Chapter 763: Tokugawa is just a chicken (third update, please subscribe)
When Saigo Takamori boarded a merchant ship to Tokyo to present his samurai register to the Ming Emperor, the battle against Tokugawa Shigemitsu had reached its final stage.
Nearly 50,000 Tokugawa troops withdrawing from Nagoya were blocked in the mountains between Tsu and Nara. One thing that is certain is that Tokugawa Shigenari was not a brainless man. He commanded his troops into the mountains, not only avoiding the bombardment of naval heavy artillery, but also making maximum use of the mountain advantages to undermine the firepower advantage of the Ming army and give full play to the military advantage of the Tokugawa army.
It can be said that Tokugawa Shigemitsu's plan was perfect.
But times have changed!
Sometimes plans seem perfect, but due to the changes of the times, the so-called plans may very likely become a joke.
Almost as soon as Tokugawa Shigemitsu led his army and tried to retreat from the plains to the mountains, they were discovered by an airship in the sky.
Airship troops.
As early as last year, the Ming Dynasty had already dispatched sixteen airships. These airships were not many, but they were the only air force in East Asia at that time.
It can be said that the Ming Dynasty spent a huge amount of money for Japan.
These airship troops hovering in the sky are proof of this.
"As long as we enter the mountainous area, we can fight with the Ming people and strive for decent peace terms."
Tokugawa Shigetsugu never thought that he would have any chance of winning the war with the Ming Dynasty. He just didn't want to be a "chicken".
Since you don’t want to be a “chicken”, then find a way to give it a try!
As long as he can win a beautiful victory, he can force the Ming Dynasty to negotiate with him!
If Tokugawa Shigetsugu had heard what Emperor Zhu said, he would definitely not have thought so - what does it mean that the empire cannot be challenged?
The essence is that in the face of failure, the empire will not only not back down, but will redouble its investment to preserve the dignity of the empire and let the world see that the empire will not tolerate any challengers or disruptors of order.
If he tried to force the Ming Dynasty to sit at the negotiating table by winning, then his wishful thinking would have been wrong from the very beginning.
Facing defeat, the Ming Dynasty would not negotiate with him, but would mobilize more troops to completely wipe them out from this world.
Because only in this way can we deter the villains, and only in this way can we make others full of awe of the empire.
After all, the existence of the empire itself requires respect from the outside world. Compared with other things, the dignity of the empire is undoubtedly the most important thing.
But he obviously didn't have the chance to understand this.
Just as Tokugawa Shigenari was thinking this, someone in the marching column looked up at the sky.
"What is that?"
The people in the marching column looked up at the sky with some confusion.
Although airships had been used in the war in Europe several years ago, most Japanese were extremely unfamiliar with them. Perhaps some of them had heard of airships but had never seen one.
In this way, the Tokugawa army, carrying old rifles and pushing bronze muzzle-loading cannons, followed the direction of the sound and looked towards the northeast. A dozen white shadows appeared in the sky. If you didn't look carefully, you might even mistake it for Yunnan.
Is...is it an airship?
It looks a bit like white clouds.
Just as Tokugawa Shigemune was thinking of the flying machine he had heard of invented by the Ming Dynasty, he saw countless black spots falling from those "white clouds".
"Chiu..."
The whistling sound of the bomb's tail pressing the air finally reminded Tokugawa Shigemitsu of Westerners' descriptions of airships.
"It's an airship!"
With a loud shout, Tokugawa Shigemitsu jumped off the tall Western horse and rolled into a pit on the side of the road.
From the very beginning, Tokugawa Shigemitsu's march was destined to be a journey of death.
Sixteen airships began carpet bombing in front of the Tokugawa army's marching column - this is a term coined by the Ming Dynasty's floating troops, the bombs cover the ground like a carpet.
The dozens of tons of bombs dropped by the airships were not ordinary bombs, but cluster bombs. Those small bombs dropped from wooden boxes fell from the sky like raindrops. After exploding in the valley, millions of fragments whistled in the air, like a sickle cutting grass, knocking down the Tokugawa army that had not yet reacted.
Lying in a pit on the side of the road, Tokugawa Shigetsugu only heard bursts of explosions like a continuous string of gunfire. In the violent explosions, many people were swallowed up by the smoke of the explosions. They were either blown into the sky or blown into pieces.
He saw that his retainer Laochu had fallen off his horse at some point and was lying on the ground in the grass by the roadside. The fragments of the bomb had severed his artery and blood was gushing out from his neck like mist. His hands were covering his neck and his whole body was twitching constantly. Not long after, the twitching stopped.
“Boom! Boom!”
Amid the successive explosions, a gunpowder barrel on an ammunition truck was also detonated. For a moment, flames shot up into the sky, debris scattered everywhere, and the continuous sound of explosions like firecrackers continued to be heard in the flames, and bullets in the explosions whizzed out of the ammunition truck and flew around.
In this lightning-like bombing, the entire valley pass was completely turned into a slaughterhouse, with cluster bombs being dropped continuously from the air. After the bomb box exploded in the air, countless small cylindrical bombs were ejected. This bomb weighed only 1 kilogram, with a killing radius of more than 20 meters, and could produce a large number of fragments when it exploded. According to the experience of the Ming army during the Franco-Prussian War, this bomb could effectively kill the enemy's manpower. This time, in order to prevent the Tokugawa army from escaping, and of course to kill the army as much as possible, the floating troops used this weapon, which was called "extremely inhumane" in Europe. Thousands of small bombs blew the Tokugawa army exposed in the wilderness into blood and flesh.
The battlefield completely turned into a slaughterhouse.
The carpet bombing ended quickly, just like a storm, it came quickly and went away quickly. After a round of bombing, the airships descended in altitude and circled over them again. Looking up into the sky, suddenly a red muzzle flame flashed on one side of the airship, and dense bullets fell from the sky like raindrops.
Teams of Tokugawa troops who were fleeing to the trees on the roadside to avoid the bombing were knocked to the ground by the 30mm Gatling cannon on the airship. The shells tore their bodies apart and then exploded in their flesh and blood. Shrapnel and blood mist flew all around, breaking people's flesh, bones and arteries. The blood of people with broken arteries gushed out like fountains, and beautiful red blood flowers bloomed in the wind.
Blood flowers were flying in the air.
When the bodies of those hit by the shells were torn in two, only half of their bodies were left, and they were still screaming and crying.
If there is a hell, this must be it.
After about half an hour, the long bombing ended. The long and narrow valley had turned red. There were piles of red corpses and red body fragments everywhere. The trees in the valley were burning. On the treetops of some trees, there were still pieces of meat, broken limbs, and internal organs such as intestines and lungs hanging. In the air filled with the choking smell of sulfur, there was a peculiar stench of corpses, a bit like the smell of feces.
But at this time, no one cared about the smell. There were still many soldiers wriggling, struggling, groaning, and crying in the blood and flesh. Some uninjured soldiers automatically dragged the wounded out and helped bandage and give first aid.
Looking at the airship going away, Tokugawa Shigemitsu brushed off the dust on his body and stood up from the pit. Looking around, all he saw were broken limbs and arms all over the ground, and people struggling in a sea of blood.
"This, this is the airship..."
Just then, a terrified scream suddenly came from the distance.
"Monster, monster..."
The ones coming were none other than the armored forces of the Ming Dynasty. There were not many of them, just an armored battalion with only twenty-three "Tiger" armored vehicles. With the roar of their engines, they rushed towards the Tokugawa army at full speed along the valley.
They rushed towards the Tokugawa army like tigers. As soon as they met, the machine guns on the armored vehicles started firing. In the rapid sound of machine guns, those Japanese soldiers who had luckily escaped the bombing were knocked to the ground before they even had time to run away.
Although many Japanese fought back with their rifles, the bullets only knocked off a layer of paint when they hit the steel plates of the armored vehicles.
The Japanese who tried to fight back were also beaten to pieces by the machine guns on the armored vehicles. In this valley that was originally like a slaughterhouse, blood and flesh were splattered everywhere. The limbs broken by machine guns and the pieces of flesh from bombings mixed together, turning the entire valley red.
The red blood gathered into a stream and flowed there like a brook.
For the surviving Tokugawa troops, apart from looking at the Tiger armored vehicles rolling towards them in horror, there was simply no way for them to stop the advance of these armored vehicles.
Some desperate people even raised their samurai swords and slashed at the armored vehicles, and then they were knocked to the ground, their bodies crushed into meat paste under the solid rubber wheels.
Watching the approaching armored vehicles, Tokugawa Shigetsugu's eyes were filled with despair. This despair was not because he saw loyal and brave warriors falling under the guns of the armored vehicles, but because he saw power, a power that was irresistible.
Is this... the power of the Ming Dynasty?
This kind of power is really something that humans cannot resist! Oh, really.
Since I can't resist it, so be it.
Just when this thought came to his mind, he felt something hit his chest. At that moment, he felt a little burning inside his body, and then all the strength in his body seemed to be drained away, and he fell down softly...
(End of this chapter)
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