Chapter 210 14. The River of Hanging

While Kobayata dispatched capable personnel to replace the scattered outsiders with their own troops, he also gathered archery foot soldiers to replace his fifty iron cannon foot soldiers.

The army had surrounded Kakegawa Castle at this moment. It was obvious that the city had long received reports that Kobayata had unilaterally torn up the alliance and attacked the castle of the Imagawa party in Totomi. With all the castles belonging to the Imagawa party from Ogasayama to Oigawa River on the Makino Plateau either dead or surrendered, Kakegawa Castle did not even have a branch castle to rely on.

But Kakegawa Castle's greatest reliance has never been these. It was built on the Makino Plateau, which is not a particularly dangerous terrain.

First, let me introduce the plateau, which generally refers to the stepped landforms that are distributed in a belt along the banks of the river valley or the coast. The plateau is a flat terrain with a large raised area and a low altitude. The slope in the center of the plateau is gentle, and the surrounding areas are steep, standing upright on the surrounding lowland hills. Some people think that the plateau is a kind of plateau, but generally speaking, a large area of ​​flat land with a lower altitude is called a plain, and a large area of ​​flat land with a higher altitude is called a plateau. The plateau is between the two, with an altitude of one hundred to several hundred meters.

Due to the terrain of the plateau, the Kakegawa River surrounds the city and the moat, and the upper reaches of the Oi River are deep in the valley, so it is impossible to build a dam to cut off the water source. After all, a 100-meter-high dam was just a thought in the Warring States Period.

And because the top of the plateau is gentle and the area is large, Kakegawa Castle has a lot of city defenses, and various towers are densely distributed. Through a variety of city defense facilities, the weakness of the terrain is not dangerous. At the same time, huge granaries and treasuries can be built in various places in the city to store enough food and supplies for the whole city to defend for more than half a year.

These are the advantages of Kakegawa Castle itself. Kakegawa Castle has a greater advantage. With Kakegawa as the center, one after another rolling hills and slopes are planted with tea trees. If you want to take advantage of your military strength and attack the castle from all sides, you must destroy these tea trees.

If it was a samurai named Matsudaira from the countryside of Mikawa who had poor cultural cultivation, was a rough and brainless man, he would definitely not care about his mother and shovel everything for me first. Then next year, he would find that he had worked so hard to build such an important town that controlled the disaster of Yuanjiang, but he could only harvest a few thousand stones of grain a year, which was not enough to compensate the dead samurai.

This has a lot to do with the topography of Yuanjiang. There are small plains along the coast and along the river to grow rice, which is good. But why is it still rich in the north of the border with undulating mountains? He relies on the large-scale tea forests that can make a profit of more than 10,000 kan a year.

This thing is not rice or wheat, which is planted in the first half of the year and harvested in the second half of the year, and harvested endlessly every year. Tea trees are precious. If you cultivate them well and plant them reasonably, you may not see money in three to five years, but it will be successful in ten to eight years. Moreover, tea trees do not produce tea forever. Like normal trees, they will grow old, get sick and die.

So even during the Hanakura Rebellion more than ten years ago, no brainless idiot would destroy the tea forest. After all, the profit of more than 10,000 kan a year was all hard currency, Yongle money! No one would do it unless their brain was filled with a bucket of paste. (Yes! I am talking about a brainless Matsudaira turtle, he shoveled it!)

At this moment, Kobayata was of course very conflicted. The defense of Kakegawa Castle was strict. There were about 2,000 soldiers left behind and farmers mobilized urgently in the city. The military force was very sufficient for such a mountain city. In addition, the Totomi Asahina family had been operating for a long time and the people were attached to it. The lord of the city, Asahina Taitomo, was not there, so everyone embraced his wife and his still-feeding son to hold on together. The actual people in charge were Asahina Carpenter and Asahina Saemon, both of whom were warriors of Asahina Taitomo. As warriors who had been rooted here for hundreds of years, they would fight to the death to defend this solid city.

The right time, the right place, and the right people. Kobayata only has the right time now. After all, the lord of the city is away, and Yoshimoto died in the battle, which has dealt a heavy blow to the morale of the city. The other two are on the side of the city.

When the siege camp was set up, Uncle Tsunayoshi and Iwase Motomasa led their troops to come one after another. Now Kobayata's makeshift team has a few cobblers in the shogunate, and everyone began to discuss the siege method.

Murakami Yoshimitsu gave a basic description of the general situation, and casually drew a sketch of Kakegawa Castle and hung it on a wooden board. The external defensive buildings that can be clearly seen, such as the outer pills, the fire-viewing turrets, the arrow platform, and the heavy turret gate of Kakegawa Castle, were also pointed out one by one.

The phrase "throwing a rat and avoiding the weapon" is really good. The tea trees with more than 10,000 kan per year and the actual need to quickly conquer the city and send troops to Suruga are really hard to choose.

Uncle Tsunayoshi's first idea was to persuade them to surrender. There were 9,000 outside the city and 2,000 inside the city. They could persuade them to surrender. Anyone could see that the difference in military strength was huge. If the soldiers defended the city to the end, both sides would suffer losses and it would be the end of the game.

However, it is not easy to persuade people to surrender. To persuade them to open the city, one is life and the other is territory. Both of these things must be preserved before they will consider it. But facing the biggest piece of fat meat in Totomi, Kobayata agreed, but would Yamanouchi Yoshiharu agree?

Uncle Tsunayoshi remained silent. Iwase Motomasa was brave and asked Kobayata if he had tried to attack. He definitely hadn't. When have you ever seen Kobayata willing to attack the city with human flesh? The means of attacking the city were so inferior that it would be more troublesome if too many people died.

So Iwase Motomasa took the initiative to ask to go up and try. Most of the people in the city were temporarily mobilized farmers, and their fighting ability might be very poor. He succeeded in trying.

Everyone thought so, yes, no problem, so Kobayata gave him his fifty iron cannon soldiers and Ejiri's fifty iron cannon foot soldiers to support him. Set up a three-stage formation of a hundred iron cannon soldiers, take turns to shoot, and provide cover for him.

Iwase Motomasa was indeed a famous samurai of generations, with excellent martial arts. He led his men to rush to the outer Maru Ote Gate of Kakegawa Castle under the cover of iron cannons. Good guy, a bow at a distance and a gun at a close distance, fighting with Asahina soldiers in front of the board.

However, there were too few soldiers to be deployed, so they retreated. The main reason was that the attack area was not wide, and the combat power in the city was really not high. If they attacked from all sides, it would not take a few days, and they would definitely be able to conquer the city with the advantage of military strength.

Kobayata thought that there was no need to rush, and he could try to open up several mountain trails and attack from different gates. At the same time, his most elite 300-man Yori and 500-man Ejiri were used as the final decisive assault force. As long as there was an opportunity to fight at any point, they would immediately rush in to expand the victory, and finally the miscellaneous soldiers would rush in to settle the situation.

At this time, Yamanouchi Yoshiharu's main force finally arrived at Ejiri.