Prime Minister Bizen

Chapter 359 The Southern Kyushu Decisive Battle ([-])
After hearing the summons, Saeki Yusada came over quickly, saluted the Hide family and his lord Otomo Yoshitomo, and waited for the orders of these superiors.

It was still Shibata Rei who asked him: "Master Shibata, I remember that Tsumure Castle was in your territory in the past, do you know if there are any weaknesses in this city?"

Hearing Shibata Reino's inquiry, Saeki Yusada thought for a moment and replied, "There is a back door behind the mountain, which directly connects to Ninomaru, and it may be possible to launch an attack on Tsumure Castle from this."

In fact, Saeki Yusada’s answer is very formatted. After all, basically all Japanese castles have their own back doors. Tsumure Castle is only connected to Ninomaru, and some castles are directly connected to Honomaru for the convenience of the lord’s escape. It can be said All back doors are weak points of the castle.

But such an obvious weakness, it is impossible for the city lords of the Warring States to not know about it, and once the enemy knows about it, they will definitely use the back door to directly attack Honmaru.

Therefore, in order to avoid such problems, the city owners often build the city walls where the back door is located to be particularly concealed, and often build them in the name of semi-independent city walls such as "Nishi Maru" and "East Maru".

Taking a mountain city like Tsumure Castle as an example, even if there is a back door, the city gate is set up extremely hidden, and there will be no special mountain road connecting the road.

What's more, the back door of Inabayama Castle only considers the way from top to bottom. The back door is set on a steep slope, which can only be used to climb down the rope, but it is difficult to climb up the mountain from the back door. It's all very difficult.

What?Didn't Hideyoshi capture Inabayama Castle through the back door?
There is no detailed description of Hideyoshi's surprise attack on Inabayama Castle in the Historical Records, because Hideyoshi was just a small mission at that time.

Novelists such as Sima Ryotaro wrote without exception when they described it, "Hideyoshi, like a real monkey, led his 200 people to climb up the back mountain of Inabayama Castle with great painstaking efforts. I saw a family living here with gourds hung on the door.”

It can be seen that when Hideyoshi attacked Inabayama Castle, he climbed up the mountain first, and then saw Horio Yoshiharu who lived in seclusion on Jinhua Mountain, and under his leadership, he entered the city from the back gate of Inabayama Castle.

I have said so much to prove that it is very difficult to find the back door without the guidance of several people. Even if you find it, how to get to a city built according to geography like a mountain city is a problem.

Hearing Saiki Yasada mention the back door of Tsumure Castle, all the people in the shogunate immediately whispered to each other.

After all, at any time, the weakness of the castle is a secret that the family will keep to the death. Now that Saeki Yuiding publicly revealed the weakness of Tsumure Castle in front of so many people, it is obviously a big determination.

"Then can you lead people to surprise Tsumure Castle?" Hearing Saeki Yusada's answer, Xiujia asked proactively.

After getting an affirmative answer from Saeki Yusada, Hideka asked again, "Do you think it is better to make a surprise attack in the daytime or in the dark? If you plan to launch a surprise attack in the daytime, I will order people to feint from the front to attract the people in the city." The attention of the Shimadzu family."

After hearing this, Zuobo Weiding replied with a smile, "We country people are not as good as His Highness's elite. It is difficult to identify the line of defense at night, and we need to climb the steep slope to go to the back mountain. It is too dark to march, so we should put it in the daytime."

Hearing Saeki's answer, Hideka nodded and ordered to his subordinates, "Although it's a feint attack, we must keep our momentum up. Tomorrow all the backup teams will launch an attack on Tsumure Castle in turn according to the order of the teams.

If you receive the sound of the trumpet, you will advance, and if you hear the golden sound of the passage, you will retreat. Don't give the Shimadzu soldiers in Tsumure Castle a moment's rest.

If the offensive goes well and accidentally breaks through the defense of the castle, as usual after breaking through the city, increase the force to storm the castle. "

In the early morning of the next day, when the sky was still dark, smoke was already rising from the Fukuyama Castle. When the sky gradually dawned, with the blowing of the conch horn, the Hoki members of Ukita Kan’s family were the first to join in the drumming. Heading towards Tomure Castle in rhythm.

Almost at the same time, the artillery battalion in the Xiujia Firearms Battalion retargeted the target on the Imaru City Wall of Izumaru Tsumurei Castle, and began to cover the temporary Imaru with only fences.

Among the 3000 members of Hoki, Yonagobei was compiled with Toyama Bei and Kurashiki Ubei as the backbone. Toyama Bei was trained with Mino Bei and Kamido Bei at the beginning. It is the backbone of Ukido. force.

Therefore, although they suffered certain losses in the previous battles, they still showed good strength in this siege battle.

Even in the face of the stone fire arrow projectiles fired from the top of Tsumurei Castle, he was still able to maintain his formation and use the long-range firepower in his hand to suppress Kamaru.

Since the fort was set facing the mountain of Tsumure Castle, and the gate of Izumaru was opened on the side, the artillery did not affect the breaking of the gate.

But it doesn't matter. In the past without cannons, how should the Japanese attack the city? Now they are attacking the city like this.

Hoki organized a team of more than a dozen Xianfanzhong, with 8 powerful foot-lights holding a bumper, and with the shouts of the warriors, they smashed the gate of the city of Demaru and smashed the city.

At the same time, there are a corresponding number of foot-holding wooden poles on both sides of them to block the arrows and projectiles shot from the walls of Sannomaru and Demaru.

At the same time, other ashigaru, led by the samurai, leaned out from behind the wooden poles and bamboo bundles, jumped into the soil borough dug in front of Imaru, carefully bypassed the wooden pickets inserted in the soil borough, Thinking of climbing up the earthen wall with bare hands.

Seeing the Xianbanzhong who were hitting the door, and facing the crossfire of Demaru City Wall and Sannomaru at the same time, even though they used wooden poles to resist, they still seemed a little at a loss. Casualties appeared in a short time, and Hideka immediately asked Fan Make an order to firearms.

"Order the Artillery Battalion to bombard the Sannomaru Castle, and the Iron Pao Battalion to transfer a battalion to suppress the Sannomaru Castle, so as to reduce the pressure on the first fans to break the city."

At the same time, Saeki Yasada also led his team of 200 people quietly down the mountain from Fukuyama Castle with Hideka's approval, and carefully walked around behind Tsumure Castle.

As the banner head of Otomo's family in Haibu County, Saeki Yuiding has an official knowledge of more than 2 shi. However, as the vicinity of Saeki Castle was captured by the Shimadzu family, he can only bring hundreds of his own people back to the Bungo inland .

Simply this time it is just a sneak attack mission, the most important thing is to fight in covert, if there are too many people, it will be easy to be exposed.

It's just that Hideka is still worried that there are only 150 people. Even after attacking Tsumure Castle, it may be difficult to expand the results of the battle against the Shimadzu army who sacrificed their lives.

Therefore, Xiujia specially asked him to leave one person as a guide, responsible for bringing reinforcements as follow-up reinforcements.

As the artillery battalion turned the muzzle, the wooden screens on the Sannomaru earthen wall of Tsumure Castle were shattered by the design of the cannon's iron bullets, and some earthen walls even partially collapsed due to multiple blows from the cannon.

After a breach appeared in the screen, the iron cannons under the city immediately fired at the breach.

After losing the protection of the screen, the people standing at the top of the city will only become targets. With the shooting of bows and arrows and iron cannons below the city, some people are shot down and fell down. What's more, because they lost their strength, they wailed and rolled down the hillside.

It's a pity that although the Xiu family has provided help as much as possible, the Hoki people are still shaken under the attack of dozens of stone fire arrows at the top of the city.

Seeing that the formation was shaken, and Demaru was not breached, despite all kinds of reluctance, Xiujia still ordered the Quanjia to retreat.

Following the Xiu family's order to reach the front line, except for the long-range units that were still shooting at the top of the city, even the soldiers who had begun to attach themselves to the city began to recede like a tide.

After the Anan family retreated, it was the Sanuki people led by Iemitsu Samukawa and Bai Hubei led by Todo Takatora who were in charge of the attack.

This time, due to the addition of standing equipment, Yuxiduo's offensive was even sharper.

Relying on the fortifications left by the Hoki people, Bai Hubei began to shoot at the defenders in Tsumurei City, while the Sanuki people of Xiangxi Jiaqing and others were responsible for the task of attacking.

Although Bai Hubei had better equipment and stronger combat power, the Xiu family would never use them in a siege battle.

After all, Baihubei is one of the regular equipment, the tip of Yuxi's swords, it exists as a pillar in the field, and it is trained to withstand the most vicious beatings and break the strongest phalanx.

Only in this way can the standing combat power of Bai Hubei be brought into full play, and in the siege battle, both the soldier's individual ability and the team's ability are infinitely weakened.

The defensive side with a good location made up for the weakness in the quality of the soldiers. Even if Bai Hubei attacked and fell into the city, his consumption was not ordinary.

In contrast, using ordinary Chinese people as the main force to pull out the city, although the combat power is relatively low, it is indeed good consumables and cannon fodder.

After all, their mission is to hit the door. This is a tactic that requires constant refueling from everyone.

Therefore, although the Xiu family is very optimistic about Xiangxi Jiaqing and has always regarded his army as a half-line, but in terms of benefits and risks, the Xiu family's choice is still very realistic.

Perhaps when Xiangxi Jiaqing was dispatched to take charge of the attack, Xiujia had a little struggle in his heart, but in Xiangxi Jiaqing's view, this was the performance of Xiujia letting himself attack.

After all, if we really talk about cannon fodder, the Hoki people in the first round are the direct descendants of Yuxi's family, and the patriarch is the cousin of the Xiu family.

And what he came into contact with was Demaru whose defensive strength had been weakened by a round of Hoki attack, and in Xiangxi Jiaqing's view, breaking through Demaru was nothing more than an easy grab.

"Hachiro, Demaru is clearly on the verge of collapse, and my Hokis can still fight, why do you let me back down?"

As soon as he returned to the shogunate, Ukita’s family expressed doubts like Xiu’s family. After all, in his opinion, although his army was shaken by the shelling, his combat power was still there. This is different from yesterday’s Hanfang Zhengcheng. So he was somewhat unconvinced.

Hearing that Ukita Kan's family walked into the shogunate in a hurry, and even called Qixiu's family by their nickname, the originally noisy environment in the shogunate fell into silence for a while.

What kind of person is Xiujia?
Kibi Seven Kingdoms, across the Seto Inland Sea, a million-stone Daimyo, is the third leader of the Toyotomi family iron iron. In this world, only Hideyoshi and Hidecho can be called collectively by the Hide family.

Even Mori Terumoto and Tokugawa Ieyasu used honorifics to address the Hide family by their official names, but now the Ukita Kan family actually called the Hide family by the general name in front of so many people, which made everyone in the shogunate somewhat embarrassed .

The key is due to Yu Xita's character. He was holding his breath at the moment, but he didn't realize that he said the wrong flower for a while, and stood there in a daze waiting for Xiu's response.

This is also the reason why the relationship between the Quan family and the Xiu family was not good in history. The Quan family has a straightforward personality, and he can say whatever he has, so that in the later period of religious confrontation, he would choose to follow Togawa Tatsuan and others directly. In Osaka Castle, the Ukita Hide family was attacked.

Of course, Xiujia knew very well in his heart that Ukita's loyalty was absolutely trustworthy, so he just sighed and comforted him a little.

"Brother Quan family has worked hard, why is there any credit for breaking this small pill, don't you forget that my arrangement today is to let each reserve team attack Chumuli City in turn.

Taking you down now is to ensure the morale and combat power of the Hoki people. My brother will rest here for a while. Once Saeki Yaiding succeeds in breaking through the city, I will transfer you up as soon as possible to serve as the main force for attacking the city. "

Under the appeasement of Xiu's family, Ukita's family turned off the fire a little bit, and sat down puffed up.

Although the weird atmosphere in the shogunate has calmed down a bit, the irrational actions of Ukita Kanka still attracted criticism from the non-Ukita daimyos in the shogunate.

"Hehehe!"

With the cheers from the castle, the Sanuki people led by Kosai Jiaqing finally broke through the crown wooden gate of Izumaru, and the ashigaru people swarmed in under the leadership of the samurai, and fought with the defenders in the castle.

The purpose of releasing the pill is to attract the focus of the siege, so that the defenders at the head of the main city can use long-range firepower to consume the soldiers of the siege side.

So even though the Sannomaru's screen had many holes due to the shooting of Hideo's cannons, many Shimadzu soldiers still risked being named by Toyotomi's iron cannons and bows and Risk stood at the head of the city, using the weapons in his hand to attack the Toyotomi army who had entered the city.

The Shimadzu family only arranged 200 ashigaru defenses in Demaru, led by two ashigaru generals. The early confrontation has already reduced the number of troops in the city by dozens of people.

Although the number of people has just exceeded a hundred, facing the Toyotomi army pouring into Izumaru, the ashigaru of the Shimadzu family still launched a desperate charge against them under the leadership of their own samurai.

As mentioned earlier, due to special historical reasons, the Shimadzu family has more samurai in the territory than other regions, and even the samurai may not be divided into full armor.

It is also because of this that the proportion of samurai in the Shimadzu family's team is very high, which has long demonstrated the tenacious character and fearless fighting spirit of the Shimadzu family's army.

After all, the Sanuki people dominated by Xiang Xijia are just ordinary powerful troops. After the fall of the Miyoshi family, the troops of the four countries can even be said to be the weakest in the four seas.

Later, although the training quality and equipment level were improved with the help of the Xiu family, it was still a little more armed than ordinary Chinese, and it was still somewhat weak against the Shimadzu family.

Especially when the side was about to be hit by Sannomaru firepower, the nearly 300 Sanuki people who invaded the city were actually driven out by more than a hundred Shimadzu soldiers, which attracted the attention of both sides.

(End of this chapter)