Since the apocalypse and Chongzhen, although the Ming Dynasty has had a period of decline for decades, it has to be said that the vow of the Ming rulers to die is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people of East Asian countries.

Although Chongzhen is incompetent in governing the country and is stubborn and self-serving, he did not coax until he died, and if he said something that could not be compromised, then he must not compromise, it was just a big deal.

And now it has been fifteen years since Longwu, and the Ming Dynasty is once again flourishing. At that time, the situation was so critical that they refused to compromise, and now, of course, they do what they say, and if they are released, they will never compromise half a step.

Whoever dares to resist Da Ming and fall into a conclusive charge, then Da Ming said that if he kills his whole family, he will kill his whole family, and he must be trustworthy.

In the spring of the 15th year of Ryūmu (1659), after the eighteen-year-old fourth shogun of the Edo shogunate, Tokugawa Ietsuna, officially rejected the Ming Dynasty's request to "abolish the rule of the Fuso Ezo Daimyo and hand over the power to conquer Ezo to the Ming Dynasty".

Zhang Mingzhen, the commander of the Ming Beihai Division, led hundreds of large warships and more military grain transport ships to conquer Ezo Island.

If the Fuso people don't give it, then take it yourself.

This operation can be regarded as the first large-scale operation against the Ming Dynasty after it built a new fleet in accordance with Dutch shipbuilding technology, integrating the advantages of Eastern shipbuilding technology, and combining Chinese and Western architecture.

Previously, Zhu Shuren enveloped Yang Sen. Tasman, Descartes and other Dutch scientists were used by the Ming Dynasty, which first happened in 1648, so time flies, and now it has been twelve years since the first Dutch scientists worked for the Ming Dynasty.

Among the first generation of scientists who were reused by the Ming Dynasty, Descartes died of old age last year, which is also something that cannot be helped, after all, people's age is there. If Zhu Shuren hadn't co-opted him and let Descartes stay in Europe, he would have been tossed by those royal families, and according to the life span of Descartes' original history, he would have to live seven or eight years less than now.

But his contribution to the Ming Dynasty, as well as his historical significance as the first representative of "European scientists who came to work for the Ming Dynasty", will definitely be remembered by the Ming Dynasty.

After Descartes, in the past ten years, almost every two or three years, a group of new germinating science and engineering talents in Europe have been recruited by Daming with heavy money, which has played a catfish effect of mudding the water and promoting technological exchanges.

So when Descartes died, Zhu Shuren also gave him great grief and honor, and found a bunch of Confucians to carry the coffin for him, just like when Newton died in later generations, the British also asked a bunch of dukes and marquis to carry the coffin.

This is a kind of golden bone, following the trick of King Yan Zhao to build a golden platform to give preferential treatment to Guo Kui, in the final analysis, to show that the imperial court attaches great importance to scientific talents.

With the blessing of these Chinese and Western scientists, after more than ten years of development, the level of warships has been changing with each passing day, far from being comparable to that year.

It's a pity that when the Manchu Qing Dynasty finally collapsed five or six years ago, the Manchus didn't have a navy that could fight at all, so the navy of the Ming Dynasty was absolutely crushed at that time, and there was no sense of accomplishment at all, and they couldn't find any decent resistance if they wanted to.

Now it's finally the turn to deal with the Fuso people, Fuso still attaches more importance to the construction of warships, after all, it is an archipelago country, as early as the Azuchi-Momoyama period, the Fuso people built ironclad ships.

(Ironclad ships at the time were equipped with muskets, but not cannons.) It was not until the final decisive battle between Tokugawa and Toyotomi that the Fuso people began to use siege artillery similar to the Hongyi cannon, and the "national collapse" of Tokugawa Ieyasu's bombardment of Osaka Castle was the Hongyi cannon. Although there were also cannons in the previous decades, the largest was only the Franc machine level, and the weight of the cannon body was only a few hundred catties)

Later, after fighting with Yi Sun-sin of Korea during the Imjin Rebellion and being violently beaten by a turtle boat equipped with cannons by Yi Sunsin, the Fuso people also learned their lesson, and after they returned, they also began to make attempts to move Hongyi heavy artillery onto warships.

It's a pity that after Fuso stabilized its rule in the Tokugawa family, there was no war for two hundred years, so these Fuso warships were useless.

In the history of the Fuso War, there are only those warring warships equipped with light guns similar to the Franc machine, and there has never been a record of heavy warships equipped with Hongyi cannons. Daming's attack this time can be regarded as taking what they need, and everyone is just verifying the true strength of their hands!

……

The number of warships carrying sailors and marines was about 300, and the rest were loaded with military rations and supplies.

The number of additional marines that each ship can carry, depending on the size of the ship, is only fifty to more than a hundred—

After all, this is a cross-sea operation, and it takes more than 1,500 miles to sail from the port of Vladivostok, which was just built by the Ming Dynasty, to Hokkaido. Zhang Mingzhen had to consider the issue of military rations and water during the voyage, and the number of people on each ship could not be large.

Originally, if the Ming Dynasty could have given a few more days, first control Withered Leaf Island, and then establish a logistics base on Withered Leaf Island, hoard military rations, and finally choose to go south from Withered Leaf Island to Ezo when attacking, then it would have saved more than half of the voyage.

But the Ming Dynasty considered that the operation of Dry Leaf Island did not know the Year of the Monkey, and the excuse of war that "the Ezo people and local feudal towns had colluded with the Manchu Dynasty to prohibit trade" could not wait for so many years, so it didn't matter, and it was directly attacked by sailing 1,500 miles!

In the final analysis, Zhang Mingzhen looked down on the Fuso defense force on Ezo Island at all, and felt that with a marine team of more than 10,000 people, he could completely beat the main reinforcements of the local feudal towns and the shogunate.

The Ming fleet still specially chose the end of February of the lunar calendar to set sail, and after about ten days of sailing, it could land in early March.

In this way, you can take advantage of the end of the northwesterly winds of the Siberian cold current and avoid the most severe winter cold wave and strong winds.

At the same time, there will be several months of typhoon season at the turn of summer and autumn in the Pacific Ocean, which is also a time that must be avoided, otherwise you will encounter the same "kamikaze protectorate" as Kublai Khan.

The current decision-making level of the Ming Dynasty has a full grasp of astronomy, geography, and meteorology, how can it be like the ignorant Mongols hundreds of years ago.

Every favorable climate, the Ming Dynasty has made the best use of it in the decision-making stage, and every unfavorable climate is also designed to be avoided before the war, which can be described as a decisive victory in the temple calculation.

Because before the start of the war, the Ming Dynasty had made diplomatic representations in advance, so the suddenness of the attack was not strong.

Before the Ming army attacked, Matsumae Clanhiro, the daimyo of Ezo Island and the fourth lord of the Matsumae Domain, had already organized a fleet of warships to patrol the waters around the Tsugaru Peninsula.

In addition, the Tokugawa shogunate also warned several daimyo and powerful daimyo in the northeastern region of Honshu in advance to send troops on alert, and in the event of an incident in Ezo, they would support the Matsuzen Domain, at least to prevent the flames of war from reaching the northern tip of Honshu Island.

[In view of the general environment,

Therefore, the third lord of the Sendai Domain, Yoon Tatsunamune, the lord of the Aizu Domain, Masayuki Hoshina, and the lord of the Yonezawa Domain, Uesugi Tsunakatsu, also gathered a lot of troops to be on guard.

Those who have played "Nobunaga Yewang" or "Taiko Lizhi" know that Yin Da's family was the "Northeast King" of Fuso at the end of the Warring States Period, and Sendai Castle was also an important town in the northeast of Fuso, and Mr. Lu Xun studied there in later generations.

Although the Aizu clan was a rising star in terms of strength, it was a pioneer in terms of loyalty to the shogunate, and it belonged to the category of "even if you are poor, you can give up your strength".

Who made the current lord of the Aizu Domain, Masayuki Hoshina, the uncle of the current shogun in terms of blood, and the Aizu Domain, who inherited him when he was the second shogun.

Today's fourth shogun Tokugawa Ieduna is just in his early twenties, and when his father's third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu died a few years ago, he also entrusted Gu to his half-brother Hoshina Masayuki, so Hoshina Masayuki also has an extra layer of identity as a shogunate entrusted to Gu Zhongchen.

Therefore, the Aizu Domain has always been the most iron-clad daimyo of the Edo Shogunate in history, and later during the Meiji Restoration at the end of the Edo Shogunate, the Aizu Domain remained a diehard loyalist of the Shogunate and insisted on resisting until the end.

No one knew much about this information in the Ming Dynasty. But with the spying of Zheng Chenggong and his younger brother, plus Zhu Shuren understands history and knows the stubbornness of the Aizu Domain,

Therefore, as early as before Zhang Mingzhen set off, Zhu Shuren summoned him to give him a face-to-face lecture, and asked him to be mentally prepared that "once the Ming Dynasty attacks the Ezo Matsuzen Domain, the Aizu Domain will also come to the aid desperately".

……

With full planning and knowing oneself and knowing oneself and the enemy, Zhang Mingzhen's fleet was unexpectedly under the command of the Ezo Emperor Matsumae on the second day of the third month

The patrol fleet found out.

Who told Zhang Mingzhen not to hide from the beginning, he just went straight to Matsumae Town Port to land, disgusted that the other beaches were either too many shallows, large ships could not dock, or cliffs, and it was difficult to maneuver after going ashore.

At that time, the Matsumae Domain had a total of three castles on Ezo Island, and in fact only controlled the Tsugaru Peninsula from Ezo to Honshu, and the rest of the island was controlled by the indigenous people.

In addition to Matsumae Town, which is a port, there are also two small towns: Hakodate Castle and Oysaki Castle.

As for Sapporo, the core city of Hokkaido, it is still a fishing village of the Ezo savages, and there was no civilized rule at all, and the administrative system of the place was not established until the Meiji Restoration 200 years later.

To put it bluntly, the Edo daimyo during the Edo period was really just a trading base on Ezo Island, which was closest to Honshu Island, plus some supporting facilities. It is equivalent to Zhangjiakou and other Jin merchant strongholds on the side of the Ming Dynasty, responsible for importing and exporting with the barbarians.

When the Matsumae clan heard that the army was coming, they reacted quite surprisingly at first, but they didn't expect Zhang Mingzhen to be so straightforward, so they asked the subordinates in charge of the Matsumae Town and Port Domain:

"How many soldiers and horses does the Ming army have? How dare you land directly in the port? Isn't he afraid of being blocked by our batteries? Matsumae Town Port has a full eight "national collapse" heavy artillery, and the Matsumae Domain sent it the day before yesterday on the order of the shogunate!"

The feudal priest in charge of Matsumae Port was also disgraced, obviously having fled from defeat, and replied directly in frustration: "The Ming army has a lot of heavy artillery warships! The eight cannons we have been accumulating for so long were all destroyed by the artillery bombardment of the Ming warships! Shiro, the lord of the lord, led his troops to defend the port, and together with 300 samurai and 1,500 peasant soldiers, he was completely annihilated by the Ming army in half a day! The subordinates risked their lives to break through before they had to come back to report the news!"

Matsumae Shihiro was suddenly poured with a basin of ice water.

He didn't expect that he would actually become a frog at the bottom of the well, and the carefully prepared anti-landing force was actually annihilated by the Ming army's frontal forced beaching within half a day.

At the beginning of the Edo shogunate's feudal division, the Matsumae Domain was assumed to be obligated to be a daimyo only at the height of 10,000 koku. In other words, the Tokugawa family decided that Ezo Island was too cold and wild to grow too much rice, so they decided that the grain tax on the whole island was only 10,000 koku.

Of course, this figure is actually greatly concealed, at that time, the Fuso people on Ezo Island were able to provide more than 200,000 stone a year of tax revenue, and now half a century has passed since the partition, after continuous breeding and development, the stone height of the whole island has increased to about 500,000.

What is this concept? At that time, Fuso's taxation of rice fields was about two acres of land to collect one stone of rice, so 500,000 stone was equivalent to only one million mu of rice fields on the whole island, plus other vegetable fields and inferior fields that were not used to grow grain, the total should be less than 2 million mu.

Considering that the total area of Hokkaido in later generations was 80,000 square kilometers, and 2 million mu was equivalent to more than 1,000 square kilometers, the farmland area of the Fuso people on the island at that time only accounted for 1.5 percent of the total land area of the island, and the degree of development was of course very low.

Less than 200,000 Fusang peasants on the whole island of Ezo had planted this little field, and at that time, Fusang needed about eight stone of rice a year to raise a soldier with the lowest combat effectiveness, which was similar to a peasant soldier. And if you want to reach the level of a samurai, you must have a certain military literacy, at least twenty stone rice a year as rations and slu. And that's not even counting the money for weapons and equipment.

Therefore, all the grain collected on the whole island of Ezo Island was used to feed the soldiers, which was about enough to feed 25,000 people. If you want to buy weapons, this number will be cut in at least half, and you can barely support more than 10,000 people.

In fact, at that time, the Daimyo and nobles at all levels of the Matsumae Domain had to spend money to maintain a decent life. In peacetime, less than half of the money was used to raise soldiers, so the whole island tried its best to raise up to seven or eight thousand troops.

The Ming army killed 2,000 people in a port, which was equivalent to destroying a quarter of the family money that the Matsumae Domain had accumulated for decades in half a day.

Realizing that he was arrogant and underestimating the enemy, Matsumae quickly went to the other extreme, ordering his entire army to retreat to Hakodate Castle, which was surrounded by mountains, and begging the Aizu Domain to send reinforcements from Ezo Island in advance and join him in defending Hakodate.

Since the lord of the Aizu Domain could not come to Ezo in person, the commander who sent the army was Hoshina Masa

。

Seeing the menacing Ming army, Hoshina didn't want to wade into this troubled water, but wanted to stop the loss in time, and took a boat to take some of the Aizu clan samurai back to Honshu Island.

Unfortunately, he lacked channels to communicate with Zhang Mingzhen, and Zhang Mingzhen did not talk to him. He had no choice but to try to go out to sea in the dark at night, and found some boats to try to sneak through the Tsugaru Strait.

Unexpectedly, the Ming army patrolled and defended the strait tightly, and the first batch of exploratory smuggling troops of Baoke were intercepted and killed, and the warship was directly bombarded and sunk by the Ming warships on the strait, which was completely overwhelming.

The small warship of the Fusang people, in the face of the Ming army's latest heavy Hongyi cannon that fired 60 catties of cannonballs, directly penetrated the bottom of the ship and sank with a cannonball, even if it was an ironclad ship, it could not carry 60 catties of big iron bullets to the top of the attack.

The Fuso people were directly frightened by this scene, and with dozens of warships and thousands of soldiers slaughtered in vain, Hoshina Masashi had no choice but to take the rest of the people and hide in Hakodate Castle with Matsumae Clanhiro.

The combined strength of the two feudal domains originally exceeded 15,000 people, but unfortunately thousands of people had been lost in the two battles, and only 13,000 people finally retreated to defend the city.

However, the Aizu Domain's dark breakthrough fleet was not all killed, after all, a few ships managed to reach the other side of the Tsugaru Strait, and some soldiers on the sunken ships were lucky enough to swim back.

In just a few days, they reported the tragic situation on the island to the other Tohoku domains, and the rest of the troops of the three Tohoku feudal clans, Sendai, Aizu, and Yonezawa, had to assemble in the direction of the Tsugaru Strait to prepare for battle.

……

On the Tsugaru Peninsula, Zhang Mingzhen's generals saw that the commander had easily landed, destroyed the beachhead to block the enemy army, and successfully surrounded Hakodate Castle, and asked him to launch a strong attack as soon as possible.

But Zhang Mingzhen was not in a hurry at all, he took the time to say to his subordinates: "If you attack Hakodate now, how can you keep bleeding the Fuso people? Seduce Fuso people to come to the rescue?

It's nothing to take such a remote island, the key is to completely hurt the Fusang people, let them swallow this bitter fruit, recognize the reality, and never dare to come to the rescue in the future!

Divide the troops! Landing thousands of people on the Michinoku Peninsula on the other side, occupy a port castle adjacent to the strait, and lure the Fuso and Okuwa coalition forces to attack the city and seize the port across the strait! We can kill and injure a large number of unruly people in Fusang!

If we don't go ashore, I guess they won't dare to go to the sea to fight. Moreover, after going ashore, he defeated some enemies, and he could also take advantage of the situation to plunder their military rations, because the food was fed by the enemy. We have crossed the sea, and we are not afraid of fighting people, but we are afraid that they will be strong and clear, and we would rather burn down the city's stockpiles and scorch the earth everywhere."