Now, there are a bunch of netizens on the Internet, as soon as they see someone praising the strength of China (including Han Tangming and modern China), they will jump out and satirize it a sentence or two, or take some outdated information and relatively low-credibility historical records to blind people, people say that they want to make you Chinese not arrogant, be modest, in fact, just want to maintain the cultural history of other countries that they are interested in. The most typical example is that some lovers of Japanese culture, in the name of rationality and objectivity, actually step on one by one, ignore historical facts, and brag about what "ancient Japan was strong".
Ming cavalry.
Japanese samurai.
How strong was Japan in ancient times? Can you compete with China? I think the results and process of the Wanli War of Resistance against The Japanese War, which took place at the end of the sixteenth century, are the most convincing for this issue, because at this time the gap between China and Japan is theoretically the smallest, and we will divide the war into three parts: the battle between tomorrow's two armies for Pyongyang and the towns around Pyongyang, tomorrow's two armies' tug-of-war in the south of the Korean Peninsula, and tomorrow's naval battle between the two armies.
First, tomorrow the two armies will fight for Pyongyang and the towns around Pyongyang.
The battle between the Chinese and Japanese armies around Pyongyang began with Zu Chengxun's sneak attack on Pyongyang in April 20120 and ended with Li Rusong's army attacking Pyongyang the following year, when Governor Konishi led more than 6,000 remnants of his army to flee to Wangjing. Regarding Zu Chengxun's attack on Pyongyang, which has been discussed in detail above, this is only a small-scale contact between the Chinese and Japanese armies, and it is not informative. The real confrontation between the two armies was the battle of Pyongyang by Li Rusong the following year. Before the war, Li Rusong once gave Liu Chenglong encouragement, saying: "If I use cannons to pass five or six miles, how can he be a yahweh?" Although this passage is suspected of exaggerating its own force, it also points out the gap between the equipment of the Chinese and Japanese armies, the Heavy Firearms of the Ming Army are far more than the Japanese Army, and the single firearms in addition to conventional firearms such as fast guns, single-barrel guns, and bird guns, there are also Ming rockets and poisonous rockets. It can be seen that in terms of firepower, the Japanese army is not an opponent of the Chinese army at all. This is evident in this battle.
Ming arms wrench.
Small artillery of the Ming Army.
Before the Ming army attacked the city on a large scale, the Japanese garrison commander Konishi once sent his son-in-law Zong Yizhi to lead troops to attack the Ming army camp, but it was blocked by Li Rubai's rocket array, and the Japanese army could not resist the powerful firepower of the Ming army, and threw thousands of corpses back into the city. The next day, Li Rusong attacked the city in a big way, and the Japanese "Conquest of Han Weiluo" recorded that the Ming army at that time: attacked it with cannons, the sound shook the ground for tens of miles, the mountains were moving, the rockets were empty, the smoke covered the sky, the arrows entered the city everywhere, and the grass and trees were burned. "The Japanese were killed by artillery, killed by rockets, and killed by poisoned rockets. The Japanese general Yoshitomo Ōtomo, who was near Pyongyang, feared the Ming army and led his troops to escape. The Japanese generals of Wang Jing of Korea did not dare to send troops, Pyongyang City was breached in only one day, Andi Commander Konishi led the remnants of the army to flee, and after inspecting the troops, the first army, which had nearly 20,000 people, only had less than 5,000 people left at this time. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army suffered such a crushing defeat when it first faced the Ming army head-on. In this battle, the Japanese army collapsed like a turkey tile dog under the powerful firepower of the Ming army, which shows the large difference in strength between the two countries.
Ming artillery in film and television dramas.
Tomorrow, the two armies will engage in a tug-of-war in the southern coastal areas of the Korean Peninsula.
In the twenty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar (1596), negotiations broke down tomorrow and the war resumed until 1598. During this period, the two armies fought in the Battle of Namwon, the Battle of Jisan, the Battle of Ulsan, the Battle of Island Hill Castle, the Battle of Suncheon, the Battle of Siju, and the Battle of Luliang. Among them, the difference in strength between the two sides in the Battle of Nanyuan was too large (3,000 Ming troops and 50,000 Japanese troops), and the Ming army's deception in the Battle of Jishan made great achievements. What can really reflect the strength of the two countries is the war in the Ulsan and Suncheon areas.
The Battle of Ulsan began in November of the 26th year of the Ming Dynasty (1598), when Ming Yanghao led 20,000 troops to besiege Kato Kiyomasa at Ulsan, and after a long time, the Uighur reinforcements were so large that the Ming army was defeated and retreated, and thousands of people were killed. The Battle of Suncheon Wucheng began in September of the 26th year of the Wanli Calendar, when the Mingxian coalition forces, led by Liu Ting, Chen Lu, Li Shunchen, and Quan Li, besieged Xiaoxi's governor Yu Shuntian, which was also long and unkempt, and later due to the fiasco of Sizhou Dong Yiyuan, the coalition forces had to retreat. To be fair, the Second Wanli War of Aid to Korea was not well fought, and tragic defeats appeared one after another. However, if you look closely at these battle records, you will find that the victory of the Japanese army is often just accidental. For example, in the Battle of Ulsan, at the beginning of the war, the Ming cavalry first defeated the Japanese army that went out of the city to fight, and then the general Mao Guoqi led the army to conquer the Japanese army's Muzha outer city, the Japanese defenders were in chaos, at this time, Yang Hao actually ordered Mao Guoqi to organize soldiers to cut the first rank, it turned out that he had to wait for Li Rumei's Liaodong cavalry, the reason was that he and Li Rumei had worked together in Liaodong, and wanted this old colleague to grab the first merit, and as a result, during this time, the Japanese army re-deployed. Even more tragic is the Battle of Sizhou, the original Ming army is about to break the city, Shimazu Yoshihiro is ready to cut his abdomen to commit suicide, the result of the Ming army has artillery gunners operation error, the cannon fire exploded, incidentally ignited the ammunition depot, the Japanese army took the opportunity to go out of the city to counterattack, so the Ming army collapsed, three thousand people were killed, four hundred people were captured, and the Korean army that fought together also died thousands of people. The direct result of the defeat of Sizhou was that Liu Ting, Quan Li and others in Shuntian had to retreat.
Japanese army.
Although these battles were quite ugly, on the whole, the Japanese army was still compressed in the coastal areas of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, and there was no ability to counterattack at all, and these battles were all passive defense, so in the end, even if Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not die, it would be sooner or later for the Japanese to be driven out of the sea.
battleship.
3. Naval warfare between the two sides.
Tomorrow's biggest maritime clash between the two sides will be the Battle of Luliang. In 1598, Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, the five elders of the Japanese regent ordered the Japanese army in Korea to retreat, Shimazu Yoshihiro, who was stationed in Sizhou, decided to go to Suncheon first to pick up Konishi's headquarters and return to China, only to be ambushed by the MingXian coalition forces in the Luliang Strait, almost completely destroyed, and Shimazu Yoshihiro only returned to Japan with dozens of broken ships that had escaped.
It is no exaggeration to say that this naval battle was nothing more than a massacre. The tall ships of the Ming Dynasty army were like wheels crushing insects, sinking and sinking the Japanese warships one by one, and all kinds of firearms showed their might, and this battle sank a total of 200 Japanese warships and drowned more than 10,000 people, while the allied forces suffered minor losses, the Ming army lost two warships, the Korean army lost four warships, and the allied casualties included Deng Zilong and Li Shunchen.
Ming Army Marine Division.
Li Shunchen.
This war fully shows that Japan is very weak in the face of China, and it is the same in every way. The victory of wanli in the war to aid Korea was not only due to the strong combat effectiveness of the Ming army, but also supported by China's national strength at that time. As for what the History of ming says: "China and North Korea have no chance of winning." "Isn't that ridiculous?