Chapter 2126

Faced with the reality of huge disparity in firepower, even if the Hirado clan army had the advantage of home field, it was still difficult to stop the advance of the Kaihan army. The special battle group did not even invest artillery in the battle, and quickly repelled the attempts using only rifles.

An opponent blocking the official road leading to Hirado Castle.

Realizing that they could not achieve their goal, the Hirado clan army retreated angrily after leaving more than 20 corpses. Tagawasuke did not embarrass the frontline commanders because he himself also watched the battle not far from the battle site.

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Although there were certain predictions about the strength gap between the two sides before the war, the reality was still crueler than Tagawasuke's imagination. He found that his troops had almost no chance to perform in front of the Haihan Army, and even against them

It is extremely difficult to cause effective damage.

I remember that when he heard the personnel from Shibazhi describe the strength of the Haihan Army, he was still a little skeptical. He was somewhat suspicious that these people were looking for excuses for their previous failures. However, it was only after he actually fought against the Haihan people on the battlefield that he understood the past.

All the rumors I heard were true. Let alone defeat the opponent, it was difficult to even slow down the opponent's attack speed.

The combat plans formulated before the war, including dispatching naval forces to attack the opponent's maritime supply lines, now seem unlikely to be realized. Tagawasuke watched the artillery battle in Hirado Port for two days and clearly realized

Given the strength of Haihan's navy, he could only secretly pray that the navy would be more careful in its actions and not hit the opponent's main force.

But this kind of prayer seems to have failed to bear fruit. In the morning, he received the news that the navy fleet appeared north of the Hirado Strait, which gave Tagawa Suke a vague premonition, because this was not what he ordered to Wei Zhi.

The combat order was obviously that Wei Zhi noticed that the situation in Hirado Port was not good and tried to do something to change the situation.

Seeing that the two large warships that had not been in action in the past two days unexpectedly rushed out of the strait at extremely fast speeds to confront the navy fleet, Tagawa Suke couldn't help but worry, worrying about whether the navy could withstand it.

Such a big guy's attack. His worries became a reality in the afternoon. Several Anzha ships belonging to the Hirado Navy were sandwiched by the Kaihan warships and swaggered across the sea outside Hirado Port. It was obvious that

It was captured by the opponent and deliberately displayed to undermine the morale of one's own troops.

The only good news is probably that there are no newly built Chinese warships among the captured ships. This at least allows Tagawasuke to continue to have a glimmer of hope for the navy. Maybe there will be better fighters left for the navy in the future.

play.

But whether it is at sea or ashore, the current battle situation of the Hirado Domain is not ideal, or to put it more seriously, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as losing ground. Although the retainers claimed to Tagawa Suke that they also successfully shot and killed during the battle

He visited many Haihan soldiers, but he did not believe too much in these battle reports that lacked evidence support.

According to some unconfirmed gossip, someone witnessed the Haihan Army executing Tagawa Kojiro near Boxiang Bay. This news also hit Tagawa Suke hard. There were not many senior officers under him who could lead troops in war, and they died.

One is one less. And with a loyal dog subordinate like Tagawa Kojiro, he probably doesn’t have enough time to train new ones.

The enemy troops in Onomura began to advance north, which meant that the opponent was about to launch an attack on Hirado City. Knowing that he only had one night left to deploy the final line of defense, Tagawa Suke ordered the recruitment of all the young men in the city and began to attack the southern front

Dig trenches and build temporary defense lines.

Hirado Castle, as the main local defense fortification, was burned down more than thirty years ago by the feudal lord who was eager to clear his name. After that, in order to gain the trust of the shogunate, the successive feudal lords did not rebuild peace.

Castle fortifications like Tojo, not to mention the walls surrounding the entire Hirado city area. Whether it is to avoid the suspicion of the shogunate or to save money, in short, there are no decent fortifications in Hirado today, and temporary constructions

How effective can the defense line be in the face of powerful foreign enemies?

Hirado City is the main populated area on Hirado Island, accounting for more than 70% of the island's long-term population. However, these thousands of people have not accelerated the construction of fortifications. The troubles Tagawa Suke has to face are far away.

Much more than just coming from the outside.

In fact, before Kaihan came over, Tagawasuke had already ordered the recruitment of civilians. While building a coastal defense fort at Hirado Port, he also had to build a defense line at the southern end of the city to defend against possible landing attacks by the enemy from the south. However,

The recruited civilians could barely meet the needs of the port construction site, and the defense line outside the city was only a paper plan. It was not until the Haihan people reached Fujiang Island that the construction of the south defense line finally started.

However, the construction process is still not going smoothly. The reason is that the complex composition of the urban residents makes it difficult for relevant arrangements to be implemented smoothly.

The people living in Hirado City are not all natives. On the contrary, most of the people who have settled here are immigrants, especially people engaged in business. Because Hirado has unique characteristics.

The trading environment here brings together merchants and sailors from all over Japan, and these people are not farmers who can be ordered around casually. They have money in their pockets, various connections, and most importantly, they have the knowledge of farmers.

The lack of insight and vision.

It was not easy for the Hirado Domain to instruct these people to work. Even if it was a wartime situation in which foreign enemies invaded, it was still difficult for them to willingly dig soil on the construction site south of the city.

These people don’t know where they got the news, saying that the enemy Haihan people who invaded Hirado this time were targeting the current feudal lord and his Han leaders, and were not intending to loot the Hirado clan. As long as they did not participate in the resistance, they would not invade.

Liquidated after the war.

Based on such remarks, if you assist the official in building fortifications, it will obviously be regarded as participating in the resistance, and this seems to be a risk that is completely unnecessary for outsiders who are not natives of Hirado.

As for the strength of the enemy, the two consecutive days of artillery battles in Hirado Port may be very telling. The Hirado navy, known as Japan's number one navy, did not dare to show up from the beginning to the end, only the temporary shore defense forts built a few days ago.

Although they were struggling to support themselves, more and more people were escaping from the south. It was said that thousands of enemy troops had landed in the south, and the feudal army had no effective way to retreat from the enemy.

Some foreign businessmen who were stationed in Hirado to fight against the enemy knew how powerful the Haihan Army was, so they intensified their propaganda among the people of Hirado that the battle would be defeated. This made those people who planned to wait and see the situation unwilling to join the resistance.

For the Hirado clan officials, it is also difficult to forcibly recruit these people who are unwilling to contribute. Nowadays, the competition between Hirado and Nagasaki is becoming increasingly fierce, and the shogunate is using various methods to pull business practitioners away from Hirado.

Going to Nagasaki, in this environment, if the Hirado official offended merchants and shipping companies on a large scale, they would surely suffer the consequences after the war.

Once it loses the support of practitioners, Hirado's trade status will be greatly affected, which may further aggravate the consequences of defeat. If the scale of Hirado's foreign trade is significantly reduced as a result, it is certainly not a result that Hirado officials want to see.

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As a result, the officialdom inevitably fell into a dilemma. If the civilian labor force was not recruited, the labor force on the construction site would definitely be insufficient, and it would be difficult to build enough defensive fortifications before the enemy attacked the city. If the civilian labor force was forced,

It is inevitable to offend a large number of outsiders, thus affecting Hirado's trade status. No matter which approach is chosen, the consequences may be devastating.

But in the end, Tagawasuke chose to protect himself first. As for the adverse effects this will cause, we will wait until after the war. If he is no longer the ruler after the defeat, it will no longer matter what the future trade environment of Hirado will be.

It’s the Tagawa family’s business, there’s no need to be merciful at this juncture.

When organizing construction work in such an atmosphere, one can imagine the morale on the construction site. Most of the people who were forcibly recruited were unwilling to contribute, and some people who worked honestly saw that many people were deliberately sabotaging work, and naturally they were not willing to do so.

Want to be treated differently.

Therefore, although there were two to three thousand people working on the construction site in the south of the city, the construction efficiency was extremely low, and the progress of the project was far from meeting official expectations. Some businessmen even privately spent money to buy peace and give it to the people responsible for recruiting civilian husbands.

They stuffed themselves with benefits and ignored themselves; or they hid at home and paid a lot of money to hire people to do the work for them. In short, they tried every means to avoid this kind of wartime labor.

Even if Tagawasuke knew about these situations, he could only ignore their existence. He no longer had time to investigate the troubles. The enemy might launch an offensive after dawn, so there was no need to be distracted by such trivial matters.

Although he knew that Hirado Port would also face great defense pressure, Tagawasuke still ordered Lu Yuanlong to transfer several artillery pieces from the port to the south of the city for deployment. If several large guns were not deployed on the southern defense line, Tagawasuke would be very worried about this line of defense.

When the time comes, you won't be able to withstand the opponent's attack at all.

Even if the enemy cannot be retreated by this, it can at least delay the opponent's offensive and buy more time for the Hirado clan to organize a counterattack. Of course, the so-called counterattack is only a combat plan formulated before the war, and the current war situation follows the same trend.

There was a big difference in the pre-war estimates, and most of the plans formulated at that time would not work.

Although Tagawasuke himself had a death wish, he also knew that he could not force his officers and soldiers to be like him. The only thing that could stimulate morale at this time was a heavy reward. He announced to his subordinates that from now on

The feudal treasury took out 200,000 taels of silver and distributed it to all participants before dawn. Even the peasants and soldiers recruited temporarily were rewarded with 10 taels of silver each.

Those who perform outstandingly in the war or have a record of killing enemy troops will have the opportunity to receive more generous rewards. Tagawa Suke placed a bounty of one hundred taels of silver on the heads of the Haihan Army. If it is

For officers, the reward amount will double and increase.

Under such stimulation, the low morale finally recovered a little. There were also desperadoes in the vassal army. Seeing that there was a huge reward to be obtained, no matter who the opponent was, after receiving the money, they started clamoring to kill them after dawn.

A pleasure.

As the sky dimmed, the Haihan Army began to break camp and slowly advance northward. The East China Sea Fleet continued to follow the activity route of the previous two days, heading north along the Hirado Strait from the anchorage near Onomura to Hirado Port.

The Fujian Navy in charge of the west coast is still tasked with guarding Boxiang Bay today. Although Xu Yuzhuo also wanted to show his face at Hirado Port, a considerable number of the coalition's troop transports and supply ships were anchored in Boxiang Bay.

, after all, it is not easy to find another anchorage in Hirado that is convenient for logistics ships to dock, and the Fujian Navy can only continue to serve as bodyguards to ensure that the Hirado Navy will not have the opportunity to sneak attack its own logistics ships.

However, Xu Yuzhuo learned from yesterday's lesson and divided half of his warships in advance to ambush outside the bay. If the Hirado navy conducts reconnaissance like yesterday, even if he cannot capture the main force of the enemy, he will at least send his opponent here.

The reconnaissance ship was left behind.

However, at this time, Wei Zhi had already taken the remaining troops of the Hirado Navy to Madu Island, about fifty miles northeast of the Hirado Strait. Because the fleet led by Shota Ishimura sank yesterday, Wei Zhi was worried.

The base on Shanda Island has been exposed, and the enemy will come and raid the home, so they moved to a farther place overnight.

But in this way, although Wei Zhi ensured the safety of the naval fleet, it was difficult to grasp the timeliness of the changes in the battle situation in the Hirado Strait. If a ship was to be sent to conduct reconnaissance near the Hirado Strait, it would have to stay quite far away.

Distance - According to the people who narrowly escaped death on the battlefield today, the fleet led by Shota Ishimura was approached bit by bit by the Kaihan battleship from a distance of several miles and then named one by one.

And if the observation point is too far away from the Hirado Strait, it will be difficult to play a reconnaissance role. We can only wait for the fireworks signal from Hirado Castle to send out a distress signal before we can attack. But this communication method that will not be used unless absolutely necessary is not only

I can observe it from the distant sea, and of course the Haihan people who are closer can also see it. By the time I lead the navy to rush into the Hirado Strait, I am afraid that my opponent will have already done what they did to Shota Ishimura's fleet.

Ready for battle.

So for Wei Zhi, he is also very entangled now. If he leads the remaining naval fleet to the Hirado Strait to fight his opponent to the death, the result will undoubtedly be the annihilation of the entire army. But if he preserves his strength, perhaps this navy will be

The capital for Tagawa Nanaemon's comeback in the future.

It wasn't that he was afraid of death, but he was worried that after he used the few men at hand to fight out, Tagawa Shichizaemon hiding in Kyushu would face the dilemma of having no one available after the war. Let's not talk about what the Kaihan people would do at that time.

If we will not continue to arrest him, I am afraid that many careerists will emerge from Kyushu to seize the rule of the Hirado clan.
Chapter completed!