Chapter 204

Despite the fact that there were fewer enemies and more enemies, the soldiers of the Ning Navy were not worried, because of the speed of this new ship, they would be invincible.

Even if they can't beat it, they can run, and if they delay, the merchant ships that are being pursued by the pirates of the small day can also escape.

In fact, this can be regarded as a crooked fight, Cheng Shijie is investigating the disappearance of five sea ships, and this time they ran into it, the probability is actually not big, but it is far greater than the first hit.

If these seventeen pirate ships wanted to sink these four merchant ships, it was actually very easy, in fact, they had already done it, but sinking a merchant ship was a loss-making deal for the pirates, and they still needed to spend a lot of money to buy cannonballs, and they would not get anything.

What the pirates wanted was the cargo of the four ships on board, and they had already inquired clearly, some of the things loaded on these four ships were tung oil, and part of them were Jiangnan rice destined for Liaodong.

Especially this rice, which is too precious for these little pirates.

In 1632, the second Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Hidetada, died in the 8th year of Kanei (1632) of Kohō Province, and in the previous era, although Tokugawa Iemitsu was canonized as Edo Nabu Nayan by the Imperial Court in the 4th year of Motowa (1618), in the Tokugawa shogunate, it was Tokugawa Hidetada and his son Tokugawa Iemitsu who jointly ruled and was also known as the dual ruler of the shogunate.

After Tokugawa Iemitsu took power, he soon made a drastic move and began to clean up the forces in the shogunate, and Tokugawa Tadanaga, who had competed with Tokugawa Iemitsu for the storage position, was the first to be cleaned up, Tokugawa Iemitsu was known for Tokugawa Tadanaga's cruelty, and there was an eyeliner that Tokugawa Tadanaga hunted apes, killed small servants and servants several times for sesame trivial matters, and also killed pregnant women to see their fetuses.

As a result, Tokugawa Iemitsu confiscated Tokugawa Tadanaga's territory, Suruga Province and Kai Province, and then exiled Tokugawa Tadanaga to Ueno Takasaki. And in the tenth year of Kanei, Tokugawa Tadanaga went berserk, and Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered him to commit suicide by seppuku, and the other is that Tokugawa Tadanaga committed suicide by himself, not Tokugawa Iemitsu's order.

It didn't really matter, in short, Tokugawa Tadanaga died at Takasaki Castle at the age of twenty-eight. With the death of Tokugawa Tadanaga, Tokugawa Iemitsu began to concentrate the power of the shogunate, and the ministers of the Tokugawa Hidetada era were gradually cleaned up, and the current Kohi country, because of the death of Tokugawa Hidetada, produced a large number of samurai who lost power.

After all, Xiao Ri was influenced by Chinese culture and won the essence of it, once a son of heaven and a courtier, what ministers who were originally loyal to his father Tokugawa Hidetada, lost power one after another, and then Tokugawa Iemitsu's henchmen Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Hotta Masamori, Miura Masaji, Abe Tadaaki, Ota Shimune and Abe Shigeji were the "six people". Subsequently, the shogunate's positions such as the old middle, the wakanian, the commissioner, the daimesuke, and the mesuke were established one after another, and the duties and powers were also standardized.

However, the samurai who lost the lord of the domain became a ronin. But the ronins did not have a fortune, they did not have land, if they wanted to live, they could only find their own jobs, in this case, most of the warriors who had lost their power, took refuge in Zheng Zhilong, and this group of people was six or seven thousand.

All of them are samurai with strong skills and rich combat experience, with the deepening of Tokugawa Iemitsu's reforms, some people have taken the position, and some people have lost power, so that more and more people have lost power, and they want to continue to take refuge in Zheng Zhilong, but Zheng Zhilong did not want it, Zheng Zhilong only occupied the central area of Dayuan at this time, and organized more than 100,000 people in Dayuan Tuntian.

The output of tens of thousands of people in Tuntian is limited, and it is impossible for Zheng Zhilong to expand the army indefinitely.

In this case, Kato Tadahiro, the feudal lord from Kumamoto, was implicated in the Tokugawa Iemitsu incident with Tokugawa Tadanaga, and he ordered Kato Tadahiro to abdicate and be ruled by a new lord, the Hosokawa clan (formerly Bunzen Kokura 390,000 stone daimyo), and this pattern continued until the Meiji Restoration.

Although the Kato family was in the position of the lord of the Kumamoto domain, there were only three generations, namely the first lord Kato Waisho, the second lord Kato Kiyomasa, and the third lord Kato Tadahiro, the last lord of the domain. The Tokugawa iemitsu ordered the last feudal lord Kato Tadahiro to be sent to the Sakai family of the Dewasho Uchi domain to be controlled.

As one of the seven samurai of the Tokugawa Ieyasu era, Kato Kiyomasa Seven made great achievements, known for the "Seven Guns of Cheap Mountain", and the descendants of the Kato family were governed, but the Kato family also has Kato Shijie, Iida Naokei (Iida Kakubei), Morimoto Kazuku (Morimoto Itachi), Shobayashi Isshin (Shobayashi Hayato), Morimoto Kazubo (Morimoto Right Near Taifu).

Especially Morimoto Ichihisa and Morimoto Ichibo took the sixteen generals who couldn't survive the Kato family and other people, there was really no way to live, and Morimoto couldn't help but think of the good times when his ancestors plundered the Daming coast and brought back a lot of grain, gold, silver and jewelry......

Morimoto and Morimoto couldn't take care of it so much for a long time, he took out the last bit of silver and gathered a group of samurai who couldn't survive anymore, set sail to the sea, and robbed Daming!

As the saying goes, with these two stunned species taking the lead, a large number of Kumamoto Kyushu samurai, bankrupt merchants, and farmers followed one after another, and they actually got together more than 100 ships, nearly 6,000 men and horses, rushed into the sea happily, and became pirates.

It's just that the sea is now ownery, the south belongs to the sea king Zheng Zhilong, the north belongs to Cheng Shijie, Morimoto Ichijiu first robbed the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, which was the area where the Japanese invaders often visited before, and before Morimoto Ichijiu and others had time to land, the fishermen of Jiangsu and Zhejiang found the Japanese invaders, and they were all afraid of robbery.

You must know that Jiangsu and Zhejiang were the hardest hit areas of the previous Japanese rebellion, and they were robbed of experience. Quickly fled with the gold and silver, although the big fish ran away at once, but the problem was that the small shrimp was enough for Morimoto Ichihisa and others to eat, after all, these fishermen, people, and merchants fled in too haste, and the wealth and food left behind were enough for them to eat with their mouths full of oil.

You must know that the island of Kyushu is a place with many disasters and difficulties, it is said that for thousands of years, Xiaori has been like this bird, low grain production, low steel production, low cultural level, backward military technology, but the probability of the outbreak of disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and plagues is terrifyingly high, and everyone will feel as if something is missing if there is no earthquake for a day, and they are uncomfortable.

How miserable is the little life? To say that Morimoto Ichihisa and Morimoto Ichiba, their landlords are under one person in the Kumamoto Domain, above tens of thousands of people, and their status is almost equivalent to the status of Zhou Yandong, Chen Guodong, Shen Mingyu, Zhang Yu and others around Cheng Shijie.

But the problem is that Morimoto Kazuhisa, who is so high and powerful, as one of the four generals of the Kumamoto Corps, only has one soup and one dish for his meal, the dish is fish, and the soup is rice soup.

Of course, it is not that Morimoto has masochistic tendencies, it is an indisputable fact that there is a shortage of domestic materials and a serious backwardness in the economy, so that the superior samurai are also very down, and it is not surprising that hunger is the norm of life.

It is precisely because of this that the empire on the east side of the sea is particularly attractive, the abundant products, fertile land, highly developed culture, the majesty of the submission of the four yi, and the peerless elegance that all the countries admire, all make the eyes of the little people red.

However, the problem is, but this empire is too powerful, as early as the Tang Dynasty, Xiao Ri launched a war of aggression against Baekje, Baekje was the younger brother of the Tang Dynasty at that time, and when he saw Xiao Ri coming, he couldn't parry, so he hurriedly asked Datang's father for help.

Datang's father shot, the battle of Baijiangkou, there were more than 40,000 warships that had a good time, but they were slapped to death by Datang, this scene is rarely recorded in the history of Datang, only a few words, because Datang's military is too strong, like Wang Xuance destroys a country alone, and it is enough to pay homage to the generals in other dynasties.

However, after Wang Xuance returned to China, he sent the captured Alona Shun, the princess, the son, etc., 12,000 captured men and women, and more than 20,000 cattle and horses to Chang'an as prisoners. Tang Taizong felt that Wang Xuance's destruction of a small Tianzhu country was not a big achievement, so he only named Wang Xuance as the doctor of Chaosan, which was just a civil official from the fifth grade at that time, ranking thirteenth in the entire civil official system. In other words, Wang Xuance has only risen one level from the sixth grade to the fifth grade.

This slap beat Xiao Ri too hard, so Xiao Ri learned from the Tang Dynasty and sent a large number of envoys to the Tang Dynasty, but the problem is that they can't learn how to learn, so they think that there is a problem with their own race, and if they have the conditions, they will send their wives or daughters to China to borrow seeds, and then boast to the people around them: "My wife and daughter have slept with the dignitaries of the Celestial Empire!" ”

Later, I finally felt that the Ming Dynasty was not good, and Xiao Ri felt that he could do it again, they invaded Korea in the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era, and Emperor Yu Wanli sent tens of thousands of troops to beat Xiao Ri down again.

The current Japanese are different from the previous ones, they dare not be as unscrupulous as before, but the problem is that the good days are not long, you must know that although Zheng Zhilong is a Fujian naval commander, but the problem is that he thinks that from the south of the Yangtze River, it is his territory.

This Morimoto Ichijiu robbed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and it was a slap in the face, so Zheng Zhilong made a move and directly pressed Morimoto Ichijiu and others, who had just improved a little, to the ground and rubbed them.

Originally, Zheng Zhilong wanted to throw these small samurai in the sea to feed the fish, but the problem was that Zheng Zhilong received a secret letter from the minister of the DPRK and China, so these Morimoto Ichihisa and others were released and strengthened.

Although they originally had more than a hundred boats, they were just fishing boats, or directly small sampans, and Zheng Zhilong gave Morimoto Ichihisa twenty-five blacktail boats.

The Wuwei ship is a special combat ship for Zheng Zhilong's troops, and it is the master battleship, with a large hull and can accommodate three or four hundred people. In fact, the bottom of this wide ship is the face of the blessed ship. Structuring the advantages of both Guangzhou and Fuchuan, this kind of warship not only has a high speed, but also has a tall guard.

In terms of scale, their black-tailed ships are similar to the four King Kong and 2,000-level warships of the Ning Navy, and their firepower is about the same, and they are all equipped with twenty-four guns.

This kind of blacktail ship can crush all the warships of the Ming Navy, and has been tested in actual combat, in 1633, the Ming Dynasty sailors and the Netherlands in the southeast coast of Kinmen, Fujian Province launched a fierce battle, the Ming government was about to collapse with an absolute superiority of troops to defeat the thriving Netherlands, this battle is known as the Battle of Liuluo Bay. After the naval war, in order to maintain the East India Company's maritime trade, the Dutch government paid 10 million francs a year to China.

Of course, this naval battle was fought by Zheng Zhilong, and its main force was the Wuwei ship, however, Zheng Zhilong fought more and less, Zheng Zhilong successively invested 150 warships, including 50 Wuwei ships, more than 100 small fireships, and the Dutch side was 50 Liu Xiangbu pirate ships, as well as seven large Galen ships.

However, seven Galen ships. Brouckersheaven was burned, Weiringen sunk, Slotendijck captured (about 100 people on board were taken prisoner), and the rest of the ships fled after being mortally wounded in the face of the Ming army. Fifty Liu Xiang warships participated in the battle, and the whole army was wiped out in Liaoluo Bay.

"Tell Your Excellency Weimen, the official ship of the Ming Kingdom is here!"

In fact, there is no need to tell it, now Morimoto Ichijiu has also seen this lonely battleship, and the Ning Navy only has a lone large one rushing over, and they have seventeen, although the new ship is larger, but Morimoto Ichijiu is not worried, but directly ordered: "Qingbei!" ”

"In!"

"You go with ten ships, ten dozen to one, it's best to capture this ship, this is a new ship!"

"Hay!"

Qingbei, that is, Kato Qingbei, this surname was given by Kato Kiyomasa, and it is also one of the three of the sixteen generals who have been given a surname.

Qing Bingwei also knew Morimoto Kazuhisa's true thoughts, Zheng Zhilong refused to take them in, they had to rely on their own development, then they needed to constantly rob ships, merchant ships were of little significance to them, and the warships of the Ming army were too important to them.

After this period of robbery, they also knew the combat effectiveness of the Ming army's naval divisions, if it weren't for Zheng Zhilong's troops, the other naval divisions basically had no combat effectiveness.

Not to mention ten, even if it is three to fight one, Kato Seibei is sure enough to sink this Ming warship.

The ideal is very plump, but the reality is too skinny.

If this encounter at sea, Morimoto has been indiscriminate for a long time, and directly comes up to besiege it, and bombards this new type of Ning Navy with more than 400 guns of seventeen black-tailed ships, I am afraid that this new ship will be sunk before it has time to be equipped.

However, the problem is that Morimoto has been thinking for a long time that he wants to capture this ship, there are three or four hundred samurai on the Wuwei ship, and there are three or four thousand people on ten ships, and there are also more than three hundred people on the new warships of the Ning Navy, and they can't fight with one block ten.

Kato Kiyobei lined up in a formation of three, four, and three, and rushed towards the battleships of the Ning Navy, he planned to surround them, and start a broadside battle, which was also one of the advantages of the blacktail ship.

The blacktail ship has five masts, one of which is movable in the front and rear, and when approaching the enemy ship, it can be put down, so that a ladder is formed more than ten zhang away and about two or three zhang wide, and the soldiers on the ship can quickly pass through the sail and rush onto the enemy ship, especially the sail of the blacktail ship is the traditional hard sail.

Li Zhixiang looked at the blacktail boat that was getting closer and closer, and his brows furrowed.

Shen Shikui smiled bitterly: "It's troublesome now, they can't figure it out to be Zheng Zhilong's people!" ”

It's no wonder that Shen Shikui has such a judgment, Zheng Zhilong's behavior is very arrogant, everyone knows that there are some small day warriors under his command, and there are even a lot of Kunlun slaves, in the landing battle of the other party's Liu Xiang, a pirate gang, Zheng Zhilong's Kunlun slaves have just landed, and the pirates under Liu Xiang's command are frightened, these Kunlun slaves are like devils.

Li Zhixiang said with a firm face: "Our Cheng Shuai has said, we would rather let the tiger return to the mountain than damage the tiger's prestige, no matter what Zheng Zhilong or Zheng Zhihu is, there is only Cheng Shuai in the eyes of a certain family!" ”

"Fighting with Zheng Zhilong's people, this is not in the interests of our Ning Navy, besides, our strength is too weak, don't look at the fact that we have more than three hundred ships, in front of Zheng Zhilong, it is not enough to see!"

Shen Shikui has also heard of Zheng Zhilong's strength, their infantry is far inferior to the Ning Navy, but the problem is that his naval division has too many troops, with more than 3,000 large and small warships, almost more than ten times that of the Ning Navy's naval division, and there are more than 800 Wuwei ships among them, but the Ning Navy has warships that can fight against the Wuwei ships, only the four King Kongs, and the fifteen new ships built by Sun Yuanhua, combined, are less than a fraction of the Zheng Group.

Li Zhixiang said: "This is something that Cheng Shuai needs to consider, and there is only one thing I need to consider!" ”

"What?"

"the little guys!"

The warships of both sides rushed towards each other, and the distance between the ships of the two sides became more and more close, and these little days the samurai brandished their katanas, shouting and shouting, ready to jump into the gang to fight.

However, just as he entered the range of 500 meters, Li Zhixiang was faintly strange, the guns loaded by these blacktail ships were British-made guns, and the range was seven or eight hundred paces.

Li Zhixiang understood that the other party wanted to capture the battleship.

"Forever!"

"Father-in-law!"

Li Zhixiang said: "You take people to the cabin to prepare, in case we can't stop them and blow up the ship, we can't leave it to them!" ”

"But ......"

"Don't talk nonsense, carry out the order!"

Three hundred meters, at this distance, Kato Kiyobei ordered: "Everyone, prepare to lower the sails......"

Before his words fell, a three-inch smoothbore rear-loading flower bomb landed on the deck of an Augtail ship, with a huge orange-red fireball rising into the air, the shock wave of the cannonball, like an invisible hand, more than a dozen Japanese robbers were crushed on the spot, the rigging was torn alive, the mast was pushed down, and the powder keg stacked near the gun emplacement exploded with a boom, you must know that this is hundreds of catties of black powder, and it exploded into fragments, and the entire blacktail warship was beaten to the sky in a blink of an eye!

The "Pro-Martial Force" is finished.

One of Kato's sixteen generals, the Akashi pro-martial pro-martial number burst into flames, exploded one after another, and a terrible scream was heard from inside, and many samurai who were on fire jumped into the sea.

Kiyobei Kato was dumbfounded.

Morimoto was dumbfounded for a long time.

"What's going on?"

One cannon killed a black-tailed ship, this is a battleship of more than 600 tons, and it is already a big ship of the giant ship class in Xiaori, not to mention one cannon, even dozens of shells are in the same place, so there is not much of a problem.

You must know that in the Battle of Liuluo Bay, Zheng Zhibao's Wuwei boat rushed the fastest, directly hit twenty or thirty shells, one of which was a forty-eight-pound shell, the main mast was directly swept off, and more than 30 people were killed in one shot, but this ship still had no big problems, and it persisted until the end of the battle.

Without waiting for them to react, the artillery crews of the Ning Navy Division began to continue firing shells, this time four guns fired a salvo, but due to the effect of wind and waves, the four guns did not hit, and before the smoke of these four guns dissipated, the other four guns fired another salvo.

The battleship of the Ning Navy made a rapid U-turn with a lateral movement, and the eight guns on the side opened fire in turn, and in the second round of artillery bombardment, this time another shell hit, hitting the "Nine Ghosts" Wuwei ship.

Fortunately, Cheng Shijie was not present, otherwise he would have scolded his mother directly, you know, the twenty-four guns on this new ship fired more than 40 shells in a short period of time, but only two hits, and the hit rate was only about 5 percent.

However, Cheng Shijie actually didn't know that this was already a very high rate of sight, in the naval battle between Britain and the Spanish Armada, more than 4,000 guns of the Spanish Armada began to fire, and for a time the cannon sound was loud, like lightning and thunder, and the momentum was extraordinary.

However, after all the excitement, not a single British warship was hit, let alone sunk. This is the time when naval warfare did not invent artillery gyroscopes, and the hit rate was extremely poor.

Because the waves will cause the guns of the battleship to float irregularly up and down, left and right, as the so-called difference is thousands of miles, it is actually very difficult to hit the target at sea.

I don't know if it's too close, or if it's too lucky, the shells of the Ning Navy's naval guns exploded at the waterline, and the "Nine Ghosts" were blown out of a big hole of two or three meters, and the seawater tore the wooden hull of the "Nine Ghosts" under the strong water pressure, and the sea water poured in, and there was chaos when it landed.

At this time, under the nose of the samurai of Xiaori, the battleship of the Ning Navy completed the U-turn, and the two tail guns opened fire again.

Although there were not many guns on this Ming battleship, the rate of fire was very fast, and only 24 guns were fired, but they played the power of hundreds of guns.

The battleships of the Ning Navy did not care what the samurai of the small day thought, they retreated while firing their guns, and at this time, the advantage of the fast rate of fire of the rear-loading smoothbore guns was vividly displayed.

In particular, the guns of the Ning Navy fired flowering shells, and you must know that the fastest thing about wooden sailing ships was not the damage caused by solid shells, but the fire caused by flowering shells.

After the loss of four battleships, Kazuhisa Morimoto finally realized that something was wrong: "Retreat!" ”

He couldn't care about the four merchant ships either.

It's just that it's too late to run.

Li Zhixiang realized that the combat effectiveness of this new ship was so strong, and in the case of a pair of seventeens, it could still fight the pirates of Xiaori and retreat.

He is like Cheng Shijie, he never knows to accept it when he sees it. can kill the other party, and will never let go of a samurai for a small day.

"Turn around, turn around immediately, catch up!"

Li Zhixiang said with a smile: "Our brothers have no meritorious service, and they have long seen those infantry unpleasant!" ”

In fact, under the military system of the Ning Navy, the only way to get promoted and make a fortune is to kill the enemy and make meritorious contributions.

"Your Excellency Emon, now that Ming Kingdom battleship is catching up again!"

"Don't be afraid, it's getting dark, and our chance is here!"

(End of chapter)