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Hideyoshi himself figures at this very time as the instigator and director of a series of acts of extreme treachery, by which the death of one of the principal Imagawa vassals was compassed; and the same Hideyoshi was the means of discovering a plot by Imagawa emissaries to delay the repair of the castle of Kiyosu, Nobunaga's headquarters, where a heavy fall of rain had caused a landslide.
The Tokugawa battalions, following two routes the Tokaido and the Nakasendo made rapid progress westward, and on September 21st, the van of the division under Fukushima and Ikeda reached Kiyosu.
These works consisted mainly of restoring dilapidated castles or building new ones on a scale so colossal as to be exceeded by only the stronghold at Osaka. It is recorded that when Fukushima Masanori, lord of Kiyosu in Owari, complained of the crippling effects of these severe requisitions, Kato Kiyomasa told him that there was no alternative except to retire to his castle and defy Yedo.
Each general sought to entice his opponent out of an entrenched position, and each general showed an equal determination not to be so enticed. At last, Hideyoshi pushed a force into Mino and captured several castles in that province. But even this failed to change Ieyasu's attitude. The Tokugawa leader entered the fortress of Kiyosu, and Nobukatsu repaired to that of Nagashima, in Ise.
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.
The course of subsequent events seems to prove that Ieyasu, in taking the field on this occasion, aimed simply at asserting his own potentiality and had no thought of plunging the empire into a new civil war. In March, 1584, he set out from Hamamatsu and joined Nobukatsu at Kiyosu, in Owari. The scheme of campaign was extensive.
The latter agreed to the Owari chief's proposals, and in February, 1562, proceeded to the castle of Kiyosu, where he contracted with Oda Nobunaga an alliance which endured throughout the latter's lifetime. In the following year, Motoyasu changed his name to Ieyasu, and subsequently he took the uji of Tokugawa.
Then he repaired to the Nijo palace and, having entrusted his infant son to the care of Maeda Gen-i with instructions to carry him to Kiyosu, he made preparation for defence against Mitsuhide. Finally, overwhelmed by numbers, he killed himself, and his example was followed by ninety of his retainers.
Fighting commenced in the province of Ise, and success at the outset crowned the arms of Hideyoshi's generals. They captured two castles, and Ieyasu thereupon pushed his van to an isolated hill called Komaki-yama, nearly equidistant from the castles of Inu-yama and Kiyosu, in Owari, which he entrenched strongly, and there awaited the onset of the Osaka army.
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