Prime Minister Bizen

Chapter 621 Imjin Japanese Invasion ([-]) Kato Kiyomasa North Expedition to Hamgyongdo

Japan has a wide variety of iron cannon calibers, and the thickest one is already the top of the big name 3/5 ten catty tiger crouching cannon.

Facing the iron cannon fire of the Japanese army, the Guanbei Army was so suppressed that it could not lift its head. Before leaving, a sergeant shot an arrow through the gap filled by the iron cannon, and it was better than nothing to cause damage.

Under the command of Kato Kiyomasa, the Japanese army quickly overwhelmed the gate of Crane Town, knocked down the wooden door with a few bangs, and the Japanese army rushed into the city to fight hand-to-hand with the North Korean army.

This is a bit of using one's own shortcomings to attack the enemy's strengths.

The soldiers of the 6th formation in Guanbei are all dealing with Jurchen soldiers all the year round. Although they can't be said to be physically strong, they are still physically strong.

And what kind of group is the Japanese army?The general height is no more than 1.6. On weekdays, Ashgaru eats brown rice twice a day, just pickled radish, and white rice during wartime. All he eats is carbohydrates. How can he build muscle without protein supplements?
This scene seems familiar again, and it is the same with Han Kejian in history. The Japanese army who could be the master of Haitingcang, cut off the water source and forced Kato Kiyomasa to break out and besiege him. Most of them were killed.

Kato Kiyomasa couldn't control these things. Seeing the attack into the town, he ordered the drums to be played to cheer, and the whole army stormed Crane City.

Crane City is such a small place, and with so many people squeezed in, the Japanese superior iron artillery had no chance to use it, and it was unexpectedly beaten by the Guanbei Army.

It was Iida Kakubei who sensed that something was wrong, stopped his subordinates who were charging so much, and ran to Kato Kiyomasa to report the battle situation in person.

Kato Kiyomasa still has some trust in this veteran who followed him, but he suffered too much damage from the horse samurai charge before, and he was a little resentful towards him.

Right now he was clearly rushing into the city, but Iida Kakuhei said that he couldn't fight like this inside, and he was really indecisive to let himself withdraw his troops.

Just as he had a moment to spare, the servant army handed over to the west of Crane City ran out of the city in panic, shouting words such as "evil ghost" and "can't fight anymore".

Obviously just now, they vowed to kill the servant army who made the North Korean army look good in the city, but at this moment they retreated all of a sudden.

At the same time, facing Kato Kiyomasa's defense line on the south side, the Japanese army's front line seemed to be constantly being pushed out.

Naoshima Naoshima blocked the gap in the north of the city, but he quickly sent someone to inform Kato Kiyomasa that he had stopped the charge, and bluntly said that the Korean army's combat effectiveness is quite strong, and it is by no means comparable to the group of fish belly they encountered before.

It was not until this matter that Kato Kiyomasa took seriously Iida Kakubei's words and stopped the troops from attacking the city.The front-line troops retreated as if they were about to be amnesty. According to the detailed count, the Japanese army of Kato Kiyomasa lost more than 600 people, the servants died in battle, and more than a thousand people fled. Naoshima Naoshige also died in battle. More than 300 people.

Kato Kiyoshi is better than Han Kejian in that he does not have Han Kejian's self-willedness.

Seeing this scene, Kato Kiyomasa no longer wanted to attack by force, and ordered all the troops to surround Crane City, cut off their water sources, trap them in the city, and use bows and iron cannons to repel the opponents when they broke out.

Naoshima Naoshige offered another plan. He believed that the North Korean army would definitely break through from the direction of the weak servant army, and let the servant army know how to build fences with timber in advance.

At the same time, 300 iron gunners, 800 samurai, and ashigaru were drawn from the Ryuzoji Army and Kato Army to support the servant army, and they also took advantage of the night to mobilize troops.

In the Battle of Crane City, the Korean army was defeated first and then won, which boosted the morale of the soldiers in the city. Although according to statistics, hundreds of soldiers were killed in the battle, and hundreds of people were injured, most of which were caused by long-range firepower before. Loss.

Seeing that he was besieged, Han Kejian convened the generals to discuss the matter. All the generals agreed that the Japanese army's advanced firearms were invincible, but at night, the use of firearms would inevitably be inconvenient. They could use this opportunity to break through the group of Korean mobs on the west side.

This plan was unanimously approved by all.

If the North Korean army had the upper hand as in history, Han Kejian might not be able to listen to the suggestions of the people below, but because of his weakness right now, he nodded and agreed to the plan.

In order to ensure the suddenness of the raid, the North Korean army deliberately waited until the middle of the night before quietly waking up the soldiers, wearing helmets and armor, holding branches in their mouths and wrapping the horseshoes.

But when the wounded soldiers in the town saw that the Guanbei Army was leaving, they thought they would abandon them, so they made noises and quarreled, which attracted the people in the town to join in the quarrel, and the noise attracted the attention of the Japanese army outside the city.

When Han Kejian saw that the incident was revealed, he didn't bother to blame the people in the city, so he immediately ordered the cavalry to suppress the people in the town, and as a mopping-up for the palace army, the whole army forcibly broke through.

At this time, Kiyomasa Kato and Naoshima Naoshima supported the Iron Cannons on the west side, and they stood behind the fence, ruthlessly pulling the trigger on the North Korean army charging towards them.

As mentioned earlier, the armor penetration rate of the Guanbei Army is about 1/3, and if the homemade leather jackets sewn with iron sheets are included, it is about 8%.

But this kind of thing has no effect at all against the shooting of the Kyushu Iron Cannon, otherwise it would not have caused such a large amount of damage to the North Korean army during the daytime confrontation.

It's night now, aiming is meaningless at all, as long as the iron cannons fire a shot at a dark place, they can hear the screams from the opposite side.

If you want to blame, you can only blame the North Korean infantry for being too tightly formed. This is precisely the advantage of a well-trained infantry, but it has become a disadvantage at this time.

Coupled with the arrows shot by the servants above their heads, soldiers in the front row kept falling down, and the officers and soldiers of the Guanbei Army could not see the road clearly in the dark. If someone fell in front, they might trip up the soldiers behind, and the people behind Can't see stepping on it directly.

However, breaking out of the siege was a matter of life and death at this time, and naturally no one was in the mood to care whether the colleagues who fell to the ground were dead or not, so they all rushed to the camp with the belief of survival.

But when they were in front of the camp, they were stunned. During the day, it seemed that there was no fence in the servant barracks. At this moment, there were not only fences, but also bamboo spikes protruding obliquely. Many soldiers rushed to death on the spikes without seeing clearly. .

At the same time, the iron cannons in the fence were still firing non-stop. The Longzouji Army and Kato Army on the north and south sides saw the battle on the west side, and they all came to support with torches.

Some soldiers didn't want to insert the spikes themselves, but the soldiers behind pushed themselves to insert them.

He was spitting blood and wanted to say something, but his head was directly crushed by the bullets fired from the big iron cannon inside the fence.

After the big iron cannon projectile smashed the heads of the soldiers in front, the kinetic energy remained undiminished, and the lives of the two people behind were harvested.

The battle of Nagashino, where Takeda stormed the Oda and Tokugawa camps, is reproduced here, but the two sides of the battle have changed their targets.

However, the number of iron cannons delivered to the Western Army was still too small. With the determination to die, the Guanbei Army finally came to the fence after killing thousands of people, and confronted the defenders inside the fence.

After all, it was a temporary fence, and some places were pushed to the ground by the Guanbei army. The Korean army finally began to fight hand-to-hand with the Japanese army and the servant army.

With the terrifying experience of fighting in the daytime, the ragtag servant army was obviously timid. Even though the Japanese army fought desperately, they still let the Guanbei army break through.

Fortunately, the two armies of Kato and Ryuzoji have almost encircled them. However, apart from sending people to support the frontal breakout direction on the west side, the north and south sides seem to dare not rush up to fight hand-to-hand. They are all facing the iron guns in the dark from a distance. Test firing.

This is actually very dangerous. If the army formation continues to press forward with the iron cannon fire, and finally there is no enemy in the middle, it is very likely to cause accidental injury to the friendly forces of both sides in the dark.

But at the moment, both sides can't care about this situation anymore, and the main thing is to eat the North Korean elite in front of them.

Perhaps because they saw the general and the main force being surrounded, Li Xinmiao and Hong Yongzhong, the two thousand households who commanded the cavalry, commanded the cavalry to rush to the north side of the Longzhaosi family's army under the fire of iron cannons. Kill a hole from the north side.

The two sides fought in the west of Crane City when the sky was getting darker and the battle ceased. The fence on the west side, which was the core area of ​​the battle, had already flowed into rivers of blood.

The Ryuzoji family who was attacked by the army also suffered a lot. Naoshima Naoshige was almost killed in the army. If the North Korean army had no desire to fight, they would have taken your general to make meritorious service.

This battle was undoubtedly won by the Japanese army, but it was also a narrow victory in a bloody battle, but at least the strategic goal was achieved.

Without Naoshima Naoshige's suggestion, perhaps the Guanbei Army would directly overwhelm the defense line of the servant army on the west side, and eventually save most of their strength and escape.

Now, after the statistics of post-war corpses, more than 3500 heads of the Guanbei Army have been captured. Counting the dead and wounded soldiers in the city, the total number of heads is 4415.

But for this, the Kato side paid the price of 720 deaths and 638 injuries, most of which were paid when they intercepted the Guanbei Army in the west camp.

The Ryuzoji family lost a lot. Famous warriors such as Ishizuka Kintaro, Isano Kanbei, Fujisawa Toshibei, Adachi Hikobei and other famous warriors died in battle. After the war, a total of 1738 people were killed and 1660 were injured. Also lost combat power.

As for our Korean servant army, the losses were relatively light. More than 1600 people were killed or fled, and more than 1500 people were injured.

Of course, with such a battle loss ratio, for this group of mobs, they basically lost their combat effectiveness.

In the battle of Crane City, North Korea's most elite Guanbei Army was killed in the first battle, but it still caused great casualties to the Japanese army.

Counting the battle losses during the day, the Japanese army had more than 3 troops when it came out of Hamhung, and had already suffered more than 7000 casualties, most of which were losses from the Japanese army.

Since the Second Corps landed in Busan, it has been marching all the way without encountering any resistance, but it broke its wings on Hamgyong Road and lost 1/3 of its casualties all at once.

Such a battle loss ratio made both Naoshima Naomo and Kato Kiyomasa gasp. It was hard for them to imagine what kind of troops they encountered along the way. If everyone in the North Korean army was the same as the Guanbei Army, they would have What kind of ending.

And this is also the reason why Hideka clearly asked Nobushige Sanada to restrain his subordinates in the kit, so as not to let them go too far north, so as not to run into the Guanbei Army. Hideka was unwilling to bear such serious casualties.

Such a casualty ratio cannot be concealed. So many samurai corpses need to be processed and brought back to Japan for burial.

Kato Kiyomasa and Nabeshima Naomo could only write a letter of military loyalty and send it to Nagoya in a nervous mood, telling Hideyoshi how powerful they are.

Of course, in order to cover up this ugly battle loss ratio, the two of them slightly modified this military loyalty certificate.

In the letter, they set the number of North Korean soldiers at 2 elite, and they were attacked at night without any preparation. Even so, they still killed more than [-] North Korean soldiers. Prepare.

The Ryuzoji Army led by Naoshima Naoshige suffered the most in this battle, and wanted to repair it after the war, but Kato Kiyomasa believed that the elite of the Northern Army had already been wiped out at Tsuru Castle, and he should take this opportunity to expand the results and win Hamgyongdo.

The two sides couldn't stop arguing, and finally decided that Naoshima Naoshima's main force would be repaired in Hamxing, but 2000 sergeants would be sent to support Kato Kiyomasa to continue northward, and all the servants were taken away by Kato Kiyomasa.

The facts are indeed as Kato Kiyomasa expected, the Guanbei Army led by Han Kejian is the courage of the soldiers of the Hamgyong Taoist priests. When they saw Han Kejian leading hundreds of people fleeing to the north in embarrassment, the two squads of Hamgyong North Province felt in their hearts. Different thoughts.

Before Kato Kiyomasa arrived in Jizhou, Quan Minzu, the envoy of Jizhou Prefecture, voluntarily surrendered to Kato Kiyomasa Kaesong.

Ju Shibi, Wanhu Ju Shibi of Wanhu in Jingcheng, the main city of North Hamgyong Province, contacted soldiers privately to capture Li Hongye, the judge of Jingcheng, and voluntarily surrendered to Kiyomasa Kato.

He even planned to directly present the two princes Linhai and Shunhe who were hiding in Jingcheng to Kato Kiyomasa. If Huang He, who followed the prince to the north, was astute, and took the prince out of the city immediately, he might be trapped in Jingcheng It's called Ju Shibi's vote.

Even so, the chancellors only had time to take a few guards to protect the prince and escape to Huining. As for the prince and concubine, the families of other officials stayed in Jingcheng.

Huining is the headquarters of the Sixth Guanbei Army here. In their impression, there are more than 2000 Guanbei Army here. With the strong men here, it should be no problem to gather 4000 people.

However, Jing Guirong, Huang Tingyu, Huang He, and the two princes who fled to Huining arrived in Huining, only to find that even the most elite Guanbei Army had no pay.

The 4000 Guanbei Army brought by Han Kejian before was the last elite of the six towns of Guanbei. What he said before only brought most of them to the south. It is bullshit that Guanbei still has elite defensive Jurchens.

But fortunately, they escaped to a temporarily safe place, although the family members around them had already fallen to the enemy.

The six towns of Guanbei are already the northernmost point of North Korea, and further north across the Datong River is the border of Jurchen.

The two princes were obviously terrified by the Japanese army, and even expressed that they would flee north to seek refuge in the Jurchen tribe that opposed them.

Naturally, the prince's abnormal attitude could not be concealed from the officers and soldiers of Huining Town. Soon the news of the Northern Army's Han Kejian's disastrous defeat in Crane City spread in Huining Town, along with the results of the Japanese army's victorious march northward from Busan. .

At this time, they didn't know what kind of damage the Guanbei elites caused to the Japanese army in the First Battle of Crane City. How could the old and the weak and the newly recruited men be opponents.

The North Korean court was not kind to itself, and the Jurchens only thought of us when they attacked, and they came and went as soon as they called, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the Guanbei Army long ago.

Now that the whereabouts of Han Kejian, the highest military officer in Hamgyong Province, is unknown, the officers and soldiers of Huining Town inevitably have other thoughts.

On July 7, officers and soldiers of Huining Town rebelled in Huining Town and closed the four gates without warning. Soldiers rushed into the Zhenfu Yamen and forced Ju Jingren to take them to surrender to the Japanese.

Ju Jingren originally had this idea, but because he was a North Korean official, he didn't want to do anything because of his face. Right now, the officers and soldiers were rioting, and they took advantage of the donkey's downhill to lead them to surround the courtyard where the two princes lived, and captured the two princes and several prime ministers alive. .

After arresting these people, he quickly wrote to Kato Kiyomasa who was far away in Jingcheng, wanting to "set things right", bluntly saying that the prince of North Korea had been captured by himself, and asked him to come and receive it in person.

On July 7, Kato Kiyomasa saw Ju Jingren's letter, and soon led his troops to the city of Huining. He lined up more than ten thousand soldiers outside the city and asked Ju Jingren to bring the two princes out to him for examination.

When he saw the two princes being bound and pushed out of the city by the soldiers, Kato Kiyomasa's unique Japanese loyalty to the emperor overflowed.

Regarding the attitude of these North Korean traitors to their masters, he unabashedly blamed, "This is the son of your king and the minister of the court, why is it so embarrassing?"

As a result, Ju Jingren said the shocking sentence "You and the Japanese king are our monarchs, they are just enemy chieftains."

Ju Jingren's words caused the surrounding North Korean officials to yell at them, and even Kato Kiyomasa didn't know how to answer the words.

He can only let the left and right untie them and provide them with a rich diet.Kato Kiyomasa knew the political importance of these two princes, so he put them under house arrest in the army for surveillance.

At the same time, Ju Jingren said such kneeling and licking words, how could Kato Kiyomasa not be kind to him.

Immediately, he appointed Ju Jingren as the punishment envoy of Hamgyong-do, which is similar to the daimyo's procurator and is one of the chief officers of the three divisions of Hamgyong-do.

(End of this chapter)