On the Thor, the fifty recruits who were ordered by Zhao Xin to experience artillery fire were now hiding behind a group of sandbags stacked half a person high. The impact of the first cannon fire just now made these people numb and dizzy.
Even though Yaichiro and others had followed orders to cover their ears, kneel on one knee, and open their mouths wide before the cannon started, he still felt like his heart was about to be shaken out. When the muzzle shock wave passed over his head, he felt as if his head had been hit hard with a stick.
The huge vibrations on the deck caused the hull to shake, making the new recruits feel as if the sky was falling and the earth was falling.
After the two shellings, several soldiers were frightened like headless flies, stumbling and crowding together, their faces pale. One soldier even stood up and was about to run into the cabin, but Hu Ji next to him grabbed the collar of the back of his neck and dragged him back behind the sandbag.
Seven or eight sailors wearing earmuffs were moving the cork and sandbags that had been shaken back to their original positions, and then taking out the shells and cartridges from the ammunition boxes to prepare for loading. After these sailors participated in the last bombardment of Ishinomaki Port, Zhao Xin prepared to train them as loaders.
However, becoming a loader is not just about strength. Whether the loading action is accurate will directly affect whether the loaded projectiles can be aligned with the positions of the cartridges loaded later, thus affecting the firing effect.
Take the humble projectile feeding stick as an example. Every time you send projectiles and cartridges into the gun chamber, you must refer to the scale on it and push it to the specified position. On the modern battlefield in another time and space, some bullet-feeding sticks are connected to the tails of special force gauges to determine whether the bullet-feeding force is in place.
At this point, these sailors are still far from becoming a qualified artillery loader.
Four people, Zhao Xin, Liu Sheng, Zhao Liang, and Ding Guofeng, who were divided into two groups, were waiting for Deng Fei to report the results of the bombardment from the broadcast on the deck so that they could adjust the muzzle angle. Deng Fei, who was in the cab of the Thor, was checking the impact point from the perspective of the drone, and then recalculating the shooting elements.
Zhao Xin was tired of negotiating, sneak attacks, and then negotiating again. He clearly remembered several Dahe dramas he had watched. Except for the Tang people, the Dutch and the Koreans, the attitude of the shogunate or the vassals towards the foreigners who came to trade was "the country pursues a national policy of isolation, so it cannot agree with the matter of trade."
Therefore, rather than going ashore and negotiating in vain, it would be better to directly use cannon to express our position.
As long as Matsumae Castle is beaten to pieces, the Matsumae clan will no longer care about Sagawa. With the speed of information dissemination in this era, it will take at least two months for the Matsumae clan and the shogunate to react.
During this period of time, Tuka's Sachuan tribe can take a breather, and Zhao Xin himself can also free up time to go south and continue to engage in Nagasaki Port.
The miserable Tokugawa shogunate never imagined that the originally impregnable sea territory under their rule would be riddled with holes everywhere.
"The first shot hit the open space in the city, and the second shot blew up an arrow tower on the city wall." Soon, Deng Fei's voice came from the radio on the deck.
Seeing Zhao Xin and others smiling, the surrounding sailors immediately burst into cheers. When the recruits hiding behind the sandbags heard this, they jumped up and shouted "Wan Sheng".
After more than twenty minutes, Deng Fei reported new data after some calculations.
"This time we are going to shoot at the castle guard in the city. Two quick shots." Deng Fei added after reporting the data.
The recruits on the deck saw the cannon's muzzle begin to rotate and knew that it was about to fire again, so they quickly hid behind the sandbags and covered their ears tightly.
Torayoshi and Heita checked the soldiers one by one, and slapped anyone who reached out his hand without opening his mouth, "Do you want to die?! Squat down and open your mouth wide!"
After the two artillery pieces were adjusted, Zhao Xin gestured to Pingtai and Huji, telling everyone to prepare.
"Load!" When the sailors loaded the shells and cartridges, Liu Sheng and Ding Guofeng, who were responsible for the inspection, kept watching their operations. They nodded in approval when they saw that the scale on the bullet feeding rod inserted into the gun barrel met the requirements.
"shooting!"
At this time, after being hit by the first two shells, the Ninomaru of Matsumae Castle was filled with howls of ghosts and wolves.
Outside the conference hall, a large crater blasted by the first shell was still smoking. The Ninomaru courtyard, which was originally covered with white sand and decorated with standing stones, was filled with blown bricks, rubble and corpses of flesh and blood.
"Help! Someone is coming..."
In the collapsed double oar, an injured warrior was pressed under the masonry and wooden beams, screaming for help.
Several senior family ministers who had been hit by shrapnel fell on the steps of the meeting hall and screamed in agony, while Michihiro Matsumae was trembling in a corner of the house, protected by several guards.
The few retainers who were lucky enough to be uninjured staggered and shouted to several of Michhiro's guards: "Take the master of the house to the Honmaru Castle and take shelter!" After that, they retreated to Honmaru's castle tower with Michihiro Matsumae in their arms.
Inside the main building, Dohiro's side room and the maids fled in all directions after being frightened by the huge explosion. Some frightened women ran out of the house, ran back into the house, and out again, running around completely bewildered.
At this time, someone heard an attendant shouting "get out of the way" outside the courtyard, so he ran out and saw Michihiro Matsumae and several retainers, surrounded by his men and fleeing to the castle. These women did not care about the jewelry and belongings in the house, and quickly followed him into the castle tower.
In the castle town, the townspeople walking on the street were stunned by the explosion sound coming from the castle and the subsequent black smoke column. The sudden change left people in the market at a loss as to what to do.
The two teams of "town fire fighters" began to gather at the intersection under the leadership of the group leader. However, they could not enter the feudal city, so they could only stand under the city and watch and wait. If the fire in the city burned through the moat, they would start demolishing the houses and building firebreaks.
On the dozens of large ships in the port, the busy shipowners and sailors were startled by the explosion in the city. The two smoke pillars that followed made these people stunned.
"Boom~Boom~" Two more low thunders came from the distant sea, but they were immediately lost in the sound of waves and the noise on the shore. However, as the sharp and piercing whistling sound passed through the sky, the sound became louder and louder.
A sailor pointed to a black spot on the sea in the distance and shouted to his companions: "That's where the sound is coming from!"
A town dweller who had been standing there for a long time looked up at the blue sky and suddenly shouted: "It's here again! Everyone, run for your lives!"
"Boom!" A shell fell in the main pill, and several dozen people who were looking under the eaves of the main pill were immediately blown away by the shock wave of the explosion.
Immediately afterwards, a second explosion was heard from the Honmaru again, and the fireball and smoke column that immediately rose up shocked the hearts of the townspeople who were familiar with the architecture in the castle. "Could it be the castle tower?!"
In the longhouse area on the east side of the castle town, residents who were confused about the situation ran towards the hill on the east side. From the temple there, it was a pity to see the situation of Honmaru in the distance.
Hundreds of people were running up the mountain. Another sharp roar made their footsteps stall, followed by two more huge explosions.
The first few townspeople who climbed up to the temple on the top of the mountain came to the top of the west side and saw that the originally thick and beautiful gate had been blown away, and a section of the originally white courtyard wall had collapsed into a pile of rubble; Sannomaru's Under the double oars, a large field of camellias was burning; as for the castle tower in Honmaru, it had disappeared from sight and was replaced by a ball of rising fire.
"Is this a cannon?" A man from a merchant shop muttered while lying on the wall of the temple.
"Nonsense! The Dutch cannons are not that powerful. This is a meteorite falling from the sky!"
"I don't see it." The store clerk looked at the fire rising in the main pill and argued without looking back: "I have never heard of meteorites falling in two pieces at the same time. Have any of you seen it?"
Just as a few people were about to discuss it, a town citizen behind them ran over and shouted, "Some people say that the whistling sound came from the sea."
After hearing what he said, hundreds of people turned their heads and looked towards the port. But at this time, fog began to form on the sea. The fog gradually thickened, and soon covered the sea in the distance, and then spread towards the shore, making even the ships in the port blurry.
After waiting for more than half an hour, the terrifying whistling sound never sounded again. So, led by a few brave warriors, a group of people went around to the northeast of Matsumae Castle and entered the city from the side gate to investigate.
In the hazy mist, the blood and ruins everywhere frightened the torch-carrying warriors to the point where they were speechless. When they rushed into Sannomaru, they finally saw the collapsed castle tower and several corpses pressed under the bricks. These samurai couldn't help but kneeling on the ground with their legs slumped and crying loudly.
At night, news came from the feudal city.
Michhiro Matsumae, the 30-year-old eighth-generation lord of the Matsumae Domain, was trapped in the collapsed castle tower with his two side chamberlains and three important ministers. There was no possibility of survival.
Five of the important ministers of Matsumae Domain who had been meeting with him in the Ninomaru Council Hall were killed and two were seriously injured. Except for the two dozen samurai who were responsible for guarding the back mountain shrine and escaped with their lives, all the samurai on duty in the city were lost.
Three days later, workers cleaning up the ruins found hundreds of metal fragments of various sizes from all over the city. Until this time, everyone in the Matsumae clan thought it was a meteorite falling.
By the time they learned the truth of the matter, it was already a year later.
(End of chapter)
