Chapter 821: Worry

On the Qing side, even more men fell, and shrill, miserable screams rang out in waves. But by now the shield carts, driven forward by the Han troops’ musketeers behind them, had also swiftly been pushed to within thirty paces of the Japanese bamboo bundles.

Then, amid the sharp sound of swan-whistles, the first row of nearly a thousand Han bannermen musketeers, braced behind the shield carts, pulled their triggers. Duoduo saw dense, continuous clouds of white smoke erupt and then spread horizontally along the several hundred shield carts; above the carts, the smoke hung thick and heavy.

The ferocity of this volley was no less than the volleys of those Japanese arquebusiers. Duoduo saw their bamboo bundles being struck, fragments flying, splinters scattering everywhere; some weaker sections were even shot through. The Japanese arquebusiers hiding inside screamed incessantly and toppled to the ground one after another.

At twenty paces, the Han bird-gun musketeers launched another volley. The screams from the other side grew even more numerous. Duoduo saw the silhouettes of Japanese arquebusiers behind the bamboo bundles continuously collapsing to the ground in an unending stream.

At ten paces, another sharp swan-whistle sounded. Before the shield carts, muzzle flashes merged into a single sheet of flame. From the bamboo bundles rose the hoarse, desperate howls of many Japanese arquebusiers. Under the ferocious fire, some of the cart-like bamboo bundles were even shot into collapse.

A signal drum sounded from the central army, followed by a uniform battle cry. The archers of each banner behind the shield carts advanced. Those in the front rows took up their bows and nocked arrows, bent their waists into a crouch, spread their feet in an inverted-V stance, and fired directly at close range. The rows further back angled their arrowheads toward the sky for long-range arcing fire.

The thrum of bowstrings merged into a single continuous sound. Arrows whistled like rain, densely blanketing the sky.

The Qing archers loosed twenty volleys in one breath. The Japanese arquebusiers behind the bamboo bundles suffered heavy casualties. The Qing archers’ arrows were both accurate and vicious; at such close quarters, with only ten paces between them, practically none of their arrows missed.

Whether those Japanese arquebusiers hid behind the bamboo bundles or crouched to either side, as long as they appeared within the archers’ line of sight, they could not escape the arrows’ aim.

The arrows they shot were cunning and lethal, continuously slipping through the gaps and holes in the bamboo bundles. The Japanese arquebusiers sheltering behind them fell victim one after another — struck in the eye or hit square in the face. Shrill, agonized screams rang out without end.

Japanese archers also kept darting out from either side of the bamboo bundles to shoot back, but they could not suppress the Qing archers’ fire.

Battle cries and screams of agony merged into a single din, interspersed with the scattered crack of musketry from both sides’ gunners. The Qing archers in the rear ranks kept up their arcing volleys, continuously sowing chaos and inflicting casualties on the Japanese positions behind the bamboo bundles.

Seeing the Japanese lines in utter chaos, the Qing drums rolled again. The armored soldiers behind each banner’s archers began their assault. Wielding greatswords and shields, they charged without hesitation into the Japanese bamboo-bundle positions. The Qing archers and Han bannermen bird-gun musketeers also surged forward in close support.

“A victory?”

Duoduo watched the Japanese forward lines descend into chaos. Like a receding tide, Japanese arquebusiers and archers were fleeing toward the rear, while his own armored soldiers pursued, hacking and slashing relentlessly at their backs.

But at that moment, the Japanese main formation also sounded its signal drums. The two wings of their crane-wing formation — the advance-guard units at the tips of both wings — began to move. It looked as if they intended to attack from both flanks the armored warriors who had thrust into the center, while their secondary advance-guard units at the ends of both wings remained motionless.

“These Wa country warriors are somewhat different.”

Duoduo thought to himself. As he watched their formation shift, their spearheads moved in unison, maintaining a kind of rhythm, conveying a sense of ten thousand hearts beating as one.

When they attacked, their spearmen also formed up in several ranks and then charged forward rank by rank. Each rank consisted of twenty to thirty men. When the front rank arrived, they used their long bamboo swords and bamboo spears to batter and disorient his armored soldiers, leaving them dazed and confused. The rear rank then seized the chance to thrust fiercely, impaling his armored soldiers one by one on the ground.

This was the tactic the Wa country called “spear-quilt”: each rank of twenty to thirty men attacked in a coordinated encirclement. Using several ranks at a time, the front rank battered while the rear rank stabbed, taking turns to thrust by rank — it was like being smothered by one great cotton quilt after another.

No matter how brave his own armored soldiers were, whenever they faced a spear formation that surrounded and attacked one man or a few men in concert, they inevitably became flustered. Faced with this spear-quilt tactic of front-rank battering and rear-rank stabbing, caught off guard, more and more of them fell beneath those bamboo spears.

Watching them fight in formation, uniform and precise, with forests of spears advancing in waves, there was quite a flavor of the ancient Central Plains’ Qin-Han era military formations.

In Duoduo’s mind surfaced memories of the former Qi Family Army, and the current Jingbian Army and the Ming New Army — all of which placed extreme emphasis on formation fighting, utterly unlike those retainer armies that relied on individual combat.

The armored soldiers’ assault momentum stalled. But they were, after all, veterans of many battles and quickly changed tactics. They took out their bows and shot arrows at those ashigaru spearmen at close range. The archers of each banner also surged forward, blanketing them with arrows like a violent rainstorm.

By now, the bulk of the Japanese arquebusiers and archers were in full rout. The few arquebusiers and archers in the advance-guard units could not resist the Qing archers. The ashigaru spearmen, wearing only simple ashigaru chest armor and now bereft of cover, suffered grievously under the arrow storm. Following in the footsteps of the forward-position arquebusiers, they too fled screaming toward the rear formation.

The Qing armored soldiers seized the chance to thrust forward. Using the same tactics, they again routed the secondary advance-guard units on both wings. The Japanese main formation could no longer hold back. They committed their umamawari — those elite naginata samurai — and their hatamoto samurai.

The Qing immediately threw in their bayara guards, followed by nearly a thousand heavy cavalry, both men and horses clad in heavy armor. And then…

Watching the allied southwestern domain forces on the opposite side retreat in panic under his own side’s assault, finally dissolving into a frenzied rout, a smile spread across Duoduo’s face.

“We’ve won…”

…

In the great battle of Kurume in the eighth month, the allied southwestern domain forces suffered a crushing defeat. They lost over ten thousand men killed or wounded. The survivors, relentlessly pursued by Qing cavalry with no way to flee, had no choice but to surrender to Abatai and the others. Duoduo and Abatai accepted their surrender and incorporated some of them into the Eight Banners Japanese Army.

After this great victory, Abatai could no longer restrain the desire of Duoduo and the others to attack Nagasaki. Using the surrendered domains of Chōshū, Saga, Satsuma, and others as their vanguard, they attacked Nagasaki as conquerors. In just three days, Nagasaki’s castle town and its tenshu keep fell.

The allied forces plundered Nagasaki inside and out for four full days. They looted and ravaged to their hearts’ content — whether the dwellings of common townsfolk or the wealthy temples of the upper districts, whether the local pleasure quarters or the foreign trading factories, poor men, rich men, foreigners — all were targets of their plunder and capture.

Although the surrendered domains were Japanese, they too fought tooth and nail during the looting, venting their resentment against the shogunate upon the soldiers and civilians of Nagasaki. They killed, set fires, and committed every imaginable evil. In the end, they set a great blaze that reduced the entire city of Nagasaki to ashes. The majestic tenshu keep burned for a full five days before the flames died out.

Nagasaki was the only port city open to foreign trade during Japan’s period of national seclusion, possessing a unique exotic atmosphere. Walking its streets and alleys, one could see everywhere the cultural traces of mixed Western and Eastern influence. There were various Chinese residences, the Dutch factory on Dejima, and a great number of Great Ming ship merchants and Dutch ship merchants.

There was also the Maruyama pleasure quarter, which, alongside Edo’s Yoshiwara and Kyoto’s Shimabara, was known as one of Japan’s three great licensed districts. The pleasure-quarter culture here flourished exceedingly; there were several hundred operating brothels, and the number of courtesans exceeded one thousand several hundred. There was even an entire street of brothels — Maruyama-chō and Yoriai-chō.

The city also had a permanent population exceeding sixty thousand, which had recently swelled to one hundred thousand. Because the Qing army had been rampaging through the various domains of Kyushu but had not yet moved against Nagasaki, rumors spread everywhere that the Qing brigands apparently dared not strike the shogunate’s direct territories. Wealthy households and refugees fled here in droves, causing Nagasaki’s population to skyrocket.

Now they had all been caught in one net.

Even the Nagasaki bugyō, who oversaw administration and overseas trade, was burned to nothing in the blaze.

…

The fall of Nagasaki shook all of Japan. The shogunate could no longer pretend to be deaf and blind, turning a blind eye — especially since the Qing army next crossed the Shimonoseki Strait and entered Honshu. Guided by the Chōshū domain, they assumed a posture of advancing overland toward Kyoto and Edo.

The shogunate finally stirred into action, but the manner of their response somewhat exceeded the expectations of Duoduo and the others.

In the ninth month of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, a massive fleet sailed grandly toward Japan. Leading it were seven or eight European-style two-masted and three-masted sailing ships, along with over a hundred fu ships and guang ships of various sizes. Without exception, they all flew great banners bearing the character “Zheng.”

Besides these, the fleet also included several European warships flying the Orange banner, the white-backed blue cross banner, the St. George’s Cross, and the purple lion banner — forming an extraordinarily vast armada.

They sailed across the sparkling, scale-like waves of the great sea, cleaving through the swells, pressing ever forward.

It was precisely the joint punitive expeditionary force assembled by Zheng Zhilong and the various European nations!

…

“Zheng Zhilong has sent troops?”

When Wang Dou received the intelligence, he felt some regret. He already understood the course of events. The Qing state was, after all, a petty frontier realm that did not understand the shape of the world. This time, the Manchu Qing had provoked people they should not have provoked.

The Zheng clan, though negligible on land, was a colossal power at sea. In the coastal regions of the southeast at this time, even the Dutch and the Spanish dared not contend with them.

They also had immense interests in Japan. Merely from selling sea-passage permit flags at high prices, their annual profit exceeded ten million taels of silver. This time, the Qing army had plundered Nagasaki and carried off its residents and ship merchants, cutting off not only Zheng Zhilong’s financial artery but also the financial arteries of the various Western nations — after all, Nagasaki was the only foreign-trade port in Japan at this time.

It would be one thing if the Qing army had the capability, but the problem was that their navy was not even worth mentioning.

For this expedition to Japan, they had mostly used Korean ships. If the Great Ming navy did not intervene, they could have handled things with ease, since the Japanese navy was equally negligible.

But the Zheng clan had made a move, and they had even formed a joint fleet with the European powers.

This was inevitable. Zheng Zhilong and the Dutch had interests in Japan that were far too great. The remaining nations were likewise extremely eager for the Japanese market. Once the shogunate paid a certain price — for instance, permitting them to trade again, or opening a few more ports — it was only natural for all parties to join forces.

The shogunate’s third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, had inclined toward seclusion ever since taking power. Apart from the Great Ming and the Dutch, the English, Spanish, and Portuguese had gradually all been squeezed out of the Japanese market. Now they too were jointly sending troops; clearly, the shogunate had made some promise that moved their hearts.

Wang Dou guessed that Dorgon would soon halt the offensive in Japan, then reach some compromise with the shogunate, and finally withdraw his troops from Japan.

After all, even with the allied forces of the various nations, the shogunate still could not stop the Qing army’s advance on land. Nor could they afford the price to keep Zheng Zhilong and the others permanently patrolling and guarding their coasts. Even more, their pride would not permit them to let foreign fleets remain in Japan for long.

Tokugawa Iemitsu’s wariness of foreigners was well known. Moreover, the immediate losses were mostly suffered by the southwestern domains hostile to him. It was not certain how deeply the shogunate truly hated the Qing state. So the final agreement would likely be that the Qing army withdrew from Japan, pledged not to raid again, and the matter would be dropped there.

As for how things would actually unfold, Wang Dou would wait and see. But once Dorgon withdrew his troops from Japan and turned his energy back toward the Great Ming, that would not be good news.

The plague matter has also come to an end for now. From the intelligence obtained so far, the losses in the capital and other places are very heavy, especially the losses in the capital garrison. Hong Chengchou also seems to be gravely ill.

And over in Shaanxi, the more urgently the roving bandits attack Kaifeng, the more Sun Chuanting finds himself unable to withstand the pressure from the imperial court. It seems he is on the verge of marching out from the pass.

Will he still suffer a great defeat just as in history?

The autumn rain began to patter down again, first as threads of rain, slowly forming a curtain of rain.

Watching the rain grow heavier, the downpour incessantly lashing the eaves, a thread of worry slowly surfaced in Wang Dou's heart.