the Bliss Bridge and the Qingwu Bridge in the east were also unguarded.

Li Chenfang looked up at the west, a round of red sun dyed the sunset on the horizon blood-red, the sky had begun to darken, but the outline of the city wall in the distance became clearer. His mind went blank for a few seconds before he spoke to the men around him.

"Leave a squad on guard at the entrance of the Kyobashi and reclose the gate. There is also a squad left behind on this side of the arsenal, and someone will be sent back to bring the other volunteers over to transport weapons and *..."

A loud noise from the south interrupted Li Chenfang's order, and everyone standing in the courtyard couldn't help but look south, and they saw a puff of black smoke rushing into the sky near the Otemon. Immediately, someone happily said: "An arrow tower has been blown up, and the adult's plan really works..."

Before the man's words could be spoken, another violent explosion was heard from the south, and the consequence of this explosion was that the upper part of an arrow tower completely burned into a huge torch. You can guess why the previous explosion was, but for the second explosion, it's a little hard to understand what happened there.

Li Chenfang glanced at the suspicious subordinates around him, and then said, "Heavenly punishment, this is heavenly punishment." Three generations of generals favored treacherous villains like Sakai Shigesumi, so that the heavens were angry and resentful, and even the heavens punished them. With the blessing of heaven, Osaka Castle will inevitably be taken by our army. Except for the team that had just been assigned a mission, the other squadrons followed me, and we went to attack the Bliss Bridge and the Blue House Gate to cut off the retreat of the enemy forces in Honmaru..."

Li Chenfang's words immediately boosted the morale of his subordinates, and before they could figure out why the arrow tower garrisoned by the officers and soldiers would become a torch, the volunteers in Osaka were more willing to believe that this was God's punishment for the acting official Sakai Shigesumi. For the officers and men of the 2nd Battalion of Haiphong, this was a good omen given to them by God, indicating that their adventure would inevitably succeed, so the morale of both sides became inflamed for a while.

Li Chenfang led more than 300 people to the narrow passage leading to the Bliss Bridge, a long causeway sandwiched between two moats, and the width of the embankment was about no more than 15 meters. Li Chenfang led the team to the front, but they did not encounter any defenders on the road, and there was a mysterious silence on the causeway.

When the team came to the Bridge of Bliss, it was already extremely dark, and when they reached out, they could only see the outline of their fingers. The Honmaru on the other side of the Bliss Bridge was pitch black, and it was impossible to tell how many people were stationed at all, looking at the Bliss Bridge, which only allowed about 3 or 4 people in parallel, Li Chenfang hesitated for a long time.

The width of this moat was only fifty or sixty meters, and there was no reason why the defenders on the opposite side could not hear the arrival of their brigade of men and horses. Similarly, the movement of the opposite side preparing for battle, this side should also be able to hear it clearly, and now there is no movement on the other side, which is a little suspicious.

Li Chenfang thought for a moment, always suspecting that there was some conspiracy here, and while ordering a volunteer squadron around him to continue to march towards the Qingwu Gate in the east, he ordered three or four bold cronies to walk across the bridge to test it.

Just when Li Chenfang stopped and waited at the head of the Bliss Bridge, more than 300 volunteers followed, and they also brought good news that the passage to the cherry blossom gate had been opened. Now Li Gorou is leading his team to shoot at the enemy troops on Sakuramon, because the sky is dark, it seems that neither side has achieved anything.

Just as Li Chenfang was listening to the report, a torch suddenly lit up on the gate tower of the Gate of Blis, and the cronies he sent to explore the way poked their heads out of the gate tower and shouted excitedly here: "My lord, the gate here is open, and there is no one." ”

Li Chenfang couldn't believe it, he carefully sent two teams to cross the bridge, and after occupying the entire gatehouse and no abnormalities, he personally led the squadron directly under him to cross the bridge. Standing on the tower of the city gate, he kept sending personnel to search the nearby buildings, but found no one. If it weren't for the sound of fierce battle coming from the south, he would have almost thought that this Honmaru had been abandoned by the defenders.

After assembling four squadrons, Li Chenfang finally attacked the castle tower close to his side, and there were people in the brightly lit castle tower, but they were just some miscellaneous servants. None of the acting officials and senior samurai in the castle tower were there, and after asking these miscellaneous servants, Li Chenfang learned that when the battle began in the afternoon, the acting officer Sakai Shigesumi and the commander of the inner city army, Obantou and others, were not in their posts, and there was only a group of mid-level samurai in Honmaru who could not call the shots.

These samurai did not dare to reveal the news of the absence of the deputy official and the daibantou to their outside colleagues, nor did they dare to issue orders to defend the castle on behalf of the official and the daibanto, and as a result, the Ninomaru army was disheartened, and the middle and lower rank samurai took off their armor and went home to protect their families.

Seeing that the city's defenses were tending to collapse due to this inexplicable reason, a certain mid-level samurai in charge of the costume of the acting official Shigesumi Sakai finally couldn't help but stand up. Ignoring the opposition of his colleagues, he refused to wait any longer for the return of the deputy and the daibanto, and ordered the samurai of Honmaru to be armed in the name of the acting officer, and opened the * warehouse and weapons depot of Ninomaru, and transferred the remaining soldiers of Ninomaru to the arrow tower in front of Sakuramon.

The mid-level samurai stationed on Sakuramon with the Honmaru samurai who agreed with him, leaving all of his comrades aside. Naturally, his colleagues were extremely dissatisfied, believing that the samurai had overstepped his status and had ignored their majesty. Dissatisfied, a certain samurai refused to accept the order he had been assigned, opened the gates of the Bridge of Bliss, and ran home.

Since someone took the lead, the other middle-level samurai in Honmaru naturally followed. However, when the samurai left, they did not send anyone to inform the defenders guarding the Sakura Gate, they simply left their equipment in the castle tower. The defenders north of Honmaru didn't know what was going on inside the castle tower, they just saw that their boss had run away, and there was no one to lead them, so everyone dispersed.

The reason why they didn't run away was because they weren't samurai and that they were afraid that they would be caught and executed by the samurai masters if they escaped from their posts, so they stayed and lit the candles of the castle tower at a fixed time according to the old rules.

Li Chenfang felt that this was really an absurd war, and he had some difficulty believing the truth of everything that was happening in front of him. However, since God really put this opportunity to capture Osaka Castle in front of him, he felt that he had no reason not to accept it.

After determining that the ungarrisoned north of Honmaru was due to infighting and not a trap in the Honmaru garrison, Li Chenfang unceremoniously transferred all the troops to the front of the castle tower, and then cleaned up the courtyard everywhere. Most of Honmaru's existing defenders had been transferred to Sakuramon, and the remaining samurai had no idea that their superiors and colleagues would leave the safest castle tower and flee without even notifying them.

Li Chenfang soon led the team to stand in front of the Sakura Gate, although their whereabouts had been discovered by the defenders on the Sakura Gate, but Li Chenfang was not worried, he ordered to throw the furniture and wood in the back building in front of the Sakura Gate, and then let people shout to the defenders on the city gate, if they did not drop their weapons and surrender within 30 breaths, he would order to set fire to the Sakura Gate.

Although the Sakura Gate of Honmaru is made of stone masonry, the wooden building behind the Sakura Gate is not fireproof, not to mention that the platforms on the Sakura Gate are still everywhere*. The defenders of Sakuramon, who were flanked from front to back, suddenly became confused, and when Li Chenfang's subordinates counted to 23, the defenders on Sakuramen finally dropped their weapons and gave up resistance.

At 8 p.m. on August 22, the fourth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty and the eighth year of Kanei, the last defender of Osaka Castle Honmarunai gave up resistance, and Li Chenfang led less than 300 men to capture the first Xiongcheng in the region in one day. When the news spread, the impact on all parties was so great that even he himself did not expect.