We talked about Toyotomi Hideyoshi's unification of Japan in the last issue, which was the end of Japan's Sengoku period. Just before and after Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan and seized power, Japan launched a war of foreign aggression: the Battle of Bunroku Keicho, and in China, this war has a more famous name - the Wanli Korean War!
Wanli Korean War
At the end of the Azuchi-Momoyama period in Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi inherited Oda Nobunaga's legacy and resources, opened the way to unify Japan, successively quelled the internal disputes and external divisions of the Oda family, and made full use of political and diplomatic skills to subdue the daimyo of the warring states one by one, and finally basically unified Japan at the end of the 16th century
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Just after Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, in 1592 Toyotomi Hideyoshi gathered a large army to invade the Korean Peninsula on the grounds that Korea refused to attack the Ming Dynasty, planning to use this as a springboard to invade the hinterland of the Central Plains
However, the japanese army and Korea's fighting situation was one-sided (at this time, Korea was in a period of internal party strife and decline, completely inferior to the Japanese army trained from the division of the masses), so Korea appealed to Daming, and the Ming Dynasty sent troops to the Korean Peninsula at the request of Korea to fight against the Japanese
Thus began the famous Wanli Korean War in Chinese history, which became the third of five major confrontations between China and Japan in history, which were:
Although the Battle of Bunroku Gyeongcho is not so famous, the impact of this war was enormous, changing the trajectory of China, Japan, and Korea, and laying the foundation for the international environment in East Asia for more than a hundred years...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > overview</h1>
First of all, we must clarify the concept that the war can actually be divided into two parts: the first engagement / the first phase (April 1592 - July 1593) and the second war / the second phase (February 1597 - December 1598)
After the first engagement between Ming and Japan, the Japanese army turned to peace talks and retreated. But immediately in 1597 he led a large army to make a comeback, which was the second engagement. But it is customary for us to classify these two as one major war, the Wanli Korean War
The second question is the question of the name of the war:
Because japan launched the war began in 1592 (the first year of the Japanese Bunroku) and finally in 1598 (the third year of the Japanese Keishō), the war was divided into two stages because of the "interruption" in the middle, the Japanese called the first stage "the Battle of Bunroku", and the second stage was naturally the "Battle of Keicho". When the two were combined, the entire war was named the "Battle of Bunroku Gyeongcho"
Battle of Bunroku Keicho
The invaded Korean side was still a unified dynasty (i.e., Lee's Korea) at the time, but after the modern partition of Korea, the war had a different name
In North Korea, the war is often referred to as the "Namchen Motherland War"; in south Korea, people prefer to name it after the "Nongchen Rebellion"
The Rebellion
At that time, the Ming Dynasty was in the Wanli Period (Ming Wanli 20th to 26th years), and this war belonged to the ming Dynasty's war to help the vassal korea resist Japanese aggression, so this war was called the "Wanli Korean War", also known as the "Wanli Aid Korea War" and "Wanli Korean Battle"
In short, this war involved China, Japan, and north Korea, and all three sides had their own emphases, and of course, this war also brought different historical influences to the three sides
The war was first initiated by Taikoku Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had just unified the whole country on the Japanese side, and as early as the year before the war, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had made sufficient preparations and gathered a large army
On the other side, North Korea is militarized, heavy on literature and light on force, and fierce party strife, which is called "people who do not know the soldiers for more than two hundred years." Therefore, since the beginning of the war, the Japanese army has captured the Korean king Jinghancheng in only one month, expelled The then King of Korea, Li Fu, and occupied most of the territory of Korea (for details, see The Friends Inside, the Wokou Outside, see the Korean Crisis Behind the Wanli War to Aid Korea - A Brief History of Korea)
Map of the Korean War
After hearing the news, the Ming Dynasty immediately gathered 40,000 troops under the command of Li Rusong to resist Japan and aid Korea on the Korean Peninsula, and after a series of victories, the Ming and Japanese sides began to negotiate peace, the Japanese army gradually retreated, and the first phase of the war ended.
Li Rusong
In the first month of 1597, the Japanese army invaded Korea again. North Korea asked for help for the second time, and the Ming Dynasty sent another 70,000 troops to The DPRK to rescue. Shortly after the two sides fought, the Japanese heard the news of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death, so they hastily retreated from the Korean Peninsula.
In the end, the Wanli Korean War ended with the victory of the Ming and Korean forces. However, after this battle, Lee's Korea suffered heavy losses and its national strength collapsed, hastening its demise;
The weakening of the Toyotomi regime on the Japanese side led to Tokugawa Ieyasu usurping the throne and unifying Japan, and subsequently opening the Tokugawa shogunate into Japan's Edo period; the Ming Dynasty also suffered a national strength, which led to the reduction of liaozhen's military strength, allowing the Northeastern Jianzhou Jurchen Nurhaci to expand its power, and eventually making the Manchu Qing a major problem for the Ming Dynasty.
Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor, Joseon Li Fu, Japan Toyotomi Hideyoshi
From a macroscopic point of view, the Wanli Korean War reintegrated the political and military forces of East Asian countries, objectively laying the foundation for three hundred years of peace between the three East Asian countries (of course, it was also because the losses were too great to fight).
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > the beginning of the war</h1>
After Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, in order to quell the dissatisfaction of the samurai in the country with the uneven division of land, and also wanted to consolidate the newly established Toyotomi regime by plundering land and wealth, he decided to send troops abroad in May 1591
Images of Hideyoshi Tsugaomi
In June, Japan sent an emissary to inform The Korean Xuanzu Li Fu that Japan intended to attack the Ming Dynasty under the guise of Korea and assist the Korean side, but at that time, Korea, as the vassal of Daming, was not only a long-time Ming Dynasty, but also quite "loyal" (even after the Manchu Qing Entered the Customs, the Korean side still thought about whether to go south to contact the Southern Ming Court), so the Korean side explicitly refused.
North Korea's Seonjo Lee Jong
Of course, this was also expected by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, so he began to gather a large army, and by the time the war officially began in 1592, the Japanese side had mobilized a total of 300,000 troops (the data is not necessarily reliable, but how many troops were there in Japan at that time?). ）
Among them, 150,000 were divided into army units and nine corps crossed the sea to fight in Korea; 8,750 sailors and 700 ships; and more than 100,000 people in logistics and reserves. The Japanese side has made a bloody mistake
Japanese Army
And this kind of achievement soon appeared: in just one month, North Korea "lost all three and eight disintegrated", ironically, at this time, the most powerful resistance of the Korean side to the Japanese invaders was the rebel army formed by the powerful townspeople, such as the rebel army organized by Guo Zaiyou to resist the Japanese army's onslaught many times, known as the "red-clad general descended from heaven"
And the official regular army was defeated even faster than the speed of escape, so the whole country of Korea fell rapidly, how fast was this? So much so that when North Korea's request for help was sent to the Ming Dynasty, most of the civil and military officials did not even dare to believe it
Japanese troops landed in Korea
Therefore, the King of Joseon sent several groups of envoys to ask for help, and these Korean envoys, in addition to submitting the credentials, did more work to travel to the cabinet ministers, shangshu, attendants, imperial histories and eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty, and even said that they could be attached to the Ming Dynasty, as long as the Ming Dynasty quickly sent troops to rescue [cover their faces]
Of course, the Ming Dynasty still did not dare to believe that North Korea, which had once carried Jurchens, was so unbeaten, so it suspected that North Korea was complicit with Japan, and used the excuse of asking for help to attract the Ming army into Korea and then annihilate it in one fell swoop ([laughing and crying] North Korea's credibility does not seem to be high).
Of course, after some tossing and turning to dispel doubts, the Ming Dynasty came to the final conclusion that "the map of Korea by the Wokou is really China, and the salvation of Korea by our soldiers is really to protect China"!
Then the Ming army began to assemble a large army on the border between China and North Korea, the original Ming army was ready to assemble a large army and then go to battle in one fell swoop, as a result of the urgent request of the Korean side, the Ming army finally sent a small group of troops to enter Korea first, the result was a big defeat, and then the Ming army sent many batches of small troops into the DPRK to support, but it was indeed a big break of the Japanese army, but in the end it was outnumbered, and it could only delay time before the Ming Dynasty large troops were assembled
It is worth mentioning that during this time, Nurhaci also proposed to the DPRK that it could send troops to support, and as a result, although the DPRK was in a hurry, it politely refused Nurhaci's request after repeated weighing and waited for the main force of the Ming Dynasty
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="66" > a big fight</h1>
In August of that year, the central government of the Ming Dynasty appointed Song Yingchang, the right attendant of the military department, to prepare for military affairs and command the world to supervise and raise generals. On October 16, the Ming Dynasty officially appointed li Chengliang, the eldest son of Li Chengliang, the general of Liaodong, and served as the chief military officer of the Imperial Guard of the Sea
Li Rusong's brothers Li Rubai and Li Rumei were deputy commanders-in-chief and led the main ming army to Korea. In order to defeat the Japanese in one fell swoop, the Ming Dynasty recruited 40,000 elites from all over the country, including: 10,000 iron horses in Liaodong Province; 8,000 elite horses in Xuanfu and Datong; 5,000 elite infantry in Jizhen and Baoding; and 3,000 infantry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
In January 1593, the Ming army arrived at Pyongyang Castle, so it fought fiercely in Pyongyang with the First Army led by The Japanese Side Commander Konishi in 18,000, but Pyongyang City was easy to defend and difficult to attack, so the Ming generals made full use of their rich command experience and military tactics and strategies, and finally won the great victory in Pyongyang
Pyongyang Victory
During the chaos of the war, One of the twenty-four generals under kuroda Nagamasa of the Japanese army, Kuno Shigekatsu, was killed by the Ming army, and When Governor Konishi saw that the general situation was gone, he led the remnants of the army to retreat. Immediately after Li Rusong recaptured Pyongyang, he recaptured Kaesong and then turned to Seoul, a battle in which the Ming army wiped out more than 9,000 Japanese troops at the cost of 790 killed
Ming Army
After Li Rusong's great victory in Pyongyang, he took advantage of the victory to pursue and wanted to make a quick decision (because the supply of grain and grass for the Ming army's logistics was a big problem at that time), so he sent his deputy general Cha Dae-woo and the Korean general Gao Yanbo to lead hundreds of cavalry to reconnoiter first
As a result, in the first month of this year (more than ten days after the great victory in Pyongyang), the vanguard troops in charge of reconnaissance encountered more than 100 reconnaissance troops of the Japanese army Maeno Nagayasu and Kato Mitsuyasu at Toshi ridge south of Bihookan, and both sides may have been stunned for a few seconds, and then the two armies charged into battle
Outpost battle at the Bihokukan
Li Rusong received the report and led the headquarters of the elite cavalry of 4,000 troops to rush to reinforcements, only to encounter the Japanese army Tachibana Muneshige's 3200 ambush troops, Tachibana Zongshige first with a surprise attack to fight the main force of the Ming army chaos, but the Ming army quickly reorganized and began to counterattack, the Japanese general Ten Hours Lian Jiuzhong Li Rumei shot arrows killed, it is said that at that time even the commander Tachibana Muneshige's armor was also full of arrows, the Japanese army finally had to retreat to Komaruyama, which is the battle of the outpost of the Bihouguan
Muneshige Tachibana
The Japanese sent Kuroda Nagamasa with 5,000 men to meet Tachibana Muneshige, and 20,000 troops were on the way. Subsequently, Li Rusong and Zha Dafu converged and reorganized their army at the Bijieguan. At this time, the Ming army was far less numerous than the Japanese army, so Li Rusong adopted the strategy of suspecting soldiers
Kuroda Nagamasa
As a result, under a battle of wits and courage, the Japanese side, which was twice as large as the Ming army, surrounded Li Rusong in a regiment, and Li Rubai, Li Ning, Zha Dashou, Zhang Shijue, Fang Shihui, Wang Wen and other Ming generals each fought in small groups with knives, and after 6 hours of fighting between the two sides, Yang Yuan, deputy general of the Left Association of the Ming Army, led 1,000 reinforcements to help the Ming army retreat
During the retreat, after the Ming general Li Rusong took the initiative to break off, the Japanese army saw the Ming reinforcements coming and retreated, and finally ended the battle with the retreat of the Ming army, which was the famous Battle of Bihouguan
Battle of the Bi hoof pavilion
According to the history of Korea, the two armies each suffered 5,000 or 6,000 casualties, but the Japanese recorded that the number of people who participated in the battle was 20,000, which is unlikely, because at that time, the Ming Dynasty also sent more than 40,000 people into the Korean War to participate in the war, and it is even more bizarre that the Qing Dynasty explained that the army killed and wounded 20,000 people in this battle
In short, the heavy casualties of the Ming army in this battle are certain, because at that time, the Ming army led by Li Rusong was almost dead. Of course, the Japanese army did not get much better, because thousands of people in this area were the elite of the Elite of the Ming Army at that time- the Liaodong Iron Horse.
Liaodong Iron Ride
After that, Li Rusong burned hundreds of thousands of millet in the Granary of the Japanese Army in Yongsan, causing the Japanese army to retreat due to lack of food. In May, sichuan general Liu Kui led an army of 5,000 to support, and at the same time the Japanese army also retreated to the Busan area, and then the Ming and North Korean forces fought against the Japanese army, and the Japanese army was basically compressed to the southern Korean area
At the same time, the Korean naval forces on the sea launched a series of counterattacks led by Lee Shun-chan at the left water of Jeolla Province, and the Battle of Yupo took place at this time, which was the first major victory of the Korean army since the outbreak of the Nongchen War.
Li Shunchen
In June 1593, when the war situation was deadlocked, the Korean side sent envoys to accompany the Ming envoy Shen Weijing to Beijing to negotiate peace. In July, the Ming court announced the withdrawal of troops and tribute to Japan (in fact, a great oolong), so Li Rusong led a large army to retreat, leaving only Liu Ling with thousands of people to guard the key entrance.
Thus came to an end the first phase of the war
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="101" > wolf smoke re-emerged</h1>
In 1597, the Japanese army refused to withdraw from Busan, and when The Koreans learned that the Japanese army had invaded Korea again, they immediately sent envoys to the Ming Dynasty to ask for help ([cover your face] This set is all familiar)
And this time the Japanese learned to be clever, first used anti-plots to frame the famous Korean general Li Shunchen for plotting to usurp power, so that Li Shunchen was imprisoned, and finally the drastic change in the war situation reduced Li Shunchen to a soldier, and Li Shunchen, who was more than half a hundred years old, could only join the army in white.
In the first month of 1597, Toyotomi Hideyoshi gathered 140,000 troops and 7,200 sailors and launched the Second War against Korea. In February, the Ming Dynasty commanded the northern and southern armies with Ma Gui as the chief military officer. Wait until May when the Ming army leaves for Korea
Hemp expensive
In August, the Japanese army attacked Sacheon, Namhae, and Gwangju in Korea, and finally attacked Namwon, when Yang Yuan, deputy commander of the Ming Army, led 3,000 Ming troops and more than 3,000 Korean troops to defend Namwon, and after fighting alone for several days, they were forced to break through, and most of the defenders were killed and Namwon was lost.
Due to the fall of Namwon, the strategic situation changed drastically, and the Ming general Chen Yuzhen, who was stationed in Jeonju at the time, immediately retreated, and the Japanese army took Jeonju without bloodshed. Later, the Japanese army captured Huangshi Mountain, Jinju, Gongju and other places, and the outer barrier of Seoul in Korea was lost.
In short, the loss of Nanyuan and Jeonju completely disrupted the strategic deployment of the Ming army and created an unnecessary obstacle for the later counterattack of the Ming army. Of course, the loss of Namwon and Jeonju was due to the fact that the ming army was far lower in number than the Japanese army: at that time, Toyotomi Hideyoshi gathered 140,000 troops, while the Ming dynasty's army in Korea was only 40,000, and later the number of troops increased to 110,000
Therefore, the situation in Korea at the beginning of the war fell into crisis again, and at this time, the Wanli Emperor decided to give full support after discussion, and successively recruited the Ming army to go to the Korean battlefield continuously, but this took time, and time seemed to have become the target of both sides of the war
Wanli Emperor
In order to buy time, Ma Gui, the commander-in-chief of the Ming Army, ordered Xie Sheng, the deputy commander-in-chief, to lead 2,600 troops to Jishan to ambush. As a result, the Ming army encountered the famous Japanese general Kuroda Nagamasa near Jishan Mountain, and the Ming army immediately sent Yang Deng to lead the follow-up troops to arrive after learning the news
Eventually, after some fighting, the famous Japanese warlord Kuroda Nagamasa was defeated, and then the Japanese Army Maori Hidemoto arrived with a large army, and finally Kuroda Nagamasa occupied Minoran Castle. The great victory of Jishan became a classic example of the Ming army winning more with less.
Although the Japanese army later occupied Jishan Castle, it was afraid of the combat ability of the Ming army, so it did not dare to go north to Seoul, and finally gave up the initiative in the war, so the strategic significance of this battle to both China and North Korea was very important.
Ming Dynasty army
Subsequently, the combined forces of the Ming and the DPRK launched a counterattack, the two sides had back and forth, and in December, the Ming army that came to the aid of the DPRK fought a major battle with the Japanese army at Ulsan, and the Battle of Ulsan was greatly damaged by the wrong command of Yang Ho on the Ming side, and finally Yang Ho was deposed and awaited investigation.
The Korean sailors above the sea were almost completely annihilated at the Battle of Seocheon beam. Helplessly, North Korea had to use Li Shunchen again. Lee Soon set about rebuilding the navy at the Right Water Camp in Jeolla Province.
On August 28, 1597, Li Shunchen commanded the rebuilt marine division to fight a decisive battle with the Japanese sailors in the Mingliang Strait, which was known as the Battle of Mingliang
Battle of Mingliang
In this naval battle, the Japanese commander Fujido Takaho led more than 133 warships, while Li Shunchen personally led 14 warships (there are also 12 said) to fight, and the final result was that Li Shunchen defeated the Japanese marine division (this battle is very extensive, all sides have different opinions, everyone is interested in their own research, here will not be carried out)
Takatora Todo
As a result, in October of that year, the news of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death reached the Japanese army as early as August, and the morale of the Japanese army was demoralized and began to prepare for retreat.
When the Japanese army officially withdrew from Ulsan in November, the Ming army took the opportunity to march. On the Japanese side, Kato Kiyomasa led his troops to retreat by boat. The Ming army was assisted by Chen Xuan's admiralty, deputy general Deng Zilong, guerrilla Ma Wenhuan and others, and sent hundreds of warships to the sea mouths of Chungcheong, Jeolla, and Gyeongsang to wait for the Japanese army.
Chen Xuan
When the Ming army found the traces of the Japanese army, Chen Xuan immediately sent the veteran general Deng Zilong and the Korean Li Shunchen to attack jointly and intercept the Japanese troops who had come to the rescue of Governor Xiaoxi at the Luliang Sea
President Konishi
In this battle, Deng Zilong, a veteran of the Ming Army who was more than 70 years old, led three giant ships as the forward to fight the Japanese army, but in the battle, because other warships mistakenly threw firearms at Deng Zilong's battleships, causing the battleship to catch fire and Deng Zilong was killed.
Deng Zilong
Subsequently, Li Shunchen led a fleet of ships to rush into the enemy position to support, only to be surrounded by the Japanese army and killed by stray bullets. However, the Ming army, which had lost its main general, continued to fight. Subsequently, the deputy generals Chen Silkworm, Ji Jin and others led the army to attack the Japanese army
Battle of Luliang
In the end, the Japanese army completed the task of rescuing Governor Konishi, so they fought and retreated and finally fled Korea, and the famous Battle of Luliang ended, which also marked the final end of the Wanli Korean War
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="132" > summary</h1>
Although the Wanli Korean War/The Battle of Bunlu Gyeongcho ended with the victories of the Ming Dynasty and Korea, the three parties involved in the war: Korea, the Ming Dynasty, and the Toyotomi regime of Japan, eventually had to bear the wounds of the war
For example, Japan's Toyotomi regime was directly weakened and then usurped by Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the result was relatively tragic; while Korea's national strength was even weaker, and the country fell into an irreversible chronic death; the Ming Dynasty was even more damaged in its national strength to give the northeast Nurhaci an opportunity to take advantage of it, and finally the Manchu Qing entered the customs to replace the Ming Dynasty...
The Japanese Tokugawa Ieyasu, who rose through the Battle of Bunroku and Keicho, then established the famous Tokugawa shogunate, and then opened the famous Edo period in Japan, and Japan's history entered a new period of development...