After a night of continuous shelling, after the sky was shining, the task force finally completed the target of firing nine base shells and stopped firing the artillery.

As soon as the shelling ceased, the rebels, who had been waiting for them for a long time, immediately took action, and there was no doubt that they were going to send infantry to attack.

Although I felt that there should be no danger after being bombed overnight, it was still the Japanese in front and the expeditionary force behind, in other words, the Japanese were the pioneers, and the Chinese were just following the rear as support. Of course, if it sounds good, it is support, but if it is not good, it is the prison army, because after all, Katsu Kaishu's subordinates are from Edo Prefecture, and it is always difficult to be reassuring in terms of reliability.

However, Katsu Kai and Shi Dakai and others are too worried, although those who follow Katsu Kai are from Edo, but most of the soldiers are not from high backgrounds, basically they are from the countryside around Edo Prefecture, of which eighty percent are farmers from nearby villages, and the remaining two percent are mostly temporarily recruited ronin no samurai, so basically few people are from the regular army of Edo City.

The reason is very simple, when Katsukaizhou was sent to lead troops to fight against the Choshu Domain, he originally went to follow the Chinese and Westerners to fight soy sauce to earn fame, strictly speaking, it was a very dishonorable act, and the real nobles and samurai were very disdainful of it.

And although Katsu Kaishu is said to be the boss of one side, after all, his background is too low, and his status and qualifications are not enough, so in Edo Castle, which attaches great importance to the family, samurai with a bit of status are not willing to obey orders under him, so in the end, he gathered a group of ashigaru miscellaneous soldiers to Katsu Kaishu, which can be regarded as pretending.

As for the ships that transported troops, they were not good guys, they were basically converted from some larger fishing boats, and even the officers and men of the sailors who transported this army were temporarily recruited fishermen, and they were not equipped with many regular sailors, which shows how contemptuous the shogunate was to follow the trend of his actions at the beginning.

It is precisely because of this that the rebellion of Shenghaizhou had to pull the Chinese, because he knew that it was useless to rely on these rabble. If these 5,000 people rebelled, the shogunate didn't need much, and pulled out 500 banner samurai, and they could crush these 5,000 peasant soldiers like chopping melons and vegetables.

Having said that, since he knew that these 5,000 soldiers were a rabble without combat power, then when the shogunate asked him to suddenly change his route and attack the Chinese in Osaka Prefecture, it was clear that he would be sent to death.

But isn't it, attacking the Chinese is death, and not obeying orders is also death. Because the shogunate won't spare him, with this excuse for not obeying orders, isn't it a big use?

Since they are all dead, is there any other way for Shenghaizhou to go except to rebel? It's just that what Sanjo Minoru and others didn't expect was that Katsu Haizhou actually dared to collude with the Chinese, and he was so quick and decisive in rebellion, but he was caught off guard by the rear.

To put it bluntly, Sheng Haizhou did it. Mainly to save his life, his so-called righteousness of worrying about the country and the people, although he is sincere, after all, he has always been a deferential faction. But most of them are speaking out to fool their subordinates. His subordinates are different from Sheng Haizhou, they are all a group of hot-blooded and angry young people, if they are not so foolish, I am afraid they will not listen to him and go together.

Although Sheng Haizhou's subordinates are mainly miscellaneous soldiers. Most of those who served as officers were temporarily recruited ronin samurai, but in some cases, morale was quite good.

Most of those ronin samurai were protégés of Katsu Kaishu. Or some low-level samurai who are unwilling, such as Ryoma Sakamoto, etc., are all in this category of people.

Although this kind of people do not have a prominent background, and their families are not wealthy, they are open-minded, worried about the country and the people, and do not hesitate to sacrifice to achieve their goals.

If they were somewhat skeptical of Sheng Haizhou's statement before, then after witnessing the ferocious artillery fire of the task force and the strict military discipline and sharp weapons of the expeditionary force, they all believed in Sheng Haizhou's set, and felt that if Japan did not lie down and try its courage, if it was hard to do it now, it was indeed possible that it would be divided and dismembered by the foreign powers.

Because they know that no Japanese army can stop these Chinese, even 6,000 people can't fight, once they anger the Chinese, China continues to send large troops over, then what awaits Japan will be a catastrophe.

Therefore, the best way at present is to learn from the Yue Kingdom when Wu and Yue were fighting for hegemony, first be obedient, paralyze the other party, and use this method to protect Japan from being dismembered, and then cut back on food and clothing, wait for the other party to weaken and then take advantage of the situation.

Because of this, the morale of this group of stalwart samurai is undoubted, and in some cases even better than the samurai of the shogunate, because they are not afraid of death, they live for faith and righteousness.

In fact, Ryoma Sakamoto and others had already organized a new Japan meeting, which meant to create a new Japan, with the aim of uniting the majority of like-minded people to work together for the rise of Japan. However, after all, the number of these people is still too small, and their influence is limited, if those basic miscellaneous soldiers are not powerful, it is useless for them to toss.

As far as the majority of the ashigaru miscellaneous soldiers are concerned, most of these people are the lowest-level conscripts, and they are usually engaged in agriculture, and they are not full-time soldiers.

These people are illiterate, narrow-minded, have no lofty goals and ambitions, and their greatest wish is not to give up their lives, make more money, and go back to live a good life, so it is definitely not possible to let them fight a brutal battle, but if it is a tailwind battle that must be won, especially after being allowed to plunder, the morale is absolutely screaming, and it is absolutely not low.

In order to boost the morale of these people in this attack on Edo Castle, Katsu Kai and Shi Dakai allowed them to loot for three days after opening the castle, so from this point of view, they were very excited.

However, Edo Castle was difficult to fight after all, so it was estimated that the rhetoric of Kaejo and plundering for three days alone would not be able to make them go all out, but the artillery bombardment of the task force relieved their worries.

Although he was asked to go down and rest, the shelling that had been fought all night could be heard from so far away, except for a few people, how could everyone really fall asleep?

Everyone is not stupid, and they can all see that under that kind of shelling, Edo Castle is probably finished, at least those walls and other things are difficult to have a complete thing.

Now that they already have strong firepower to open the way for you, and there are friendly Chinese troops next to you, what are you afraid of? Hurry up and rush in to grab a special robbery is serious!

Because of this. So not to mention the expeditionary force, Katsu Haizhou's subordinates held their breath from top to bottom, and as soon as the shelling stopped, and the above said to attack, then these people who had already arrived at the sortie position in advance immediately charged towards Edo Castle with a roar.

At this time, there was no formation, and most of those ashigaru rushed forward, with a few samurai as the leaders in the middle.

Originally, these people were worried about what was going on in the city. However, when they reached the foot of Edo Castle, they found that no one had moved, not even the ladder, because not only had the gates been blown down, but even the walls were damaged in many places.

Seeing this situation, everyone was even more confident, and they continued to charge until they reached the gate, only to suffer the first wave of resistance.

The wave of resistance was a few abrupt gunshots. But not to mention dense, it's not even sparse, at most it's sporadic shooting.

However, it is this point of shooting. It also startled the people in front, and the momentum of the charge was actually stopped, but it was found that it was really only sporadic shooting, and there was no follow-up for a long time. They immediately understood what was going on, there must be a few survivors shooting, but there were definitely not many of them.

After discovering this. The few samurai in the middle raised their katana swords and swung them again, and then the people around them roared and continued to charge forward at a faster speed.

Soon, they broke through the first barrier, and found that there were broken walls and ruins everywhere, and occasionally there were many corpses that were horizontal and vertical, and the shape was also miserable.

This is also understandable, more than 100,000 shells came over, and they were all 120 mm caliber heavy guns, or the kind of high that increased the charge. Burst. There were many defenders in Edo Castle, especially at the gate, which was relatively densely populated, and I didn't have much experience in anti-artillery before, so I rarely knew how to find an open place to lie down, but as soon as it was bombed, I ran around, or hid under the city walls and gates, but I didn't know that that kind of behavior was even more death under the heavy artillery, so the casualties immediately went up.

Of course, there were some survivors, but after a night of continuous bombardment, these survivors were either in a trance, or dizzy, and basically lost their ability to move, and most of them had given up resistance, and even if some still resisted, they were a very small minority, and they did not pose much of a threat to the attacking forces at all.

However, even so, the people who attacked were not soft at all, they were ruthless to their own people, as long as there was a living mouth, regardless of whether the other party surrendered or not, they immediately went up and raised a group of people with swords and guns, killing these people on the spot, if it were not for the strict orders of the accompanying samurai, urging them to hurry forward, they would probably follow to strip the corpses.

Stripping corpses is one of the necessary skills of these ashigaru miscellaneous soldiers, and Ashigaru who can't strip corpses is not a good ashigaru, because it will definitely not be rich.

However, after receiving the promise of three days of plundering, these ashigaru did not look down on these small things, and besides, it was indeed not the time to slow down and loot, the most important thing was to continue to move forward, so everyone quickly obeyed the samurai's orders and continued to charge.

From this point, it can be seen that the gap between this group of Japanese soldiers and the expeditionary force is coming, although the expeditionary force is also attacking, but they are all lined up in arrays, unhurriedly moving forward, with a kind of calmness and self-confidence all over the body, even if they enter the city, they are also orderly and divide their labor, and the lowest is to act as a unit, absolutely not acting alone, and it is not a little stronger than those chaotic Japanese soldiers.

This calmness also gave the Japanese soldiers in front a lot of pressure and self-confidence, making them even more excited to charge forward, hoping to occupy the whole city as much as possible.

After breaking through two floors in a row, when they reached the innermost castle tower, these people finally encountered resolute resistance, and that was the core samurai of the shogun's mansion.

I don't know if it was luck or other reasons, but the entire Edo Castle was bombed by such a fierce shelling, and it didn't cause much damage to the tallest castle tower in the center, so that most of the flag samurai in the castle tower were preserved and became the last line of resistance.

However, at this time, everyone felt that they would not be able to overturn the sky by relying on so many dozens of flag warriors, not to mention the Chinese expeditionary force behind, just relying on their Japanese ashigaru would be enough to solve these guys.

However, when it came time to actually attack, those ashigaru found it quite difficult, and the people inside were strong in martial arts and muskets. It can be said that the long-range attack and close combat are quite sharp, and the few people they attacked were quickly cut down.

Those ashigaru weren't samurai, and they told you about fair duels, and when they found that it wasn't easy to attack, they brought in groups of musketeers and shot at the castle tower with a crackle.

Although most of Katsukaishu's group were ashigaru, after all, they were originally going to follow the Chinese and Westerners to fight the Choshu Domain, so the proportion of musketeers was very high, and there were 3,000 musketeers armed with muskets.

Most of these ashigaruses are arquebuses, and their power is naturally incomparable to foreign guns. But if you gather together and hit dozens of people, it's still completely fine.

It didn't take 3,000 people, so 1,000 people were brought in, and the method of three-stage attack was used, and they took turns to shoot at the castle tower.

After fighting for half an hour, I found that the musket shot did not seem to have much effect. So he launched a crowd charge again, but as soon as the people rushed up, due to the narrow terrain of the castle tower, the numerical advantage could not be brought into play. As a result, he was put down by the strong Qiben warriors like chopping melons and vegetables, which boosted the arrogance of the defenders inside.

Seeing that his musket shooting is not very effective, if he sends someone to charge hard, there are no masters on his side, and he is afraid that the casualties will be too great. Eventually, they simply turned to friendly forces, that is, expeditionary forces, for help.

After hearing this plea for help. The expeditionary force was also a little speechless, but after sending someone over to take a look, they understood their difficulties.

In fact, the castle tower was cramped and the walls were very thick, and the casualties of a forced attack would be too great, and even if you used the Expeditionary Force's imitation Sharps rifle, you would be able to use it.

But this is not difficult for them, they don't have to push the field guns up, directly cover with platoon guns, and then send a few bombardiers, quietly advance, and throw a bundle of grenades into it when they reach the distance, boom, and everything is solved.

This is also the factor that the people inside do not know the power of the grenade, if they knew that the grenade was so fierce, it is estimated that they would not let them throw the grenade in.

Of course, they also knew that the grenade was inappropriate when they threw it, but how to say it, when they reacted and wanted to pick it up and throw it away, the grenade had already exploded, so they didn't have time to react.

Knock out the defense at the entrance of the innermost layer of the castle tower, even if this Edo Castle has completely fallen, and then, no one needs to supervise, the Japanese soldiers are pouring in, and they snatch everything they can, even their clothes and pants, which really makes the leader of that group of samurai very embarrassed.

Although the samurai also gave orders not to rob the clothes of the dead, the ashigaru did not listen to them, because the order said that all the gold, silver, weapons, and other goods should be collected and distributed uniformly, but there was no mention of clothes, shoes and socks. Those clothes and other adults don't look down on them, but they are all good things for these poor peasants and soldiers.

You know, these samurai in Edo Prefecture are all rich people, and their clothes are all of the best materials, not to mention the generals' satin, and ordinary samurai are all high-quality cotton cloth, although they are somewhat stained with blood, but it is still a good thing to take it back and let their mother-in-law change it.

Fortunately, with the entry of the expeditionary force into the city, with the patrol and law enforcement of the samurai law enforcement team, especially after killing a few disobedient guys, these people quickly became honest and reorganized under the organization of their respective squad leaders to welcome the arrival of Shangguan.

Sheng Haizhou and Shi Dakai entered the city under the condition that the overall situation had been decided, because the victory was too fast, so the attacking soldiers did not have time to loot, so although the destruction was relatively strict, there were actually many people in the city, but most of them gave up resistance.

It should be said here that Edo Castle was divided into the main castle and the outer castle, and the main castle was naturally a castle for purely military defense, where only the shoguns and samurai lived, and the outer castle was the living quarters adjacent to the inner castle, where samurai families and merchants lived.

In other words, the outer castle actually wrapped the castle town from earlier, and added a wall to the outside of the castle town, which was also the planned plan of Edo Castle.

However, with the development of the times, Edo Castle became larger and larger, and it was no longer possible to live in the castle, so around the outer castle, a circle of castle towns was added, such as Edo Port, which is a castle town outside the castle.

Thus, attacking Edo Castle was actually no different from attacking a large Chinese castle, and it had a fairly large population, roughly estimated to be more than 150,000 people, but most of them were samurai families, merchants and craftsmen, real noble samurai and soldiers. It's just over 20,000.

When the task force bombarded violently, it was not a random fight, mainly aimed at the city wall and the inner city, but after all, the distance was too far, so many of them actually fell in residential areas, which was inevitable.

In short, at first, the defenders of the General's Palace were still dutiful, but when it was discovered that the shelling was incessant, mainly against the inner city and the various gates. A lot of people actually sneaked away.

Most of the escapees took off their armor and disguised themselves as civilians and blended into residential areas, and although some of them were inevitably bombed by mistake, they escaped on the whole.

In other words, most of those who were killed and injured near the city walls were those who were resolute and refused to run, so naturally they were blown up by artillery and scattered all over the field.

After dawn. The reason why the Japanese advance of the rebel army was so easy was mainly because the resistance force was either killed or wounded or fled, and the rest of the people retreated to the castle tower, which was just a desperate fight. But in fact, the victory or defeat has already been decided.

That is to say, the so-called successful siege of the rebel army was nothing more than the capture of the inner city, but those residential areas still did not interfere too much. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether there are defeated armies or nobles hidden in it.

Sure enough, after Katsu Haizhou followed the past to check, he found that although many people had died in the castle tower. But the shogun and Minoru Sanjo and other important figures are gone, and they obviously fled ahead of schedule. As for these guys who will not retreat, it is just a trick to attract everyone's attention.

"Damn it!" Sheng Haizhou slapped his hands, "The general must have been kidnapped and run away by them, if they can't catch them, they will definitely issue an edict after they escape, saying that I am a traitor, and then continue to call on other feudal lords to fight me, this must be a trouble." ”

"Don't panic, big man." After listening to the translator's words, Shi Dakai, who was going around a lot, smiled slightly, "Even if they run, it is estimated that they will not be able to run far, it is nothing more than a disguise to mix in the city, or take advantage of the two possibilities of running out of the city last night." If we had run out of the city last night, then we might not have much choice but to send someone to pursue in the direction possible, but if we were mixed in the city...... It's easy to solve, let's close the city gate, and the whole city will be searched. ”

"A city-wide search?" Katsu Haizhou frowned, "This is not good, the people of Edo have already suffered a lot of crimes, and if they go to close the city gate and search the whole city, it will be strictly disturbing the people." ”

"How can this be considered a nuisance?" Shi Da opened his eyes and narrowed, "My lord, you have forgotten, when we attacked this city, we said that as long as we could open the city, we would plunder it for three days, and then seal the sword after three days." Now that the city has fallen, it doesn't seem good if you don't keep your promise. ”

"This, this ......" Sheng Haizhou frowned again, "it was then, it is now, we ......"

"Dashuai." Shi Dakai arched his hand, and without waiting for the other party to finish, he simply interrupted him and said, "Without faith, how can you gain a foothold?" Since we promised the soldiers, we have to do it. It just so happens that there is a search for traitors now, and we might as well use this name to let our men have fun in the city.

As long as you promise them this time, they will know that you will do what you say, and you will be willing to die for your lords, and in time, you will be a strong soldier under you.

To put it mildly, we can't be with you for the rest of your life, sooner or later you will have to rely on your own strength to take charge of a qiē. In this world, nothing is as effective as an obedient strong army, don't you say? ”

After listening to Shi Dakai's words, Sheng Haizhou was silent, and finally nodded, which was considered to be agreed.

The reason why Sheng Haizhou can agree is very simple, if this army is his own decision, then he will definitely not do it, even if he is dishonest? However, this force also has an expeditionary force, which is nominally his mercenary, but in fact is not under his command. Now that Edo Castle has been conquered, how can it be done if they don't let go and grab it? Isn't that why people come?

Seeing Sheng Haizhou nodding in agreement, Shi Dakai smiled lightly and nodded to the adjutant behind him, which determined the tone of the three-day robbery.

Of course, Shi Dakai is not a stupid person, he also cherishes his feathers, and it is impossible for his people to participate in the big robbery, so in the end, it was stipulated that the expeditionary force was only responsible for guarding the important places, and the specific looting work would be handed over to the group of subordinates led by Sheng Haizhou.

However, looting things is robbing things, and they cannot be privately hidden, and all the looted things must be handed over in the end, and then they will be rewarded according to everyone's performance.

In principle, it is four or six open, that is to say, the expeditionary force takes sixty percent, and the Japanese subordinates of Shenghaizhou take forty percent.

Naturally, in order to let everyone rob at ease and grab happily, it is stipulated that within three days, there will be no restrictions, that is to say, if there is adultery and looting within three days, it doesn't matter, everyone can let go of it, and only need to hand over all the looted property at that time.

This undoubtedly ignited the fire of desire of those Japanese, and as soon as the order was given, the five thousand Japanese immediately shouted and cheered, which was really even more exciting than when they attacked the city.

In this way, when the 5,000 wolf-like Japanese began to plunder the entire Edo Castle in earnest, the people of Edo Castle really tasted the taste of hell and understood what it meant to live rather than die. (To be continued......)