At the end of September of the second year of Chongzhen, the monarchs and ministers of the Joseon Kingdom finally ordered the closure of Busan and other places and expelled the Tsushima Domain's purchase of rice.

This situation is, of course, unwilling to be seen by the current feudal lord of the Ma Domain, Zong Yoshicheng, and his family's old retainers.

As a result, the Tsushima Domain, which did not know where to go, sent people to contact the officials of several provinces in southern Korea several times to no avail, and began to engage in the business they used to be good at, that is, to send the samurai of the domain to disguise themselves as pirates and go to the coastal towns of Korea to directly grab rice.

Because Tsushima Island is very close to the southern coast of Korea, the nearest place is less than 100 miles.

Historically, these Japanese robbers who went ashore to grab rice had a special name, which was translated into Chinese as rice grabbing death squads (historical facts).

On top of that, the Tsushima clan, who went ashore in small groups to grab rice, were not only armed with traditional Japanese swords, but also heavily armed with European-style muskets purchased from the Dutch.

This is the truth behind the two people, Li Li and Yin Xuan, the two princes of Ayahara, who went to the Jingshi of the Ming Dynasty to request the purchase of firearms for the Ming army.

In fact, the Japanese army began to be equipped with a large number of muskets very early, and at the latest when Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent a large army to invade Korea during the Wanli period, the Japanese army was already equipped with a large number of European-style muskets.

And at that time, the firearms tactics of the Japanese army were also very proficient, and the Japanese had already mastered the three-stage musket tactics commonly used in the Ming army.

This is the fundamental reason why the Japanese army sent by Hideyoshi Toyoda was invincible as soon as it landed in Korea.

At that time, the Korean army was under the protection of the Ming Dynasty and had not fought for more than 200 years, and because Korea was a subject country close to the Ming Dynasty, there was only a standing army of Wuwei, that is, a standing army of less than 30,000.

And the weapons equipped by the standing army of these five guards are all cold weapons such as swords, spears, short bows, and shields.

It was okay to scare the common people with these cold weapons and suppress the peasant uprising, but when they encountered the Japanese army, which was armed with a large number of European-style muskets and proficient in musket three-stage tactics, it was immediately defeated.

Therefore, after the Japanese army landed in Korea, it pushed all the way from south to north and from east to west, occupied Seoul and took Pyongyang within a few months, and the Korean king had to flee to the territory of the Ming Dynasty for a time, asking the Ming Dynasty to send troops to restore the country.

The main reason why the Japanese army was so powerful at that time was that their weapons and equipment far exceeded the equipment level of the Korean army at that time.

However, the European-style muskets that the Japanese were equipped with in large quantities at that time were only European-style arquebuses purchased from the Dutch and Portuguese.

However, in their usual exaggerated and exaggerated style, the Japanese called this European-style arquebus from the West an iron cannon.

Of course, there is a reason why the Japanese are so exaggerated.

Because for the general height of the Japanese at that time, this European-style arquebus from the European battlefield was indeed more like a small artillery piece for them.

The arquebus prepared by the Japanese was the same as the self-made arquebus commonly equipped by the Ming Dynasty army at that time, but the craftsmanship was excellent, the firing range was a little longer, and the training was well-trained, so in the early days of the war, the Ming army that had just entered Korea and did not know what was going on still suffered a lot of defeats.

Fortunately, the Ming family at that time was rich, and after knowing that the Japanese were also equipped with a large number of firearms, they began to cast artillery on a large scale and imitated a large number of Franc machine guns.

In this way, a few years later, when the level of firearms and equipment of the Ming army increased rapidly, and a large number of vehicle-mounted general guns and Franc machine guns were equipped, the defeat of the Japanese was inevitable.

Fortunately, after the defeat and withdrawal of the Japanese army, a civil war broke out in Japan, and the faction of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's son was defeated, and Tokugawa Ieyasu rose rapidly, establishing the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and embarking on the path of seclusion.

Otherwise, with the arquebus technology that the Japanese had already obtained at that time, they would not close themselves to the country and develop until the Chongzhen period thirty years later, I am afraid that they would also have advanced firearms such as flintlock pistols and rifled guns.

But even so, in the current Chongzhen period, the level of Japanese muskets should not be underestimated.

Although the country has been closed off for several years, the Japanese musket technology has not deteriorated.

Both the iron cannons built by the Japanese feudal lords and the European-style arquebuses purchased by the wealthy feudal lords from foreign merchants in Nagasaki through various channels were all excellent.

Since the beginning of the year, Emperor Chongzhen ordered Li Xingzhong, the sailor of Dongjiang Town, to go to the Tsushima Domain to question the Tsushima Island Domain, together with the sailor fleet of the Yingzhou Town Guard, and it has been more than half a year now, but there has been no substantial progress in this matter.

The reason for this is that the muskets and artillery of the Tsushima Domain army on Tsushima Island are also very sharp, and in terms of quantity and performance, they are not much worse than the sailors of Dongjiang Town and the army of Yingzhou Town.

In particular, in terms of numbers, the Tsushima army on Tsushima Island probably had a lot more muskets than the Ming army and the Korean coalition army that had gone to besiege Tsushima Island before.

Therefore, after Emperor Chongzhen's will to ask the guilt of the Ma Fan arrived in Dongjiang Town, Mao Wenlong, Marquis of Andong, asked Li Xingzhong to take the main force of the sailors in Dongjiang Town to North Korea.

Of course, Mao Wenlong, Marquis of Anton, looked down on the strength of the Tsushima Domain in this era, but because some people under his command had trade contacts with Japanese merchants in Nagasaki, Mao Wenlong still had some understanding of the strength of the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate behind the Tsushima Domain, and knew that Japan, the Japanese state, was not as easy to provoke as the emperor thought.

Therefore, although Anton Hou Mao Wenlong was ordered to send Li Xingzhong with a fleet of sailors to Tsushima Xingshi to ask for the guilt, he did not want to really send troops to fight for the sake of the Koreans.

Li Xingzhong was ordered to take only the naval fleet of Dongjiang Town, and there was no Ming soldier in charge of the landing operation.

It was the North Koreans who were specifically responsible for the landing operation and charged into battle.

In late March, Li Xingzhong made proper preparations, led more than 200 ships of all sizes, and more than four people from three naval divisions and battalions, and set out along the Korean coast in the direction of Ganghwa Island.

Li Xingzhong was on the coast around Ganghwa Island until mid-April, when he waited for the food and grass advanced by the Koreans, as well as the 5,000-man firearms battalion that the Joseon State had equipped with the sharpshooters that Yin Xuan had purchased from Daming.

After the two teams met, they were organized for a while, with Li Xingzhong, the chief soldier of the Ming Dynasty, as the main body, and Li Gui, the Korean soldier Cao Jushu as the deputy, leading more than 500 large and small ships under his command, and tens of thousands of people, running all the way to Tsushima Island along the coast to ask for guilt.

Li Xingzhong used to be the general of the naval army in Denglai Town in the era of Yuan Keli, and now he is the chief general of the naval division in Dongjiang Town.

And in his opinion, with such a huge fleet, with thousands of sailors under his command, and a North Korean firearms battalion equipped with 5,000 people from the Shenji Battalion, it is not easy to fight Tsushima!

In his eyes, Tsushima Island is not as big as Yingsu Island, even if the power of the clan of the feudal lord on Tsushima Island cannot be underestimated, the entire Tsushima Domain has a total population of 350,000, can it still make up 350,000 troops?

In mid-April, Li Xingzhong and Li Gui set off with a fleet, and half a month later, in early May, the group bypassed the southern coast of South Jeolla Province in North Korea and arrived at Geoje Island off the south coast of North Korea.

Geoje Island is located between Tsushima Island and the coast of North Korea, closer to the sea of North Korea's so-called South Gyeongsang Province, and is only 20 miles from the coast of Gyeongsang Province and within 100 miles of Tsushima Island.

Today's place is the distribution point of the so-called rice-grabbing death squad of the Tsushima Domain.

Li Xingzhong and Li Gui took more than 500 large and small ships and tens of thousands of people, including a North Korean firearms battalion equipped with 5,000 guns.

At this time, the Tsushima Clan Japanese Invaders entrenched on the island were originally a team of dozens of people, and the larger team was only 200 people, of course, not an opponent of tens of thousands of people.

The sudden appearance of hundreds of large and small ships next to Geoje Island alone has already terrified many of them.

In this way, one side is full of confidence, and the other side has no intention of fighting, and the task of clearing Geoje Island was completed very smoothly, but in just a few days, all the Japanese strongholds on the island were cleared.

Although the Donggang Navy Division and the Korean coalition forces did not kill or capture many Japanese in total, the Japanese on Geoje Island and other small coastal islands around Geoje Island fled from the news.

Li Xingzhong and Li Gui's men also rescued a group of Korean women from the Japanese stronghold on Geoje Island and found a lot of food.