On the seaside in northern Kyushu, Japan, a new Nagoya castle has appeared.

This bastion located on the seaside of Matsuura County, Hizen Province, Kyushu Island, was built on the abandoned foundation of Nagoya Castle built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The original Nagoya Castle was the second largest castle in Japan at the time.

The second largest castle in Saka Castle is located in Kyushu, far away from the center of the Tokugawa shogunate. Therefore, after the Battle of Sekigahara, it was demolished under the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, leaving only a base that remained until the Tokugawa family five years ago.

Guangcai ordered the reconstruction of Nashin Goya Castle.

However, the rebuilt new Nagoya Castle is no longer a Japanese-style castle that cannot withstand cannon bombardment, but a Western-style bastion, designed and built by engineers brought by the Spanish Ambassador to the Qing Dynasty and Japanese Ambassador de Salamanca.

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After the bastion was built, Tokugawa Iemitsu added a new character in front of Nagoya Castle to name this seemingly very solid fortress, making it the foundation of Japan's southwestern coastal defense and the commanding officer for the war in Korea.

Base camp.

As for Tokugawa Iemitsu himself, after learning that Zhu Youjian had returned from the Western Regions, he moved from Edo to New Nagoya Castle. He posed as if he wanted a general to guard the country and stayed there for a long time, but he did not

When the navy and army of the Ming Dynasty invaded Japan, they got a lot of good news about the disasters in the Ming Dynasty and the people's livelihood.

In fact, disasters have occurred frequently in Japan in recent years, and people in many places are in dire straits. However, the Japanese samurai class headed by the Tokugawa shogunate has a very strong suppression ability, which seems to be no weaker than the Eight Banners masters in the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, some people starve to death.

Farmers are not a thing at all.

However, the seemingly rock-solid Tokugawa shogunate is not without some hidden dangers. What poses a threat to the shogunate's rule is the surplus of samurai, a problem left over from the Warring States Period! Or to be more precise, the surplus of ronshi!

In an era of strife in the world, the ambitious Warring States daimyo would not mind having too many people helping them conquer the world, so they tried to raise as many warriors as possible. However, most of these Warring States warriors were "shameless", even if their masters

They were not willing to follow the path of death, but lingered until the era of Iemitsu's rule.

Theoretically speaking, these samurai who lasted until the Edo period no longer belong to the noble class of samurai because they have no lords, no salary, and no territory. They are just rogues.

These former samurai should give up their unrealistic dreams, accept the reality that they are already civilians, and then find a job that can support themselves and pay taxes to the domain or shogunate that rules them.

If there was really no way to make a living, one could quietly starve to death or find a more respectable place to commit seppuku. According to the rules of the time, rogues who could not survive had the right to commit seppuku in a dignified manner like a real samurai.

It's a pity that there are not many ronshi who are willing to commit seppuku like a samurai. Most of them, no matter how difficult it is, grit their teeth and cling to life, and they also have to combine the identity of ronshi who is not a samurai at all with becoming

The dream of the samurai is left to their descendants.

And these rogues who are spread all over Japan are the greatest hidden danger in the Tokugawa world!

Moreover, because the rōshi were too widely distributed, there were too many of them, and they were inextricably linked to the real samurai class, General Tokugawa did not dare to openly order the killing of the rōshi. He could only watch them cause trouble for him and think.

There seems to be only one way to solve the rogue crisis, which is to find a golden road for them to become samurai again.

However, in Japan, the chance of a ronin becoming a samurai is very small. After all, Japan only has a small land, and the total stone height (surface height) is only about 20 million stone. The average salary for a samurai is 50 stone, which is 400,000 warriors.

The Tokugawa shogunate itself claimed to have 80,000 banners, which means 80,000 samurai. Including the samurai employed by the "Three Hundred Domains" in Japan, the total number has exceeded 400,000!

Therefore, there is almost no room to expand the recruitment of samurai in Japan. If we want to find the path of samurai for more rogues, we can only expand externally.

In the original history, Tokugawa Iemitsu had considered this matter. His expansion target at that time was the Philippines under Spanish rule, but he gave up because Japan's naval power was weak and could not support an expedition of this scale.

In this life, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally found a way out for the rogues in Korea, which was closer to Japan.

In fact, North Korea is much stronger than the Philippines! The Philippines is basically still a barbaric country, and I don’t know how much capital it will take to grow up.

North Korea is a mature land that has been developed for many years. According to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's estimate, the stone height in North Korea is about 20 million stone or more, which is similar to that in Japan. In fact, it may not be that much, but 15 million is still there.

In most of Gyeongsang Province and the southern coastal areas of Jeolla Province occupied by Japan, after several rounds of inspections, the Tokugawa shogunate had "inspected" an apparent height of 1.8 million koku.

These 1.8 million stones alone are enough for 30,000 to 35,000 rogues to realize their dream of becoming warriors!

However, Tokugawa Iemitsu would not give away the samurai status in vain. You must have military exploits to become a samurai!

Therefore, in the past few years, Tokugawa Iemitsu has been using "becoming a samurai" as a bait to recruit samurai from all over Japan to join the Korean Expeditionary Force led by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Just the rogues who have been tricked into joining the Korean Expeditionary Force one after another have already

More than 60,000 people!

Coupled with the genuine samurai who serve as officers and backbones of the Korean Expeditionary Force (not all are directly affiliated with the shogunate, each vassal has to send personnel), the current total strength of the Korean Expeditionary Force has reached 55,000 (in recent years, it has also

More than 10,000 casualties)! 40,000 of them followed Iemitsu's Jindai Matsudaira Nobutsuna across the sea and entered Korea, and were stationed in Gyeongsang Province and Jeolla Province in southern Korea.

There are still 15,000 people, together with 5,000 shogunate troops, stationed near New Nagoya Castle on standby.

In addition, the "Six-Six Fleet" of the shogunate navy and several Spanish galleons are stationed in Karatsu Port near Nagoya Castle.

"Gongfang Hall, according to reliable information, Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty has arrived at Lushunkou in person, accompanied by tens of thousands of elite soldiers of the Ming Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty's Beiyang Navy!

It is reported that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty will personally lead his troops northward along the west coast of the Liaodong Peninsula to attack Gaizhou and Haizhou! The Ming Dynasty general Sun Chuanting and the Mongolian noble concubine Wu Liangha will lead the other two armies from Guangning.

and Nenjiang grassland to attack the Qing Dynasty from the west and north. If the Qing Dynasty cannot quickly defeat one of the three armies, it is very likely to be destroyed by the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the Queen Mother Taisong of the Qing Dynasty has decided to personally conquer Liaonan.

Facing the army of Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty.

In order to ensure victory, the Qing Dynasty hopes that Japan can send 20,000 troops to help according to the "Japanese-Qing Covenant"!"

The person who was reporting to Tokugawa Iemitsu on the situation of the Ming and Qing wars in the Honmaru of Shinnago Castle was Tokugawa Iemitsu's half-brother Masayuki Hoshina, a tall 31-year-old samurai who had just been transferred by Iemitsu from the Dewa Yamagata Domain.

When he arrived at Gyeongju Domain in Korea, his territory was as high as 500,000 koku, and his status in the Korean Expeditionary Force was second only to Iemitsu's Jindai Matsudaira Nobutsuna.

This time he accompanied the Qing envoy Sony across the sea from Korea to Shinnago Castle to move reinforcements!

"Twenty thousand people are enough?" Tokugawa Iemitsu looked at his big, stupid brother, and then at Sony, the elegant-looking Tatar, and frowned, "Now here is the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty!

If defeated, the Qing Kingdom will perish, and once the Qing Kingdom perishes, it will be difficult to preserve the Gyeongju Domain, Sangju Domain, and Naju Domain of Japan in Korea!"

Sony could already understand Japanese, so he said to Tokugawa Iemitsu in Japanese: "Kongfangdian, Her Royal Highness the Queen Mother of our country is going to personally lead an army of 100,000 people to go south to meet the Emperor of Ming Dynasty plus 20,000 Japanese troops. The total force is

There are only 120,000. If there are more, the military rations may not be able to keep up."
Chapter completed!