It is not for nothing that Zhang Mingzhen pursues the rapid annihilation of more of the Fuso coalition forces, and even prefers to land on the Mutsu Peninsula on the other side of Ezo Island, regardless of his own naval superiority.

Because although the combat effectiveness of the Ming army was absolutely crushed, it was a cross-sea operation after all, and the logistics were very difficult. The food brought with the ship was only enough for the army to eat for a month and a half, which was the limit of 1,500 miles across the sea.

In fact, considering that there were 10 days of rations to be left on the way back and forth, the combat rations given to the land war window were only 25 days, or at most one month.

Zhang Mingzhen had to quickly solve the problem of raising food on the spot during the initial period. Otherwise, it has been replenishing across the sea, even if it will not be dragged down for the time being, but once it is in the sixth month of the lunar calendar, there may be a typhoon at any time at the end of summer, and sea shipping may be threatened.

Previously, it had taken several days to take Matsumae Port Castle and other places, as well as to besiege Hakodate. It took another four or five days to maneuver and pull against the three feudatories of the Ouyu coalition army. Therefore, there are only fifteen days left for him to raise food.

Therefore, in order to prevent accidents, Zhang Mingzhen was less than five days after the unloading of the troops, after the first heavy blow to the Aizu Domain, Hoshina Masashi tried to smuggle the Tsugaru Strait and fled south.

After confirming that the ships of the Fuso in the northeast were of poor quality and had no experience in naval warfare, he resolutely sent most of the surplus ships back to Vladivostok in order to bring in rations and ammunition again to prevent the army from running out of food. The sailors of the ship that went back were all allocated according to the minimum requirements, and the personnel stayed as much as possible to reduce the load, so that when they came back next time, they could decorate more supplies.

In Zhang Mingzhen's plan, this should be the last time he will raise grain and grass from the local direction, just a backhand for insurance. If this batch of grain is eaten and he has not achieved a decisive victory in the northeast region of Fuso, then he will not be able to see Jiangdong's father.

In addition, according to Zhu Shuren's plan before the war, while Zhang Mingzhen repatriated the grain fleet, he also asked the general in charge of the escort to bring back a message confirming that the Fusang people had chosen to resist stubbornly and ignore the Ming note in Ezo and Mutsu, so that Zheng Chenggong could also set off on time.

Before the war, Zhu Shuren had instructed that the Ming Dynasty should salute first and then the soldiers, if the Fusang people immediately admitted to the soft and ceded the land and paid compensation after the defeat in Ezo, then the Ming Dynasty would have no excuse to do anything to Ryukyu and Kyushu again, otherwise it would seem that the Ming had no credibility and would regret the diplomatic conditions offered at any time, and it was not conducive to breaking the enemy's will.

Now that this has not happened, the Fusang people still resolutely resisted, and Zheng Chenggong was also famous for his hard work.

Considering that it would take a lot of time to communicate by sea bypass, Zhang Mingzhen had to send a letter back to Vladivostok in late March, and then pass through the Korean overland route, so that Zheng Chenggong's fleet could attack Tsushima Island from Pusan and then Kyushu in mid-April.

Zhang Mingzhen must set aside time for Zheng Chenggong, because the timing of Zheng Chenggong's army will be at least a month and a half later than Zhang Mingzhen, and it may be two months if it is more.

The risk of typhoons in the Fuso region will increase in June of the lunar calendar, and Zheng Chenggong only has a firm foothold in Kyushu in just 40 days from mid-April to late May, and may also face the cut off of local shipping at any time in the future.

……

The plan has been interlocked, and the rest is to strictly implement it, Zhang Mingzhen knows that he can't afford to delay, so the execution is very high.

On the 10th day of the first month of March, they crossed the Tsugaru Strait, landed on their own initiative under the unexpected circumstances of the Fuso and Ouyu coalition forces, and launched an attack on Oura Castle on the Mutsu Peninsula on the southern side of the strait.

Oura Castle was the territory of the Hirosaki Domain, the main port on the southern shore of the Tsugaru Strait, and the territory of Tsugaru Nobuyoshi in the Taiko Rishiden and Nobunaga Nobozo, and is now in its third generation, with the current lord Tsugaru Nobuyoshi.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu was first canonized half a century ago, the Hirosaki Domain only had a total of 100,000 koku territory, and after more than half a century of farming and recuperation, it was only 230,000 koku.

The reason why the Hirosaki clan suffered this time was nothing more than because their lives were not good, and the location where they grew happened to block Zhang Mingzhen's way. Zhang Mingzhen felt that it was most suitable to lure the enemy of the Austrian and Yu coalition forces here, so he easily hugged Dapu City.

Fuso Army

There was no vigilance, so the Northeast San Francisco did not have time to rescue at all, Zhang Mingzhen had already completed the siege of Dapu City, from crossing the sea to marching ashore and completing the siege, it only took a day and a half.

After the siege, Zhang Mingzhen's subordinates advised him to immediately bombard the city with cavalry and light artillery, and strive to break through the city as soon as possible. In this way, when the coalition forces of the three feudatories in the northeast arrived, the Ming army could defend the city and rely on the geographical advantages to fight.

However, Zhang Mingzhen directly rejected this proposal of his subordinates, and he strictly ordered the troops to keep the siege of the city, preferring to wait one more day for the heavy Hongyi artillery to slowly unload from the dock, pull to the front line, and then start deployment.

Anyway, the fortress part of Oura Fortress is not too far from the seaside port area, and it is enough for one day.

Seeing this, the subordinate generals anxiously persuaded them: "General! The dilapidated cities of these Fuso people, the cavalry cannons of the accompanying army are enough to smash the city gates! Cutting chickens with a knife? Wouldn't it be nice to have an extra day to go into the city to deploy defenses and deal with enemy reinforcements?"

Zhang Mingzhen explained sharply: "Using cavalry artillery is called cutting chickens with a knife! After the past ten days of fighting, a certain has discovered a blind spot in the Fuso people's combat - they have never seen a cavalry cannon so far, and they do not know the mobility of this weapon, and if they hide this, they can leave an ambush for our army! How can it be easily exposed?

We are going to use the clumsy and sluggish Hongyi cannon to slowly break through the city, so that the enemy will underestimate our ability to attack in the future!"

The subordinates pondered for a while, but they quickly admitted that the idea was good, anyway, it was more than enough to capture Dapu City, and it would not be possible to miss the big deal by pretending to act slowly.

……

In contrast, the Tsugaru Nobuyoshi clan in Oura Castle was still very nervous when they first saw the Ming army besieging the city. With a territory of more than 200,000 stones, he could only recruit a standing army of up to 4,000 people, and even if he temporarily recruited peasant soldiers, he could not talk about any combat effectiveness. The strength of the Hirosaki Domain is less than half that of the Matsumae Domain on the other side.

However, after the siege of the city by the Ming army, it was impossible to launch an artillery attack on the city at the first time, but only took a new rifle to suppress it indiscriminately at the castle tower and the castle tower, and the tension of Tsugaru Nobuyoshi gradually calmed down.

He thought that the Ming army lacked heavy siege weapons, or at least that siege weapons were slow to move and could only be suppressed from a distance. So he just asked the samurai, archers, and iron gunners to hide inside the building and not show their heads, unless the Ming army charged, they could show their heads and release arrows and guns.

Tsugaru believed in his heart, and he only hoped that the coalition forces of the three feudal clans in the northeast could come to his rescue as soon as possible.

It's a pity that he certainly can't wait for this day. The Ming army just let him live one more day, and the next day the Northeast Three Feudatories Coalition Army still did not arrive, but the slow heavy artillery pulled by the Ming army from the port arrived first.

The largest land gun of the Ming army was still one or two grades smaller than the naval gun, after all, mobility had to be considered.

Today, the final naval artillery iron bullet is 60 catties, and the heaviest marine artillery is 40 catties. If you use a flowering bullet, because the charge is much lighter than solid iron, the heaviest is only twenty-five pounds.

But even the twenty-five-pound flowering bullet and the forty-pound iron bullet are far from being seen by the Fusang people. Half a century ago, Tokugawa Ieyasu blasted Osaka Castle to "collapse", but in fact, it was only an 18-pounder Dutch cannon, which was less than 15 pounds.

And Osaka Castle was already the largest giant city in Fuso at that time, and the Oura Castle in front of him was simply a small fish and shrimp.

The first round of artillery bombardment by the Ming army stunned Tsugaru Nobuyoshi, and after a simple calibration, the third round began to hit the earthen wall and the wall, directly destroying the gate and the earthen wall several times.

By the time of the fifth round of shelling, a flowering bullet and a forty-pound iron bullet hit the castle tower, which was only three stories high. The castle tower was directly blown up, and the feudal lord Tsukamisaki Nobuyoshi was directly buried alive because of the collapse.

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, then the Ming army will shell ten more rounds according to the drill code. It's just that there's no chance of that happening.

After the first wave of ten rounds, the Ming army rushed in, and the hundreds of samurai and thousands of ordinary soldiers of the Hirosaki Domain fought in a chaotic manner, and were quickly destroyed by the Ming army advancing in formation.

The Ming army already had a new rifle lined up to shoot and bless, and the Fusang people dared to use spears or bows and arrows to fight in array, that is, to deliver food, and they could not enter the range of the Ming army at all. Only a small number of samurai charged directly with katana swords, and only then did they have a chance to approach the Ming army,

But they soon discovered that even if they were the ones who escaped the rain of muskets, they could not bargain in front of the bayonet array with the katana alone.

The most skilled samurai in the entire Hirosaki Domain, that is, the fierce fighting method of exchanging life for life, exchanged for death at most two or three Ming soldiers, and then were pierced into a hornet's nest by random blades, and more often could only be exchanged for one Ming soldier, or were killed in vain halfway.

Although that scene is not as good as the movie "The Last Samurai" that depicts the end of the Edo period, it is almost tragic and has great artistic value.

……

The 4,000 samurai and more peasant soldiers of the Hirosaki Domain were wiped out by the Ming army in one day, and the crushing of the weapon generation gap was no longer something that could be bridged by bravery and numbers.

If you want to blame the Fusang people for being offline for too long, they don't know how much the East Asian monster house has escalated in the past few decades in terms of scientific and technological progress and arms race confrontation in the context of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The Tsugaru family was also killed by the Ming army in the chaotic battle, which can be regarded as a prestige.

It took more than half a day for the allied forces of the Northeast Three Feudatories to arrive. But seeing that the Ming army was so fierce, their small number of cavalry units did not dare to step forward easily, but planned to gather their forces first and delay each other.

Zhang Mingzhen let people chase a little, and shot hundreds of Fusang cavalry with a rifle team, and finally couldn't catch up because of lack of mobility, so he took back the city when he saw that it was good.

After all, the Ming army came across the sea and had to sail on the sea for ten consecutive days, so the first batch of cavalry was very small, and it was difficult to transport war horses across the sea.

The Fuso people suffered two or three defeats in a row, and the Tohoku feudatories had no choice but to further increase their mobilization intensity and ask for help from the shogunate in Edo, trying to overwhelm the much smaller Ming army with crowd tactics.

After discussing with all parties in Fuso, they felt that there was only one way. Because the human resources of Fusang in this era are still very sufficient, the only thing that can be used is human life-

In later generations, many Chinese people had a misunderstanding of the historical interpretation of China and Japan during the Ming and Qing dynasties, believing that the population of Fusang had always been only a few percent of that of the Ming Dynasty, but this was actually divided into time periods.

If it was the Wanli period and the Renchen War, the total population of Fusang during the Warring States Period was always between 600 and 8 million because of continuous wars, and there were more than 100 million people in the Ming Dynasty at that time, which was indeed at least fifteen times that of Fusang.

But to the Ming and Qing wars, superimposed on the history of the late Ming Dynasty for twenty or thirty consecutive years of natural disasters, the population of the Ming Dynasty fell to more than 40 million at the lowest point, and now although there is the butterfly effect of the Zhu Shu people, there are only more than 50 million left at the lowest point, and now it has been restored to peace for several years, only to climb back to 60 million.

On the Fuso side, in the first fifty years after the end of the Warring States period, the population recovery was the fastest. Seven or eight million at the end of the Warring States period, 40 million at the end of the Edo period, and 70 million at the time of World War I.

During the 260 years of the Edo period, at least half of the population growth was completed in the first half century after peace was restored. At the time of the death of the third shogun, the population of Tokugawa Iemitsu was about 22 million, but now the Tokugawa Ietsuna has not counted it, and it is estimated to be about 24 million, which is three times that of the end of the Warring States period.

60 million in the Ming Dynasty, 2,040 in Fusang, the population of Fusang is now 40% of the Ming Dynasty! Therefore, it is true that Fusang should not be underestimated by fighting for the population.

This is also why Zhu Shuren didn't want to eat a fat man in one go. It is very unwise to directly launch a general war against a nation equivalent to 40% of the population of the Ming Dynasty.

Now that the Fuso people have lost a row, they still don't want to admit it, and they realize that the weapon generation difference is too serious, so they can only pile up their lives and explode troops. They won't be convinced if they don't try it.

Only by really crushing and hurting in all directions can they obediently admit it like the future generations who surrendered to the father of the United States.

The three feudal clans in the northeast plus the servants who were coerced around it, still

There were more than 4 million stone high, mainly because the Sendai Domain was relatively large, plus some direct support from the Edo Shogunate.

The Fuso people quickly organized a combat force ten times the size of the Ezo garrison and twenty times the garrison of the Hirosaki Domain, that is, about 70,000 or 80,000 people, as well as countless reserve peasant soldiers who could be expanded at any time to capture strong men, to engage Zhang Mingzhen's mere 10,000 Ming army and sea soldiers.

And Zhang Mingzhen had kept Hakodate Castle on Ezo Island before and did not break it, but only surrounded it but did not fight, in order to seduce the Fuso people to reinforce it. Now that reinforcements have arrived and are ready to be sent, there is no need to keep the bait.

On March 22, 20 days after Zhang Mingzhen's landing operation, the Ming army suddenly launched a strong attack and completely broke through the castle, all 13,000 Japanese troops in the city were defeated, thousands of people were directly killed, and the rest were either captured or fled.

The remnants of Hakodate who broke through were afraid of the Ming army, so they had to burn and plunder to the north and enter the territory of the Ezo people to survive. This aroused the hatred of the Ezo people, and the remnants of the Fuso soldiers grinded and killed each other, and the war further spread to the Fuso people on the Tsugaru Peninsula in the south of Ezo Island, and the large-scale vendetta of the Ezo people in the vast northern area, and the population consumption was not limited to tens of thousands.

In fact, even if there was no Ming army to hang the people for the crime, in history, by 1669, the Ezo people would launch an uprising that lasted for several years under the leadership of the patriarch Ku Xiangying, which is called "Kuanwen Ezo Swarming" in Fuso history books.

Now it is just for the Ezo people to explode their dissatisfaction with the Fuso people years in advance. As long as the Ming army cut off the reinforcements from Fuso Honshu Island to suppress the rebellion, then the civilians of the Matsumae Domain would not be able to resist just by allowing the Fuso people of the Matsumae Domain and the massive Ezo people to kill each other.

At that time, there were less than 200,000 Fuso people on Ezo Island, but there were as many as 500,000 or 600,000 Ezo people, a population ratio of at least three times.

After Zhang Mingzhen completely destroyed the rule of the Fuso people on Ezo Island, he left the Ezo civilians and Fuso civilians to eat their own chickens and rolls, and he was able to concentrate all the Ming troops, totaling more than 12,000 people, to the vicinity of Dapu Castle to hold on to the Fuso three feudatories.

After gathering their forces, the coalition forces of the three feudal domains of Fuso launched several strong attacks on Daura Castle.

Zhang Mingzhen did not expose all his firepower at the beginning, but hid it, seduced a lot of Fusang people to invest, and killed more people and consumed some lives.

The Fuso people were indeed killed in the fortified area like a stormy wave, and tens of thousands of people were shot and killed.

After two fiascos, the Fuso coalition army finally learned its lesson, and could only change to besiege rather than attack, hoping to rely on the Ming army to cross the sea to fight, and the army food supply could not be exhausted, and finally they were besieged and weakened by starvation.

At the same time, as the war entered April, the Tohoku feudal clan repeatedly begged the Shogunate troops in Edo to send more reinforcements, especially to transport grain to the Tohoku front.

After all, to bring up 780,000 combat troops and more reserve strong men, the amount of food needed is really astronomical. Previously, in the history of Fuso, there had only been logistics grain and grass dispatch of this scale in relation to the Battle of Hara, the Battle of Osaka, and the crossing of the sea to Korea.

The Edo shogunate could only do its best to provide the grain and grass required by the front line, but at the same time said that there was really no reinforcements, so they could only solve the problem by holding strong men on the spot.

The three feudal clans in the Northeast were inexplicable, and finally learned that it was because the Fuso shogunate dared to resist the reasonable demands of the Ming Dynasty, which led to Zheng Chenggong on the Kyushu side. The shogunate wanted to send reinforcements to the direction of Kyushu, but the local daimyo had to settle it by themselves, and the shogunate could only give money, food, ammunition, and not soldiers.

……

It was confirmed that the battle had entered a phase of stalemate, and the Fuso coalition army wanted to rely on the front line to store food and encircle the Ming army that had crossed the sea for a long time. Zhang Mingzhen certainly has a way to break the game.

He had been hiding it before, not exposing the cavalry artillery combat power of the Ming army, wasn't he waiting for this moment?

Therefore, while he continued to collect the city quietly, he sent a detailed work to investigate the enemy's situation and find out the grain storage land of the Fusang coalition army.

The hard work paid off, and the Ming army's sentry ships and fine water and land were used together, and they soon found the grain storage land of the Fusang coalition army.

——

PS: Strive to end the plot of Fuso's side within two or three days, and it won't be delayed.