Territorio Grognard Podcast

🇯🇵 Oda Nobunaga is widely credited with using the world's first effective, large-scale continuous volley fire at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. By employing rotating ranks of 3,000 arquebusiers behind wooden stockades, Nobunaga enabled uninterrupted gunfire, which killed 10,000 Takeda clan cavalry and fundamentally changed Japanese warfare. The Japanese reversed engineered and improved Portuguese arquebusiers and created and mass-produced Tanegashima matchlock muskets. It was more reliable, faster to reload, and was able to fire in the rain. By the late 16th century, the Japanese produced more muskets than any European country. Some estimates say 5 to 1. As the Japanese expelled the Catholics, Spain considered invading Japan from the Phillipines and force convert Japan to Christianity. However, the Spanish realized any invasion force would have been wiped out by samurai armed with more advanced Tanegashima muskets. Also, the Dutch offered to build ships for the Japanese and those ships were going to be reverse engineered to fight a possible Spanish Armada.