Sanada Daisuke and Mori Katsuya passed through the south gate of the outer city for a while, and Li Goro rushed up with the sparse rear team. Halfway through the procession, the wheels of a car suddenly broke and fell crookedly in the middle of the hole in the city gate.

While ordering his subordinates to scatter the cars and prisoners in front of the broken car to the side, Li Wulang beckoned the officers and soldiers guarding the gate on the side to come forward to help. The rice bags that fell from the car immediately attracted the attention of the townspeople at the back of the line.

Several town slave leaders who were persuaded by the Toyotomi remnants began to incite the townspeople at the back of the official army to snatch these grain trucks seized by the officials and soldiers and divide them, which were the property of the profiteers anyway and could not fall into the pockets of the officials and soldiers in vain.

Most of the townspeople who were called to see the excitement were idle townspeople and unemployed. Machino, another name for members of a dynamic group in the market, arose to fight against the oppression of merchants and townspeople by Banner Bunno.

After decades of peace, Japan's samurai population has multiplied. However, Japan's Four People's System learns from the Ming Dynasty, but it has its own particularities. For example, a samurai cannot engage in other professions, and if they are discovered, they will be removed from their status as samurai.

However, regardless of the shogunate or the local feudal domains, there were so many official positions. According to the principle of samurai hereditary succession, the eldest son could inherit the family business only after his father's retirement or accidental death. As for the other sons, if they can't get the favor of the feudal lord and the general, they can only become ronin.

The ronins had no money, but they were not allowed to engage in lowly work, so in order to survive, the samurai either worked as teachers or formed dynamic groups such as Kimotonu, collecting protection money from merchants and craftsmen.

The merchants in other cities were weaker, so they had to endure in silence. However, Osaka, a commercial place where the prototype of the world's kitchen gradually appeared, and the former Toyotomi domain, which was most oppressed by the Tokugawa family, had the spirit of rebellion against the shogunate.

The merchants and townspeople of Osaka formed market groups such as the Machinos to counter the unbridled exploitation and oppression of merchants and commoners.

As a newly developed commercial city, Osaka has a large proportion of craftsmen and ordinary people from all over the world, and most of them are bankrupt farmers. And the machinos in Osaka, the main force is actually ronin, and if they are not samurai, they can't deal with those samurai-born flag slaves, but they are ronins who have lost their territory due to the change of the shogunate.

The rise in grain prices and prices since the beginning of the year not only caused a depression in the market, but also caused the merchants to continuously reduce their financial support for the town slaves. Businessmen don't have a business to do themselves, so they naturally want to cut back on expenses.

But these ronins would rather become machislaves than engage in other professions, thus losing their status as samurai, so naturally they will not sit idly by. There were those who petitioned the acting officials and the shogunate, those who stole and robbed, and those who directly led people to attack the rice shops.

Compared to the poor townspeople who are unemployed and hungry at home cursing the acting officials, these more action-oriented ronin are on the verge of setting off a spontaneous rebellion against the shogunate, but they still lack a fuse.

But now, this few truckloads of grain have finally ignited the last shred of reason in the minds of the onlookers. Looking at the more than a dozen townspeople at the front, they went up and pushed away the officers and soldiers guarding the car, but they were not hindered.

This made the onlookers suddenly pluck up their courage, and they rushed up one after another, unceremoniously carrying the grain bags from the car. Nearly 100 bags of food on several carts quickly disappeared into the crowd in the passing of countless hands.

The shogunate officers and soldiers guarding the convoy not only did not make any moves to stop them, but weakly retreated to the castle. The snatching of nearly 100 bags of rice did not satisfy the onlookers, but rather aroused the dissatisfaction of most of them.

Because all this rice fell into the hands of the more than 100 townspeople at the front of the procession, the townspeople who had only dared to watch from afar in fear of the majesty of the shogunate had just rushed to the vicinity of the castle gate and found that the car was empty, and there was still any food.

The townspeople, who realized that they were one step late, did not complain that they were running too slowly, but turned their disappointment into anger and vented it on these weak officers and soldiers. They felt that as long as the officers and soldiers had just resisted, maybe they would be able to get a little bit of it.

On the side of the officers and soldiers, under the reprimand of Li Goro, the leader of the group, Sasaki Jiro, who was responsible for guarding the gate, had to bring his subordinates to try to disperse the townspeople who were blocking the city gate and ask them to return the food packets.

The townspeople, who were already feeling lost and dissatisfied because they didn't get food, were even more enraged when they heard Jiro Sasaki's words. After Jiro Sasaki finished his threatening words to the crowd, someone in the crowd suddenly shouted.

"The tyrannical officials and the greedy profiteers joined forces to raise the price of grain for profit, without caring for the lives of the people.

Since the acting official Shigesumi Sakai took office, he has not spent a day without drinking and drinking, and in addition to extorting businessmen and ordinary people every day, when has he ever administered justice for the people?

Now that there are houses outside the castle that have broken kitchens, why didn't the shogunate give them food? Did the shogunate want to starve us to death? Let the acting official come out and make it clear to us that if we don't release food today, then we will go into the city to get it ourselves. ”

"Yes, let the deputy come out..."

"If you want to put food, if you don't put food, everyone will starve to death..."

The cries of the onlookers were like a landslide and tsunami, and more and more townspeople gathered under the castle. It seems that the person who just snatched the grain is distributing food to the towns, and is still spreading the word that the food is being released in the city, and asking everyone to take the guys to get the food.

Jiro Sasaki was shocked, he still had some experience, and he knew that if it continued like this, it would probably become a machiren riot.

So he stepped forward, drew his knife and pointed at the crowd and said, "Do you want to rebel? There are still thousands of shogunate warriors in the castle, so can you storm this castle?

I advise you to calm down, and not to impulsively hit a stone with an egg, which will kill you. I will forward your request to the lord of the castle, and since the lord has caught the rice merchant who is driving up prices, he will naturally consider the matter of releasing grain.

Now that you have gone away and gone home, for the sake of all of you who have been together for so many years, I will act as if nothing had happened today. I won't pursue the food I just snatched..."

Li Chenfang, who was standing on the other side of the city gate, felt that the outburst of Jiro Sasaki in such an emergency situation was remarkable. Under the combination of soft and hard work of the group leader, and the intimidation of the group of soldiers behind him who showed their blades, the originally enthusiastic townspeople began to quiet down.

Li Chenfang naturally wouldn't tolerate Sasaki Jiro drinking these people back, he looked back, and then called Li Wulang and asked, "Have all the weapons been sent?" How are the squads arranged? How's the city doing? ”

Li Wulang nodded and said: "All the weapons have been sent to the soldiers, Lord Zheng took the sixth and seventh squads to the city, and the fourth squad is ready to meet them on the climbing trail, there should be no problem."

The 1st and 2nd squads have blocked the entrance to the street leading to Sannomaru, and the 3rd and 5th squads are ready to take orders from the adults at any time to destroy the enemy forces in the castle gate. ”

Li Chenfang asked for the loaded musket from the soldiers beside him, and then said to Li Wulang: "If I shoot a shot, you will jump into that car and repeat to them what I taught you before..."

"Haven't you done it yet? I've already done it in the city. Hearing Zheng Xiang's voice, Li Chenfang subconsciously looked back, but saw Zheng Xiang, who was wiping the blood on his hands, walking towards him.

Li Chenfang did not hesitate to shoot at the top of the door hole, and the sound of the iron cannon immediately startled the shogunate officials and soldiers in the city gate cave and the crowd at the city gate.

Jiro Sasaki, who shrunk his neck and wanted to squat, quickly reacted, he turned around and angrily reprimanded: "Bastard, who used the iron cannon?" Do you want to be put in a water prison..."

After seeing the two rows of colleagues behind him pointing at them with iron cannons, Sasaki Jiro suddenly felt a tingling in his scalp and interrupted his reprimand, like a chicken with his throat cut.

"Why are you pointing the cannon at us, we're in a group..."Jiro Sasaki's subordinates shouted to the gunner behind him, but the cannon in the other party's hand didn't even shake in the slightest, obviously not listening to their words.

At this time, a samurai jumped onto the grain cart behind the iron gunner, and shouted to them and the crowd behind them, "I, Hirano Goro, am a close attendant of His Royal Highness the Great Na Yan Tadacho..."

Hearing the words of His Royal Highness Tadacho, Sasaki Jiro's ears suddenly roared, and he knew that he and Osaka Castle had encountered * trouble.

“… Three generations of shoguns, Tokugawa Iemitsu, were tyrannical and unscrupulous, pampering greedy people like Shigesumi Sakai, exploiting the people to enrich their own private coffers, and turning a blind eye to the hungry people who were waiting to be fed...

His Royal Highness Zhongchang could not bear the overthrow of the foundation created by the Divine Monarch, nor did he want the people to be immersed in misery. Therefore, it is determined to be in the heavens, summon the heroes of the Quartet, expel the three generations of generals to the wilderness, and return the great government to His Royal Highness..."

Hirano's words terrified Sasaki Jiro and his subordinates, and they were involved in the inside story of the struggle within the shogunate, which made them feel uncomfortable for a while.

And the townspeople watching at the city gate also opened their mouths wide and looked dumbfounded. As a commercial city, Osaka's favorite thing to do is to spread gossip, especially the struggle between the three shoguns and his younger brother Tokugawa Tadanaga for the throne.

However, in the past, they were just a kind of after-dinner conversation, and they had never heard such exciting news in public. Not to mention, this shogunate samurai, who was loyal to His Royal Highness Tadacho, actually raised the banner against the Shogun, or in the name of His Highness Tadacho.