Zhao Guoliang was worried after sending the first batch of looted property back to Nanjing, and now that the news of his landing should have spread, what should he do next? It is unrealistic to wait for domestic orders, Nagasaki is more than 1,000 miles away from Nanjing, and it takes half a month to deliver news back and forth, so we cannot afford to wait for time.

Yang Shilong, the civil official who accompanied him, saw that the Admiral was frowning and silent, and asked on the side, "My lord, is there something wrong?" "Yang Shilong is not a scholar, he was originally just doing business in Songjiang Mansion, and in the words of later generations, he was engaged in entrepot trade, but in fact, he was a second-class dealer. He has been running the Nagasaki line for many years and is familiar with the situation on the island of Kyushu.

"Lord Yang, you are very familiar with the country of Wa, where do you say we will go next?"

"My lord, there are three lord-level daimyo on this island of Kyushu, and Nagasaki is just a port managed by the Nabeshima family of the Hizen Domain, and this is not the base camp of the Nabeshima family at all!"

Zhao Guoliang didn't expect Nagasaki to be rich enough, but he didn't expect that it was not the right place for people.

"Oh? So where is the Nabeshima family you are talking about? ”

"My lord, Nagasaki is not actually the territory of the Hizen Domain, but the territory of the shogun of Edo, but it is managed by the Nabeshima family of the Hizen Domain, and the Nabeshima family's base camp is in Saga, which is more than 100 miles away from Nagasaki."

"Is the Nabeshima family rich?"

"Naturally, the Nabeshima family is one of the three lords of the Kyushu island, along with the Kato family of the Kumamoto Domain and the Shimazu family of the Satsuma Domain. There were also seventeen or eighteen small feudal lords at the level of city lords. ”

Zhao Guoliang was happy when he heard Yang Shilong say this, the military order given to him by the emperor was to get some grain in addition to robbing money, and the white rice in Nanjing had risen to two silver dollars and one stone, which was really not true. But those killers of the Ten Divisions, in order to grab some silver, even set fire to the city, these are good, there is nothing but silver.

"Good! Come! Summons the order to go down, eat in the morning, and set off in the afternoon! The army marches along the coastline, warships protect the flanks of the army, let's go to the Hizen domain in Saga first, and then go to the Kumamoto domain for a big robbery around the island! ”

The order was passed down and the army began to set off, and Zhao Guoliang's order to rob around the island could make the big and small daimyo and the lord of the country on Kyushu Island unlucky, and the first to be robbed was the Hizen Domain, one of the powerful clans in the southwest.

The lord of the Hizen Domain is Nabeshima Katsushige, who is considered a slave with three surnames. At that time, the power of the Nabeshima family was not so big, and he was just a retainer of the Ryuzoji family, but Nabeshima Katsushige grew very well back then, and was adopted as an adopted son by Ryuzoji. Later, when Tokugawa Ieyasu was doing something to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's old department, Nabeshima Katsushige sat on Toyotomi Hideyoshi's side.

However, Nabeshima Katsushige had more eyes, who knew that the last one would be able to win, so he took his own troops and did not go into battle, but watched the excitement from the sidelines. Seeing the defeat of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces in the Battle of Sekigahara, he immediately took refuge in Tokugawa Ieyasu.

However, Tokugawa Ieyasu also knew that this guy was a capricious villain, but he did not kill him, but gave him a foreign name and let him inherit the Hizen domain of the Ryuzoji family.

Although Kyushu was a barren place with no special products, it was very close to Chinese mainland, and coupled with the good geographical environment of the Hizen Domain, it quickly developed until the end of the shogunate, and it became one of the four clans that fell to the shogunate.

However, in this time and space, the Feiqian Domain has no chance to fall, because the Ming Dynasty came out with Zhu Hongsan, and in order to pass on his own domestic contradictions, he extended his criminal black hand to the peaceful island of Kyushu.

Nabeshima Katsushige of the Hizen Domain had received a report two days earlier that Nagasaki had been burned down by a group of troops claiming to be the Ming Army. Nabeshima Katsushige knew that the Ming Kingdom was still in civil strife, and it was impossible to send troops to Nagasaki to cause trouble. The intelligence said that they were wearing colorful military uniforms, which were very similar to those red-haired people. Nabeshima Katsushige thought that this group of people should have come to avenge the Christians of Amakusa, after all, Nabeshima Katsushige was one of the main forces to suppress Christians during the Shimabara Rebellion.

However, Nabeshima Katsushige didn't take those strange troops to heart, there were only more than 10,000 people in total, what use could it be? Didn't the 200,000 Mongol army serve as fish food at the bottom of the sea?

Therefore, Nabeshima Katsushige organized several feudal lords around him, and several feudal lords such as Omura, Kashima, Karatsu, and Kurume all sent out different armies and prepared to face the Ming army outside Saga Castle. And among these armies, the most elite is the two thousand iron artillery team of the Hizen Domain!

The iron cannon of the Wa Kingdom was the arquebus, which was introduced by the Portuguese and shone in the battles between Korea and the Ming army. In all fairness, the iron cannon of the current Wa Kingdom is not worse than the arquebus of the Ming Dynasty, and it is even stronger in terms of accuracy, but it is not easy to say about Zhu Hongsan's flintlock pistol, after all, it is two generations worse.

Zhao Guoliang was very surprised by the iron artillery team of the Hizen Domain, he didn't expect that such a poor Wa country would still have muskets? However, the iron artillery team only surprised Zhao Guoliang, and it did not affect the course of the battle. The flintlock pistols of the Ming army were far superior to the iron cannons of the Japanese State in terms of range, accuracy, and speed, and even the number could not be compared. The Ming army is an all-firearms unit, and the iron artillery team is only 2,000 people, which is really not an opponent, not to mention that the army still has artillery support!

The battle ended with a great victory for the Ming army, and the 20,000 troops organized by Nabeshima Katsushige were defeated, and Nabeshima Katsushige himself died under the muskets of the Ming army, so Saga Castle fell into the hands of the Ming army.

Although Saga Castle was the main city of the Hizen Domain, it was not as rich as Nagasaki, and Zhao Guoliang only got a million taels of silver in Saga, but there was a lot of grain, and there were 500,000 koku of white rice. As in Nagasaki, the loot was packed onto ships and shipped to Nanjing.

The Hizen Domain, which was at the level of the lord of the country, was destroyed in the First World War, and the remaining small feudal clans all surrendered to the wind and sent silver and grain to the Celestial Empire generals of the Ming Dynasty.

If you are replaced by a literati leader, it is estimated that you will have to talk about some stinky rules for convincing people with virtue, but now it is Zhao Guoliang who leads the army.

Zhao Guoliang was originally a bandit in Huguang, and under Zhu Hongsan's education, he developed a bad habit of flipping the table after eating. Of course, the Ming army is not trying to occupy this place, so what's the use of asking for your allegiance? It's better to kill chickens and get eggs quickly.

In the remaining month, Zhao Guoliang led his men to start an armed march around the island, and the Ming army along the coastline of Kyushu, robbed the towns when they encountered them, and set them on fire after robbing. However, it was not without resistance, and after receiving the news, Kumamoto and Satsuma, the other two lords on the island of Kyushu, organized a combined army of 50,000 people, and a fleet of more than 100 ships, including 20 Ataka ships, to prepare for a life-and-death battle with the Ming army on the Kuma River in Kumamoto.

When Zhao Guoliang received the war letter from the coalition army, he sneered and said to Li Tinglong: "Are these Japanese people in the brains of the Chinese people in water? What age are you still playing this set of war books? ”

"My lord, the people of the Wa Kingdom are all samurai, and what they probably pay attention to is some kind of boundless honor! What shall we do? Did you break it before they were ready? ”

Zhao Guoliang shook his head and said, "No! This time, Ben Du is not going to play some conspiracy, but to defeat these little dwarfs head-on in a dignified manner, and let them see the strength of my Da Ming! ”

Zhao Guoliang turned his head to the messenger and said, "Okay! This governor promises you that in five days I will fight you to the death at the Kuma River that you are talking about! ”

The Kumagawa River is a seaside plain about 50 miles from Kumamoto Castle, about a dozen square kilometers, facing Amakusa Island in Kyushu.

Zhao Guoliang led the team to this place and frowned, the plain is easy to say, the main reason is that this bay is too narrow.

Zhao Guoliang sneered: "A good place chosen by the Japanese people, in such a shallow bay, their naval army can exert the greatest combat power. Li Tinglong, are you sure to win? ”

Li Tinglong looked at the surrounding environment and said: "My lord, it's not okay in this bay, there are reefs everywhere, and our big ship has a deep draft, so if you are not careful, you will run aground!" ”

"What's your solution?"

"My lord, why don't I lead the navy to lure the enemy's navy out of this bay when the war starts, as long as I get to the ocean, I can take advantage of the fast speed of our ships and let them sink them separately! It's just that my lord is going to face 50,000 enemies alone! ”

"Don't worry about this, Ma Kun's 10,000 musketeers in Nanchang can win against 30,000 Manchu cavalry, can't I win against 50,000 infantry?"

Just as the two were talking, the Japanese coalition forces on the opposite side had already entered the battlefield, and Li Tinglong saw that the Japanese naval army had appeared on the horizon, and after saying goodbye, he led the eleven warships of the navy to meet them.

Zhao Guoliang saw in the telescope that these Japanese people were dressed more fancy than their own army, what red, green, blue, it was really colorful. Especially the dozen or so generals in the center of the enemy army, one by one wearing demon masks and holding a flower paper fan.

Zhao Guoliang scolded secretly in his heart when he saw this: "Is this fucking here to fight or sing?" ”

Li Tinglong relied on the long range of his warships and sank two ships in unison from a distance of 500 meters, and then slowly withdrew from the battlefield with the fleet and headed for the sea off Amakusa.

When the generals of the Japanese navy saw that the two ships had been sunk just after the battle, they were also enraged and led the fleet to tail away.

Seeing the beginning of the navy, Zhao Guoliang ordered his army to put up the formation that he was best at, with musketeers in front and sword and shield soldiers in the rear. Finally, artillery positions.

There were very few cavalry in the Japanese army, and there were no hundreds of thousands of cavalry like the northern peoples on the mainland, and only 1,000 cavalry were followed on the expedition this time, which were placed on the flanks of the military formation to prepare for assault. In front of the Ming army was 20,000 foot light, that is, the lowest cannon fodder.

The task of this group of ashigaru is to use their bodies to resist the bullets of the Ming army, so that the five thousand warriors behind rush forward to fight hand-to-hand, and the five thousand iron artillery team behind them are the backbone, and they are responsible for the heavy armor sword and shield soldiers of the Ming army opposite.