The Imjin War (cont)

[RollingWave]

yeah that's what I mean, referring to that Han chinese is basically just a cultural term, no a true ethnic one. since in the history of China it gradually absorbed a lot of other ethnics into the culture, kinda like how western folks almost all loosely refer to any middle eastern / north africa muslims as Arabs, when in fact most of them simply share the same culture and not the same ethnicity.

[Mister D]

yeah that's what I mean, referring to that Han chinese is basically just a cultural term, no a true ethnic one. since in the history of China it gradually absorbed a lot of other ethnics into the culture, kinda like how western folks almost all loosely refer to any middle eastern / north africa muslims as Arabs, when in fact most of them simply share the same culture and not the same ethnicity.

Understood. I knew there was greater amount of biodiversity in China than westerners tend to believe exists. Very interesting.

[RollingWave]

So moving on with the topic.

The Japanese saw that it's greatest problem in the last war was logistics, thus it had made several plans to address that before the war started, one is that they had build a stiring of forts (still around today, they're called Wojo stretching the south eastern coastlines of Korea and filled them with supplies beforehand, the other is that they set forth a plot to remove Yi Sun Shin from command of the Joseon Navy while building up their own.

The plot was fairly simple double agent plot, a Japanese had agreed to help spy on Japan for the Koreans (something they needed seeing how they didn't see the first attack comming) but in fact was feeding them wrong informations, most notablly he had gave a information that would have asked Yi Sun Sin to lead his navy into a big trap, Yi realized that the region was terriblly dangerous and didn't fall for it, but in turn this was flipped as him refusing order , and also further fueled by the silly court rivalries within the Korean court, the end result was that Yi was stripped of his title and even demoted to a common solider in humuliation, and the fleet was given to another command (the guy that had previously let his fleet get destroyed in the initial Japanese invasion at Pusan).

Suffice to say that this had disastor written all over it, and not surprisingly the admiral that replaced Yi decided to immediately seek out the Japanese main fleet and try to attack it, only to find that it was much much larger than their own, and lacking the tactical advantage that Yi had brought, the Korean fleet was in turn annihilated in August of 1597 at the outset of the second invasion. and the Admiral was killed in Action. Only about a dozen Korean vassal survived the battle. out of 169 ship.

The disastor at sea opened the floodgate for the Japanese on land as well, as they stormed into Jeolla province, where they were able to take the city of Namwan, which was guarded by 3000 Ming soliders and a few thousand more Koreans, the Ming general somehow managed to sally out of the city with a few men but was still executed later on for his failure in this battle.

At this point it look like doom and gloom again in Seoul (i've read the court records of that time, basically when the news of the fleet's annihilation arrived the entire court fell slient for a whole hour, and the King basically flipped and ask his official to speak up and no one did, such was the degree of doom), as the Korean court was basically packing it's bags and ready to run north again, even the Ming general there, which only less than 10 thousand men still on his hand, had advice them to retreat to PyongYang until reinforcement arrive.

But a repeat of the initial success of the Japanese in 92 was not to be, and soon the tide began to turn again.

[RollingWave]

So in mid September of 1597, with the Joseon navy all but destroyed and the Japanese forces once again pushing towards Seoul, all looked lost, but then Yi Sun Sin would once again come to the rescue and forever seal his legend as an admiral.

Upon the annihilated of the Joseon fleet, Yi was hastily reinstated as the admiral o the fleet, however with only a dozen ship surviving the previous disastor, the odds looked so bad that one point the Korean court had wanted to simply disband the remaining fleet . But Yi refused and claimed that he can win with the small fleet, and was able to regather some of the surviving sailors, The Japanese meanwhile, was planning a large expedition to capitalize on their recent success, they will sail a combined fleet of some 300+ ships right across the western side of Korean and land close to Seoul, thus resupplying their advancing army and seal the fate of the Korean capital.

Yi was aware of the plans, and he set in motion his greatest battle, the battle of Myeongnyang

The battle took place on the south western edge of Korea, right as the Japanese fleet was about to swing northward. Yi had found a perfect spot where the current was extremely favorable, and also the day's weather was foggy, and then he lured the Japanese fleet in by sending one of his ship as bait.

despite being outnumbered to the extreme, the plan worked, the Japanese were unfamiliar with the strong current in the region, combined with the foggy day and fire from the Joseon ships they quickly fell into chaos, as many ship simply sank from ramming into each other due to the strong current, and the few that did get out were hit by the Joseon ships. more than 1/3 of the Japanese fleet was either sank or had their ship badly damaged. they lost some 8000 men on the day, while the Joseon fleet under Yi had barely lost even a single man. it was an improbable victory in almost every way. And reversed the tide of the war almost instantly.

The Japanese army on land meanwhile, was advancing towards Seoul not knowing what had occured behind them, the Joseon court and many of the Ming generals had wanted to pull back towards PyongYang, but the highest Ming official in Joseon, the newly appointed minister of military of the Ming, Xin Jie, ordered his general to confront the approaching army.

The Ming only had less then 10 thousand men left, but most of them were elite cavalries. so they decided to try and hit the advancing Japanese army on the move and capitalize on their relative mobility advantage. So some 4000 cavalry setout from Seoul and tried to seek out the advancing Japanese army. they met near the modern day city of Cheonan (roughtly 50 miles south of Seoul)

Essentially the Ming vanguard caught the Japanese advanced scouts around the area, outnumbering the small scouting party they were able to beat them back without much trouble, then the rest of the Japanese vanguard force, some 5000, arrived while the rest of the Ming army also caught up. a battle happened the next day where the Japanese was forced back but wasn't decisively defeated. At that point, the Ming detected that the rest of the Japanese forces, some 30k strong was approach, so they retreated from the area.

It wasn't a true decisive battle, but it had surprised the Japanese a bit and now gave them the impression that the Ming's remaining strength in Korea was still signficiant, while they were also ready to fight for Seoul, which made them considerablly more cautious in their advance, this combined with the news that their naval party was badly defeated, made the Japanese daiymos decided to withdrawl from the area and back towards Pusan, this would the last time Japanese forces get so close to Seoul for the rest of the war.

So just months after the second war begun it already saw some dramatic back and forth. the Japanese was forced back to the southern coastlines, though they had also devasted Jeolla province, the only province they really couldn't touch during the last war. so they were not completely without gains. meanwhile the Ming hastily try to reinforce Korea while the Koreans desperately try to rebuild their navy. The tide had turned but the Japanese was not going to go down without more fighting.

[Conley]

Yi defeated a fleet of 300 ships with only about a dozen of his own? Very clever to use the unfamiliar waters against the Japanese. I'm also surprised the Koreans had the influence (after their initial battles with the Japanese) to be able to tell the Ming that they couldn't have a garrison, and convinced them to keep only about ten thousand troops there.

[Mister D]

RW, I'm curious about armaments. Do you have a link to the types of weapons, tactics and so forth? I'm fairly familiar (for a white man, anyway) with the feudal Japanese military but I have no idea what Chinese and Korean armies might have looked like at this time.

[RollingWave]

Yi defeated a fleet of 300 ships with only about a dozen of his own? Very clever to use the unfamiliar waters against the Japanese. I'm also surprised the Koreans had the influence (after their initial battles with the Japanese) to be able to tell the Ming that they couldn't have a garrison, and convinced them to keep only about ten thousand troops there.

I'd guess that it wasn't exactly a hugely popular purposal in the Ming court either, so if they had an excuse to spend less money then why not? The Ming had little to no interest in reality of annexing Korea.

RW, I'm curious about armaments. Do you have a link to the types of weapons, tactics and so forth? I'm fairly familiar (for a white man, anyway) with the feudal Japanese military but I have no idea what Chinese and Korean armies might have looked like at this time.

This is a complex issue....

On the Korean front is a bit simplier, tactic wise, they could be divised into 3 stages.

1.Standing army (this was the army that the Koreans had before the war, obviously it was soon annihilated): This army consisted mostly of professional warriors, usually fighting as heavy cavalry, with bows and sabers and other blunt weapons (like flails) their primary job was to fight the Jurchen Tribesmen in modern day Manchuria that often raided into Korea, so this was the most logical setup to have a small group of mobile and well armed men. the problem of course was that this was an army designed to fight small groups of mobile raiders or at best other cavalries like themself, but they faced something completely different in the Japanese. In the few battles they fought against them, they managed to do some damage to the Japanese army with a frontal charge but were simply too few and the Japnese too disciplined for that alone to work. and when they were defeated the rest of the army simply collapsed (they were emergency callups with little to no training anyway). An adept comparison would be something like 12th Century European Knights fighting 15th century Pike and Shot formations.

2.Righteous Army (this was what the various insurgents usually called themself): after the Japanese took care of the standing army they were mostly fighting against insurgents such as these, they were usually very lightly if at all armored, mostly they'll fight in a hit and run style, ambushing small parties of japanese on patrol of supplying missions. then simply disperse when a bigger party come. the fairly classic guerrila warfare mentality. occasionally they'll make a stand on very well defended fortress. They're often lead by Korean officals left behind enemy lines (including military onces) and occasionally they manage to deploy some gunpowder weapons like rocket arrows, light artilleries piece and sometimes looted Arquebus.

3.Naval: The Joseon fleet's sailor would usually be lightly if at all armored as well, which is fairly typical and logical of course, given that falling into the water with armour on is obviously a very very bad idea, usually only the leading officers would have armour. the weapons they use were things like tridents and hooks and spears. Though in general the Joseon fleet avoided boarding fights when possible, they usually had far more artillery pieces onboard than the Japanese, for the Japanese fleet only a small portion would have any artillery piece at all, and usually only maybe 10 on the largest of them at best, while the Joseon Panokeseon tend to have around 20+ piece on board each.

Also, the Panokseon was a ship designed for close shore operation, that was a big problem for the Japanese, who's larger vassals were made to be Ocean going onces which would be rather clumsy in close shore manuvering while their smaller onces that can manuver in close water were simply too small compare to the Panokseon.

So in short, Yi Sun Sin had a ship that both out manuvered and out gunned the Japanese fleet, and he knows his advantage and disadvantage well, which was why he basically kept scoring ridiculas victories. when the Japanese did win against another Admiral, it was because he had already previously exhausted his rowers befor the confrontation, and also didn't setup in a fashion to avoid close contact, so the end result was that he couldn't get away from the charging Japanese fleet and were caught up and slaughtered.

The Japanese didn't have nearly as many artillery piece, but had many more Arquebus onboard, so even gettnig within relatively close range would have already given the Japanese a considerable advantage.

a Japanese Atakebune usually their largest vassal type.



a Panokseon

[RollingWave]

The Ming situation is far more complexed, but I'll post some picture here first and let you guys get some idea, first is the armour aspect, the late Ming was a transformational period for Armours, the Armours gradually went from a Lamellar type armour like this



To eventually a full Brigadine armour like this one in the Qing period.


To give an idea, here's a drawing of the Ming emperor recieving his generals when they returned from Korea in 1593, this should give you some idea

[MMC]

Any notable warriors running around during this time RW? Skilled Fighters and or experts?

[Mister D]

Thanks, RW. That was a good overview.