There is also a war in history in which China sent troops to Korea to fight against invaders, that is, the War of Resistance Against Japan and Aid Korea during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. In this war, the Ming army also won. Like the Volunteers' War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, this war was fought more than once before the invaders were defeated. This war was the Wanli Korean War that took place from 1592 to 1598.
Schematic diagram of Wanli Korean War
From 1467, Japan experienced a century of war, which is called the Warring States Period of Japan. Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose gradually at this time, and gradually unified Japan. At this time, Toyotomi Hideyoshi played the idea of North Korea, and he wanted to attack the Korean Peninsula.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
He did this for two purposes: first, to expand his territory, because in his mind, he was the God of War, and even he planned to conquer China and India after seizing the Korean Peninsula. His slogan at that time was "Conquer and destroy Korean territory, occupy Daming and land in India". Another purpose is that although Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed the unification of Japan, the Japanese samurai class was very dissatisfied with the land distribution policy of the country at that time. At this time, he needs more land to distribute to these people. So he expanded and invaded abroad.
In fact, in the eyes of the Japanese at that time, the end of the world was India. If he knew the size of Eurasia, he might readjust his slogan.
At that time, the Japanese thought India was the westernmost place in the world.
In contrast, in the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Wanli had been in power for more than ten years, but the situation in the Ming Dynasty was not good. Emperor Wanli was not an industrious and capable emperor. He was too lazy to deal with the civil servants who remonstrated all day in the court, so he hid in the palace and stopped going to court. As a spent force of the Ming Dynasty, only the cavalry in the north and the troops left by Qi Jiguang in the south could fight. Compared with the territory of the Ming dynasty at that time, this fighting capacity was far from enough. Moreover, at that time, the Ming dynasty was completely ignorant of Japan's intention to invade the Korean peninsula.
Besides, North Korea didn't fight for 200 years. If we really want to fight, we may not even know how to use weapons. Because North Korea was close to the Ming Dynasty and Japan at that time, they felt that these two countries would not wage war against them.
A ship carrying soldiers in war.
Here, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is ready to start his own offensive arrangements. In order to formally go to war, he even specially asked the envoy to send a letter to the then King of Korea, meaning that you stay honestly, bro, I'll hit you first, then the Ming Dynasty, and take you both away together.
After receiving this letter, King Han was powerless, because the Korean war was in full swing at that time and he had no time to take care of this Japanese provocation. I'm not in the mood to deploy troops to resist the coming Japanese aggression.
In this way, 1592, Toyotomi Hideyoshi led 100,000 Japanese troops across the coast and landed in Busan, Korea, and started a war of aggression. The Japanese army was invincible all the way. After occupying Seoul, Kaesong and Pyongyang, he won seven of the eight roads in North Korea. Korean king Liu Yun was forced to go to Yizhou near the border of China.
At this time, North Korea came back to the taste: I quickly asked for help from the Ming Dynasty.
We must transfer reinforcements, or we will die. He also presented the gauntlet given to him by Toyotomi Hideyoshi at that time to Emperor Wanli.
In the Ming Dynasty, after receiving frequent calls for help from North Korea, they were the first to take korean king to China for protection.
The Japanese army once crossed the Yalu River and entered the sphere of influence of Jurchen, but it was beaten out of the water by the Jurchen Coalition forces with strong combat effectiveness and fled directly back to the Korean peninsula.
Weapons used in war
The Ming dynasty began to send troops to formally fight against the Japanese army. Initially, 5,000 cavalry troops were sent as vanguard troops to enter North Korea and attack Pyongyang. The leader is Hezu, whose purpose is to test the combat strength of the Japanese army. There were 20,000 Japanese troops in Pyongyang at that time.
5,000 Ming troops rushed into Pyongyang from Qixingmen. They thought they could meet other soldiers at once, but it was not people who greeted them, but Japanese soldiers with a ghost face and a lion's head.
Where have the military forces of the Ming army seen such a scene? They thought they were in the underworld, and they were frightened. Coupled with the heavy rain that day, the Ming weapons deteriorated, and in a panic, the Ming cavalry fell into a quagmire. The Japanese army shot at the Ming cavalry from two directions with shotgun. Two thousand cavalry, including Shi Ru, were shot in the Ming Dynasty.
Lost the first battle. Zu Chengxun returned to China with the defeated troops.
Soldiers of the Ming dynasty
After this battle, the terrible and powerful rumors of Japanese pirates in the Ming army spread like wildfire. Emperor Wanli was even more surprised to see this result. Then he ordered Li, who had just put down the rebellion in Ningxia at that time, to lead 40,000 Ming troops to re-enter Korea to fight the Japanese.
Judging from the number of troops at that time, the Ming army was not dominant, and most of these soldiers, such as Song Li, had only mediocre combat experience, and they were also at a disadvantage in the face of a rugged and completely unfamiliar place like North Korea.
Therefore, before the war, Li used a trick as a cover: first, he sent three envoys to the Japanese army, claiming that the two sides could negotiate without using force. This move puzzled Konishi Yukinaga, then commander-in-chief of the Japanese army in Pyongyang. He also sent more than twenty people to prepare for Li. So, Li directly ordered the arrest of these twenty people, three of whom were taken alive, and the rest died and escaped.
When the Japanese saw that these people did not return, they sent a group of messengers to inquire about the situation, and the Ming army found some reasons to prevaricate. It was not until the first month of 1594 that the Ming army reached the gates of Pyongyang that the Japanese army realized that it had been cheated. They immediately closed the city gate and could not hold on any longer. The Ming army directly began to attack, and the war began.
Soldiers who attacked the city
After a day of fierce fighting, the Ming army used its own equipment advantages to hit the Japanese army hard. Konishi Yukinaga saw that reinforcements were not available, so he had to lead down archers to escape. The Ming army and the Korean army besieged and intercepted together, annihilated some Japanese troops fleeing south, and seized the opportunity to recover the Yellow Sea, Ping 'an, Gyeonggi and Gangwon.
In this battle, the head of the Japanese army captured by the Ming army alone was more than 1600, and the Japanese army lost more than 1 10,000 for other reasons. The Ming army killed 796 people.
On the 24th day of the first month, Cha Dashou, a pioneer of the Ming army, led 3,000 cavalry to Wang Jing in North Korea, which is now Seoul. He met a handful of Japanese troops in the northwest of the capital, and Cha Dashou quickly defeated them. Subsequently, the Japanese army dispatched more than 20,000 people from the city to fight, and the Ming army retreated in time and was surrounded in the same place.
When Li heard the news, he immediately led more than a thousand pro-guards to survey the road into Beijing and lift the difficulties. When I saw Li's banner that day, they immediately turned around and ran directly towards him. Surrounded by the Japanese army, Li fled at the cold feet, and Lieutenant Li Yousheng died in the process of protecting Li.
The Ming army was surrounded by Japanese troops.
The fighting continued until midnight, and China officer Yang Yuan led a thousand infantry to rescue Li. The Japanese army felt that the fighting time was too long, and if it continued, I was afraid that the main force of the Ming army would come, so I stopped fighting and retreated to the city.
Since then, the confrontation between the two sides has been glued together, and there has never been a large-scale battle.
However, the Japanese army coming across the sea was facing the problem of insufficient supply, because there was always a general at sea behind the Japanese army at that time, and Li Shunchen attacked the Japanese supply line at sea with his improved turtle boat, which made the Japanese army greatly passive. It was this year that there was a famine in Gyeonggi Province and Gyeongsangdo Province, which had not happened for many years. Li sized up the situation and sent someone to sneak attack the Japanese Longshan granary, and ten thousand stones of grain were burned completely. At this time, many Japanese soldiers were unwilling to fight, and some even sneaked back to China.
Seeing this situation, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the troops to retreat from Wang Jing in April 1593, but still left tens of thousands of troops to occupy the South Fourth Road of Korea, and the two sides started a tug-of-war at the border.
Then the two sides entered the negotiation stage, but the negotiations failed. The two sides sent troops to fight, and the Japanese army sent troops to North Korea in large numbers. The Ming army also sent a large army to support it, so it kept fighting back and forth.
After six years of fighting, Toyotomi Hideyoshi died of exhaustion in this war. The Japanese army began to retreat from the sea to China, and the Ming army and the Korean navy took this opportunity to intercept the Japanese army. Among them, the naval battles in Liang Ming and Lvliang caused tens of thousands of Japanese troops to die in the vast sea, and the famous North Korean Li Shunchen also died heroically in the process.
The image of Li Shunchen in film and television dramas.
Since then, Japan has completely lost North Korea.
The war that lasted for seven years is over. The three parties involved, China, Japan and North Korea, were seriously injured in this war.
In these seven years, the Korean peninsula has completely turned into a human purgatory, and life has been ruined. Although all the territory was successfully recovered, it was greatly weakened. This is where the Korean people's resistance and vigilance against the Japanese began.
As the late Ming Dynasty, this campaign consumed a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources, making the already weak Ming Dynasty even more fragile.
Japanese Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not realize his great ambition through this war, but died of depression. Subsequently, the remnants of Toyotomi Hideyoshi were defeated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, which opened a new era of shogunate.