"Winter Campaign"
After the publication of material about the Battle of Sekigahara and the current state of the castle in Osaka, many wanted to know, and how did it end there at all? Well, yes, three years after the battle, Tokugawa Ieyasu became a shogun, that is, he received the highest post in the state after the emperor, which had been vacant since the commander Oda Nabunaga, thirty years before all these events, ended the Ashikaga Yoshiaki shogunate. Kobayakawa Hideaki, the main Japanese traitor in history, also got everything he wanted, but two years later, it is not clear why (or maybe it’s just clear ?!) went crazy and … died.
Ishida Mitsunari, the leader of the "Western", sawed through his neck with a bamboo saw, but Toyotomi Hideyori, Hideyoshi's son, was still considered the heir to his father, and his family remained the richest and most influential in Japan. Moreover, many princes believed that the new shogunate was nothing more than a temporary phenomenon. In addition, Hideyori was on the side of his youth, and against the Tokugawa - his old age. True, Ieyasu had sons and, above all, the eldest son, Hidetada. He could leave the title of shogun to him. But Hideyori in this case became a kwampaku - chancellor, and the situation of confrontation between the "west" and "east" could repeat itself again! And if anyone understood this better than others, it was Tokugawa Ieyasu himself. Understood, but did not try to force events. Another, having received power, would immediately start stuffing his pockets, execute enemies and have mercy on his friends, and this would be clear to everyone. Only Ieyasu was not like that!
“Slowness is a property of the devil,” says an old Spanish proverb, and it should be noted that Ieyasu was more than anyone else who knew how to “hurry slowly”. And he began by trying to lull Toyotomi's vigilance, for which he married Hideyori - a man he hated and dreamed of destroying - to his own granddaughter, and through this he became related to him! After that, he decided to ruin him and did it in a very original way: by inviting each daimyo to build a new castle for themselves! Everyone, including Toyotomi, bought into it, but even completely rebuilding the castle in Osaka, their clan did not become poorer because of this, although other daimyos in this race of vanity went bankrupt almost completely …
Then Ieyasu remembered that in 1588 Hideyoshi introduced the law on "hunting for swords", according to which weapons were taken from commoners, and all of them were melted into metal, from which nails and bolts were made for a huge statue of Buddha. So Ieyasu suggested that Toyotomi finish it in memory of his father, especially since the unfinished statue in 1596 was destroyed by an earthquake. Everyone knew that Hideyoshi until his death was thinking about how to restore it. Both Hideyori and his mother Yodogimi, with whom he consulted about all matters, decided that they should certainly do so, that it was a "good idea" to pacify the spirit of their father and husband in this way. But when in 1602 it was restored to the level of the neck, it is not clear how the scaffolding caught fire and the statue died again. True, in 1608 the work began again, but 100,000 people took part in it, and one can imagine how much money was required for one of their feeding, not to mention the cost of materials. Hideyori's treasury has suffered tremendous damage!
In 1611, Ieyasu decided to meet Hideyori in person at Fushimi Castle. I met and saw that the boy grew up, became a man and is quite capable of dominating. Ieyasu smiled as he spoke to him. But Hideyori's smile did not bode well!
And then began what all this was for, but the reason, as always, was the most trifling: in 1614 Ieyasu decided that on a huge bell, which was cast for the temple of the mysteriously deceased statue of Buddha and which weighed 72 tons, in the made the inscription on it contains a curse on him - Ieyasu! In fact, the phrase there, in general, had a completely innocent content: "May the state be peaceful and prosperous." But the hieroglyphs Ie and Yasu were written in Chinese, and it turned out that the name Tokugawa Ieyasu in it turned out to be torn into two parts, and this, they say, promises a terrible disaster for its bearer! They found fault with another phrase about the Sun and the Moon, built in such a way that it turned out that Hideyori in Osaka is higher than Ieyasu in Edo. From somewhere, rumors suddenly arose that Hideyori had begun to collect ronin, so all this seemed to indicate that he wanted war and was calling a curse on Ieyasu's head.
Hideyori, like all common people, at first did not attach any importance to this, so he did not even buy the gunpowder offered to him by the Dutch, which was immediately bought by Ieyasu. He then bought four 18-pound British guns and a 5-pound cannon, and then between June and October the price of English gunpowder in Japan increased by as much as 60%, and the price of low-grade Japanese gunpowder was four times the price of English gunpowder, which was given in March. !
Only now Hideyori decided to turn to the great daimyos for help, but they were so used to obeying the shogunate Ieyasu that no one answered him. True, among those who participated in the Battle of Sekigahara, there were many disaffected, who were punished with the confiscation of land, and they harbored anger at the Tokugawa clan. These were, for example, Ono Harunaga and his brother Harafusa, Kimura Shigenari, Oda Nabunaga's brother - Oda Yuraku, Tosokabe Morishige and Sanada Yukimura. It was because of him that Tokugawa's son Hidetada was late for the battle of Sekigahara, and his father scolded him for being late. He was a talented military leader, and Hideyori made him commander-in-chief over all the troops loyal to him.
There were many Christians among the defenders of the castle in Osaka, and this gave the war against the Tokugawa a kind of "war of faith". But why this is so is understandable: everyone knew that Hidetada hated Christians and was only waiting for that to apply the laws on the expulsion of Christians from Japan, adopted by Hideyori's father!
Well, about the castle in Osaka, we can say that it was one of the most powerful fortresses, if not the most powerful, in medieval Japan. The sea was then much closer to the castle than it is now, and enveloped it in a semi-circle from the west. Tenma, Yodo and Yamato - the rivers that flowed there - turned the land around the castle into a real network of islets, and between them there were only rice fields flooded with water. Around the castle there were two moats and two walls 40 meters high! They have survived to this day, but the citadel was restored after the Second World War.
The main feature of Japanese castles was that they could not be destroyed by artillery fire. After all, the walls were made of huge stones, laid with an inclination so that they could withstand any earthquake. Shooting at them was like shooting down the mountain slopes. But it was not difficult to climb such a wall, since the gaps between the stones provided good support for both hands and feet!
Foreseeing that the castle would need to be defended, Hideyori reinforced it with two additional moats 80 meters wide and 12 meters deep, which were flooded with water to a depth of 4-8 meters! Behind the moats, a 3-meter-high wall was built with a roof, platforms and embrasures for archers and arquebusiers. At the main castle gate of Hatome, Sanada Yukimura built a bastion, which was called the Sanada bastion, also with a moat, but dry, and in addition with three rows of palisades: one row was in front of the moat, one was behind, and another row was already at the bottom of the moat! The samurai defending the castle had good artillery purchased from the Dutch, and flamethrower ballistae were also located on the walls every hundred meters. The total number of the garrison reached 90,000 people.
And on November 2, 1614, Ieyasu ordered Hidetada to gather the troops that were around the castle in Edo, and the same order was passed on to all daimyo who were there. Tokugawa's fifth son Yoshinao awaited his father with 15,000 soldiers at the new castle in Nagoya. Hidedata had 50,000 men, Date Masamune - 10,000, Usesugi Kagekatsu - 5,000 and Satake - 1,500. Soon the Eastern Army of 180,000, that is, twice as many as the garrison in Osaka, was ready to move to storm Osaka Castle.
Many believe that the samurai troops, being knightly at their core, were similar to the knightly troops in Europe. But this is not the case. The orders of Ieyasu Tokugawa, issued by him in 1590, have reached us, and hardly anything changed in 1615 …
In them, on pain of punishment, it was forbidden to go on reconnaissance without an order, without an order to get ahead even for the sake of accomplishing a feat, and not only the culprit himself, but also his family had to be punished! Anyone who found himself in a strange detachment on the march and did not have a good reason for that, had to lose his horse and weapons. The end of the order was: “May all the gods of Japan, big and small, watch over us! May they strike without pity anyone who violates these orders! May it be so. Ieyasu . That is, his discipline was downright iron, which did not allow any liberties!
The troops surrounded the castle, and on January 3, 1615, before dawn, an assault began on the southern side. Soon the samurai Maeda Toshitsune went to the Sanada bastion, began to climb the wall, but the defenders repulsed them with rifle fire. The "red demons" under the command of Ii Naotaka nevertheless climbed the wall. But when they headed inside, they were met with such fierce fire that they retreated, suffering huge losses.
The failure did not discourage Ieyasu. He immediately gave the order to surround the castle with a rampart, put a palisade on it and begin a systematic siege. Then it was bombarded with guns for three whole days day and night, while the sappers were digging the trenches. A ship with an armored casemate sailed along the non-freezing Yodo River, from which they also fired at the castle, but this did not give positive results. Well, the blockade was simply pointless, since there were 200,000 koku of rice in the barns of the castle, and this was only a part received before the siege! So, purely theoretically, Hideyori could sit under siege for several years, and in the meantime, most of the Tokugawa allies would have fallen away from him. And if Hideyori had held out longer, the Tokugawa clan could well have been defeated due to mass desertions associated with the harsh conditions of the winter siege.
Ieyasu himself understood this well and after unsuccessful attacks decided to bribe Sanada Yukimura. But he also failed to bribe. Moreover, Sanada spoke about this as evidence of Ieyasu's weakness - they say, his strength is running out! Then Ieyasu decided to influence Hideyori's mother. A lady named Ata Tsubone was sent to her as envoy to persuade her to start peace negotiations. And to make Yodogimi more complaisant, the Tokugawa gunners were ordered to fire at her women's quarters, and it had to happen that one cannonball landed in her room for a tea ceremony and killed two of her maids there. A couple of days later, the same gunners ended up in the sanctuary, built in memory of Hideyoshi, where Hideyori was praying just at that time, so much so that they almost blew off his head with their core!
Companions convinced Hideyori that Ieyasu could not be trusted at all, since he had once already conducted such negotiations about the surrender of one of several temples that the militant monks defended, and it was decided that the temples should be returned to their original appearance. And what did Tokugawa do instead of simply lifting the siege? He burned them, arguing that the "original appearance" implies the absence of any temples. So he can do something like that this time too …
In the end, Hideyori obeyed his mother and those who advocated for peace. Ieyasu's proposals were discussed, accepted and signed. At the same time, he himself signed them with blood from his finger. All ronin were given full forgiveness, and Hideyori was given the freedom to choose where to live in exchange for his vow not to rebel against Ieyasu. One of the conditions, which was mentioned three times, was the filling of the outer, deepest ditch, which seemed to have become unnecessary. But, although Ieyasu spoke about this, for some reason this clause was not included in the final version of the text of the treaty, although it was recognized in Osaka.
Interestingly, admittedly, the samurai Ieyasu did not perform any special feats in this campaign. It was Hideyoshi's ronin who fought bravely, and those who fought on the shogun's side were simply doing their duty as soldiers of the regular army.
However, there are also known exceptions. For example, Ieyasu was served by the samurai Furuta Shigenari, a well-known master of the tea ceremony, distinguished for his bravery. Walking around the palisade around the castle, he saw an elegant bamboo trunk, decided to make an elegant teaspoon out of it, and began to cut it off. While he was doing this, the shooter from the castle took aim and hit him in the back of his helmet, but Furuta did not even pay attention to it! He only pulled a purple whip from under his armor and wiped the blood from his cheek with it, as if it were a simple scratch!
Well, the very next day after the peace treaty was signed on January 22, 1615, Ieyasu disbanded his army. But only part of his troops was disbanded, and then to the nearest port, and the bulk began to fill up the outer ditch and destroy the fortifications of the front line. And all this was done in one week, so one can imagine how many soldiers worked there, and then they began to fill up the second ditch. Hideyori's associates protested to them, but the commander of the soldiers involved in this case replied that the officers simply "misunderstood" his orders! Yodogimi complained to Ieyasu himself, but while the complainants went to his headquarters, the shogunate soldiers, who worked continuously, filled up the second ditch. And the contract did not say anything about digging it again! So in just 26 days, the castle lost its second moat, and without shooting and bloodshed. Now all the fortifications of Osaka Castle consisted of one moat and one - just one! - walls.
Summer Campaign
And it was then that Ieyasu again found himself under its walls just three months later! The pretext was found in rumors that the Osaka ronins had returned and wanted to attack the capital. And Hideyori really attracted many more ronin under his banner than six months ago, and now the number of his troops has reached 120 thousand - a whopping 60 thousand more than in winter. And again there were many Christians among them! Six large banners on the wall of the castle, for example, were decorated with the image of a cross, and there were several foreign priests inside at once. True, the Tokugawa managed to mobilize almost a quarter of a million people!
True, there is still no consensus among historians about the number of troops near Osaka Castle. The famous English Japanese scholar Stephen Turnbull just calls this figure, but the Japanese historian Mitsuo Kure gives the numbers 120 thousand for Ieyasu, and 55 for Hideyori. The main thing is that the Tokugawa had more soldiers, that's all.
The first blow was struck by the garrison of Osaka Castle. On May 28, Ono Harifua sent 2,000 soldiers to Yamato Province, hoping to defeat the Tokugawa troops marching towards the castle in parts. But the enemy's numerical superiority did not allow him to do this.
But Hideyori's people managed to excavate part of the outer ditch again, so it was at least some kind of obstacle. On June 2, 1615, a council of war was held at the castle, at which it was decided to meet the Tokugawa troops in an open field and give him a decisive battle there. It was this battle, which is also called the Battle of Tennoji, since this was the name of the field where it took place, and was destined to be the last battle of such a large number of samurai. According to the plan developed by Sanada, Ono and other military leaders from the castle, the Tokugawa was to be attacked along the entire front, then Akashi Morishige was to bypass him from the flank and strike from the rear. Meanwhile Hideyoshi had to deliver the finishing blow in the center. On the morning of June 3, the troops of the "western" left the castle on the plain, where the Tokugawa forces stood on it from the Hirano River to the sea coast.
This time, Ieyasu performed under a white flag without any emblems, and his eldest son Hidetada was the commander-in-chief.
There was no fog, as in Sekigahara, but it was a clear summer day. The smoke from the burning wicks of the arquebus curled towards the sky, and the warring parties still could not decide to start a battle. But then the ronin Mori Katsunaga, who stood closest to the enemy, began to shoot at him. Sanada didn’t want them to rush and ordered the fire to stop, but they instead redoubled their efforts as if they didn’t understand the order at all. Mori discussed the situation with Sanada and they decided that since the battle had begun, let it continue, and that they should use the fighting fervor of their people to launch an attack along the entire front. Soon, Mori's forces broke through the front lines of the Tokugawa army, and Sanada led his troops against the Echizen recruits and achieved complete success. In part, he was helped by the fact that the samurai Asano Nagaakira, who were marching to his aid, appeared on the left flank of the Tokugawa. They were allies, but their appearance seemed to many like Kobayakawa's betrayal, which everyone remembered, and shouts of “Betrayal! Betrayal! heard here again, as in Sekigahara!
A stupid hand-to-hand fight began, more like a dump, and it was not clear who wins it. Ieyasu Tokugawa, by his own example, decided to cheer up his soldiers and climbed to fight like a simple samurai. It is believed that at that time he was wounded by a spear that passed near the kidney. The fact that such a patient and cold-blooded person did this best of all speaks of the seriousness of the situation, which, in fact, was critical.
But the situation was saved by his young commander Honda Todatomo, who was also wounded by a spear, but managed to cheer his warriors and, together with the samurai from the Echizen province, gradually pushed Sanada back. Sanada himself was so exhausted in battle that he could not fight and sat down to rest on a camp stool. Here he was seen by an "Eastern" samurai named Nishio Nidzemon and challenged him to a duel. But Sanada was so tired that he couldn't accept it. All that was in his power was to introduce himself and remove the helmet from his head, after which Nishio immediately chopped it off!
The news of the death of Sanad scattered among the troops of the "western" and they began to gradually retreat. Now the Eastern Army began to move forward: the detachments of Ii Taotaka and Maeda Toshitsuke, and on the left flank - the reliable Date Masamune.
A letter was sent to Hideyori to march immediately, but he did not receive it and appeared at the castle gates when it was already too late: the superior forces of the "east" pushed the Osaka garrison back to its very walls!
A fierce battle ensued again at the walls of the fortress, and parts of the "eastern" rushed in, and the civilian personnel and servants of the castle scattered in fear in all directions. Hideyori locked himself in the citadel, but they began to fire at her from cannons, and there was also a fire started, according to Stephen Turnbull, Hideyori's chef. The last hope left Hideyori, and by morning both he and his mother, as well as many of those close to him, committed suicide by committing seppuku, and the castle itself burned down to the ground. Hideyori's son, who was only eight years old, was also beheaded, since he was the last of the Toyotomi, and Tokugawa simply had no right to spare him in front of his children. Then all the ronins (!), Who fought on the side of his father, were executed, and their heads were put on stakes and placed along the road from Kyoto to Fushimi, which more than clearly showed all the dissatisfied shogunate's strength.
Hideyoshi's own widow shaved her head, became a nun and went to a monastery.
Thus, having lived to be seventy-four years old, having taken part in countless battles and fights, after a life-long power struggle, Tokugawa Ieyasu finally became the real ruler of all Japan. He died the following year, in the spring, transferring all power to his eldest son Hidetada, and the Tokugawa clan then ruled Japan for 265 years until 1868! Well, the Osaka castle, having survived the greatest siege in the history of Japan, was then restored by the personal order of the shogun Tokugawa Hidetada, and its wall behind the moat was twice the size of the old one, but then at the end of the 19th century it was again destroyed by an earthquake. Tourists come here in groups and one at a time, without fail to climb the last tier of the main tower of the castle. There, everyone imagines in their own way what young Hideyori saw and felt, who stood here also high, in the same place and looked at the camp of his enemy. It may very well be that he had to think about why fate is so unfair to some, while giving everything to others, and how to make it so that luck smiles on you too. The most interesting thing is that this secret of earthly existence has not yet been revealed!
