CHAPTER 340: CHAPTER 237 CAR FORT_2

He had even once thought of sending Kinoshita Fumijiro to the Chita Peninsula to breed horses for him, simply because horses were desperately scarce, and the Chita Peninsula really wasn’t suitable for large-scale horse breeding. The natural environment was what it was, and nothing he could do would change that. Even the small stable he built up till now wasn’t producing; it was basically about to be declared a failure, and they were switching to raising cattle instead.

But this problem had already been solved after the "trade expedition." The Houjou family was poor and very willing to barter horses from the Takeda family in exchange for Wanjin-produced gunpowder iron cannons, printed textiles, and porcelain. This greatly eased their economic pressures, and once in a while, they could even make a small profit.

The Satomi family was currently feuding with the Houjou family and was unwilling to fall behind. They had even more allies than the Houjou family, and upon discovering that Wanjin merchants were offering relatively high prices for horses, they actively imported horses from the Northeast and North Land Regions, then concentrated them around Tokyo Bay to sell to the Wanjin people.

Of course, warhorses were rarely sold; apart from the batch required by Harano, they generally wouldn’t sell warhorses to Wanjin merchants.

The Houjou family, Satomi family, and even the Takeda family, all guarded strategic resources like warhorses quite closely. The asking prices remained high, and rare famed horses were priced sky-high. Only selected cart horses, pack horses, and the surplus mules and donkeys bred alongside them did they not particularly care about, and were willing to sell or barter for goods.

But even that was good enough for Wanjin. On the production side, warhorses were money pits, whereas cart horses, pack horses, mule horses, and draft horses actually had value.

With a source of horses, and at a time when Wanjin maritime trade was booming, there were plenty of people bringing back these hot commodities. The Wanjin market didn’t hesitate; they immediately launched a Hayek-style intervention, and the price of ordinary horses was halved again and again within less than a month. The Wanjin Army could finally make large, low-cost purchases, and Harano no longer needed to secretly glance at the military budget and clutch his chest, gasping for breath.

Then, after acquiring over a thousand strong cart horses, the Chita Peninsula also wasn’t lacking in timber or carpenters. Harano held back with Chief Engineer Okabe Iyayama for a while, and together they developed the "fortress vehicle."

The prototype came from the Battle of Namyślów in 1419 and the Battle of Sudoměř in 1420. The Hussite Army used "wagon fort" tactics to defeat the charge of over two thousand Royalist cavalry with only a little over four hundred men, and then held off the impact of over a thousand knights of the Order of the Hospital. It shocked the world at the time.

Of course, their victory was also heavily reliant on the position of the fortifications. Back then, Jan Hus made use of ponds, wetlands, and swamps as flanking protection, forcing the knights to attack head-on into volleys of crossbow bolts. But after Harano carefully recalled and reflected, he believed that this "wagon fort" tactic from over a century ago could also be employed by the Wanjin Army, and it was especially suitable for them.

As an engineering guy, he always acted on his ideas. He really did modify the "wagon fort" tactic and implemented it in the Wanjin Army.

The improvements weren’t much—mainly using modified large vehicles as cover to withstand enemy arrows and lead bullets, while matchlock gunmen and small cannons inside the vehicles counterattacked. In front of the vehicle formation, long spear infantry, flail-men, and grenade-throwers were arranged to prevent enemies from forcibly climbing over or breaking through. In the future, he even planned to hide a small cavalry force within the vehicle formation, to launch a counterattack at a critical moment and break the enemy ranks.

Simply put, this was a kind of field defensive tactic. He came up with this clumsy solution for dealing with cavalry or large formations of enemy infantry at a time when primitive matchlock guns couldn’t perform "volley fire."

Matchlock guns just couldn’t form tight firing lines. After firing, the matchcord and sparks would jump and fly unpredictably, and the matchlock infantry usually carried plenty of gunpowder on their persons. If they stood shoulder to shoulder and all fired at once, there was a good chance they’d set off their neighbors’ powder, which could cause immense chaos and seriously damage morale.

Therefore, matchlock guns couldn’t fully stop the enemy from approaching, and matchlock troops still needed long spear and sword-and-shield soldiers and other melee types for protection. But once it came to melee, even if their armor and training were good, it was still impossible to avoid casualties amid the chaos.

But Harano didn’t want to see too many casualties. The strict military discipline on his side was built on the foundation of high welfare and generous pensions. Plus, he only had one province, with agriculture and manufacturing already consuming most of the population. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have that much money to burn. So, he was starved of manpower. To this day, after scraping by, he still had less than 3,000 infantry fully armed—he simply couldn’t bear heavy losses.

Thus, he developed the "fortress vehicle," and planned to play the "turtle tactic" for a while. If anyone came to fight him, he’d deploy the vehicle formation and exchange fire with the enemy, aiming for a high exchange ratio and never taking a loss. If the enemy ignored him, he didn’t care either. Anyway, he was holed up on the Chita Peninsula, unthreatened, and he’d just slowly crawl onto enemy turf, bit by bit eating away at their foundations, or threatening their vital points, forcing them to throw their heads against his "fortress vehicles."

Anyway, that’s what he planned to do. Sacrificing some mobility was just the price to pay. After all, there was no such thing as a flawless tactic. Wanting both stability and speed? It’s not that easy. In war, leveraging your own strengths is what matters—no need to strive to be a perfect "hexagon warrior"!

It’s just that the "fortress vehicle" had only just begun deployment, and he wasn’t sure how well this thing would perform in Japan with all its rivers and mountains. This trip to help Mi Jiulang as a sideshow was also a chance to observe its effect on the march—consider it a live, low-intensity field exercise.

So far, it looked...

He had well-trained engineering units, so getting vehicles across rivers and such wasn’t a problem. On the move with the army in large groups, their speed, damage rate, and repair rate all matched previous test results, so overall, they were usable.

At the very least, they could serve as infantry support transport without issue, and these vehicles could also pull considerable supplies and tents, increasing the endurance of large infantry units in the field. They could even transport small cannons and move them around quickly, functioning nicely as light artillery or munitions carriers.

But he’d still have to watch a bit longer, see how compatible these were with the army—would losing a few in action cause confusion within the formations, and so on. The Wanjin Army also needed time to adapt to long-distance marches with "fortress vehicles," and officers and NCOs would need to gain experience handling breakdowns and other sudden issues.

Harano wasn’t the least bit concerned by Hosokawa Shigekatsu’s cautious surveillance. After seeing so many historical figures, he was thoroughly disillusioned; he mostly couldn’t be bothered to interact. Along the way, he kept discussing "fortress vehicles" and related topics with his officers. Realistically, this trip would probably only serve to test their performance on the march. He’d hardly get the chance to truly use them in combat.

The real battlefield for these things was always going to be the Ise Peninsula.

Once the performance and operating procedures were fully ironed out and the timing was right, he’d take a few hundred "fortress vehicles" to the Ise Peninsula, advancing bit by bit—wherever he moved, he’d hold that ground, firmly securing the main territory of Wanjin.