Osaka.
The roar of cannons floated all the way from Osaka Castle, and the smoke of gunpowder was blown by the southwest wind to Osaka Castle Town.
King Ning of the Great Ming Dynasty, Zhu Cijiong, husband of the Japanese Emperor, was fully clothed and stood on the large roof of the temple that was occupied as the emperor's palace. He held up a telescope and watched the movement on the other side of Osaka Castle motionlessly.
Zhu Cijiong arrived ten days later than Emperor Xingzi. Before that, he had been sitting in the main city of Suzhou on Awaji Island, commanding the dispatch and logistics of the 100,000-strong army.
The scale of this war that detoured around the Seto Inland Sea to attack Kinai was really large. The troops involved included not only Emperor Komu's Northern Army and the coalition forces of Kyushu, China, and Shikoku daimyo, but also 10,000 King Ning from the Korean Peninsula. The vassal army (mainly cavalry and naval forces).
Moreover, the so-called number of one hundred thousand is only the number of land troops, and does not include the sailors on the ships of the Ming Dynasty and the East India Company that King Ning spent huge sums of money to hire. If they are included, the army put together by Zhu Cijiong and Emperor Xingzi is probably 120,000 to 30,000 people.
Of course it feels good to use a large army, but the cost really makes Zhu Cijiong feel bad.
If he has money, forget it, just spend it. How can there be no war without spending money? But he is a poor king! His wife is also a poor emperor. The Yonezawa Domain that is the poorest in Japan, the Choshu Domain that is the second poorest in Japan, and the Tosa Domain that is the third poorest in Japan are all judged by a group of frogs in the well. They have never seen how poor they are!
The poorest people in Japan are undoubtedly Zhu Cijiong and Xingzi. They no longer have a mountain of debt, but they have so much debt that they have submerged the high mountain.
In order to launch this Jinei strategy, Zhu Cijiong and Xingzi not only spent all the 10 million they borrowed from the Salt Bank last year, but also signed another 10 million tael IOU... At that time, both Zhu Cijiong and Xingzi felt that it would not take 10 million taels to make a Jinei.
But now, after landing at Osaka Beach, Zhu Cijiong already knows that if he wants to occupy the five Kinai countries, another 30 million taels of military expenditure may not be enough!
The reason why so much money is spent is because the current civil war in Japan has begun to enter the most troublesome "village war state"!
The word "village war" sounds very classy. It's just a group of village chiefs fighting each other. What does it mean? But if you think about it carefully, if every village has to be fought again, what else can this be but a war quagmire?
And the village war doesn’t mean it’s easy to fight!
Because the terrain of Japan is too fragmented, by Chinese standards, there are no great plains in Japan at all. Even the Kanto Plain, the largest in Japan, is actually a large basin surrounded by Edo Bay. It's just a circle of mountains.
The entrance to Edo Bay has now been mostly blocked by the Kannon Cape Fort and Futtsu Cape Fort that were "aided" by the Spanish. Ships entering Edo Bay can only avoid being imported from Spain by the shogunate by passing through the center of the channel. of 24-pounder and 36-pounder cannons.
In Edo Bay, there are not only dozens of gunboats from the Shogunate Navy, but also many coastal defense forts, which are so tightly guarded!
Even if the Ming Navy could break through the obstruction of these forts and fleets, and send Zhu Cijiong's army ashore, as well as the main force of the shogunate's Fanfang army, and Edo, known as the most powerful city in Japan... so Zhu Cijiong also Don't dare to risk attacking the Tokugawa shogunate's lair.
If he did not attack Edo Bay directly, then Zhu Cijiong would have no choice but to first capture Kinai, a treasure land that was economically powerful enough to compete with Guan Hachishu.
But the problem is that the terrain in Kinei is more fragmented than in Guanbazhou!
After all, there is a continuous plain in Guanbazhou.
Kinai is composed of three basins: the compact Osaka Plain (1,900 square kilometers), the Kyoto Basin, the Nara Basin, and the Biwa Lake Basin. Although the first plain and the third basin in the Kinei are very prosperous, with well-developed agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce, the area of the flat land is too small and is surrounded by hills with very complex terrain.
These hills are not inaccessible places, and are dotted with countless large and small valleys. Most of these valleys have been developed and turned into the territory of a certain feudal lord.
If the one-country-one-city order had not been abolished, and if the feudal lords and ministers of the Kinai region were still busy traveling to and from Edo, these valleys would have been like Zhu Cijiong's in Echigo, Etchu, Kaga, Noto, Echizen, Wakasa, and Iwami. , Izumo and other places encountered the same situation. There was basically no defense. It was easy to snatch it and seal it to the northern samurai or hide it as a heavenly territory.
But the longer the One Country, One City order is abolished, these fragmented and complex areas will become harder to control. There will be many "village chief" level tycoons with only tens of millions of stone territories. These tyrants will take hundreds of people, occupy a valley, and build a shabby castle on the mountain... It just looks like this. He is a mountain king, but it is not that easy to destroy one.
Moreover, the Tokugawa family also left several large vassals in the Kinai Five Kingdoms and its surrounding areas that were difficult to organize, including Osaka 1.15 million koku, one of the three imperial families! There were also Fushimi 500,000 koku who moved from Echizen and the Hikone clan who were loyal to the Tokugawa family.
A 600,000-koku Owari domain was also established in Owari Province, which is next to the Kinai Five Kingdoms. It is also one of the three royal families!
In addition, the Kameyama Domain was established in Tanba Kingdom, which is full of valleys near Kyoto, and was led by the son of the shogunate Tadakatsu Sakai.
As long as the five domains of Osaka, Fushimi, Hikone, Owari, and Kameyama are not wiped out, it will be difficult for the village chiefs in the Kinai hilly area to completely conquer... There will always be people who side with the Tokugawa family. .
And these five vassals are difficult to eradicate!
Because the lords of these five lords are like stones in the latrine, smelly and hard, no matter how good they are in fighting and running the army, they will definitely stay in the kinei to the end and fight until they commit seppuku.
For example, the Osaka Castle in front of us has a stance of fighting to the end.
Zhu Cijiong has already inspected the front lines several times and found that Osaka City is extremely well-defended, the city is solid, and it has undergone certain fortress-like reconstructions. The city is surrounded by water on three sides, and only the southern part of the city has open and flat terrain. But they had already built a prismatic exit from the fortress, and it was impossible to defeat them without killing and injuring tens of thousands of people. To capture the entire Osaka Castle, tens of thousands of people might have to be sent away.
Therefore, Zhu Cijiong had no choice but to conduct a long encirclement according to the original plan.
Businessmen in Osaka Castle reported that Osaka Castle has stored enough food for three years...
This Osaka is so stubborn, I think Kishu Wakayama Castle guarded by Tokugawa Yorinobu's son Tokugawa Mitsusada is just as stubborn!
The three cities of Fushimi, Nijo, and Takato that Matsudaira Mitsuyoshi and his two brothers guarded were changeable and tough.
Not to mention the two cities of Hikone Domain, Nagahama and Hikone.
The Kameyama Castle of Mr. Sakai is in a dangerous terrain, easy to defend but difficult to attack... This is a mountain city! It’s useless to do “math problems”, and the cannon is hard to reach, so it looks like the only option is to besiege!
It seems that this Kinei cannot be defeated without three to five years!
And the cost of deploying hundreds of thousands of troops in Kinei for three to five years must be more than 30 million!
Moreover, after defeating the Kinai Five Kingdoms, village chiefs in other parts of Japan must have improved the feudalism construction in their hometowns.
According to this strategy...it will take another thirty to fifty years until the whole of Japan is leveled? How many hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent?
This emperor deserves to be blamed, and his descendants will have to repay the debt in the future!
Thinking of this, Zhu Cijiong felt even more depressed.
At this moment, Emperor Koiko's voice suddenly came from the courtyard: "Husband, the great monk of Mount Hiei just sent someone to deliver the news. My father and brother have left Kyoto and gone to Edo." ...Now we can go to Luo and enter the capital! As long as we can capture Nijo Castle, Kyoto will be in our hands!"
From now on, there will be two dynasties, East and West!
Zhu Cijiong thought to himself: It seems that Japan’s war is going to be quite easy to fight!
However, he still nodded solemnly: "Okay! Once the long trench besieging Osaka Castle is completed, we will set off to Luo together!"
