Cheng Shijie looked at the five captured armed merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company. These five were all armed merchant ships of about 1,200 tons. They also had strong combat effectiveness when placed on the sea.
Cheng Shijie frowned slightly and said, "When did the Dutch get involved with Xiaoli?"
Shen Shikui's nephew, the former guerrilla general of the Dongjiang Army, and now the deputy commander of the Ning Navy's naval strike fleet, Shen Zhiyong, said with a wry smile: "According to the prisoners' confessions, these armed merchant ships were hired by the lord of the Choshu Domain, Mouri Hidemoto, to transport troops for the Choshu Domain. and provisions!”
Cheng Shijie smiled lightly and said: "This is to give me a chance to beat them up again!"
Shen Zhiyong asked: "General, do you want to start a war with the Dutch?"
"Those Westerners always care about beating rather than eating. If you have the opportunity, just give them a good beating. Some Westerners are really mean. They won't shed tears until they see the coffin!"
While Cheng Shijie was talking to Shen Zhiyong, Kuroda Xingji led a group of samurai and walked quickly.
More than a hundred steps away from Cheng Shijie, Admiral Ning stopped Kuroda Xingji.
"Disarm and remove the knife!"
Kuroda Yuji asked his samurai to stay where they were. He took off his katana and walked towards Cheng Shijie. He was more than ten steps away from Cheng Shijie and bowed at 90 degrees: "Kuroda Yuji, pay homage to the General, Your Excellency. Wan'an."
"No gift!"
"Your Excellency, General, congratulations on your victory with a small number against a large number, and the elimination of the Satsuma Domain, which was a serious enemy of yours!"
Cheng Shijie shook his head: "Fu's innermost enemy, Satsuma clan, in my eyes, is not even a big deal!"
Kuroda Xingji said: "Your Excellency, General, you must have captured quite a few weapons, right?"
Cheng Shijie nodded and said: "There are quite a lot. There are sixteen or seven thousand samurai swords alone, and there are more than one thousand five hundred fire guns and iron cannons. They are still in good condition."
Kuroda Xingji said: "I have an unkind request, and I would like to ask Your Majesty the General to fulfill it."
"What do you think."
"General, you know that our Fukuoka Domain is a barren land. It is very difficult to produce a batch of weapons with superior performance, so I want to take advantage of the money I have now to buy those thousands of katana swords. This saves you from spending a lot of manpower and material resources to build it later!”
"Yes, why did I forget this? Kuroda-kun, you can't want all of those weapons, I want half of them too!"
Kuroda Xingji said angrily: "Hosokawa-kun, your territory is rich in iron ore, and it is very convenient to make weapons. Why do you have to fight with me!"
Hosokawa Tadori smiled and said: "Who doesn't want cheap things?"
In fact, he didn't want to buy weapons just for cheap, he just didn't want to see the Fukuoka Domain acquire a large number of weapons and become stronger.
You must know that the fierceness and tenacity of the Fukuoka samurai are unparalleled in Kyushu. In the battle with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, they were extremely fierce. However, they have few soldiers and insufficient weapons, so they have never been able to grow. If the Kuroda family were to obtain a large number of weapons, their strength would expand rapidly. What is certain is that for the Kumamoto clan, this is nothing short of a disaster.
Cheng Shijie shook his head and said: "You two, stop arguing. I will bring these weapons back to the country to sacrifice to the Ancestral Temple. I won't sell any of them. You guys should give up!"
Seeing that Cheng Shijie was unwilling to sell these weapons, Kuroda and Hosokawa were very disappointed.
Kuroda Xingji asked tentatively: "Your Excellency, General, we are willing to offer ten times the price!"
Hosokawa Tadori also said: "We are willing..."
"You guys are so ignorant these days, you actually care about these rags!"
Cheng Shijie waved his hand towards Li Dingguo and said, "Dingguo."
Li Dingguo agreed, took off his knife and handed it to Cheng Shijie.
Cheng Shijie took the Hengdao from Li Dingguo, pointed at the captured Xiaori spear and said, "Can you cut off this kind of spear with your samurai sword?"
"able!"
Kuroda Xingji drew his katana and quickly cut off a gun shaft made of miscellaneous wood.
Cheng Shijie smiled: "Tie the five gun barrels together!"
Ning Haijun immediately tied the five gun barrels together and asked Kuroda Xingji to chop them down.
Kuroda's katana slashed three times in a row, and the five spears barely managed to cut off four of them, that's all.
Cheng Shijie asked Ning Haijun to tie five more spears. As Ning Haijun had just set up the spears, Cheng Shijie gave a loud shout and slashed Huashan with one force, his sword slashing down with the wind.
With a "Crack" sound, the barrels of the five long spears made of miscellaneous wood were cut off in unison!
Hosokawa Tadashi's heart felt as if it had been gouged out with a knife. The pain was severe. Ten spears, which must be worth a lot of money, were cut like this. But the horizontal knife equipped by Ning Haijun was so sharp?
Kuroda Xingji's eyes lit up: "General, your sword..."
"Your katana looks good, but its armor-breaking ability is too weak!"
Cheng Shijie said unceremoniously: "Your samurai sword is too bad! I tried it just now. I used this samurai sword to cut off spears, but it was barely able to cut through them. When encountering armored soldiers, it couldn't be cut through at all!"
Afraid that Kuroda and Hosokawa wouldn't believe it, Cheng Shijie had someone build a wooden figure, put the armor on the Ning Navy officers, and asked Kuroda and Hosotane to chop with samurai swords, and then stab them with spears.
Li Dingguo looked at this scene and lowered his voice: "Commander, aren't you worried that these equipment will be used against us in the future?"
"If they have such courage, I can only ask for it!"
"They are always very courageous!"
Li Dingguo said with some worry: "They..."
Cheng Shijie patted the pistol on his waist and said, "We will use this in the future!"
Ning Haijun has now phased out cold weapons. In the future, they will not even be equipped with long spears and crossbows, and the accompanying knives will become symbolic decorations. The real melee weapons are pistols and engineer shovels. Now the Ning Navy Gun Bureau has solved the rifle problem. Although the monthly production capacity is only 2,600 rifles, the problem is that this kind of long gun has a range of 450 meters, and it can shoot 450 meters per minute with skill. Can fire ten to fifteen bullets.
Both the shooting speed and range have far surpassed the formation-breaking crossbow, which means that the formation-breaking crossbow has lost the need to serve. What's more, if the infantry attacks Ning's navy soldiers, they will need to go through ten or fifteen rounds of shooting if they are fully armed. It is strange to be able to charge forward.
What's more, Ning Haijun has also strengthened the research on squad machine guns. There has been no breakthrough progress yet, but with the development of science and technology, it is only a matter of time before a breakthrough is made.
At the same time, Ning Haijun's artillery will continue to strengthen, and it will be impossible for troops equipped with cold weapons to rush forward. Moreover, the heavier the armor, the slower the movement speed. They can only become targets for Ning Haijun soldiers.
Even the armor of Jiannu's white-armored soldiers was like paper in front of Ning Haijun's muskets.
When Hosokawa Tadayoshi and Kuroda Yuji were out of breath from exhaustion, they looked at the katana swords that were already full of gaps. They had to admit that there was a huge gap between their swords and the Ming Dynasty's sabers.
"Do you understand now?"
Cheng Shijie pointed at the spear of the warrior in his childhood and said: "The shaft of your spear is as soft as tofu. I can cut off five spears with one blow! You said that this kind of spear can't kill people, and the shaft of the spear is as soft as tofu." , what’s the use of it!”
"Your Excellency, General, you mean to sell us this horizontal sword!"
"Yes, because our cooperation is so smooth, this is a knife-making craft from the Tang Dynasty. Each Tang Hengdao can stab and cut. Twenty taels of silver for a knife is not expensive, right?"
Kuroda Xingji said excitedly: "It's not expensive, our Kuroda family wants 30,000 swords!"
With the Kuroda clan's financial resources, it was very difficult to come up with 600,000 taels of silver, but the problem was that they had just robbed several cities of the Satsuma clan lord and gained a lot. Six hundred thousand taels of silver are available.
Hosokawa Tadayoshi said: "We also want 30,000 swords!"
"Easy to say, easy to say!"
Ning Haijun produced no less than three million of these horizontal knives. Basically every household in Liaodong has a horizontal knife, and some have more than one. The key is that the troops still have more than one million knives. Cheng Shijie has a huge headache. How to deal with these equipment.
Not to mention that the two of them need 60,000 handles, even if it is 600,000 handles, 600 handles is just a matter of two shifts and more overtime.
"bring here!"
Immediately, a Ning navy soldier handed over a long gun. The length of the gun barrel was one foot or two feet, which is three and a half meters long. The combined length of the gun blade and gun bottle was also one and a half feet long. The entire long gun was four meters long.
The most amazing thing is that its spear head is not the usual wheat awn shape, but a long and narrow sword shape, with a deep blood groove, and the blade glows with a cold light.
Kuroda Yukiji, who understands Chinese history, whispered: "This is Ma Shu!"
"It's not Ma Chao, it's just Bu Chao!"
Cheng Shijie continued: "Bring your heavy shield over here!"
Kuroda Xingji picked up a heavy shield from the pile of captured Xiaori weapons. This is Xiaori's heavy shield, weighing more than forty kilograms. The outer layer is wrapped with rawhide and copper skin. In Xiaori's army, it is equipped with Not much, just as equipment for the guards.
After the shield was erected, Cheng Shijie handed the spear to Li Dingguo.
Using a spear to pierce a shield was a labor of strength. Although Cheng Shijie was confident in his own strength, after all, he had not trained during this period, and his body had suffered greatly since he was a child.
Li Dingguo took the spear, danced out a beautiful spear flower, and stabbed it with a single shot. With a bang, the shield was pierced through, and the spear tip protruded nearly half a foot from the inside.
Hosokawa Tadori suddenly took a breath: "This..."
"This is the standard equipment of our Ning Navy. Have you seen this gun barrel? Inside it is a steel bar about the thickness of a little finger and a foot long, and then it is layered with bamboo strips soaked in tung oil and densely packed with beef tendons. Tie it up tightly, wrap it in Gebu, and apply raw lacquer, and finally you're done! See this gun head, right? It's made of high-carbon steel, and its armor-breaking ability is very powerful!"
"How much?"
"The price is the same as the horizontal knife!"
Cheng Shijie smiled and said: "Twenty taels of silver per shot!"
"purchase……"
Kuroda Yuji's face was full of bitterness: "We can't afford it..."
"You can replace it with someone else!"
Cheng Shijie said with a smile on his face: "Ten strong men have a long sword, and twenty strong women...have a gun."
"But we... there are not many people left in the Satsuma clan!"
"The Satsuma clan is not the only one in Kyushu, wouldn't you..."
Kuroda Yuji and Hosokawa Tadori immediately understood.
…
Ogi City, the hometown of the Choshu clan.
Li Zhixiang led thousands of elite soldiers to land at the pier without anyone noticing. After taking the pier in one fell swoop, he began to attack the city. As a result, the city walls were filled with guns and bullets rained down. After one round of attack, not even a brick was knocked off. More than 200 people were killed or injured.
"Pull up the bazooka!"
The biggest advantage of rocket launchers is their mobility and rapid launch. Hundreds of rocket launch tubes that had been set up let out a terrifying roar, spraying out large clouds of white smoke and flames. Slender rocket launchers rushed out from them, leaving straight trails in the sky and rushing toward Ogi City.
The defenders of Ogi City suddenly heard this piercing scream. When they raised their heads and saw it, their faces suddenly turned pale!
It's too late to do anything now, let alone facing such a fierce bombardment, they can't do anything! The meteor shower fell with the grim smile of the God of Death, and the earth trembled violently. The loud explosion, which was far more terrifying than a hundred thunders exploding at the same time, shook the walls of Dadi City.
The shock wave of the explosion blew the defenders of Ogi City to pieces. I don't know how many people were blown to pieces in an instant. After the violent and heart-stopping explosion, cries and shouts followed, and a large number of young soldiers were covered in blood. Fire, fell to the ground and let out a miserable howl.
The defenders of Ogi City had never witnessed such a horrific bombardment. They all fell silent and watched all this with fear. The thoughts in their hearts were surprisingly similar... Heavenly punishment!
If it wasn't God's punishment, how could such a terrifying thunder suddenly fall from the clear sky?
One of the great advantages of the rocket launcher is that it is easy and fast to fire. Just put the shell into the launch tube, flick the fuse and ignite it. It is more than ten times faster than the miserable rate of fire of the front-loaded smoothbore gun, so the second round of shelling is much faster. Faster than anyone imagined.
Fire dragons flew towards the city one after another, rocket launcher shells exploded on the ground, sulfur burned violently and splashed everywhere, burning wherever it splashed. Those paper-bark and tree-bark houses were on fire at a moment's notice. The little Japanese army was shocked and fought hard. Save.
However, rocket launcher shells kept flying in and exploding, igniting fires one after another. Soon, the unlucky ones who put out the fire discovered that even they themselves were surrounded by large artillery.
The entire Dicheng City turned into a big furnace under the bombardment of artillery. Thick smoke billowed and flames shot into the sky. The cries of the soldiers and civilians of Dicheng City hit the city wall like a stormy wave, which was unbearable to hear.
Then there was a landslide-like explosion that almost collapsed the city wall. Tens of thousands of kilograms of black powder stored in the Ogi City firearms warehouse were detonated. Several blocks were instantly wiped out, and the fire immediately jumped several feet!
The soldiers and civilians in the city poured out from various city gates with fearful expressions. They trampled on each other and suffered numerous casualties. The dead almost blocked the city gates...
However, even if they escaped from the big furnace, they would not necessarily be safe, so thousands of Ming army elite soldiers were waiting for them, either to surrender or to be massacred.
After the fire was extinguished, the Ming army launched another attack and captured Dicheng without any effort, because there were few living people in the city, and the dead would not pick up swords and guns to resist.
Just when Li Zhixiang was harvesting the fruits of Ogi City, the coalition forces composed of Fukuoka Domain and Kumamoto Domain were eyeing Nagasaki. Nagasaki is the main city of Hinoe Domain (later renamed Shimabara Domain). Nagasaki Port, located in the west of Kyushu Island, was the most prosperous port city in its early days. A large number of fishing boats went out to sea every day, bringing back boatloads of seafood. Every day, a large number of merchant ships carried fruits, rice, swords, and copper ingots produced in Japan. Cargoes such as sulfur, flower cloth, swords and so on sailed out of the port and sailed to Korea, Ming Dynasty, Vietnam, Nanyang and other countries. Similarly, a large number of ships from foreign countries entered the port every day.
The fleets from the Ming Dynasty brought silk, porcelain, and tea; the fleets from the West brought muskets, cannons, and glass products. Pirates under Zheng Zhilong's group ran to Nagasaki City in search of flower girls. Western missionaries were full of excitement. He went ashore, walked into a simple church and began to preach...
All in all, the entire Port of Nagasaki is an important base for cultural exchanges between the East and the West. In 1610, the Virgin Mary incident broke out in Nagasaki. A Portuguese merchant ship was burned by Arima Harunobu and other daimyo. From 1616, the Edo government began to restrict ships from Europe to only trade in Hirado and Nagasaki; from 1635 onwards, the restrictions were further increased. Trade could only be carried out in the Port of Nagasaki, and Deshima was built as a restricted living place for the Portuguese. In 1641, the Dutch business office also moved to Deshima. The Edo government's measures to sequester the country had been completed. In the next nearly two hundred years, , Nagasaki became Japan's only international trade port.
Of course, this prosperous land is not ownerless. How could the Tokugawa shogunate let go of this fat piece of meat overflowing with grease? From the day the Tokugawa shogunate was established, Nagasaki Port has been firmly in their hands, and the customs taxes collected every year have made the shogunate full of fat.
After learning that the coalition forces of Fukuoka Clan and Kumamoto Clan were heading towards Nagasaki Port, Ning Haijun cooperated in the battle. With the coalition's fierce attack, they took the commanding heights. Then, Ning Haijun set up a rocket launcher and bombarded Nagasaki City with hundreds of rocket shells. When it smashed in, the whole city was enveloped in thick smoke and fire, tens of thousands of people were burned alive or suffocated to death, and strategic reserves of food, gunpowder, weapons, etc. were burned to the ground.
In the battle to attack Nagasaki, a small force performed very eye-catchingly. This was the equipment that Honda Yuei, the Shimadzu family general, and Cheng Shijie did not sell to the Kuroda and Hosokawa families. These equipment are not like As Cheng Shijie said, it will be transported back to China to show off the victory.
In fact, these equipment were used to arm more than 3,000 Shimadzu samurai and ashigaru under Honda Yuei. After eating three meals from Ning Haijun, the warrior felt like he was living like a human being in these little days.
They immediately swore allegiance to Cheng Shijie. Of course, in Cheng Shijie's eyes, they were just cannon fodder. Cheng Shijie promised these more than 3,000 little warriors: "The whole family of those who climb the city will be free!"
Therefore, these young warriors behaved very bravely and crazy during the attack.
As Nagasaki fell into a sea of flames, the entire Kyushu Island was filled with smoke and smoke, like crazy.
In this case, the Tokugawa shogunate finally couldn't sit still. (End of chapter)
