United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Mori was acting entirely by the advice of his two uncles, Kikkawa and Kohayakawa, both men of profound insight. They fully admitted the desirability of peace, since Hideyoshi's army effectually commanded the communications between the eastern and western parts of Chugoku, but they resolutely rejected the notion of sacrificing the life of Shimizu on the altar of any compact.
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.
It is noteworthy that, before leaving Azuchi, Hideyoshi declared to Nobunaga his intention of conquering Kyushu after the reduction of Chugoku, and thereafter he announced his purpose of crossing to Korea and making that country the basis of a campaign against China. "When that is effected," Hideyoshi is quoted as saying, "the three countries, China, Korea, and Japan, will be one.
The ease with which this feat was accomplished and the expediency of maintaining the sequence of successes induced Hideyoshi to propose that the subjugation of the whole of central Japan should be entrusted to him and that he should be allowed to adopt Nobunaga's second son, Hidekatsu, to whom the rule of Chugoku should be entrusted, Hideyoshi keeping for himself only the outlying portions.
Word Of The Day