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Updated: June 14, 2025
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.
That is amply shown by the stories told in the previous pages. But his political sagacity taught him that to continue Nobunaga's crusade against Buddhism would not be wise statesmanship, and that if the bonzes could be disarmed and diverted from military pursuits, they would become useful agents of intellectual and moral progress.
Nobunaga's castle is stated by some historians to have been partially attributable to Christianity, but this theory seems to rest solely upon the fact that the central tower was known as Tenshu-kaku, or the "tower of the lord of Heaven." The cost of constructing this colossal edifice was very heavy, and funds had to be collected from the whole of the eleven provinces then under Nobunaga's sway.
But when the Imagawa suffered defeat in the battle of Okehazama, at the hands of Oda Nobunaga, Ieyasu allied himself with the latter. In 1570, he removed to Hamamatsu, having subjugated the provinces of Mikawa and Totomi. He was forty years old at the time of Nobunaga's murder, and it has been shown above that he espoused the cause of the Oda family in the campaign of Komak-yama.
It is claimed by some of Nobunaga's biographers that he was perfectly honest in presenting this memorial, but others, whose judgment appears to be more perspicacious, consider that his chief object was to discredit Yoshiaki and thus make room for his own subsequent succession to the shogunate. At all events Yoshiaki interpreted the memorial in that sense.
Sakuma Nobumori, one of Nobunaga's captains, was openly, and of set purpose, insulted and beaten by orders of his general, and thereafter he escaped to the camp of the Takeda army, pretending that the evil treatment he had undergone was too much for his loyalty.
At first the foreign faith had been only persuasive; afterwards, gathering power under Nobunaga's encouragement, it became coercive and ferocious. A reaction against it set in about a year after Nobunaga's death.
From the carnage that ensued Mitsuhide himself escaped, but while passing through a wood he received from a bamboo spear in the hands of a peasant a thrust which disabled him, and he presently committed suicide. By this time the principal of Nobunaga's vassal-barons were on their way at the head of contingents to attack Mitsuhide.
He recovered his sang-froid and contented himself with sending the officer from his presence and subsequently causing to be handed to him a couplet setting forth the evils of bribery and corruption. He forgave the guilty man in consideration of his advanced age, and the incident is said to have closed with the suicide of the old officer. Frugality was another trait of Nobunaga's character.
It may here be mentioned that three years later, in 1568, Hideyoshi succeeded in inducing all the territorial nobles of northern Ise, except Kusunoki Masatomo, to place themselves peacefully under Nobunaga's sway. Hideyoshi's history shows him to have been a constant believer in the theory that a conquered foe generally remains an enemy, whereas a conciliated enemy often becomes a friend.
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