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Nobunaga had crushed the Imagawa, for though his victory had not been conclusive from a military point of view, it had placed the Imagawa under incompetent leadership and had thus freed Owari from all menace from the littoral provinces on the east.

Most fortunate was it for Japan that events took this turn, for, had Ieyasu and Hideyoshi remained mutually hostile, the country would probably have been plunged into a repetition of the terrible struggle from which nothing enabled it to emerge except the combined labours of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu.

Hideyoshi had one great ambition, born in him when a boy, and haunting him as a man. This was to conquer Corea, and perhaps China as well. He had begged Nobunaga to aid him in this great design, but had only been laughed at for his pains. Now that he was at the head of affairs, this plan loomed up in large proportions in his mind.

Nevertheless, whatever Nobunaga may have lost by these defects, the fact remains that in the three decades of his military career he brought under his sway thirty-three provinces, or one-half of the whole country, and at the time of his death he contemplated the further conquest of Shikoku, Chugoku, and Kyushu.

But Nobunaga was saved by the slowness of Nagamasa, who, had he moved with any rapidity, must have reached Kyoto in advance of Nobunaga's forces; and Hideyoshi was saved by an exercise of the wonderful resourcefulness which peril always awoke in this great man.

Summoning a famous priest, Ekei, of a temple in Aki, who enjoyed the confidence of all parties, he despatched him to Mori's camp with proposals for peace and for the delimitation of the frontiers of Mori and Nobunaga, on condition that the castle of Takamatsu should be surrendered and the head of its commander, Shimizu Muneharu, presented to his conquerer.

Returning to Owari, he obtained admission to the ranks of Oda Nobunaga in the humble capacity of sandal-bearer. He deliberately chose Nobunaga through faith in the greatness of his destiny, and again the reader of Japanese history is confronted by ingenious tales as to Hideyoshi's devices for obtaining admission to Nobunaga's house.

A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to Hidéyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and to Iyéyasu, "I will wait till she opens her lips." Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius.

On learning of the assassin's death, these barons all directed their march to Kiyosu, and in the castle from which Nobunaga had moved to his early conquests thirty years previously, a momentous council was held for the purpose of determining his successor.

Gradually the family acquired possession of about one-half of Mikawa province, and in the seventh generation from Chikauji, the head of the house, Hirotada, crossing swords with Oda Nobuhide, father of Nobunaga, sought succour from the Imagawa family, to which he sent his son, Ieyasu, with fifty other young samurai as hostages. This was in 1547, Ieyasu being then in his fifth year.