The plan to build a plank road openly and secretly travel to Chen Cang by the shogun army was finally successful.

Tens of thousands of farmers set off torches across the Guanmen Strait for several days in the night, making a stance of a large army to cross. The huge noise and clamor were clearly heard across the strait that hundreds of feet were squeaked.

After urgent discussions with Matsupan Kagi and Ito Sato, Ikeda Shigemasa mobilized all the troops to the narrowest part of the strait overnight, and set up a large number of obstacles on the wide beach to eliminate them at the beach after the shogunate army landed.

In order to make up for the shortcomings of insufficient troops, Ikeda Hiromasa immediately sent his confidants to the territory of Yamauchi Koya and others who had left. With both soft and hard work, they asked them to lead the army to reinforce as soon as possible.

However, the shogunate army took advantage of the night to protect the coalition forces and transported more than 5,000 vanguard troops to Kyushu Island while the coalition forces were concentrated, and then reconnaissanced and advanced to provide protection for the main force's landing.

Among the vanguards of more than 5,000 people, there were 1,000 cavalrymen, which was also the killer weapon of the shogunate to deal with the coalition forces.

The commander of the shogunate army was still the one who was defeated by the coalition forces last time. Before going to war, he swore in front of Tokugawa Ieki and would definitely wipe out the gang of traitors from Kyushu Island. If he was defeated again, he would commit suicide to thank the world.

Through the experience gained from the failure of the previous battle with the coalition forces, Yoshihiro concluded that the coalition weapons are fierce and cannot fight head-on, and other strategies must be used to deal with them.

Since the landing site of the Shogunate Army was still more than 30 miles away from the coalition defense, and the coalition was all focused on the other side, it was not until the next morning that more than 10,000 main force of the Shogunate Army landed on Kyushu Island and the vanguard had approached ten miles behind him that Ikeda Hiromasa and others realized that they had been fooled.

Before the afternoon of that day, the battle between the shogunate and the coalition began again, but this time the coalition was defeated.

Under the deployment and command of Ichiro Yoshihiro, the shogunate army attracted coalition firepower with four thousand feet and then used cavalry to assault the left wing of the coalition and attacked the right wing of the coalition with six thousand samurai.

As a result, less than a quarter of an hour after the battle started, the left-wing Ito Fan of the coalition forces was broken through by the shogunate cavalry. The defeated left-wing soldiers who were killed and fled everywhere under the slash of the cavalry, causing chaos in the coalition forces. Then the right-wing Ikeda Fan was also killed by the main force of the shogunate army. The two sides began to fight hand in hand. Only the central Hirado Fan iron artillery team forced the front-line shogunate army with strong firepower to force the front-line shogunate army to fail to approach.

The shogunate cavalry played a crucial role in this battle and became the winner of the war situation.

After defeating the two thousand troops of Ito's troops, they immediately went around and launched a decisive charge against more than 3,000 Hirado's troops from the side and rear.

After the formation of the Hirado Iron Artillery Team successfully changed its formation, the shogunate cavalry braved the dense rain of bullets and the uninterrupted shooting of the longbow to launch a desperate assault on the middle road guarded by more than 3,000 Hirado Iron Artillery Team and the archer team in chaos under the loss. Yoshihiro took advantage of the situation to order the reserve team to push forward and launch a full-scale attack on the coalition forces.

The fierce battle took less than an hour and ended with a coalition defeat.

The 8,000 coalition forces lost 40%. Fortunately, Ikeda Fukumasato faced defeat and was in a state of disarray. He commanded 2,000 spearmen to resist the fierce offensive of the shogunate army, and used archers to carry out long-range strikes behind to cover the defeated soldiers of Ito and Hirado to retreat to the southeast, which did not cause a large-scale defeat of the coalition forces.

Because the cavalry was too severe, the main force suffered a considerable loss in close combat with the coalition forces, so it temporarily lost the ability to continue pursuing and could only watch the coalition forces retreat alternately.

As the coalition forces had to retreat to the southwest due to unfavorable conditions, the shogunate army successively crossed the Guanmen Strait and landed on Kyushu Island.

In order to completely eliminate the "rebels" on Kyushu Island, Tokugawa Iemitsu this time mobilized more than 50,000 troops from Honshu and Hokkaido, which was a huge sum of money.

After all the troops landed on Kyushu Island and repaired them for several days, Songheiichiro waved his flag and 50,000 troops were divided into three groups on the left, center and right, and rushed towards the southwest of Kyushu Island.

Many of the weak foreign daimyos who passed along the army saw signs of reversal of the situation, so they took out money, grain and men to the shogunate army, drawing a clear line with the anti-shog alliance with practical actions.

Although I don’t know the fact that the two armies were fighting, the coalition forces had just passed here a few days ago. Anyone with a little brain could see that the morale of the coalition forces was extremely low. The hundreds of ox carts driven by the army were loaded with supplies, and also pulled countless wounded people. This situation was completely opposite to the previous situation of the coalition forces passing by.

Now the shogunate army is incomparable to the number and morale of the coalition forces, which is enough to say everything.

In the next month, under the offensive of the shogunate army, although Ikeda Hiromasato temporarily took over the position of the leader of the alliance and reunited the originally loose coalition again, and did not lose in the subsequent battles, the number of the two troops was too different, and the space of the coalition was gradually compressed to a very small range, and the situation deteriorated day by day.

Fortunately, with the arrival of the rainy season, heavy rains fell in the southwest of Kyushu Island, causing countless roads and bridges to be destroyed, and the Shogunate offensive was forced to be suspended.

But Ikeda Hiromasa and the others knew that the rainy season in Kyushu Island only lasted for two months. After the rainy season, the shogunate army would regain its offensive after full renovation. With the existing strength and morale of the coalition forces, I don’t know how long it will last.

In the critical situation, different voices have appeared within the alliance. He has heard that Daming, a foreigner, secretly prepared to surrender to the shogunate army. This extremely dangerous signal made the senior officials of Ikeda and Hirato and other people desperate.

Others can surrender, but Hirado and Ikeda cannot.

No matter what considerations are made, Tokugawa Iemitsu will never let them go. Begging for surrender means putting down your weapons and letting others slaughter. Rather than doing this, it is better to die in the battlefield.

But the feeling of waiting to die is simply unbearable. How should we seek to live in death?

At this moment, Yonekura led his men to come up with an idea: ask the Ming Dynasty for help, ask the Ming Dynasty to send troops to land on the Japanese mainland, destroy the shogunate army, and then help the coalition forces overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate in one fell swoop.

Yonekura led his men to tell Ikeda Hiromasa and others that the purpose of the Ming Dynasty's assistance to the armies was to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and establish a new shogunate pro-Ming. In the current situation, only if Daming quickly sent troops to save the crisis.
Chapter completed!