Chapter 1159: Skillfully Laying an Ambush to Await the Ming Army

The fierce battle at Benxun Temple had begun after all!

Even if the Shimazu men were willing to throw the fight, the battle-supervising California Commissioner-in-Chief De Belasco was not about to stand by and watch these Japanese dawdle. After flatly refusing Zhu Cihuan's request for single combat (Zhu Cihuan had no idea about the matter at all), he moved his headquarters to the front line, less than three hundred paces north of Benxun Temple — he knew the Ming troops who had crossed the mountains had no cannon, so he pressed forward along the entire line.

Once his command post pushed forward, the two provisional infantry regiments below him and the Shimazu clan's 1,200 men had no choice but to press forward as well. The six 6-pounder guns were even more bullying, pushed right up to the front line less than 150 paces from Benxun Temple — they might as well have fixed bayonets to the barrels.

With the guns pulled close and the men pushed up, the pressure on Zhu Cihuan's side mounted at once. Hoshina Masateru no longer dared to drag Zhu Cihuan out into the open; instead he invited His Highness back into the main hall to work on his death poem, while he himself set up his command post in the courtyard and took over directing the defense in Zhu Cihuan's place.

After another round of shelling and long-range fire from the heavy matchlocks, before the gun smoke had even cleared, a flintlock square of the Shimazu army surged toward the breach in the wall, which had now been widened to nearly thirty paces across.

This time the Shimazu men were serious, advancing at a quick step under cover of the lingering smoke. The Shimazu samurai forming the square did not fire; only a few picked marksmen walked along the flanks of the formation, constantly taunting the guard samurai holding the breach with relatively accurate shots, trying to draw their fire.

These marksmen worked in teams of three: one man, the best shot, did the firing, while the other two, very fast loaders, followed along specifically to reload. In effect, they had applied the Japanese three-volley method to sniping!

But Zhu Cihuan's samurai guards were no pushovers either. Most of them had lived through the Toyotomi overthrow war back in Japan and had been tempered by it. So now, no matter how the enemy taunted them, even after several of their own men were shot down, the rest held their fire — in fact, the tactic they adopted was also the three-volley method. Kneeling half-upright behind the collapsed earthen wall were thirty marksmen, each with a light matchlock loaded and match cord lit (also modeled on the Spanish light matchlock), simply waiting quietly. They waited until the Shimazu main body charged to within thirty paces before letting loose their first volley with a thunderous roar, immediately dropping a dozen or more Shimazu samurai.

The Shimazu troops, however, did not press their charge into the enemy's fire; instead they halted and began returning fire with their flintlocks.

The two sides traded fire for several rounds, and the center of the battlefield became a haze of gun smoke. Visibility dropped, and after that there was not much accuracy to speak of.

The square the Shimazu men had formed was not very wide at the front (since the breach was only twenty or thirty paces wide). Each soldier carried a large straw pack on his back, filled with earth, for filling the trench. After firing several rounds, the first two ranks of Shimazu musketeers stopped shooting and dropped down to crawl forward.

The two ranks behind them stepped forward a few paces and began firing their flintlocks wildly, creating smoke to cover the samurai crawling forward to fill the trench. When those trench-filling samurai returned, the men now firing would have to crawl up and fill the trench next. This tactic of covering trench-filling with musket fire was not something ordinary troops could pull off.

The Shimazu troops, however, had no intention of fighting to the death; they simply filled the trench methodically, so the troops did not press too far forward, halting about thirty paces out. No matter how thick the smoke got, they showed no inclination to advance one step further into the enemy's bullets.

And the samurai crawling forward moved at a snail's pace. Princess Naiji had given them all instructions to crawl carefully — everyone understood what she meant.

So the Shimazu offensive dragged on from early afternoon until evening, and in all that time they mounted only four waves, never managing to completely fill that stretch of trench north of Benxun Temple — several dozen paces long and several zhang wide.

As soon as the sky darkened, the young lady of the Shimazu clan had another excuse ready.

"Commissioner, Your Excellency, we East Asians are mostly born night-blind. In the dim light of night we cannot see a thing. Let us wait until daylight tomorrow and fight again!"

De Belasco had spent a long time in Japan and knew that many Japanese did suffer from night blindness, and he also had no idea that after the Shimazu people arrived in the Americas, they had eaten fish and meat in abundance every day and long since eaten their night blindness away. So he agreed to Shimazu Naiji's suggestion — though he was not about to let the Shimazu people off too easily.

He nodded and said: "Then we shall suspend the attack for now. Thirty paces north of Benxun Temple's wall, construct fieldworks from earth-filled straw sacks. Tomorrow at dawn, we shall use the newly built fieldworks as the jump-off position and continue the assault on Benxun Temple!"

"Hai!"

Shimazu Naiji and the several Shimazu clan elders accompanying her all breathed a sigh of relief inwardly — the Great Ming's Warrior King had managed to survive another day. They only wondered where his "thirty thousand reinforcements" had gotten to.

Until the Ming reinforcements arrived, they dared not turn their coats!

Right now Don Juan José had nineteen thousand Spanish troops in hand (José had brought fifteen thousand, De Belasco four thousand), and the Shimazu clan had not only handed over hostages, but most of their forces had been transferred away by Don Juan José and mixed in with Spanish troops. With the 1,200 men under Naiji's control, there was simply no way to overturn the heavens!

What the Shimazu people did not realize was that De Belasco was actually in no hurry to wipe out Zhu Cihuan at Benxun Temple, because Don Juan José's plan was to besiege the point and strike the relief force.

The 2,000 men under Zhu Cihuan were not even enough to fill the gaps between the teeth of nineteen thousand Spanish soldiers. What Don Juan José wanted to devour was the elite main force of the Ming army in the American Prefecture.

And Zhu Cihuan, this prince of the Ming dynasty, was nothing more than fragrant bait to lure the Ming army into coming to his rescue.

While De Belasco was busy besieging the point, Don Juan José was laying out the ambush for the relief force.

The battlefield for striking the relief force had been personally selected by the Minister of War of the Kingdom of New Spain, the Marquis de Gaspala, who was also an old subordinate who had followed Don Juan José through the campaigns in the Spanish Netherlands — it was the great valley the Shimazu people called "Flood Valley."

This valley was not only the sole route south from the mountains of northern California into the Satsuma River valley, but its internal terrain was extremely complex. Some parts were relatively broad, while others were very narrow. And this alternation of broad, narrow, and broad again was precisely the ideal terrain for Don Juan José to strike the relief force and annihilate the enemy.

He first divided the six provisional infantry regiments and one cavalry regiment he had brought to Flood Valley into two parts. One provisional infantry regiment was placed in the open ground at the center of Flood Valley, using the encampment fortifications left behind by the Ming troops (Zhu Cihuan's force) to set up a defense. This regiment's task was to lure the enemy.

The remaining five provisional infantry regiments and one cavalry regiment were placed in another stretch of open ground at the southern end of Flood Valley.

Between these two open areas lay a relatively narrow passage, with gently sloping hillsides on either side, thickly vegetated and suitable for an ambush. But Don Juan José did not place too many ambushers on the slopes — only a small screening force.

Setting an ambush on the slopes on either side of the valley was simply too obvious; as long as the opponent was not a fool, they were unlikely to fall for it.

So Don Juan José's plan was not to ambush the Ming army as they pursued the decoy provisional infantry regiment through this narrow stretch of valley. Instead, he intended to attack when part of the Ming army had passed through the narrow valley and entered the next open valley.

Concentrating the strength of five provisional infantry regiments, he would strike them head-on while the Ming army had not yet had time to pass fully through the valley and deploy their forces! After routing them, he would then send in the cavalry for a close pursuit.

Since Flood Valley was eight hundred li from the Ming army's forward base at Riverside Fort, and the entire route lay through mountain forests with no inhabitants apart from a few Indians, the retreating Ming troops would have no way to obtain supplies.

Therefore, as long as Don Juan José won a single routing victory, he could deal a devastating, annihilating blow to the main Ming force advancing south.

(End of Chapter)