Chapter 65: Turning Back West
The Miyoshi hoped Hamamatsu wasn't going to hold out too much longer, but given what they knew about the combat strength of Daimyos, they'd have to at least kill anything that could support Tokugawa Ieyasu with defensive bombardment, and have plenty of Ninja to attack him with. Failing that, they could just use their conventional forces to kill everything in the city. Whatever happened, though, it was probably going to take some time.
The Hojo and Date signed a peace treaty in August of 1542. It likely didn't mean much for their likelihood of actual combat, but it did mean the Hojo were more clearly on one side of the loose alliances- one mainly in the Southwest, between the Ryuzoji, Ichijo, Mori, and Mogami, and one mainly in the Northeast, between the Urakami, Chosokabe, Takeda, Date, and now Hojo. Most of the two alliances weren't at war with every member of the opposing alliance- some were at war with as few as two of the opposite alliance- but with the Hojo and Date at peace now nobody was fighting anyone in the same alliance. The Uesugi and Tokugawa were at war with members of both alliances, and the Miyoshi at war with only the Tokugawa, and nobody else. The Uesugi and Tokugawa had several enemies in common (the Takeda, Urakami, and Mogami), enough so that they could be said to be an alliance of their own, but the Tokugawa also fought the Miyoshi and Hojo, who both weren't fighting the Uesugi.
In what at first looked like a victory for the Northeastern alliance, the Mori city of Iwakuni was destroyed that month. Except... that was their city on Kyushu, which only the Urakami would have been able to easily get to. And based on the timing of when it was destroyed, it seemed like it must have been the
Ryuzoji acting to destroy it. But... how? They weren't at war anymore. Could Ninja have been responsible, like they were responsible for destroying the Shimazu?
The Miyoshi weren't sure if Ninja could even take cities when not at war, they'd have to answer that question later.
The Hojo resettled the area around the ruins of Fuji, building the city of Shirakawa. The Miyoshi were slightly disappointed, hoping they could have gotten there themselves, but they didn't really have a chance to. Oh well, there was still some underutilized gaps in the territory that used to belong to the Tokugawa or Imagawa that the Hojo and Takeda still weren't settling in, but they'd be happy to once they got around to it.
The Miyoshi weren't able to make much of a dent in the defenses of Hamamatsu in October- it just had too many Yamabushi. They decided it would be best to just wait a bit and get some more Ninja ready before attacking the city again.
Thankfully, the Tokugawa decided to help out a bit by sending a recently-built unit of Samurai Archers out of the city in November. The Miyoshi weren't sure where they were going, but the fact that they moved out meant that Hamamatsu was now weaker, and the Archers would be easy to pick off outside of the city, and they were glad for both of those things.
Perhaps they intended to fight the Hojo, who were having more success in getting past the defenses of Tokugawa cities than the Miyoshi were, burning the recently-built Shizuoka that month. The Tokugawa now had only their capital remaining under their control.
In January, 1543, the Miyoshi felt in slightly better position to attack Hamamatsu, and sent 3 Ninja to the city to take out the rest of the Samurai Archers. Sadly, this didn't work out too well- the Ninja only killed one Archer unit, at the cost of 2 of their own number. The Miyoshi evened the score out by having Saotome's Army kill the Archers that had left the city two months earlier, but they wished they could have had a bit more success in killing the ones defending Hamamatsu.
In February, a unit of Hojo Yamabushi ran from the east to Hamamatsu, and destroyed the roads to the Furs outside the city. The Miyoshi found this mildly annoying- the Hojo were now blocking one of the quickest ways Saotome's Army could have used to reach Hamamatsu, and if they were going to try to help in attacking the city, they could at least send a real attacking force, not just some pillaging Yamabushi.
The Chosokabe and Ryuzoji signed peace that month, ending a war that had once again seen the Chosokabe lose a city to the Ryuzoji in an invasion, and once again seen them emerge with the same number of cities as they started with- last time because they rebuilt a destroyed city, this time because they retook a captured one. As strong as the Ryuzoji had been at taking control of their own island, they were having significant trouble gaining a foothold on any others, which had to be a good thing- they'd likely be much stronger than they were if they also controlled territory on Honshu and Shikoku.
The Miyoshi again tried to kill the Archers defending Hamamatsu with Ninja in April. They continued having a mix of success and failure, with the Ninja killing another Archer unit, but again losing 1 Ninja in the process. The Miyoshi weren't happy with how this was going at all- Ninja were more expensive to train than Samurai Archers, so losing 1 Ninja to kill 1 Archer was a pretty bad trade to be making.
If Ninja weren't working, maybe their armies would- they'd have to kill lots of Yamabushi, but oh well, so be it. Saotome's Army was holding back a bit, ready to take back Nakatsugawa if it decided to revolt, but the Mounted Samurai Army was more than ready to attack Hamamatsu, and so it killed two of the units of Yamabushi defending the city. Only something like 6 to go, and that would be it.
The remainder of the Miyoshi force decided to spread out and occupy all of the farmland surrounding the city in the hopes of starving it out a bit, though given the food the city could get from the ocean and the immense size it already had, that would likely be quite difficult to achieve.
If the Hojo had any intention of sending their military to help out at Hamamatsu, they sure weren't showing it- they just seemed more interested in resettling the cities they'd destroyed, building a city in the rubble that used to be Shizuoka, and before that, Shimada. The Mori also seemed to like this "rebuild near other people's destroyed cities" idea, and built a city on an island in the far West, the island that had once held cities belonging to the Matsunaga, Otomo, and Oda, all of which had disappeared into dust when those clans' Daimyos had been killed in battle.
Also in May, the Takeda took several steps towards ending the many wars they were in, signing peace with their immediate neighbors, the Uesugi, and their not-at-all neighbors, the Ichijo.
Despite having been at war with each other for quite a while, the Takeda and Uesugi had never done any significant damage to each other, never taking any of the other's cities. Perhaps they were just too evenly matched to do anything, as both were known to be quite strong militarily.
In July, the Miyoshi continued their Ninja attacks on the Archers in Hamamatsu, and as usual, traded casualties at a one for one rate: One Miyoshi Ninja died, and One Tokugawa Archer unit also died.
But that also meant there were no Tokugawa Archers left in Hamamatsu, and the earlier deaths of their Yamabushi meant that there were now a small enough number of units left in the city that the Miyoshi's every-three-months bombardment of the city could do some real damage to them, bringing every remaining Yamabushi unit below maximum combat strength. Not far below it, but a little below would have to do.
They'd used several Arquebusier units in the bombardment, though, only one remaining to attack. But one was enough to kill 1 unit of Yamabushi. Sadly, after that, the Miyoshi pressed their luck a bit by attacking with the weaker Mounted Samurai- and 2 Mounted Samurai attacking units succeeded only in strengthening the Yamabushi even more through the experience of killing one of them while the other unit escaped barely with their lives. The Miyoshi decided at this point that further attacks would be foolish, and they'd wait for their bombardment to do a bit more damage in a few months, and perhaps wait for their armies to get in better position and health to attack.
August brought news that the Miyoshi mostly didn't care about, but others might- particularly the Mogami, for whom the news was entirely bad. The Uesugi and Urakami signed a peace treaty, leaving the Uesugi at war with nobody except the Mogami- and given that the Uesugi were neighbors to the Mogami, much stronger than them, and that the Mogami were fighting plenty of other wars, that had to be bad for them. For some reason, they decided that would make it a good time to add even more to their list of problems, and they declared war on the Hojo at the request of the Ichijo. The Mogami were now at war with not just their immediate neighbors, the Uesugi and Date, but also all of their neighbors' neighbors, in the Takeda and Hojo. And the Chosokabe and Urakami, just for good measure.
The Miyoshi's bombardment of Hamamatsu in October really didn't do much to the defenders at all- just a few scratches on them. Nonetheless, they were willing to attack, but only with Saotome's recently-arrived army, which killed 2 of the strongest Yamabushi units in the city. Several remained, though, and they weren't willing to risk more Mounted Samurai to not actually harm the Yamabushi much. They could just try sneaking past all of them with their Ninja and killing Tokugawa Ieyasu that way, but they felt that having just 4 Ninja to attack with might not be sufficient to kill a Daimyo. And so they held off on any further attacks.
November saw one more war start between the Southwestern and Northeastern alliances and another end- the Ryuzoji convinced the Mori to declare war on the Hojo, while the Ichijo and Date signed peace. Given their great distances from each other, neither of these likely mattered all that much.
With the previous attacks on Hamamatsu having killed quite a few of its Yamabushi units, the bombardment of the city in January, 1544 actually did a noticeable amount of damage for a change, hitting all of the Yamabushi units in the city with a significant amount of damage- more than enough that the Miyoshi felt like they might actually be able to kill every one of them this month. Their optimism proved correct: Their two armies attacked first, the Mounted Samurai army killing 2 Yamabushi units while Saotome's Army killed a 3rd, and an Arquebusier unit followed by killing the 4th and last Yamabushi unit in the city. All that remained was Ashigaru and Tokugawa Ieyasu himself. The Ashigaru ended up being somewhat troublesome, forcing one unit of Mounted Samurai to retreat, but it could not hold out against a 2nd. Now Tokugawa Ieyasu was all that stood between his clan and destruction.
He would be a rather tough fight for the Miyoshi, though.
But not an insurmountable opponent, by any means. They had 5 Ninja to attack with, and several units of Mounted Samurai left as well.
It was decided that the Ninja should go first.
"If you're trying to be sneaky," said Tokugawa Ieyasu as he saw the group of Ninja approaching, "You're not doing a very good job. At least, I can see you."
Oh well; the Ninja were sort of expecting he could see them, and just hoped they could kill him with their superior numbers.
Said numbers didn't seem to be doing much to help at first, though. With just a few strokes of his sword, Tokugawa Ieyasu was able to cut down 4 of the 5 Ninja to attack him. 2 of them had gotten in a few lucky scratches on him with their kunai, but that hadn't really meant much of anything, because battling them had also just made him stronger. He was, technically, somewhat beat up from the fight so far, but no less tough to kill in terms of the amount of damage it would take to finish him off.
"Give up and get out of here," Tokugawa Ieyasu said to the remaining Ninja. "You couldn't beat me when there were 5 of you, what hope do you alone have? Run away now, or you'll end up looking just like your fallen comrades."
The last Ninja said nothing, and kept right on with his original goal in mind: Kill Tokugawa Ieyasu. He charged, weapon in hand.
"So be it, then, don't say I didn't give you a chance to run."
It was a chance the Ninja wouldn't need. As it turned out, he was a bit tougher, or at least luckier, in battle than the other Ninja were.
Several minutes of battle saw both Ninja and Daimyo land several good hits on each other with their blades, both now injured heavily. Whoever landed the next hit, it would be the last hit. They charged at, and then past each other, and took one last swing at each other.
The Ninja sheathed his weapon, and looked back with a smirk as Tokugawa Ieyasu's head fell off, and shortly thereafter, Hamamatsu burned into a pile of ashes.
With the Tokugawa dead, the Miyoshi had removed one possible source of irritation to the East, in that there was no longer any possibility of being harassed by Tokugawa-hired Ninja. A few built cities in the former Tokugawa lands would further solidify their hold on their conquered territory. And now... they found themselves out of more room to expand into in that direction. There was just the Takeda and Hojo on their borders now, and both while the Miyoshi probably could fight one of them if they had to, it would be more difficult than they really wanted.
And why do that when there were easier targets to the West? Better fight the weaker clans first. Better yet, this could remove the possibility of fighting a two-front war if they could conquer their Western neighbors, at least if they were careful to remain allied to the clans to the East while doing so.
So in April, the Miyoshi decided that as soon as their forces were healed up from the Battle of Hamamatsu, they'd go back to the West, ready to fight an old enemy that the Miyoshi had wanted to conquer a bit more of the last time they'd fought them, but gotten distracted by ending up at war with almost everyone else. They hoped to not run into that particular problem again.
In the meantime, they'd build cities in their newly conquered territory, starting with Wakasa, built on the ruins of Hamamatsu in July.
They also decided to try weakening the defenses of some Urakami cities on the border before actually fighting them, by attacking those cities with Ninja.
It didn't work. Not because the Ninja didn't do well in battle- because it was, for some reason, impossible for the Ninja to actually enter opposing cities in the first place if they weren't at war with who they wanted the Ninja to attack, so the Ninja couldn't actually attack any Urakami cities.
"Wait, what?" was the collective response of the Miyoshi when they realized this. "If Ninja can't do that, how the hell did the Ryuzoji destroy that Mori city while they weren't at war, and how the hell did they kill Daimyo Shimazu Yoshihisa while they weren't at war? It doesn't make any sense."
(Seriously, if anyone knows what's happening here, that would be cool- I also tried having Ninja attack a Takeda city to see if it was some weird Great Wall thing or something, but it seems my Ninja can't attack any AI cities if I'm not at war with them, but somehow the Ryuzoji can attack other AI's cities while they're not at war? How does that work?)
Well, whatever, even if they couldn't attack cities, they could at least take an Urakami worker.
Amusingly, that captured worker was now seen as a Miyoshi unit by the Urakami, who didn't like having Miyoshi units in their territory, so the Miyoshi got a demand from the Urakami that they vacate Urakami territory in August.
The Miyoshi agreed, and were mildly amused when the Urakami couldn't retake the worker with their own Ninja, though they could use their own Ninja to kill the Miyoshi that had taken the worker in the first place. Oh well.
The Urakami also signed peace with the Mogami that month, leaving the Urakami at war with only their immediate neighbors, the Mori. Being at war with fewer clans had to be good for the Mogami, but they had to be more worried about their neighbors than about the far-off Urakami- and for good reason, as the Uesugi captured the city of Yamagata from them. They had just 3 cities under their control now, making them the smallest of the clans now that the Imagawa and Tokugawa had been destroyed.
In October, the Miyoshi complied with the Urakami request to move "their" worker out of Urakami territory and into Miyoshi territory, and also decided they should "help the Urakami out" by killing a Ninja in Urakami territory with one of the Miyoshi's own Ninja. Nevermind that the Ninja belonged to the Urakami in the first place, this was definitely helping them.
In November, the Urakami decided to not learn lessons from the Mori losing their city on Kyushu, and built a city of their own, Aioi, in the same location as Iwakuni's ruins. The Miyoshi figured the Ryuzoji would not let it stand, probably somehow destroying it with Ninja, despite the fact that shouldn't really be possible.
The Mogami finally were able to get some relief from all the wars they were fighting with their neighbors: It appeared the one city they'd lost to the Uesugi was all the Uesugi were interested in taking from them, and so they signed peace.
Now they were only at war with one of their immediate neighbors instead of both, more manageable odds. They were still tiny and weak, though.
The end of this war put the Uesugi in a position that would have seemed rather unlikely for them fairly recently: They were no longer at war with anybody. A big change from when they were fighting over half the other clans in Japan. All too recently, there had been tons of wars going on in a series of chaotic shifting alliances with no real sense to them, everybody fighting somebody, and now, there were two clans at war with nobody in the Miyoshi and Uesugi, both of whom had at one point been fighting at least 9 wars at once. Now it seemed 4 or 5 was the most other clans any single clan was fighting.
The recent decreases in the number of ongoing wars made some wonder if the Miyoshi would hold an actual election for War Council Daimyo in December, but again they refused, saying they thought there was still too much disunion to hold an election but privately knowing they weren't going to hold elections if they weren't sure they could win, and right now they figured they couldn't- but the Hojo, their presumed opponents, potentially could, and the Miyoshi definitely didn't want anyone else winning the Daimyo election.
The ongoing trend of reducing the number of ongoing wars continued in February, 1545, with the Ichijo and Hojo ending a war they probably weren't ever going to seriously fight. This meant the Ichijo were now at war with only their neighbors, the Chosokabe, and the Ichijo could focus a bit more on them as a result, while the Chosokabe were at war with both the Ichijo and Mogami still. That said, the Chosokabe probably weren't focusing much on the Mogami.
In a field near Tsu, on the Miyoshi-Urakami border, a Ninja ran out of Urakami territory and killed a unit of Takeda Yamabushi that had been traveling through. The Miyoshi found this odd, since if the Takeda were going this way, it was probably to fight the Mori, but the Ninja probably belonged to the Urakami- surely they'd want the Takeda's help against the Mori, wouldn't they?
Well, whatever their reasons, the Miyoshi saw little reason to let some Ninja traipse around in their territory, so Saotome's Army, recently arrived from the East, killed the Ninja in April.
Speaking of the East, the Miyoshi built the city of Samani in a somewhat crowded area on what once was the Tokugawa/Imagawa/Oda border, where there was just enough space for a city:
The Mogami's peace treaty with the Uesugi proved to not be enough to get them out of the bind they were in: In May, the Date captured the city of Kitakata from them, leaving them with just 2 cities.
Off the coast of Miyoshi territory to the South, Ryuzoji and Hojo Caravels constantly passed by on their way to presumably try to invade each other. Occasionally they did battle, as they did in May, when a Ryuzoji Caravel fleet attacked a Hojo Caravel fleet, resulting in both sides losing a Caravel.
July saw the moment the Miyoshi had been anticipating for over a year: All their military forces they'd sent West had arrived in Himeji. In just a few months, they'd be ready to attack the Urakami, and finish what they'd started decades ago before having to pause that war to go fight other wars.
In August, the Ryuzoji and Hojo continued to do battle on the seas, with the Hojo losing 1 Caravel in the only battle they fought that month.
The Takeda, presumably irritated that their Yamabushi had been killed on their way to help fight the Mori, decided to just not bother fighting the Mori anymore, and signed peace with them. They'd rather focus on finishing off the Mogami, the only clan the Takeda were now at war with.
In October, the Miyoshi were finally ready for their war with the Urakami to begin. Before starting, they wondered if maybe the Urakami could be convinced to start themselves if the Miyoshi asked the Urakami to leave their territory or else- they had, for a while now, had a unit of Samurai Spearmen slowly moving West that was close to being back in Urakami territory now. To the Miyoshi's slight disappointment, the Urakami just decided to leave.
In that case, they decided to see if planting a spy in Kobe could either give them continued information on the Urakami's deeds while they were at war, or if failing to plant a spy could get the Urakami to declare war like the Tokugawa had. The answer proved no to both: the spy was caught, but the Urakami weren't irritated enough to start a war over this.
"Why has every single one of our spies failed? Can't they do anything right?"
"Oh to hell with it, if the Urakami won't start this war, we will."
And so, the Miyoshi sent a message to the Urakami informing them they were now at war. (But not before seeing, to their great confusion, that they could somehow still ask the Urakami to remove their forces or declare war... even though the Urakami seemingly had no military forces in Miyoshi territory after being asked to leave last time)
The Miyoshi got right to work, first having a unit of Arquebusiers attack the unit of Spearmen that had been kicked out of Miyoshi territory, and kill all of the Spearmen.
Then they shelled Nishiwaki, the city just to the West of the border... and watched with dismay as their cannonballs magically ricocheted off the city walls and destroyed Nishiwaki's Barracks.
"Oh right, the indestructible Great Wall thing. Forgot about that. Well that's annoying..."
Whatever, they didn't need to damage the defenders to kill them, they had too much military force. They decided to start off with a Ninja attack to see if there were weak units that could be killed first. They found the city was defended by only Samurai Spearmen... but also that there were only two units of Samurai Spearmen in the city. The Ninja failed to do more than damage the one it attacked, but knowing Nishiwaki was that weakly defended made things easier. Saotome's Army killed one of the Spearman units, and though the other fought valiantly, forcing a unit of Mounted Samurai to retreat and then killing two more, but the 4th Mounted Samurai unit that attacked was too much for it, and Nishiwaki belonged to the Miyoshi.
The Miyoshi Ninja that hadn't attacked Nishiwaki looked around for another target, and found Kobe to be a compelling one. The city was too big for its walls, making the wall problem they'd encountered at Nishiwaki not an issue, but the bigger problem was that Kobe had far too many military units for shelling the city to do much to them.
They could just try to attack Urakami Munekage and hope their overwhelming numbers advantage would be sufficient to finish him off- but then the rest of the Urakami's cities would disappear, and they wanted to take a few of them first. So they decide to just attack the weakest target in the city: The Urakami's Ninja. With the Ninja being relatively unprepared on defense, even the benefit of some Arquebusiers taking shots at the attacking Miyoshi Ninja wasn't enough to save them, and the Miyoshi Ninja killed the Urakami Ninja with only a few scratches as damage.
Recognizing that conquering the Urakami might take a bit of time, and not wanting to have to split their focus on multiple fronts if the Urakami decided to bring any allies in to help them, the Miyoshi asked the Takeda and Hojo for help in fighting the Urakami. Both were willing to help, either for an expensive gold payment, or for the Miyoshi helping them in their own wars in return- the Takeda wanted the Miyoshi to declare war on the Mogami, and the Hojo wanted the Miyoshi to declare war on the Mori. The Miyoshi were perfectly happy to declare war on those two, since the Mogami were small and weak, and the Mori were who they'd most likely fight next anyway once they were done with the Urakami, so why not just kill both birds with one stone right now?
And so, the Miyoshi-Takeda-Hojo alliance against the Urakami, Mori, and Mogami was signed.
Adding three more clans to the one they were at war with before this definitely wasn't good for the Urakami, and they got more bad piled on top of that in November, when their city of Aioi on Kyushu was destroyed. The Miyoshi assume, based on the location and timing, that the Ryuzoji somehow did it with their "I don't have to be at war with you to do this, somehow" Ninjas.
They'd only have more losses in the new year. In January, 1546, the Miyoshi continued advancing West, and reached the city of Kurayoshi, on the Urakami-Mori border. It wasn't much better defended than Nishiwaki was, and after a bit of shelling, it was fairly easy for Saotome's Army to kill the unit of Arquebusiers defending the city, and 2 Ninja then followed up by killing the 2 units of Samurai Spearmen in the city.
The Urakami could only respond to this in February by pulling a unit of Samurai Warriors in Mori territory back into their own territory to try to fight off the Miyoshi invaders- or rather, back into what used to be their territory, but now was Miyoshi territory around Kurayoshi.
The Ryuzoji decided they didn't like the Date that month, and wanted to get someone else to help fight them, going with their longtime allies, the Ichijo. That didn't seem like a particularly great choice given the Ichijo's great distance from the Date, but the Date followed by enlisting the help of a clan much closer to the Date: The Hojo, who had fairly recently been fighting the Date, declared war on them at the request of the Ichijo, who they'd also been fighting until fairly recently. So much for being allies with the Date against the Mogami and Ryuzoji...
The Miyoshi invasion of the Urakami had to slow down a bit in April for their forces to be able to reach more Urakami cities and for them to rest from earlier battles, but they had enough cannons in the West to give heavy damage to the Urakami Samurai that had come near Kurayoshi. They could have tried to finish them off, but decided that could wait until they came back onto flatter ground.
Farther east, they also built the city of Tomakomai, in a gap that used to be the border between the Imagawa, Tokugawa, and Takeda that definitely had room for a city that for some reason none of those three had ever taken advantage of.
There weren't any huge gaps in territory left in the East anymore, but there were a few smaller gaps remaining- just big enough that the Miyoshi could fit a few more cities there, potentially at the expense of taking some territory from the Takeda and Hojo, but the Miyoshi were fine doing that, and neither one seemed to be complaining or even making much use of the territory themselves.
And the Miyoshi had much more pressing things to worry about, anyway.
Like conquering the Urakami and Mori.
Hopefully that wouldn't take too much longer.
Ah, those were the days...
And now the Miyoshi are researching Future Tech. May be better Naval Cannons? 
