Chapter 8 Second Army Division-5

Katsushige Mizuno, the vanguard general of the Eastern Army, has led his army to Guofenling. The plain of Hanoi, sunk in the present darkness. "It's foggy!" the fifty-two-year-old Shengcheng said to himself. His name was Kunimatsu when he was a child, and he had followed Ieyasu since he was a boy, and he couldn't even count how many battles he had fought in.Based on these years of experience, he knew that on a day of thick fog, when the two armies confronted each other, it would be more or less ominous. The spies came back and reported: "On the twelve-mile-long road from the plain to Fujii Temple, you can see the torches moving."

If there was no night fog, the group of torches could be seen from the high ground where Katsunari Mizuno was standing, but they couldn't see it now. Katsunari drew a number of gunners from Hori Naoyose and Niwa Nobu, and ordered them to march in the direction of the torch, and asked everyone to also carry the torch. The generals who were fighting together laughed and said: "General Hyuga (Katsunari) is too famous, how can he fight with open flames, such a fool who attacks at night!" However, in the dense fog, without lighting, it is difficult to move an inch! Matabei arrived at Fujii Temple and ordered the entire army to stop advancing.It was Yin time (four o'clock in the morning), and it was still dark.

"Wait here for Sanada-sama." Matabei said to his staff. The whole army extinguished the torches together, and suddenly it was dark all around. As the Goto army suddenly extinguished the lights, a team of gunners sent by Katsushige lost their way. Matabe waited. However, there was no sign of the arrival of the Sanada army. --Oops. Time passed by every minute and every second, and it was almost dawn.At daybreak, a small army of more than 2,000 people wriggled on an open Hanoi plain, and would be devoured by tens of thousands of Eastern troops. "Go to Daoming Temple!"

The team set off again.Daoming Temple is the place where Sanada agreed to join forces. They plan to gather before dawn and start fighting at dawn. However, if Sanada's army does not come, Matabe and the others will become a lone army. It was this that Matabei was worried about.After walking for more than four miles, we soon arrived at Daoming Temple.But the Sanada army hadn't arrived yet.They sent spies to look behind, but within a few miles, there was not a single soldier in sight. "We were cheated," someone in the staff said. Sanada Yukimura's elder brother is now in the Eastern Army, and Ieyasu's secret envoys to lure him to surrender often went to Yukimura first through his elder brother. This is well known.Did Yukimura deliberately not arrive on time in order to sabotage this battle?

At a time like this, though, Mabei was not a casually suspicious, simple-minded general. ——Yukimura is a resourceful person. True, but precisely because he is a counselor, even though he agreed to Goto's original plan at a critical moment, in the final analysis, he was just acting according to someone else's plan.Yukimura may not be willing to fight to the death.This is not difficult to see from his marching speed. "So humane!" Even Matabei thought so too. In fact, the matter is very simple. On the day of May 6th, there was a thick fog, and the thick fog seemed to be cruising at the bottom of a pitch-black cauldron. After setting off from Shitennoji, 12,000 Sanada troops set off from Shitennoji, even though they were desperately chasing Goto's army eastward. , but progress was slow.

Yukimura was originally a calm person, but it was rare for him to scold the troops with a loud voice at this time. ——If you are late, you will inevitably die. However, this fog is really helpless! Matabei's misfortune finally began.The sky around Daoming Temple turned pale, and it was dawn. According to the original plan, it should be night here, and the curtain should not be opened yet. But the curtain was drawn. The preparations for acting are not yet ready.More than 2,000 soldiers of the Goto Army, soaked by the thick fog, stood on the vast stage of the Hanoi Plain.However, although the heavy fog brought an ominous omen to the night, when dawn came, it turned misfortune into blessing.Because the fog was thick, the Eastern Army could not find the Goto Army.

"Soldiers, the honorable death on the battlefield should be today!" Youbingwei ordered. He planted flags all over the west bank of the Ishikawa River and set up his battle.After crossing the shoal of the Ishikawa River, the opposite is Komatsu Mountain. should be occupied first. Because of the fog, the enemy on the other side could not be seen clearly.In order to know how the enemy is deployed and how many people there are, Yubingwei organizes a small gun team and goes to Komatsu Mountain to "sentinel" first. The so-called "sentry detection" is actually fire reconnaissance, shooting at an unknown enemy line, and then judging the general situation of the enemy based on the sound, number and location of the returned gunfire.

Through the thick fog, there was the sound of gunfire from both sides, and the soldiers and guards vaguely figured out the scene of the enemy's formation. For the first time in a night, he smiled. "Invincible Army on Xiaosong Mountain." The reason why Katsunari Mizuno of the Eastern Army ignored this important mountain was because he did not understand the geographical situation.A group of generals under Mizuno's tent set up positions at random and rested on the spot to recover from the fatigue of the overnight march, except for Xiaosongshan. You Bingwei ordered to withdraw from the Shichuan River position, crossed the shoal, and the whole army seized Xiaosong Mountain, overlooking the enemy below the mountain.

When the sun was high and the fog cleared, the Eastern Army at the foot of the mountain was in a panic.They looked up and saw that in the mist that was gradually dissipating, there were countless banners waving. "Take this mountain!" Mizuno Katsunari ordered. Without waiting to be dispatched, the generals under the tent rushed to the foot of the mountain first, which is really "too many soldiers without a plan".When there is a huge difference in the strength of the two sides, the side with fewer people has to change tactics, while the side with more people only needs to charge hard.

Matsukura Shigemasa and Okuda Tadashi took the lead and climbed from the front. The generals of the Goto Army, Yamada Geiki, and Katayama Assistant Guards easily defeated the Eastern Army that climbed up in groups. First, they killed the enemy general Okuda Tadaji. In addition, the famous samurai in the Eastern Army who gave away their heads in vain: Takada Kuro Jiro, Ima Takamonoemon, Iseki Hisei, Okamoto Kasuke, Mikota Shirobei, Inoue Shirobei, Shimono Michihito, Awarenbei. The vanguard of the Eastern Army was defeated, and Shigemasa Matsukura, who later became the lord of Shimabara, fled in defeat as if rolling off a cliff.

Matabei on the top of the mountain immediately ordered the sound of the conch horn, and ordered the two forwards, Yamada and Katayama, to chase down the enemy and advance quickly to the Kokufen Pass. There is Mizuno Katsunari's Dazhai. Sheng Cheng panicked.There were only two or three hundred Goto troops rushing over, but they all fought desperately. In addition, the road was narrow, with mountains to the south and cliffs of the Yamato River to the north.Both sides formed a column, one person and one rider confronted each other. What's more, the Martial Guard was overseeing the battle above his head. On the mountain, the horns of the soldiers and guards sounded together, and the sound of drums shook the ground. However, Maetei's vanguard was finally exhausted. Shengcheng continued to invest new forces and began to counterattack.You Bingwei immediately dispatched the Chinese army to replace the vanguard on the mountain, and drove the Eastern army several tens of feet away. "Why didn't Sanada come?" Matabei yelled involuntarily, knowing that complaining would be useless. If there were 12,000 reinforcements from Sanada, the reserve forces could be put into the battlefield one after another to replace the tired soldiers, and at the same time, they would set up fierce firepower on the mountain to shoot at the enemy's formation, then the Eastern Army would surely break up and flee. At this time, Matabei was sitting on a folding stool on the mountain, his face was very bright. "Isn't it fulfilled?" This refers to his original plan. If the Sanada army arrived on time according to his plan, victory would be achieved.Now the facts have proved the correctness of this tactic. "This is not satisfactory." Toyotomi's family was doomed to perish, and Matabei and his subordinate ronin soldiers only needed to end their authentic samurai lives here in a resounding manner. Time is passing. The soldiers of Matabei were exhausted, but they were still fighting back and forth in the melee. As for the Eastern Army, not only Mizuno's First Army, Honda Tadamasa's Second Army of 5,000 soldiers, and Date Masamune's Fourth Army of 10,000 soldiers have all arrived on the battlefield one after another. Seeing that the time had come, the guards kicked up the inverted stool and stood up, and rushed down the mountain with only thirty bodyguards.The moment he pulled the reins tightly and was about to jump down the mountain road, the bullet hit his chest. However, Mataebei did not fall from the horse.His officer Kinba Heiemon was taken aback, and rode his horse over. Yubei slowly turned his head to look at him and said, "Heiwei, cut off my head quickly, and don't let the enemy capture it." He said. He fell down on the saddle, and he was dead. The Second Army of Sanada Yukimura, whom Matabei was eagerly awaiting, finally arrived at the entrance of Fujiidera village before noon, seven hours later than the agreed time.He set off from the entrance of Sitianwang Temple in the middle of the night, so the marching speed was nearly three hours for every eight miles. For a general like Yukimura, who has always used his troops with great speed, to be so slow, it is probably not just because of the dense fog. Although Kazubei had already made an appointment, Yukimura probably changed his mind halfway and wanted to preserve his own troops.The 12,000 Sanada Army is the largest mobile force in Osaka. If this force is easily consumed on the pass of the Kokubun Ridge according to Goto's plan, then Yukimura himself will lose the most heroic place to die. "Matabei should die where Matabei died." Yukimura must have thought so. It's not that he is ungrateful, a military strategist like Matabei should let him die on his favorite and most suitable battlefield, and a military strategist like me also wants to die in a place that he thinks is well planned.He must have thought so. Yukimura deliberately rushed to Fujiidera Village, but only had a few skirmishes with the Eastern Army before retreating immediately. The next day, on May 7th, he fought fiercely with the 180,000 Eastern Army at the most ideal battlefield in his strategy - the high ground of Shitennoji outside the city. . In a field battle where you win more with less, it can be said that he commanded an ideal battle example. In the afternoon, when Yukimura retreated eastward from the west gate of Shitennoji Temple, he was beheaded by Echizen soldier Nishio Nizaemon in Anju Tenjin Temple. The next day, Osaka Castle fell. After all, Xiu Lai did not step out of the city gate.