Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 137 The whole family rushes in
There are many classic examples of castles being built overnight in historical novels, such as pouring water at night to cast ice into a castle, and Kinoshita Tokichirō tying logs into a raft and floating it downstream to build the Sunamata Castle overnight. However, these examples are either folk tales or historical novels, and it is hard to say whether they really happened in history.

For example, the story that Kinoshita Tokichirō built the Sunomata Castle in one night is probably a fabrication. The story originated from the Picture Book of Taikoki and was then copied into the Bugong Yehua. The former is a vernacular novel from the Edo period, while the latter has been judged to be a pseudo-history by most scholars in modern times. Many parts of the story are made up at random and do not match the various archaeological evidence at all.

The most important thing is that Yuanye had asked Aman during their daily chats and found out that Sunometa Castle had existed for a long time. Her grandfather had been there several times when he was young. Now the castle is still there and it is an important outpost base for the Saito family to defend against the Oda family.

Therefore, building a city overnight is basically bragging and a gimmick in novels. It is almost not feasible in the real world, not to mention that Yuanye went to investigate and found that he needed to build a fortress on the mountain, two small fortresses by the river, and a city between the mountain and the river as the core of defense. It would be better to have some small fortresses to fill the gaps to ensure the absolute safety of the port.

Simply put, he needed to build a small section of the "Great Wall" so that he would have the capital to fight a fierce battle with the giant Imagawa family and to protect the port so as not to be besieged and killed by the enemy.

This amount of work would have been terrifying in ancient times. After several field surveys, Yuanye returned and turned around like a donkey pulling a millstone for a long time, and then took a large group of coolies to go out to sea. This time, they went all the way west, and only chose a desolate place to land in Haixi County, and plunged into the Ise Mountains again.

A few days later, he pulled back half a boatload of volcanic ash, scoria, and a small amount of tuff and porous rock mixed in it.

With the city-building technology of that era, chiseling stones to build the foundation, piling up earth as walls, and cutting down trees to build buildings, if you really want to build a city, you can forget about it at least three to five months, and it is not uncommon to take one or two years. Such a long time to build a city is enough for the Imagawa family to drive him into the sea three or five times.

Therefore, the classical city-building method would definitely not work, and he felt that it would be better to cast it directly. Only in this way would he have a hope of having a position that he could rely on and withstand the severe test before the Imagawa family arrived.

If you want to cast a building, you need to use concrete, and if you want to use concrete, you need cement. If you want to produce cement in this era, there is probably only one way to go, which is volcanic ash cement.

This thing is not new, it has existed since BC.

Well-known buildings, such as the Pantheon in Rome, built between 27 and 25 BC (rebuilt in 120 AD), have the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome, with a diameter of 43.3 meters. It is made of "Roman concrete", a mixture of pumice, porous volcanic rock, volcanic ash and lime. It is light and strong, and is still intact after two thousand years. It is one of the famous tourist attractions in modern Rome.

For example, the famous Roman Colosseum also uses concrete. The foundation is made of dense concrete, which is made of volcanic ash cement and limestone, which can withstand the huge weight of the Colosseum; the arches and domes are made of lightweight concrete, such as lightweight pumice concrete, which is based on volcanic ash cement and added with lightweight aggregates such as pumice, which reduces the overall weight while ensuring structural stability.

This building still exists today, and although more than half of it has collapsed, that has little to do with the building materials. It can still be said that it has stood for two thousand years and is very solid.

In addition, buildings such as the ancient city of Pompeii, the ancient Roman Baths, and the ancient Roman aqueduct that stretches for dozens of kilometers have all made extensive use of volcanic ash cement and volcanic ash concrete. History has proven the reliability and convenience of this building material.

At least that's what the middle school textbooks say.

Yuanye felt that he could learn from the Romans and use volcanic ash cement. This way, at least he wouldn't have to mine stones or pile up earth layer by layer. This would save a lot of time and the construction speed would be much faster. It is not easy to pile up earth to build a wall. The earth is very particular. Multiple types of soil must be mixed together, and all kinds of messy adhesive materials must be added. It also needs to be hammered layer by layer, otherwise it will not stand up at all or it will not be strong enough, and it will take a lot of time to build.

In short, the only way out now is volcanic ash cement. Yuanye led his men to steal most of the ship's volcanic ash and then began to try to prepare volcanic ash cement. This thing has been used on a large scale before Christ. The formula is very simple - just mix volcanic ash and lime together. Depending on the composition of the volcanic ash, the ratio is about 3:1 or 2:1.

After the mixture is ready, it is the original volcanic ash cement. Then mix the cement with suitable stones, such as sponge-like porous rocks also ejected from volcanoes, or simply add river sand and pebbles, and the concrete is ready. The next step is to restrain it with a bamboo and wood frame, add water, cover it with wet linen during its formation to cool it down and prevent it from cracking. Wait for about a week, and finally you can get the "prefabricated part" that meets your needs.

The whole process is very simple and can hardly be said to have any technical content. After the "prefabricated parts" came out, Yuanye personally took a hammer and hit them more than ten times before barely breaking them. He confirmed that middle school textbooks are more reliable than Japanese history books and are not fooling people. This is indeed a very good building material. The only drawback is that it is relatively afraid of cold - this kind of cement cannot be used in extremely cold areas and will become very brittle. But it doesn't matter. The Chita Peninsula is warmer than here in Furuno, and the lowest temperature in winter is unlikely to reach below zero. Water does not freeze, so cement cannot be frozen.

Now that he had the building materials, which were relatively advanced materials of the time, Yuanye had a plan in mind. The Lunar New Year had also passed, so he mobilized everyone in Wanjin without hesitation and announced that he would build a city in Wanjin. He began to build a large number of lime kilns, burned lime frantically, and began to search everywhere for volcanic ash layers that were easy to dig. He would dig them when he found them, and transport them to Wanjin by the boatload. If the transportation capacity was not enough, he would pay money to lure the islanders to use their fishing boats to help transport the materials.

The powerful families in the four counties under Owari did not interfere with him. He had treated so many wounded soldiers in the past and had accumulated some favors. It was just digging some useless soil from the powerful families' territories. No crops could be grown there, so it was not a big deal and no one cared about it. Moreover, some powerful families, such as the Maeda family, were very cooperative. Anyway, they had nothing to do in the winter, so they were willing to mobilize their subjects to help him dig soil and transport it onto the ship to make a little money from it.

Oda Nobunaga knew about it at the first time, but he didn't care. He was happy to see that Harano was willing to transform into a local noble in Owari. Of course, if you want to be a local noble, you have to build a castle. This was always the case in Japan at that time. There were more than 15,000 "castle lords" of all sizes. Harano's behavior was reasonable. He didn't take it to heart and ignored it.

So, shiploads of volcanic ash, slag, tuff, porous rock and pumice were pulled to Wanjin, where they were either finely screened, transported to mills for fine grinding, or roughly crushed by hand. Finally, they were made into bags of volcanic ash cement and concrete, which gradually filled up the warehouses in Wanjin and approached the amount of earthwork calculated by Yuanye.

He even built a small fortress in Wanjin on a small scale as a trial, allowing the officials of the Department of Internal Affairs to experience what it was like to be a "contractor" and solve some messy small problems in advance to ensure that the work could be done more smoothly.

Internal Affairs officials such as Endo Chiyo and Maejima Juichiro were also very cooperative. Wanjin now had a population of four to five thousand and was considered a powerful area. They had long wanted to propose building a city, but now Yuanye had already started doing it without their suggestion. Naturally, they were very active and tried their best to make all preparations for building the city. They organized manpower according to Yuanye's requirements, established a command system and persons in charge at all levels, and began to stockpile wood, bamboo, and grains. They also looked for carpenters everywhere, made molds according to Yuanye's requirements, and cast a small number of prefabricated parts.

Yu Da was also working hard to expand his fleet and actively contacted the islanders with whom he had established a preliminary relationship of trust, hiring them to form a temporary maritime transport team.

From the end of winter to the beginning of spring, except for the necessary production personnel in the workshop, the entire Wanjin was in motion. Everyone was commanded by Yuanye and was busy all the time. There was no agricultural production here at all, otherwise manpower could not be used so concentratedly and the people working would not be so focused.

Of course, the new troops did not delay their training, which was the top priority. They were not required to work. Even during this period when manpower was in short supply again, new recruits continued to join the camp, preparing for the long-term battles to come.

This is Yuanye's desperate fight for freedom, independence, and his real territory. He has been patiently working for this for more than a year. He even threw away his reputation for manpower and went out to rob, just for this moment.

Even if his vitality was severely damaged, even if half of his men died, he had to gain a foothold on the Chita Peninsula and force the Imagawa family to tolerate his existence and allow him to become an independent minor daimyo!
It's just to increase the success rate. Now we still lack the opportunity to take action. Oda Nobunaga is a bit neurotic. What if his whole family rushes into the Chita Peninsula at once, and Oda Nobunaga suddenly reacts neurotically and steals his anus? That would be bad.

So he prepared everything but was not in a hurry to start. On the one hand, he was waiting for the weather to get warmer. After all, it was pure outdoor construction, and the weather was still somewhat cold, which could easily cause widespread injuries. On the other hand, he was waiting for Oda Nobunaga to take action first. Last year, Oda Nobunaga failed to capture Kiyosu Castle, and he must have been unwilling to accept this, so he had been preparing for war. He felt that it was about time for Oda Nobunaga to take action again.

Whenever Oda Nobunaga went to attack Kiyosu Castle and was unable to spare the time to raid his lair, he would take his entire family to the Chita Peninsula to build a city.

He waited patiently for more than ten days and finally received an urgent report from Aman. Oda Nobunaga did not even mobilize the powerful families in the four counties under Owari, but only led his direct forces to attack Kiyosu Castle. It seemed to be an extremely secretive operation.

Yuanye did not hesitate. Even though he did not have time to figure out what Oda Nobunaga was going to do, he still gave an order and ordered the fleet to set sail and head straight for the Chita Peninsula!
He would build the Great Wall within half a month and make the Imagawa family suffer a bloody defeat under the city!
(End of this chapter)