On the coast of northern Kyushu, Japan, a new Nagoya castle now appears.
This bastion located on the seaside of Matsuura County, Hizen Province, Kyushu Island, was built on the abandoned foundation of Nagoya Castle built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi - the original Nagoya Castle was the largest castle in Japan at that time. The second largest castle in Osaka Castle, it is located in Kyushu far away from the center of Tokugawa Shogunate rule. Therefore, after the Battle of Sekigahara, it was demolished under the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, leaving only one base. It was not until Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered the reconstruction of Nashin Goya Castle five years ago.
However, the rebuilt new Nagoya Castle is no longer a Japanese-style castle that cannot withstand cannon bombardment, but a Western-style bastion. Engineers brought by the Spanish Ambassador to the Qing Dynasty and Japan, de Salamanca, were responsible for the design and construction. .
After the bastion was built, Tokugawa Iemitsu added a new character in front of Nagoya Castle to name this seemingly very solid fortress, making it the foundation of Japan's southwest coastal defense and also the commanding officer for the war in Korea. Base camp.
Tokugawa Iemitsu himself, after learning that Zhu Youjian had returned from the Western Regions, moved from Edo to New Nagoya Castle. He pretended to ask the general to guard the country... After guarding for a long time, he did not wait for the Ming Dynasty navy and army to invade Japan. On the contrary, I got a lot of good news about the disasters in the Ming Dynasty and the people's livelihood.
In fact, disasters have occurred frequently in Japan in recent years, and people in many places are in dire straits. However, the Japanese samurai class headed by the Tokugawa shogunate has a strong suppression ability, which seems to be no weaker than the Eight Banners masters in the Qing Dynasty. So starving some farmers to death is not a problem at all.
However, the seemingly rock-solid Tokugawa shogunate is not without some hidden dangers. What poses a threat to the shogunate's rule is a problem left over from the Warring States Period - the surplus of samurai! Or to be more precise, there is a glut of swashbucklers!
In an era of strife in the world, the ambitious Warring States daimyo would not mind having too many people to help them conquer the world, so they tried to raise as many warriors as possible. However, most of these Warring States samurai were "shameless". Even if their master's family perished, they were unwilling to follow and die. Instead, they lingered until the era of Iemitsu's rule.
Theoretically speaking, these samurai who lasted until the Edo period no longer belong to the noble class of samurai because they have no lords, no salary, and no territory.
These former samurai should give up their unrealistic dreams, accept the reality that they are already civilians, and then find a job that can support themselves and pay taxes to the domain or shogunate that rules them.
If you really have no means to make a living, you can quietly starve to death or find a more respectable place to commit seppuku - according to the rules of the time, a rogue who can't survive still has the right to commit seppuku in a dignified manner like a real samurai. of.
Unfortunately, not many rōshi are willing to commit seppuku like a samurai. The vast majority of them, no matter how difficult it is, are clenching their teeth and clinging on to their last breath, and they have to leave their status as a rogue who is not considered a samurai at all and their dream of becoming a samurai to their descendants.
And these rogues spread all over Japan are the greatest hidden danger in the Tokugawa world!
Moreover, because the rōshi were spread too widely, there were too many of them, and they were inextricably linked to the real samurai class, General Tokugawa did not dare to openly order the killing of the rōshi. He could only watch them cause trouble for him. ....There seems to be only one way to solve the rogue crisis, which is to find a golden road for them to become warriors again.
But in Japan, the chance of a ronin becoming a samurai is very small... After all, Japan only has a small land, and the total stone height (table height) is only about 20 million stone. A samurai is given an average of 50 stone. That's 400,000 warriors.
The Tokugawa Shogunate itself claimed to have 80,000 banners, which meant 80,000 samurai. Including the samurai employed by the "Three Hundred Domains" across Japan, the total number has exceeded 400,000!
Therefore, there is almost no room for expanding the recruitment of samurai in Japan. And if we want to find the path of the warrior for more rogues, we can only expand externally.
In the original history, Tokugawa Iemitsu had considered this matter. His expansion goal at that time was the Philippines under Spanish rule... However, because Japan's naval power was weak, it could not support such a large-scale expansion. The expedition was abandoned.
In this life, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally found a way out for the rogues in Korea, which was closer to Japan.
In fact, North Korea is much stronger than the Philippines! The Philippines is basically still a wilderness, and I don’t know how much capital it will take to get started.
North Korea, on the other hand, is a mature land that has been developed for many years. According to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's estimate, the stone height of North Korea is more than 20 million stones, which is similar to that of Japan. In fact, it may not be that much, but 15 million is still there. In most of Gyeongsang Province and the southern coastal areas of Jeolla Province occupied by Japan, after several rounds of land inspections, the Tokugawa shogunate had "inspected" an apparent height of 1.8 million koku.
These 1.8 million stones alone are enough for 30,000 to 35,000 rogues to realize their dream of becoming warriors!
But Tokugawa Iemitsu will not give away his status as a samurai in vain... You must have military exploits to become a samurai!
Therefore, in the past few years, Tokugawa Iemitsu has been using "becoming a samurai" as a bait to recruit samurai from all over Japan to join the Korean expeditionary force led by the Tokugawa shogunate. The number of rogues who have been tricked into joining the Korean Expeditionary Force alone has exceeded 60,000!
Coupled with the genuine samurai who serve as officers and backbones of the Korean Expeditionary Force (not all of them are directly affiliated with the shogunate, each vassal has to send personnel), the current total strength of the Korean Expeditionary Force has reached 55,000 (in recent years, it has also More than 10,000 people were killed or injured)! Forty thousand of them followed Iemitsu's Jindai Matsudaira Nobutsuna across the sea and entered Korea, and were stationed in Gyeongsang Province and Jeolla Province in southern Korea.
There are still 15,000 people, together with 5,000 shogunate troops, stationed near New Nagoya Castle on standby.
In addition, the "Six-Six Fleet" of the shogunate navy and several Spanish galleons are stationed in Karatsu Port near Nagoya Castle.
...
"Gongfang Hall, according to reliable information, Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty has arrived at Lushunkou in person... Accompanying him are tens of thousands of elite soldiers of the Ming Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty's Beiyang Navy!
It is reported that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty will personally lead his troops north along the west coast of the Liaodong Peninsula to attack Gaizhou and Haizhou! The Ming Dynasty general Sun Chuanting and the Mongolian noble concubine Wu Liangha will lead the other two armies to attack from the Guangning and Nenjiang grasslands respectively, attacking the Qing Dynasty from the west and north. If the Qing Dynasty could not quickly defeat one of the three armies, it would very likely be destroyed by the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, Empress Dowager Taisong of the Qing Dynasty has decided to personally conquer southern Liaoning to fight against the army of Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty.
In order to ensure victory, the Qing Dynasty hopes that our country, Japan, can send 20,000 troops to help according to the "Japan-Qing Covenant"! "
The person who was reporting to Tokugawa Iemitsu on the situation of the Ming and Qing wars in the Honmaru of Shinnago Castle was Tokugawa Iemitsu's half-brother Masayuki Hoshina - this 31-year-old tall samurai had just been expelled from the Dewa Yamagata Domain by Iemitsu. It was transferred to the Gyeongju Domain of Korea, with a territory of up to 500,000 koku. His status in the Korean Expeditionary Force was second only to Iemitsu's Jindai Matsudaira Nobutsuna.
This time he accompanied the Qing envoy Sony across the sea from North Korea to Shinnago Castle to move reinforcements!
"Twenty thousand people are enough?" Tokugawa Iemitsu looked at his big, stupid brother, and then at Sony, the elegant-looking Tatar, and frowned, "Now here is the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty! If defeated, the Qing Kingdom will perish, and once the Qing Kingdom perishes, it will be difficult for Japan to preserve its Gyeongju, Sangju, and Naju Domains in Korea!"
Sony could already understand Japanese, so he said to Tokugawa Iemitsu in Japanese: "Kongfangdian, Her Royal Highness the Queen Mother of our country is going to personally lead an army of 100,000 people to go south to meet the Ming Emperor... plus Japan's There are 20,000 troops, and the total strength is 120,000. If there are more, the military rations may not be able to keep up."
"Oh! That's it!" Tokugawa Iemitsu nodded, "But I have a better way!"
