Chapter 204
Although there were fewer enemies and more enemies, the Ning navy soldiers were not worried because the new ship was fast and they would be invincible.
Even if they can't be beaten, they can still run away. If they delay, the merchant ship being chased by the pirates of the Little Days can escape.
In fact, this could be considered an accident. Cheng Shijie was investigating the disappearance of five ships. This time they encountered him. The chance was actually not high, but it was far greater than the first hit.
If these seventeen pirate ships want to sink these four merchant ships, it is actually very easy. In fact, they have already done it. However, sinking a merchant ship is a loss-making business for the pirates. They also need to spend a lot of money to purchase cannonballs. , and they got nothing.
What the pirates wanted in the early days was the goods on the four ships. They had already inquired clearly. Some of the goods loaded on the four ships were tung oil and some were Jiangnan rice destined for Liaodong.
Especially this rice, it is really precious to these little pirates.
With the eighth year of Kan'ei in the Koni Kingdom (1632), the second generation of Tokugawa Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada passed away. In the previous era, although Tokugawa Iemitsu was canonized by the imperial court in the fourth year of Yuanhe (1618) Edo Chunagon, and in the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Hidetada and his son Tokugawa Iemitsu co-ruled, and they were also known as the dual rulers of the shogunate.
After Tokugawa Iemitsu came to power, he quickly took drastic measures to clean up the forces in the shogunate. Tokugawa Tadanagi, who had competed with Tokugawa Iemitsu for the throne, was the first to be dealt with. Tadagawa was known for his cruelty. Some informants said that Tokugawa Tadagabu hunted apes, beheaded young men and servants several times for trivial matters, and also dissected pregnant women to examine their fetuses.
As a result, Tokugawa Iemitsu confiscated Tokugawa Tadānaga's territories, Suruga Kingdom and Kai Kingdom, and then exiled Tokugawa Tadānaga to Ueno Takasaki. Moreover, after ten years with Kanei, Tokugawa Tadagawa went crazy, and Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered him to commit seppuku. Another theory is that Tokugawa Tadagawa committed suicide himself, rather than Tokugawa Iemitsu's order.
This is actually not important. In short, Tokugawa Tadanagi finally died in Takasaki Castle at the age of twenty-eight. With the death of Tokugawa Tadanagi, Tokugawa Iemitsu began to concentrate the power of the shogunate. In addition, the ministers of Tokugawa Hidetada's era were gradually eliminated. In today's small country, because of Tokugawa Hidetada's death, a large number of people who lost power were produced. warrior.
After all, I was influenced by Chinese culture when I was young, and I deeply understood the essence of it. Once the emperor and his courtiers, some ministers who were originally loyal to his father, Tokugawa Hidetada, lost power one after another, and then Tokugawa Iemitsu's confidant Matsudaira took over. Nobutsuna, Hota Masamori, Miura Masaji, Abe Tadaki, Ota Shige and Abe Shigeji are the "six people". Afterwards, the positions of Laozhong, Wakatoshi, Shixing, Daimufu, and Mufu were successively established in the shogunate, and their responsibilities and authority were also standardized.
But a samurai who lost his feudal lord became a ronin. However, the ronin had no salary, and they had no land. If they wanted to survive, they had to find their own jobs. Under this situation, most of the fallen warriors took refuge in Zheng Zhilong. This group numbered six to seven thousand people.
All of them are warriors with strong skills and rich combat experience. As Tokugawa Iemitsu's reforms deepen, some people rise to power and some lose power. Since then, more and more people have lost power. They want to continue to join Zheng Zhilong. , As a result, Zheng Zhilong gave up. At this time, Zheng Zhilong only occupied the central area of Dayuan and organized hundreds of thousands of people to farm in Dayuan.
The output of hundreds of thousands of people from farming is limited, and Zheng Zhilong cannot expand his army without limit. These small-time warriors who were rejected by Zheng Zhilong can only fend for themselves.
In this case, the feudal lord Kato Tadahiro from Kumamoto was implicated by Tokugawa Iemitsu for the Tokugawa Tadaga incident. He ordered Kato Tadahiro to abdicate and replaced him with the new lord Hosokawa clan (formerly Toyomae Ogura 39 Manseki Daimyo), this pattern lasted until the Meiji Restoration era.
Although the Kato family holds the position of lord of Kumamoto Domain, there are only three generations, namely the first generation lord Kato Gaixiang, the second generation lord Kato Kiyomasa, and the third generation lord Kato Tadahiro, the last lord. Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered the last feudal lord, Kato Tadahiro, to be exiled to the Sakai family of the Dewa-souchi domain to receive control.
As one of the Seven Samurai of the Tokugawa Ieyasu era, the seven Kato Kiyomasa made great military exploits and were known as the "Seven Guns of the Haughty Mountain". The direct descendants of the Kato family were under control, but the Kato family still had the Kato Four. , Iida Naokage (Iida Kakubei), Morimoto Kazuhisa (Morimoto Gitaro), Shobayashi Isshin (Shobayashi Hayato), Morimoto Kazufous (Morimoto Ukon Taifu).
In particular, Kazuhisa Morimoto and Kazuhiro Morimoto took the sixteen generals and other members of the Kato family who could not survive. There was really no way to survive. Kazuhisa Morimoto couldn't help but think of the beauty of his ancestors who plundered the coast of the Ming Dynasty and brought back a large amount of food and gold and silver jewelry. Time...
Morimoto Kazuhisa and Morimoto Kazuhiro couldn't care about that much anymore. He took out the last bit of money and gathered a group of samurai who also couldn't survive, and set sail to sea to rob the Ming Dynasty!
As the saying goes, a hundred responses were answered. These two idiots took the lead, and a large number of Kumamoto Kyushu warriors, bankrupt businessmen, and farmers followed. After a lot of hard work, they actually gathered more than a hundred ships and nearly 6,000 men, and rushed in excitedly. The sea became a pirate.
However, the sea now has an owner. The south belongs to Sea King Zheng Zhilong, and the north belongs to Cheng Shijie. Morimoto Kazuhisa initially robbed the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas. This was an area where Japanese pirates often visited in the past. Before Morimoto Kazuhisa and others could reach the shore, Jiangsu and Zhejiang The fishermen discovered the Japanese pirates, and they were all frightened.
You must know that Jiangsu and Zhejiang were the areas hardest hit by the Japanese pirate rebellion in the past, and they were robbed of experience. He hurriedly ran away with the gold and silver. Although the big fish ran away all at once, the problem was that the small shrimps were enough for Morimoto Kazuki and others to eat. After all, these fishermen, common people, and businessmen fled too hastily, leaving behind no belongings and food. Enough to make their mouths full of oil.
You must know that the Kyushu Island in the past is a place full of disasters. It is said that the past thousands of years have been like this, with low food production, low steel production, low cultural level, and backward military technology. However, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis have The probability of plague and other disasters is frighteningly high. If there is no earthquake for a day, everyone will feel as if something is missing and feel uncomfortable.
How miserable was your childhood? As for Kazuhisa Morimoto and Kazuki Morimoto, their landowners were below one person in the Kumamoto clan and above tens of thousands of people. Their status was almost equivalent to that of Zhou Yandong, Chen Guodong, Shen Mingyu, Changyu and others around Cheng Shijie.
But the problem is that Morimoto Kazuhisa, who has such a high and powerful position, as one of the four generals of the Kumamoto Corps, only has one soup and one dish for his meals, the dish is fish, and the soup is rice soup.
Of course, it's not that Morimoto Kazuki had a tendency to self-abuse. In his childhood, the country was short of supplies and the economy was seriously backward. This is an indisputable fact. Even the superior samurai was in a state of poverty. Hungry was a normal part of life, so it's not surprising.
It is precisely because of this that the empire on the east side of the sea is particularly attractive. Its abundant products, fertile land, highly developed culture, majesty that makes all the barbarians surrender, and peerless elegance that makes all nations admire it, all make people in their childhood jealous. It must be fatal.
However, the problem is that this empire is too powerful. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Xiaoli launched a war to invade Baekje. Baekje was the younger brother of the Tang Dynasty at that time. When he saw Xiaoli coming, he could not parry and hurriedly attacked Baekje. Dad Tang asked for help.
The father of the Tang Dynasty took action, and in the battle of Baijiangkou, Xiaoli had a good life with more than 40,000 warships, but he was slapped to death by the Tang Dynasty. This incident was rarely recorded in the history of the Tang Dynasty, only a few sentences In other words, because the military of the Tang Dynasty was too strong, it was enough for Wang Xuance to destroy a country by one person, and to be granted the title of marquis and general in other dynasties.
However, after Wang Xuance returned to China, he sent the captured Aronashun, his concubines, and others, as well as 12,000 men and women, and more than 20,000 cattle and horses to Chang'an as prisoners. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty felt that Wang Xuance's destruction of a small country in Tianzhu was not a big achievement, so he only named Wang Xuance a Chaosan doctor. At that time, the Sanchao doctor was just a civil servant from the fifth rank, ranking second in the entire civil service system. Thirteen. In other words, Wang Xuance was promoted from the sixth grade to the fifth grade, which was only one level.
This slap hit Xiaori too hard, so Xiaori learned from the Tang Dynasty and sent a large number of envoys to the Tang Dynasty. But the problem was that they couldn't learn no matter how hard they learned, so they thought there was something wrong with their own race. If possible, they would Send your wife or daughter to China to borrow seeds, and then brag to the people around you: "My wife and daughter have been slept with by the nobles of the Celestial Dynasty!"
Later, I finally felt that the Ming Dynasty was gone, and Xiaoli felt that he could do it again. During the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era, they invaded North Korea, and Emperor Wanli sent tens of thousands of troops to defeat Xiaoli again.
These Japanese pirates today are different from those before. They dare not be as unscrupulous as before, but the problem is that good times do not last long. You must know that although Zheng Zhilong is an admiral of the Fujian Navy, the problem is that he thinks that from the south of the Yangtze River, It's all his territory.
This Izuku Morimoto robbed him in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which was a slap in his face, so Zheng Zhilong took action and directly pressed Morimoto Izuku and others to the ground and rubbed them.
Originally, Zheng Zhilong wanted to throw these young samurai into the sea to feed the fish, but the problem was that Zheng Zhilong received a secret letter from the minister of the DPRK, so these Morimoto Kazuhisa and others were released, and they were also strengthened.
Although they originally had more than a hundred boats, they were just fishing boats, or simply small sampans. Zheng Zhilong gave Morimoto Yijiu twenty-five black-tailed boats.
The Wuwei Ship is a special combat ship used by Zheng Zhilong's troops, and it is the master warship. It has a large hull and can accommodate three to four hundred people. In fact, the bottom of this Guangzhou ship is the surface of the Fuzhou ship. Combining the advantages of Guangzhou Shipbuilding and Fuzhou Shipbuilding, this kind of warship not only has a high speed, but also has tall fenders.
In terms of scale, their black-tailed ships are about the same size as Ning Haijun's Four Great King Kongs, which are 2,000-material-level battleships, and their firepower is similar. They are both equipped with twenty-four cannons.
This kind of black-tailed boat can crush all warships of the Ming Dynasty, and has been tested in actual combat. In 1633, the Ming Dynasty Navy and the Dutch launched a fierce battle at Liaoluo Bay on the southeast coast of Kinmen, Fujian. The Ming government, which was about to collapse, used its absolute superiority in troops Defeating the Netherlands, which was growing in national power, this battle was known as the Battle of Liaoluo Bay in history. After the war, in order to maintain the East India Company's maritime trade, the Dutch government paid 10 million francs to China every year.
Of course, this naval battle was fought by Zheng Zhilong, whose main force was the black-tailed boat. However, Zheng Zhilong used more to defeat the smaller. Zheng Zhilong successively invested 150 warships, including 50 black-tailed boats and 100 small fire ships. The remaining ships, on the Dutch side, were fifty Liu Xiangbu pirate ships and seven-type large Galen ships.
However, seven Galenic ships. Brouckersheaven was burned, Weiringen was sunk, Slotendijck was captured (about 100 people on board were captured), and the other ships all escaped after being seriously injured in the face of the strong strength of the Ming army. Liu Xiang's fifty warships participated in the battle, and the entire army was annihilated in Liaoluo Bay.
"Report to Lord Weimon that the Ming Dynasty's official ship is here!"
In fact, there is no need to report it. Now Morimoto Kazuhisa also saw this lonely warship. The Ning Navy only had a single large one rushing over. They had seventeen ships. Although the new type of ship was larger, Morimoto Kazuhisa was not worried and directly ordered Said: "Qing Bingwei!"
"exist!"
"You go with ten ships, ten against one. It's best if you can capture this ship. This is a new ship!"
"Hai!"
Kiyobei is Kato Kiyobei. This surname was given by Kato Kiyomasa and he was one of the three surnames given to him among the sixteen generals.
Qinghei also knew Morimoto Kazuhisa's true thoughts. Zheng Zhilong refused to take them in. If they wanted to rely on themselves for development, they would need to constantly rob ships. Merchant ships were of little significance to them, and the battleships of the Ming Navy were too important to them. It's important.
After this period of robbery, they also knew the combat effectiveness of the Ming Navy. If it were not for Zheng Zhilong's troops, other naval forces would have basically no combat effectiveness.
Not to mention ten ships, even if it were three ships against one, Kato Kiyobei was confident enough to sink this Ming warship.
The ideal is very full, but the reality is too skinny.
If in this maritime encounter, Morimoto had been indiscriminate for a long time and immediately launched a siege, using more than 400 cannons from 17 black-tailed ships to bombard the new Ning Navy ship, I am afraid that this new ship has not had time to be installed. will be sunk.
However, the problem is that what Morimoto wanted to capture was the ship. There were three to four hundred young samurai on the black tail ship, and there were three to four thousand people on the ten ships. There were also more than three hundred people on the new warships of the Ning Navy. There was no way they could fight one against ten.
Kato Kiyohei formed a three-four-three formation and rushed towards Ning Haijun's warship. He planned to surround and launch a boarding battle. This was also one of the advantages of the black tail ship.
The Wuwei boat has five masts, one of which is movable at the front and rear. When approaching an enemy ship, it can be lowered, thus forming a ladder more than ten feet away and two or three feet wide, through which the soldiers on the ship can quickly pass. The sail of the ship, especially the sail of the black-tailed ship that rushes onto the enemy ship, is a traditional hard sail.
Li Zhixiang frowned as he looked at the approaching black-tailed boat.
Shen Shikui smiled bitterly and said, "This is troublesome. They might be Zheng Zhilong's people!"
It’s no wonder that Shen Shikui made such a judgment. Zheng Zhilong acted very arrogantly. Everyone knew that he had some young warriors under his command and even many Kunlun slaves. During the landing battle of Liu Xiang, the pirate gang, Zheng Zhilong’s Kunlun slaves As soon as the slaves landed, the pirates under Liu Xiang were frightened. These Kunlun slaves were like devils.
Li Zhixiang said with a firm face: "We Cheng Shuai have said that we would rather let the tiger return to the mountain than harm the tiger's power. It doesn't matter whether it is Zheng Zhilong or Zheng Zhihu, only Cheng Shuai is in the eyes of a certain family!"
"Fighting against Zheng Zhilong's people is not in the interests of our Ning Haijun. Besides, our strength is too weak. Even if we have more than 300 ships, it is not enough in front of Zheng Zhilong!"
Shen Shikui has also heard about Zheng Zhilong's strength. Their infantry is far inferior to that of Ning Haijun. But the problem is that his navy has too many troops. He has more than 3,000 large and small warships, which is almost ten times that of Ning Haijun's navy, and among them There are still more than 800 black-tailed ships. However, Ning Haijun has only four warships that can fight against the black-tailed ships, and the fifteen new ships built by Sun Yuanhua, together, are less than a fraction of the Zheng Group's.
Li Zhixiang said: "This is something Cheng Shuai needs to consider. There is only one thing I need to consider!"
"What?"
"Kill these little dwarves!"
The warships of both sides rushed towards each other, and the distance between the ships of both sides was getting bigger and bigger. These little warriors were waving their samurai swords, shouting, and preparing to join gangs to fight.
However, just as he entered the range of 500 meters, Li Zhixiang felt a little strange. The artillery loaded on these black-tailed boats was British-made artillery, with a range of 700 to 800 steps.
Li Zhixiang understood that the other party wanted to capture the warship.
"Yonglai!"
"Father!"
Li Zhixiang said: "Take the people to the cabin and make preparations. If we can't stop them and blow up the ship, we can't leave it to them!"
"But……"
"Stop talking nonsense and execute the order!"
Three hundred meters, at this distance, Kato Kiyohei ordered: "Everyone, prepare to lower the sail..."
Before he could finish his words, a three-inch smoothbore breech-loaded shell fell on the deck of a black-tailed boat. A huge orange-red fireball rose into the sky, and the shock wave of the shell was like an invisible hand. , dozens of Japanese pirates were shattered to pieces on the spot, the rigging was torn off, the mast was pushed down, and the gunpowder barrels piled near the gun position exploded with a bang. You must know that this was hundreds of kilograms of black powder, and it exploded into pieces. Flying, the entire black-tailed warship was on fire in the blink of an eye!
The "Qinwu Hao" is finished.
One of Kato's sixteen generals, Akahoshi Chibu's Chaibu No., was in flames and exploded one after another. There were shrill screams inside, and many young samurai who were on fire jumped into the sea.
Kato Seibei was stunned.
Morimoto was stunned.
"How is this going?"
Killing a black-tailed ship with one shot, this is a warship of more than 600 tons. In its childhood, it was already a giant ship. Let alone one shot, even if dozens of cannonballs hit it, it wouldn't be a big problem.
You must know that in the Battle of Liaoluo Bay, Zheng Zhibao's black-tailed boat rushed the fastest and was directly hit by twenty or thirty artillery shells. One of the forty-eight-pound shells had the main mast directly swept off, and thirty people were killed with one shot. There were many people, but the ship still had no big problems and persisted until the end of the battle.
Before they could react, the artillerymen of the Ning Navy Navy continued to fire artillery shells. This time, it was a salvo of four artillery pieces. However, due to the influence of wind and waves, none of the four artillery pieces hit the target. Before the smoke from these four artillery pieces cleared, Finally, the other four artillery pieces fired another salvo.
The Ning Navy warship turned around quickly with a horizontal movement, and the eight side guns fired one after another. In the second round of artillery bombardment, another shell hit this time, hitting the "Nine Ghosts" black-tailed ship.
Fortunately, Cheng Shijie was not present, otherwise he would have scolded his mother directly. You know, the twenty-four cannons on this new ship fired more than forty shells in a short period of time, but only two hit, with a hit rate of only 100. About five points.
However, Cheng Shijie actually didn't know that this was already a very high target rate. During the naval battle between the British and the Spanish Armada, more than 4,000 artillery pieces of the Spanish Armada began to fire. For a while, the sound of the cannons was loud, like lightning. Thunder, extraordinary momentum.
However, after all the excitement, not a single British warship was hit, let alone sunk. This is why naval battles had extremely poor hit rates before the invention of artillery gyroscopes.
Because the waves will cause the battleship's artillery to float up, down, left, and right irregularly, as the saying goes, a slight difference can make a thousand miles, so it is actually very difficult to hit the target on the sea.
I don’t know whether it was too close or just lucky. The shells of Ning Haijun’s naval gun exploded at the waterline. A large hole of two to three meters was blown out of the "Nine Ghosts". Under the strong water pressure, the seawater suddenly collapsed. The wooden hull of the "Nine Ghosts" was torn apart, and seawater poured in, creating chaos.
At this time, under the eyes of the little Japanese warrior, Ning Haijun's warship completed the U-turn, and the two tail guns fired again.
Although there were not many cannons on this Ming warship, the rate of fire was very fast. A mere twenty-four cannons fired with the power of hundreds of cannons.
The Ning Navy battleships didn't care what the young warriors thought. They retreated and fired at the same time. At this time, the advantage of the fast rate of fire of the breech-loaded smoothbore artillery was fully demonstrated.
In particular, Ning Haijun's naval guns fired explosive shells. You must know that the fastest thing about a wooden sailboat is not the damage caused by the solid shells, but the fire caused by the explosive shells.
After losing four battleships, Morimoto finally realized something was wrong: "Retreat!"
He couldn't care less about the four merchant ships.
However, it's too late to run away now.
Li Zhixiang realized that the combat effectiveness of this new ship was so powerful. Even with a pair of seventeen, it could defeat the small pirates steadily.
Just like Cheng Shijie, he never knows how to give up when things are good. If you can kill the opponent, you will never let go of a little samurai.
"Turn around, turn around now, catch up!"
Li Zhixiang smiled and said: "We brothers have not done any meritorious service. We have long disliked those infantrymen!"
In fact, under Ning Haijun's military system, the only way to get promoted and make a fortune was to kill the enemy and perform meritorious service.
"Sir Emon, that Ming warship is catching up again!"
"Don't be afraid, it's getting dark soon, and our chance is here!"
(End of chapter)
