Late at night on October 23, residents in Hirado Port in Kyushu, Japan, were already asleep, and a few dog barks were heard from time to time, making the night even quieter. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The Port of Hirado was originally a famous port in Japan, and was once the center of Japan's international trade. At its peak, Hirado Port was home to tens of thousands of foreigners engaged in various types of trade. However, with the promulgation of the Tokugawa Lockdown Decree, the Portuguese and Spaniards were no longer allowed to do business in Hirado, and the Dutch Merchant House was moved to Nagasaki, and the Port of Hirado lost its status as an international trade port. The people lost their trading livelihoods, and the port was declining day by day.

However, because of the fine cloth trade, the port of Hirado has regained some vitality in recent years.

The Tokugawa shogunate did not force the merchants of the Ming Dynasty to trade in Nagasaki, and Li Zhi's caravan had a trading house in Hirado, and they were accustomed to Hirado's channels and traded in Hirado all the time. Hirado had merchants that Li Zhi was familiar with and unimpeded channels, and the Lee family fine cloth that was unloaded from Hirado to the ocean-going ships could be immediately loaded onto small ships in the inland sea of Japan and transported to all parts of Japan.

After Li Zhi expanded the Fanjiazhuang textile factory and sold fine cloth to Japan, the fine cloth trade soon completely defeated the Japanese native cloth, and the trading volume in the port of Hirado was extremely large.

The merchants of Hirado Port, who had been scattered all over the world, returned to Hirado Port, cleaned up the slightly dilapidated merchant houses, and began to trade large sums of fine cloth as dealers. The port of Hirado has become the center of Japan's fine cloth trade. Compared to the raw silk trade in Nagasaki, the fine cloth trade in Hirado was more prosperous and handled a larger amount.

On the night of the 23rd, the Tokugawa shogunate banned the import of fine cloth before reaching Hirado.

At midnight, a fiery dragon suddenly appeared in the field outside Hirado Port, and more than 2,000 samurai and ashigaru of the Tokugawa clan walked quickly to Hirado Port with torches in hand.

Nagasaki was the center of the Tokugawa shogun's management of Japan's international trade affairs, and most of the merchants of the Ming Dynasty and the Netherlands transferred to Nagasaki for trade in recent years, and the Tokugawa family set up the "Nagasaki Shogun" here to manage trade. The Nagasaki Governor had a number of generals under his command, and at this time, Tokugawa Iemitsu wanted to ban fine cloth, and these generals came in handy.

More than 2,000 soldiers soon took control of the port of Hirado. The flickering torches caused the watchdogs in the courtyards of the merchants to bark wildly. The merchants in the port of Hirado were gradually awakened and looked in amazement at the heavily armed soldiers and samurai in the streets, not knowing what was happening.

However, the recent rumors of the ban on cloth have been in the dust, and some businessmen also suspect that these soldiers are here to ban the cloth.

In front of a merchant who directly bought fine cloth from Li Zhi's merchant house, more than a dozen ashigaru didn't even bother to knock on the door, and slammed the door of the merchant's merchant hall open with a bang. Dozens of samurai and soldiers rushed into the courtyard with torches, and rushed directly to the fine cloth warehouse in the backyard.

The head of the merchant family had realized that the samurai of Nagasaki were going to burn the fine cloth on which they depended, and they carried dozens of "heart sticks", or family members, in front of the fine cloth warehouse with wooden sticks, hoping to desperately protect all the property of the entire family.

"Can't burn!"

"You can't burn our fine cloth!"

But in the face of the heavily armed Nagasaki soldiers, this resistance was undoubtedly a mantis arm. The "iron gunners" under the command of the Nagasaki commissioner, that is, the arquebusier, raised the arquebus, which had already been loaded with lead bullets, and pressed the trigger on the heart stick in front of the warehouse. I only heard the sound of crackling gunshots, and blood arrows splashed out from the body of the heart stick. After a few convulsions, the heart sticks collapsed in a pool of blood.

The head of the merchant family was also shot, and the buckshot tore through his feathered garment and mercilessly shredded his body organs. He staggered back two steps, and fell to the ground with a scream.

"Gentaro!"

A pregnant woman ran out of the house crying, wailing, and fell on top of the head of the house.

The soldiers of Nagasaki did not look at the crying pregnant woman, but opened the door of the warehouse with torches in hand, and found tens of thousands of horses of Li Jiajing cloth inside. Several samurai threw torches on top of the densely packed fine cloth, and ignited the goods worth tens of thousands of taels.

The fire rose into the sky like a giant beast, dazzling in the dark night.

The samurai who took the lead looked at the fire and confirmed that the fire could not be extinguished, before waving his hand and shouting, "Next!" ”

At the port of Hirado, fires burned from the courtyards of one merchant after another.

In the trading hall in Hirado, Toshishige Baba, the Tokugawa family's commander-in-chief for international trade, "Nagasaki Shinori", sat in front of the courtyard, sitting on a small chair and holding a fan, as if he were directing a battle in the main battle.

The soldiers of the Tokugawa clan shuttled back and forth through the merchant houses, searching for any possible place where the Lee family's fine cloth could be stored. Soon, all seven warehouses in the merchant hall were found by the soldiers. The hundreds of thousands of horses of Li Jiajing cloth in these warehouses were all ignited, and the dazzling fire burned in the Li Family Merchant Mansion.

After a while, Li Zhi's personnel related to Hirado Trade, including Zheng Kaida, the head of the merchant hall, were also escorted out by the soldiers.

Zheng Kaida is Zheng Kaicheng's younger brother and Li Zhi's cousin. He was escorted by soldiers with spears and forced into the courtyard.

"Manager Zheng, it's been a long time!"

Zheng Kaida glared angrily at Nagasaki and roared loudly: "Racecourse, you have destroyed the property of the Duke of Jinguo of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. No one has ever dared to provoke the Duke of Jin like this, do you know what the consequences are? Are you going to fight openly with the Ming Dynasty? ”

Ma Chang Lizhong sneered and said, "Manager Zheng, you should be cautious when you speak. From ancient times to the present, there have been so many emperors in China, but none of them dared to boast of attacking Japan. ”

"Even Kublai Khan, the Great Emperor of Mongolia, was defeated in the kamikaze that protected Japan. Li Zhi is a prince of the Ming Kingdom, but he dares to boast of attacking Japan, which is really unbearable. ”

Zheng Kaida shouted angrily: "The Zheng family, who dominates the East China Sea and the South China Sea, is far away in Fujian, and the Duke of Jin sent dozens of big ships to serve the Zheng family. How far is Fujian from Tianjin? How far is Japan from Tianjin? The warship of the Duke of Tsu departed from Tianjin, and in five days it could sail to Nagasaki to bombard your camp! ”

"In less than half a month, the army of the Duke of Tsu will be able to reach Edo!"

Hearing Zheng Kaida's words, the soldiers of the Tokugawa family around them looked at each other for a while and laughed.

Baba Toshige stood up and swaggered in front of Zheng Kaida. He stretched out his right hand in front of Zheng Kaida and slapped Zheng Kaida twice on the face.

With a cruel smile on his face, he said, "Zheng Kaidajun, I, Baba Toshige, are waiting in Nagasaki, waiting for your army of the Tsukoku Gong to attack Japan." ”

"But Zheng Jun, you can't witness the army of the Duke of Jin in Japan, I'll give you half a month to leave Japan. If the army of Tsu Guogong does not come after half a month, and you do not leave Japan, I will not be polite to you. ”