Prime Minister Bizen

Chapter 544 North Korea sends envoys to Osaka

Rikuzen Karita, Shibata, Igu, Watari, Natori, Miyagi, Kurokawa, Shida 8 counties and Uta-gun 45 were initially defined by Hideyoshi’s estimate of [-] shi.

After all, the previous intelligence has always shown that the Date Family Tomoyuki before the Odawara War was 120 million koku. After removing Aizu 20, Iwashiro 20, and Nakagawa’s 17 koku from Nobuo, Date, and Okitama, the deducted total is only 57 koku. Wanshi.

Even if there are data errors and miscellaneous deductions, the surface height of such a large territory will not be less than 100 million stones.

During the period of the Muromachi Shogunate, the total surface height of Mutsu’s land inspection was about 138 million koku, and the sum of Luzhong and Lubei was only 25 koku. If the 15 koku of Iwaki Kingdom, which is now led by Soma and Iwaki, should be there in Luqian 108 million stone.

Moreover, the land inspection data is already 100 years ago. Is it difficult for Mutsu to increase his knowledge by 100 shi after 10 years?
但是现在从伊达政宗给出的数据看来，其所领有的仅有23万石，加上会津20、岩代30、磐城15，整个陆前的表高难道只有88万石？加上陆中陆北堪堪超过100万石？历经百年发展之后陆奥国在官方的表高倒退了30万石？

In the words of Date Masamune, "No matter what His Highness rewards, my Date family will be grateful for Your Highness's kindness, but my Date family's income has been greatly reduced, and the salaries of the retainers are unsustainable. The Da family streamlined the retainer system."

To put it simply: You Hideyoshi chopped too much for me, and my family is almost out of control. If this continues, I will not even be able to pay the salaries of the samurai.

The so-called letting people go is literary talk, these people are professional warriors, what else would they do besides killing people?Really exile them, and most of them are locals, what else can they do besides go to the mountains to become bandits?

Familiar with Osaki and Kasai Ichikui, who have shadows of the Date family in history, it is clear that Date Masamune meant to vaccinate Hideyoshi.

That means to say again: My Date family can't bear it anymore, if there are "former Date retainers" rioting around in the future, you Hideyoshi can't blame me!

But Hideyoshi obviously didn't understand Date Masamune's point. In his view, after Hideyoshi issued the order of Yu Oshi to set up and inspect the district, Date Masamune handed over his land register so quickly. This is the performance of Shangdao what.

He is not worried that Date Masamune will hand over a fake registration book to pretend to be pitiful. After all, Ishida Misachi is now in Mutsu to inspect the land, and he will know how much knowledge and practice there are in the Mutsu countries. living.

As for the fact that the Rikuzen Eight Kingdoms only have 8 koku, Hideyoshi is not worried at all. The Rikuzen Shiogama Minato in the Date territory is the most important port in the entire Northeast, and it provides the Date family with an income of about 23 to 3 koku every year.

The ratio of Kangao to Shigao in Mutsu is about 1:10, as shown in the Tian Jibo handed in by the Date family in the third year of Keicho. 5186 shi, basically converted according to the ratio of 948:51.

In other words, if the current Zhixing of the Date family counts Shiogama, the Zhixing origami of the Date family will not be less than 50 shi.

But the current Hideyoshi is different from Keicho, and has not included the trade income in the general knowledge line. Just according to Shi Gao, the Date family now only has 23, which may be really less.

Therefore, Hideyoshi comforted Date Masamune, saying that the sequestration has just begun, and after the completion of the Yuao area sequestration, if it is confirmed that his knowledge and practice are indeed only 23 shi, compensation will be given from the territories of Osaki and Kasai.

葛西大崎家的领地占据有陆前的加美、玉造、远田、栗原、登米、小鹿、桃生、元良8郡，以及陆中的气仙、磐井、伊沢、江刺4郡知行合计34万石，其中陆前8郡20万石，陆中4郡14万石。

Historically, Kexian County belonged to Luqian Kingdom, because at the time of the division of the country in the early days of Mingzhi, it belonged to the knowledge and practice of the Sendai Fan and belonged to Date Masamune, so it was directly included in Luqian Kingdom when the country was divided, but it can be seen from the map It can be seen that half of Qixian and Yuanliang actually protrude from the front of the land to the middle of the land geographically.

In short, Hideyoshi’s operation has the same meaning: I understand what you mean by Date Masamune, but Yu’ao can’t be messed up, please help me support everything first, wait for me to see after the inspection is over, and I’ll add something to you Pen.

Everyone is an old fox who has been up and down in the political arena for many years, and they still don't understand the meaning of the other party. Since this matter has been put on the table in front of so many people, naturally they are not worried about the other party's repudiation. Now they are just putting aside the dispute.

Hideka was surprised that Hideyoshi didn't show the anger he imagined for Date Masamune's demand for a price, and he didn't even have the intention to reprimand Date Masamune, but Hideyoshi soon knew the reason.

Hideyoshi summoned so many Northeast daimyos from thousands of miles away. Of course, the purpose is not to simply go through a process and end it. He also needs to declare his might to Yuao and Kanto daimyos, so that this group of northernmost hillbillies can see what it means to surrender to the world. .

For this matter, he deliberately escorted the Ryukyu envoy who had arrived in Kyoto before, and came to Osaka to celebrate Hideyoshi after the arrival of Yu Oku daimyo.

He was very satisfied with Hideyoshi, the new recruit from Ryukyu, and immediately rewarded them with a lot of gold, silver and cloth.

However, the highlight didn't end there. Shortly after the Ryukyu envoy retreated, Hideyoshi signaled to a samurai sitting at the end that it was almost time.

The samurai stood up and signaled to Hideyoshi, then turned and left. After a short while, he led several strangers into the hall. The first person was wearing a scarlet robe with embroidered clouds and geese patches on it, and a plain flower belt around his waist. The ribbon at the waist is embroidered with clouds and cranes.

Following him were two officials wearing blue robes, braids, plain silver belts, and three-color ribbons.

As soon as the three of them entered the hall, Xiu's eyelids couldn't stop twitching.Because later generations Mingfan's Hanfu and crazy Xiujia knew very well that the person in front of him was wearing the Ming government.

Judging from his patch and belt, the first person should be a fourth-rank official with an entry into the scarlet robe, and the latter two should be sixth-rank officials.

It wasn't until this time that the Xiu family realized that the person who led them into the palace was right? Huang Yunji, the king's envoy, and Jin Chengyi, the deputy envoy, are here."

The names of Huang Yunji and Jin Chengyi cannot be avoided in the history of the Ming Dynasty, Korea, and Japan. It was the arrival of the two of them that opened the prelude to Hideyoshi's war against Korea.

As early as 1587, after the Kyushu War, Hideyoshi, who was so arrogant and arrogant, had the idea of ​​fighting abroad.

In his plan, the unification of Japan is not the end. He also wants to defeat the Ming Dynasty and conquer India, and even use force to teach the group of pagans in Nanban a lesson.

And not long after, under Hideya's operation, the Ryukyu people surrendered to Hideyoshi, which made Hideyoshi more firm in his thinking, so he began to prepare for the invasion war against the "Tang" country.

Coincidentally, at this time, he heard from a Nanban missionary, Louis Floys, that "North Korea pays [-] bags of rice to the Lord of Tsushima every year as a tribute".

In fact, this is the reason for the exaggerated propaganda of the missionaries of this Ming Dynasty.

Since the Onin Rebellion, the Japanese imperial court has become less and less binding on samurai, which has led to the emergence of the identity of "Japanese pirates" in Kyushu and Western states in an organized manner. The targets of attacks are not only the Ming Dynasty but also the Korea. ,

And if you want to plunder North Korea, Tsushima Island is an important transit port for Japanese pirates.

Based on the principle that more things are worse than less things, the King of Joseon gave Zong Yizhi 100 shi of grain every year, and promised him exclusive access to trade with North Korea, in exchange for the Zong family’s refusal of Japanese pirate ships to stop at Tsushima Island. Before the Japanese pirates invaded, a letter was sent to the border generals of Joseon to prepare North Korea.

However, it was this vanity statement made by the monk Qiezhidan that made Hideyoshi mistakenly think that the Joseon Kingdom was afraid of even the clan of Tsushima Island, let alone my immediate boss of the clan.

Therefore, he ordered Zongyi Zhizhi and his son to go to North Korea to negotiate soon after. The request was the same as that of the Ryukyu king.

On the one hand, the Zong family did not dare to disobey Hideyoshi's orders, but on the other hand, they knew that North Korea could not easily surrender to Japan.

The most important thing is that Tsushima is barren. The arable land on the island does not produce more than 5000 shi. However, there are actually more than 120 natural villages on the island, each with 50-200 people.

Taking the median point of view, there are actually more than [-] people living on the small island of Tsushima.

It is impossible for so many people to rely on the output of the ground to feed them. The fishing industry and trade with North Korea are the economic lifelines of Tsushima Island.If Hideyoshi's attitude is to insist on the king of North Korea, then the economic lifeline of Tsushima Island will definitely be gone.

So they made a clever move to change Hideyoshi's meaning that he wanted the King of Korea to submit to Japan, and now a new king came out of Japan, who wanted to establish diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Korea, and hoped that North Korea would send envoys to Japan.

Once the North Korean envoy came to Japan, he told Hideyoshi that it was the envoy of the North Korean surrender, trying to get away with it.

Judging from the above plan, the clan at this time obviously didn't know that Hideyoshi had the idea of ​​aggressing North Korea or even the Ming Dynasty, otherwise he would never have come up with such an opportunistic idea.

However, because the king of Korea, Li Yan (yán), believed that Hideyoshi became the king of Japan after killing his monarch, he was unwilling to establish diplomatic relations with Japan.

So Yoshitomo's diplomacy with North Korea has not progressed, which makes Hideyoshi angry. He thinks that your family is the "sovereign country" of North Korea. How can the elder brother command the younger brother without any movement for more than a year?

Therefore, at the beginning of the 17th year of Tensho (1589), taking advantage of the Hojo clan's surrender to Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi had no worries at all, and he wrote a fierce letter to Soyoshi Tomo.

In the letter, he expressed his strong dissatisfaction with Soyoshitomo's diplomatic achievements, and demanded that the king of Joseon must cross the sea to Japan before the summer of that year, otherwise he would have Konishi Yukyo, Kato Kiyomasa and others send troops across the sea to attack North Korea.

Seeing that his lies were going to be exposed and his economic lifeline was about to disappear, Zongyi was in a hurry. He wrote to Hideyoshi personally, saying that he would cross the sea to Korea himself, and persuade the king of Korea to come to Japan and so on.

Everyone knows what happened later. Hideyoshi's handling of Chiechidan led to civil unrest in Kyushu, and the Hojo clan's resistance to Hideyoshi's orders later reduced Hideyoshi's attention to North Korea.

But Hideyoshi has lowered his attention to North Korea, which doesn't mean you, Zongyizhi, can stop doing things.

He found Jing Zhexuansu, a monk from Hakata Seifuku Temple who understood Goryeo and Korean court etiquette, and then took his old family Yanagawa Choshin and businessmen headed by the Hakata merchant Shimai clan to negotiate in North Korea.

Regarding Zong Yizhi's request to send an envoy again, North Korea discussed and decided to show sincerity.

Immediately, the Japanese pirates, with the cooperation of North Korean traitors such as "Baibeitong" for several years, invaded Jeolla-do, Gyeongsang-do, Hamgyong-do, and Gangwon-do several times, killing frontier generals and plundering people as an excuse. Ask Japan to return the North Korean civilians who were taken away first, and hand over the bandit leader to North Korea for disposal.

There is indeed such a condition in history, but in history these Japanese pirates only looted around Jeolla Province, not as wide as they are now, covering the entire eastern and southern parts of Korea.

There are even many names of bandit leaders in it, Zong Yizhi, who has never even heard of them.

In fact, this is not to blame Zong Yizhi. After all, only a small group of Japanese ronin were looted in this part of history. They looted North Korea simply for survival.

But in this life, there is a man named Hideka, who is engaged in colonization in Ezo, the northernmost part of Japan. Since it is colonization, it needs population.

The population on Honshu Island is not even willing to go to the Northeast, let alone Ezo, and he needs to keep his Ezo development a secret from the Japanese countries, which leads him to set his sights on the nearest North Korea and Northeast Ligustrum.

Of course, the Xiu family spent money to settle down, so that the Korean people voluntarily migrated to Eizo to distribute the land for seeds, but some things were difficult to control when it came to the actual implementation.

In the beginning, it was true that Xiujia planned to do business with the North Korean government and directly buy refugees from them, but as time passed, Xiujia’s policy changed. After all, being a middleman is just to make a difference, and it is really worthless to collect money from both ends. Huge profits.

The Xiu family's funds invisibly nourished a large number of Japanese ronin who could not survive before. They dared to go to the coast of North Korea to plunder on a small boat, and gradually formed an industrial chain.

Of course, Xiujia didn't know that because of his appearance, the scale of looting against North Korea had increased several times in the past few years, making North Korea miserable. From Hamgyong Road in the north, to Jeolla Road in the south, and along the coast of Gyeongsang Road The beacon fire, the villages along the coast are not even afraid to live in people, for fear of falling asleep at night and being kidnapped.

In order to facilitate plundering, some pirates even occupied Takeshima and Yinqi Island, and directly used these two islands as their forward bases to plunder North Korea.

Zongyizhi, who is located on Tsushima Island, vaguely heard from his subordinates that a daimyo in the east is presiding over the looting of North Korea, and he is said to be a big boss.

In Zongyizhi's cognition, the only ones in the east who still have such a large navy are the Maori family. He can't afford to mess with this Maori family, so he keeps turning a blind eye.

But it can't do it right now, Hideyoshi gave the order to die.

For this reason, he had to personally go to Hiroshima City, and asked Mori Terumoto to restrain his subordinates. At the same time, he was going to pick a few death-row criminals to hand over to the King of Korea.

Mori Terumoto didn't figure out what was going on at all, thinking that some samurai in the family went to sea to do side jobs and were caught.

Ordinarily, he naturally wouldn't like Zongyizhi. After all, should the warriors under his command be raised by Zongyizhi?
But now he knows that the system Hideyoshi wants North Korea to use as a springboard to fight against Ming, and he needs to give North Korea a good impression, so he agrees.

Soon Zongyizhi returned to North Korea, and brought dozens of Korean expatriates living in Japan with him, falsely claiming to be North Korean fugitives, and handing over the condemned prisoners to the King of North Korea, and promised to restrain the bandits along the coast.

The king of North Korea was very happy, feeling that he had more face, first ordered the execution of these bandits and "Korean escapees", and gave Zong Yizhi a good horse in the inner stable.

At the same time that Hideyoshi officially entered Hojo in November, the king of Joseon formally established Hwang Yoon-gil, the chief envoy, Kim Seong-il, the deputy envoy, and Xu Yi, the secretary, as envoys to Japan.

For Joseon King Li Zan, this move nominally celebrated Toyotomi Hideyoshi's pacification of the whole of Japan, but was actually responsible for detecting whether Hideyoshi had any intention of invading North Korea.

But for Zongyi Zhizhi, the stone hanging in his heart finally fell. He only needs to pretend that he came to surrender to Japan after returning to Japan, which is tantamount to fulfilling his mission.

Several people set off from Wangjing on March 18th in the 1590th year of Tianzheng (3). Due to the inconvenience of the journey, they arrived in Kyoto from Wangjing for 6 months, waiting for Hideyoshi's audience.

At that time, Hideyoshi had completed his conquest of Hojo, completed his official position in Utsunomiya and returned to Kyoto.

But Hideyoshi didn't meet them right away, because Hideyoshi knew that Yuao and Kanto daimyo were about to come from the north, and he wanted to demonstrate his authority in front of these country bumpkins.

(End of this chapter)