"Sakura"

"Sakura"

"Under the clear sky in March"

"Endless cherry blossoms"

"Flowers are like a sea of clouds, like a colorful glow"

"Extremely fragrant and picturesque......"

In April, when Daming was still busy with the return of Siam and Xu Xiake, Yingzhou, which was far away on the other side of the ocean, was full of laughter.

On the mountain road leading from Nara to Nagoya, a diminutive Yingzhou folk man carries hundreds of pounds of rice and wheat on his back, and at the same time holds a rice ball, happily singing a folk song.

Ming soldiers watched them from both sides of the road, guarding them as they marched towards Nagoya.

Such a long line stretched, and everything they did was to meet the problem of food supply for the front-line army.

Unlike what Yan Siqi and the others thought at the beginning, the people and peasants of Yingzhou had no idea of welcoming back the shogunate at all.

The reason why such an idea does not exist is because of the white rice of the "silver relics" and the fact that I can now work freely in the fields.

In the past, if the people did something unruly, they would be whipped by the samurai.

However, here in the Ming army, the Ming army doesn't care what they do, don't talk about singing, no one cares about them even if they dance, the Ming army is enough as long as they transport food to the front line on time.

As a former low-level person, the farmers of Yingzhou can be said to turn over and sing.

In such a scene, Yang Wenyue, who was riding on horseback, couldn't help but shake his head and said:

"The people are not patriotic, which is enough to show that the shogunate rule is unpopular."

Even so, they did not dare to rebel, obviously His Royal Highness's evaluation of the native people of Yingzhou is very correct, they are indeed "afraid of power and not afraid of virtue". ”

Wu Aheng, who was riding a horse next to him, opened his mouth to echo, and behind the two were Cao Bianjiao and Cao Dingjiao.

They looked around vigilantly, and Wu Aheng also explained to them when he saw this:

"Don't be so nervous, the outer step pond is dense enough, if there can really be a Japanese raid here, it can only be said that a divine soldier descended from heaven."

"Yes......" Cao Bianjiao and Cao Dingjiao could only express their acceptance of the teaching.

"The strength of the Japanese is about 120,000, but most of them are new soldiers who have been trained for less than half a year, and if you think about it, our army of 60,000 is enough to sweep the north and south."

Yang Wenyue didn't take the Tokugawa shogunate seriously, just because before coming to Yingzhou, he had a general understanding of some of the previous combat methods of the two sides tomorrow.

After reading it, he only felt that Yan Siqi and Zheng Zhilong had wasted a lot of time in vain.

If he was transferred from the beginning, it is estimated that the entire territory of Yingzhou has been taken by the Ming Dynasty, and even Yang Wenyue has been able to mobilize the resources of Yingzhou and feed back to the Ming Dynasty.

There are people who think the same way as him, Wu Aheng, but compared to Yang Wenyue, Wu Aheng thinks very simply:

"Your Highness has said in your hand, only enough people will be affected."

"Swift action is not what His Highness wants."

"If it affects enough people, it doesn't have to be slow." Yang Wenyue stroked his beard and said:

"These 120,000 Japanese are enough to involve millions of people."

"At present, our army has 60,000 soldiers and horses, more than 1,200 artillery pieces, and after conquering the entire territory of Yingzhou, we will withdraw the army to Liaodong, and then mobilize resources to feed the imperial court is what we have to do."

"You also know the great drought within the country, His Highness is busy with money and food, if we can't share His Highness's worries at such a time, wouldn't it be a waste of His Highness's entrustment."

"This is also ......" Wu Aheng bowed slightly.

During the conversation between the two, the northbound men and horses gradually climbed over the mountains and arrived at the Nobi Plain.

Located in south-central Honshu, the Nobi Plain is one of Japan's three best plains, along with the Kanto Plain and the Plain, and is fed by rivers such as the Kisogawa, Nagaragawa, and Ihi Rivers.

In terms of the battlefield, the terrain of this place was high in the east and low in the west, and it was not easy to take advantage of the winter when Tokugawa Iemitsu and others led people to strengthen the defense and fortification of the area, and transported all the artillery from Edo and other places to this place.

In order to avoid the conflict in command, Yan Siqi deliberately transferred Zheng Zhilong, Liu Xiang and others to Kyoto City, and left Osaka to Jin Xuan and Wu Aheng and Yang Wenyue on the battlefield.

In this way, a few of them are just nominal, and they can still have merits after the battle, and they can also leave a good impression on Yang Wenyue and others, killing two birds with one stone.

It can be said that Yan Siqi did a very good job, because after Yang Wenyue and Wu Aheng arrived at the Nongwei Plain, the first thing they did was to modify the camp left by Zheng Zhilong and others.

In the eyes of these two generals, the camps arranged by Zheng Zhilong and Liu Xiang did not even reach the level of the original Lu'an rebels.

Therefore, the first step was to rebuild the barracks, and the second step was to inspect the ordnance of the armies.

Five days after such days, the Ming army had assembled more than 30,000 soldiers and horses in the remaining ten battalions, except for the six battalions of soldiers and horses that attacked Gifu and other mountainous areas, and the six battalions of soldiers and horses that stayed in Osaka.

The mobilization of the Ming army brought considerable pressure to Tokugawa Iemitsu.

In addition to leaving tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in Gifu and other places, the remaining 70,000 soldiers and horses were gathered in Nagoya.

In terms of strength alone, the shogunate was twice as large as the Ming army, but judging from the ordnance of the equipment, the Ming army was a dimensionality reduction blow to the shogunate.

Yang Wenyue and Wu Aheng did not attack at the first time, not because they were afraid of Tokugawa Iemitsu, but because they wanted to attract all the Japanese troops to Nagoya.

Things did not surprise them, and in the face of the Ming army, which was heavily assembled, Tokugawa Iemitsu, who realized that the gap between the two sides' strength was too large, began to continue to recruit people.

A steady stream of people were sent to Nagoya with only one bamboo gun and some bamboo armor, and by the time the time the time came to the third day of the fifth month, nearly 200,000 Japanese troops had gathered near Nagoya.

"Almost......"

Putting down the binoculars, Yang Wenyue waved his hand behind him, and Cao Bianjiao, who was standing on the school platform, immediately ordered:

Let's try it soon, everyone. 】

"Artillery battalion forward and ready!"

"Beep-"

Under the sound of the wooden whistle, more than 1,200 five-pound cannons were pushed onto the battlefield, and this scene was also seen by the Japanese soldiers who had been vigilant in the city.

"Beep!"

"Enemy attack! Wary! ”

The shouts continued to sound, whether it was at the head of the city or the defensive barracks outside the city, in short, all the Japanese troops exploded like frightened birds.

The Japanese fortifications on the outskirts of Nagoya were mainly composed of ditches, sheep's horn walls, horse rejection walls, trenches, and deer walls that imitated the Ming army.

Not only that, but they also built many wooden planks with sloped soil to resist the impact of stone bullets.

Such a defensive camp was indeed very good, but the only thing they underestimated was the number of artillery pieces of the Ming army.

"Yagaya ......"

When he saw the thousands of artillery pieces of the Ming army being slowly pushed onto the battlefield with a monocular, Tokugawa Iemitsu couldn't help but scold.

In half a year, the Japanese army only produced 63 artillery pieces, while the Ming army took out 1,200 artillery pieces in one go.

Such a gap made Tokugawa Iemitsu secretly scold, and at the same time, he couldn't help but start to measure the outcome of this battle in his heart.

After half an hour of torment, when the Ming army advanced the artillery to a distance of two miles from Nagoya Castle, all the artillery stopped, and the gunners began to dig the artillery position.

Around them, 6,000 cavalry troops cruised, protecting the artillery positions, leaving all the Japanese generals to watch from the sidelines.

The combat effectiveness of the cavalry of the Ming army, which they had already experienced in a number of battles.

With the 6,000 Ming cavalry on the Nonwei Plain and the 100,000 Japanese troops, they may not be able to beat them, and they will die if they leave the camp.

"Fixed-shot loading, three moments in the direction, thirty-five degrees in height, one round of test firing, put!"

"Peng Peng Peng—"

As the position was completed, the artillery of the Ming army outside Nagoya Castle roared again, and thousands of stone bullets were fired out, smashing into the head of Nagoya Castle and the barracks, creating pieces of death in the Japanese array.

Although there was a heavy rain yesterday, fortunately, the Ming army did a pretty good job of preserving the gunpowder, and wrapped all the gunpowder with grease cloth earlier, so there was no resurgence and it could still be used normally.

In addition, the Ming army's Yanshan five-catty cannon had a long range, and the Japanese artillery could not deal with the other side at all, so it could only be beaten passively.

After an hour's artillery bombardment, not to mention how many places the female wall at the head of the city was destroyed, more than ten openings in the camp outside the city were punched out.

If it weren't for the fact that some gaps were filled in time, Yang Wenyue would have been ready to command six thousand cavalry to charge over.

"Fixed-shot loading, the direction remains the same, the height is thirty degrees, test fire a round, put!"

After a cup of tea, the Ming army launched a second round of test firing.

With the sound of "booming" artillery, the height after debugging finally reached the height that Yang Wenyue wanted.

Thousands of stone bullets smashed into the camp outside Nagoya Nishi, causing the Japanese soldiers in the camp to flip on their backs and splash sand.

"The direction height remains the same, give me five hours first!"

Putting down the binoculars, Yang Wenyue explained to Cao Bianjiao, and Cao Bianjiao immediately issued a military order.

Under his conveyance, the artillery of the Ming army began to shell the Japanese camp in an orderly manner at the rate of twelve rounds of shelling every hour.

The Ming army shelled the Japanese camp in the front, while the Japanese peasants in the rear were talking and laughing about mining stone bullets for the Ming army.

Their speed is not very fast, and it takes a person basically three or four hours to make a stone bullet, but it can't stand up to them.

The 120,000 Japanese peasants were talking and laughing about digging and polishing stone bullets, and the soldiers left behind by the Ming army would not criticize them harshly and urge them.

Whoever was hungry on the way to the fire head camp went to eat by himself, and ate and drank the same as the Ming army.

Some resting folk men also ran to the front line to watch the battle, holding the "silver relic" white rice balls that they could not afford to eat, and joked while eating:

"These fools, they don't have any silver to fight for the shogunate, why should they work so hard, it is better to surrender directly and eat the "silver relics" that only samurai can eat. ”

"You say they're stupid, and if they're smart, they should have surrendered like us."

"Hahahaha......"

The Japanese peasants laughed and joked at their compatriots on the other side, or they didn't know what a compatriot was.

After all, in Japan under the rule of the shogunate, the peasants were just consumables, and when they needed to praise the peasants, but when it was time to share the benefits, they would kick the peasants away.

Compared with the shogunate, who only knew how to exploit the pie, the peasants in the south felt that the Ming Dynasty was the one who came to liberate them.

Or not "feel", but "affirm".

After all, apart from Da Ming, who would give them this group of lowly mud legs to eat "silver relics"?

"Put!"

"Bang bang bang-"

The artillery positions of the Ming army were still roaring, and compared to them, who were comfortable with the artillery, the Japanese troops who were beaten unilaterally were very uncomfortable.

Many of them were either killed by stone bullets, or their arms were cut on their arms and stabbed in the body by the sawdust broken by stone bullets, and the camp was full of dead and wounded people for a while.

After three hours of shelling, nearly 50,000 stone bullets washed the ground, and Tokugawa Iemitsu's face turned pale, because most of the armed men in the camp had been killed or wounded.

Although for him, armed civilians are just consumables, but even if they are consumables, it is impossible to die without even a little value.

"Let them retreat into the city first!"

"Hey!"

Tokugawa Iemitsu gave an order to Yoon Da Masamune next to him, and the other party quickly ordered the Japanese troops in the Xicheng camp to be recalled.

Their actions were clearly seen by Yang Wenyue, and Wu Aheng even said:

"It seems that there are too many dead and wounded, and the Japanese can't hold on."

"Then take advantage of the victory and pursue them, and defeat the elite of their city." Yang Wenyue said, and turned to Cao Bianjiao and said:

"The artillery moves forward three hundred paces, the height is thirty-five, hit his city!"

"Yes!" Cao Bianjiao responded and ordered someone to pass the order.

The artillery position received orders a quarter of an hour later, and then spent half an hour moving forward to build a position, and then continued the artillery bombardment of Nagoya Castle.

The rumbling artillery showed no sign of stopping, and all the Japanese troops crouched behind the women's wall tremblingly.

Even if there are some brave people who get up, most of the time they will be faced with a galloping stone bullet, which will knock the whole person into a lake of flesh and blood.

The shock of seeing his comrades being beaten to pieces made many armed men and ashigaru flee from the castle in horror, and Tokugawa Iemitsu was powerless to stop this situation.

At the same time, he also knew that even if the group fled, after regaining calm, they would still have to return to the city in the face of the threat of the Warlord's swords and guns.

"General, there are signs that the artillery of the Ming army has stopped at all."

"Bastard...... Is their gunpowder inexhaustible?! ”

Yin Da Masamune and Tokugawa Iemitsu at the head of the city were annoyed by the Ming artillery, and they also wanted to fight back, but they had no ability to fight back, so they could only be beaten passively.

The range of the more than 60 artillery pieces in the city was only one and a half miles, which was not enough to threaten the artillery positions of the Ming army.

Not only that, but with such a scarce number of artillery, I am afraid that it will be attacked by the Ming artillery at the first time when the position of the cannon is exposed.

In this way, the Japanese army really has no heavy firepower.

"Put!"

"Put!"

"Putting ......"

A whole day passed, and the two artillery battalion officers commanding more than 6,000 gunners went from the excitement at the beginning, to the numbness at the end, and then to the dullness at the end, who knows how many stone shells they ordered to fire in one day.

Perhaps except for the Japanese army who faced the stone bullets of the Ming army, no one else could imagine what a terrifying picture it was.

"The army will return to the camp and rest for the night, and the shelling will continue tomorrow."

Yang Wenyue looked at the head of Nagoya Castle, which had been hit by a lot of gaps, and decisively gave the order for the whole army to rest and recuperate.

Although he knew that if he pressed on it now, he might be able to capture Nagoya Castle, and that the price of a night's rest would be to repair the gaps, but he gave the order as usual.

His approach naturally caused the confusion of Cao Bianjiao, Cao Dingjiao and others, so Cao Bianjiao did not respond directly, but asked suspiciously:

"Jingluo, why don't you take advantage of the victory and pursue?"

"Yes, Jinglu, if you rest for the night, wouldn't it give the Wakou time to repair the city wall?"

The doubts of the two were also the doubts of many generals in the Ming army, but for their doubts, Yang Wenyue and Wu Aheng frowned.

Only then did they discover that in just a few years, although the basic quality of the generals of the Ming army had improved, the level of war planning had dropped a lot.

In this regard, Wu Aheng could only stand up and explain:

"If you attack on the first day, the enemy's morale, baggage, and money and food will be enough to support the army to fight bravely again."

"Even if it is not enough to resist our army and is driven out of Nagoya Castle by our army, the casualties of our army will not be low."

"First use artillery to grind their morale, use time to consume their baggage, money and food, and then launch a general attack at the end, in order to defeat the enemy with minimal casualties, or even encircle and annihilate."

"You still need to learn a long time to fight......

"This ...... The Admiral understood. Cao Bianjiao and the others could only reluctantly respond when they heard this, but Yang Wenyue saw that they actually did not agree with this statement.

Therefore, after Cao Bianjiao and them left, Yang Wenyue said to Wu Aheng:

"The Yanshan Military Academy is still only suitable for being a general flag, and an officer like a small flag officer is not suitable for being a general."

"Leading more than 3,000 troops, naturally you need talent, this is urgent." Wu Aheng was not as pessimistic as Yang Wenyue, but interceded for Cao Bianjiao and them.

However, in the face of his intercession, Yang Wenyue shook his head, obviously disagreeing with this statement.

In his opinion, the new generation of generals of the Ming army now have a feeling of nouveau riche wealthy, but this feeling is not used on the right path, but on the point that they don't care about the lives of soldiers.

Perhaps only Yang Wenyue and his group of people who came over from the Rebellion of Lu'an and the Battle of Fuliao can know how precious the life of a veteran soldier of a hundred battles is.

Yang Wenyue would rather exchange hundreds of thousands of catties of gunpowder and hundreds of thousands of stone bullets for victory than tens of thousands of soldiers' lives in exchange for victory, which is the psychology of people who came over in their time.

The situation of the Ming military camp on this night was different, the Ming army was laughing and laughing, eating meat, singing songs, even if the 120,000 Japanese people were given a thousand sheep, everyone ate with a face full of oil, eager to lick the bottom of the pot.

On the other hand, in Nagoya Castle, many ashigaru got nothing more than a pound of corn balls and some wild vegetables.

The cries of the wounded echoed in the city, in stark contrast to the camp of the Ming army.

But even so, this was a moment when the Japanese army could barely rest.

However, such a moment did not last long, because Tokugawa Iemitsu and other shogunate generals actually did not think that they could defeat the Ming army, let alone think of how to retreat with their whole body.

It was not that they did not send people to send letters of surrender to Yan Siqi, Yang Wenyue and others, and in order to have a way out, Tokugawa Iemitsu was even willing to retreat to become a small feudal lord in Owari.

This was already a very humiliating choice for him and the Tokugawa clan, but even so, Yang Wenyue still rejected their idea.

The reason is very simple, if the Ming Dynasty wants to completely make Japan stable, the first thing to do is to make the local environment stable.

Whether it's politics or the military, or the economy.

All three were related to the feudal lords, who controlled nearly ninety percent of Japan's land, controlled the vast majority of the shops, and had enough armed forces to threaten the Ming army's domination.

Therefore, no matter from which point of view, it is impossible for Yang Wenyue to accept their surrender.

What he wanted was to completely annihilate the Japanese army, sweep away all the daimyos, and then divide the land to the Japanese peasants, and then move a large number of people to enrich Japan, and use the Japanese population to open up routes to North Asia Melica, and establish supply market towns.

These are what Zhu Youzhen asked him to do, and compared with these, the concentrated annihilation of the Japanese army and the affected population are not worth mentioning at all.

Zhu Youzhen still underestimated the means of Yang Wenyue, a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, especially in the area of catching up with Miao and expanding the industry.

In Yang Wenyue's view, they don't need to affect so many people at all, they can rely on the land to collect the people's hearts, and then restrict the flow of local population, and only provide them with a direction to work, that is, the North Asia Merica route.

As long as work is restricted, millions of peasants will begin to worry about their own food, and this issue will erupt into conflict with the arrival of Han Chinese migration.

At this time, only the Ming Dynasty needs to issue another article, in order to sympathize with the people of Yingzhou, restrict the Han people from participating in the development of North Asia Merica, and exclusively for Yingzhou people to work, then it only needs to spend more than 3 million taels of silver to hire millions of Yingzhou people to willingly open up North Asia for the Ming Dynasty.

Maybe this is a bit of a loss in the economic account, but don't forget, all the goods consumed by these millions of people can only be obtained from the Ming Dynasty.

So in fact the money went around and around and went into the treasury, and they did not riot like the prisoners who were captive, because they chose to go to work in North Asia.

In this regard, the cost of the Ming Dynasty's rule to maintain North Asia Melica has dropped several times.

It can be said that under Yang Wenyue's idea, the Ming Dynasty does not need to dispatch anyone, and only more than 15 million Yingzhou people are enough to develop parts of North Asia and Melica to the level of the two provinces of Daming, Yunnan and Guizhou in more than ten years.

This is the art of controlling the people, not only will it not make the people of Yingzhou feel pain, but they will thank the imperial court for giving them the opportunity to go out to work and earn money.

"Hoo ......"

Drying the ink, Yang Wenyue put the handwritten letter in the envelope, then got up and walked out of the camp, handed the handwritten letter to the personal entourage at the door, and asked the other party to send someone to send the letter back to the capital as soon as possible.

Hearing this, he immediately responded, and then turned to leave.

I'm afraid that even Yang Wenyue never thought that his letter tonight would completely lay the foundation for the people of Yingzhou Province to become the most outstanding ocean-going workers in the Ming Dynasty.