英語訳
[Header] Toyohashi City Historical Discussions - (The Battle of Nagashino and the Fall of the Takeda Clan) - 124
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Honda Hikohachirō Tadatsugu, Saigō Magokirō Iesada, along with Toda Kazuaki and others, including forces from the Rengi Toda clan totaling over three thousand men followed them. Needless to say, Tadatsugu was the overall commander, and taking advantage of the night, they secretly approached the enemy fortifications and attacked at dawn. For the Takeda forces this was a complete surprise attack, causing them to lose one of their key positions, which naturally greatly affected the morale of their front army. Meanwhile, Katsuyori at this time ordered a general advance of all his forces, but since the Oda-Tokugawa forces had lined up their long palisades and were waiting in formation as I mentioned earlier, when the Takeda forces first approached these defenses, many were instead shot down by the gunners, and those who continued to fight valiantly came under flanking attacks. Of course, the Takeda generals and soldiers were by no means weak - there were indeed many acts of bravery, but the fact that their weapons were inadequate was certainly their primary disadvantage. Therefore, when the Oda and Tokugawa clans perceived that the time was fully ripe, they launched a general offensive of all their forces, so the Takeda forces finally suffered a crushing defeat and complete collapse, with elite generals and soldiers including Baba Nobufusa and Yamagata Masakage among many who fell in battle. Truly, the cause of the Takeda clan's destruction already lay here, which is no exaggeration. There are still many more stories to tell about this battle, but since I want to proceed by extracting the main points of the course of events, I will stop here. In any case, this battle began around 5 AM and ended around 3 PM, making it quite a long engagement. The Tokugawa forces took over ten thousand heads, and their own casualties also numbered no less than six thousand, showing how fierce the battle was.
[Ieyasu Pacifies Both Mikawa and Tōtōmi Provinces]
Thus Katsuyori temporarily fled to Busetsu Castle but finally gathered his defeated army and retreated to Kōshū. The Oda and Tokugawa clans then adopted a great policy of advancement, and after his triumphant return, Ieyasu immediately worked to capture the various castles belonging to the Takeda forces. In that same month he immediately took Asuke, in the sixth month Tsukude and Tamine, in the seventh month Busetsu, thus successively conquering northern Mikawa. Furthermore, from the sixth month he attacked Futamata Castle in Tōtōmi and recovered it in the twelfth month, and from the seventh to eighth months he attacked Suwahara Castle in Tōtōmi
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[Header] San'yō Shimbun No. 3866 Supplement (Published September 19, Meiji 44 [1911])
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and took it, having Matsui Tadatsugu and Makino Shinjirō Yasunari guard it. Following the historical precedent of King Wu of Zhou defeating King Zhou of Yin at Makino, they changed the name of this place to Makinohara and had Matsui Tadatsugu take the title Suhō-no-kami. Thereafter, small wars between the Takeda and Tokugawa clans continued for years between Suruga and Tōtōmi, but Takatenjin Castle alone was quite a stronghold, so the Takeda garrison commander Okabe Naganori held it firmly and it did not fall easily. It finally fell in the third month of Tenshō 9, and around the same time the castles of Inui and Koyama also came under Ieyasu's control, so finally Tōtōmi also became completely pacified by the Tokugawa clan.
Under such circumstances, the Takeda clan's power in both Mikawa and Tōtōmi provinces completely declined. Earlier, Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo had abandoned years of hostility to make peace with the Takeda clan, and simultaneously came to break relations with the Oda clan. In a document Nobunaga sent to Date Ukyōtaiu in Tenshō 5, he even called Kenshin treacherous, but there were various causes leading to such circumstances that cannot be explained in a few words. Probably, as I have mentioned many times before, the persuasion of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki played a great role.
[The Alliance of Uesugi, Takeda, and Hōjō Three Clans]
So Kenshin formed a three-way alliance with the Takeda and Hōjō clans, and in the following year, Tenshō 6, third month, he departed from Echigo, greatly mobilizing his forces toward the capital region to decide the outcome with Nobunaga. However, just two days before his departure, on the thirteenth day of the third month, he suffered a stroke and died at age forty-nine in Kasugayama Castle. This was truly most regrettable for Kenshin, but for Nobunaga it was rather fortunate. From this point, not only did the Uesugi clan fail to prosper, but the Hōjō clan also came to communicate with the Oda clan through the Tokugawa clan, leaving the Takeda clan finally in an isolated position.
[The Fall of the Takeda Clan]
So in the second month of Tenshō 10, Nobunaga determined that the time had finally come to destroy the Takeda clan, advanced his forces from Shinano, and personally took the field to invade their homeland. In response, Ieyasu departed Hamamatsu on the eighteenth day of the second month, attacked Tanaka Castle in Suruga on the twentieth, entered Fuchū on the twenty-first, and on the third
[Header] Toyohashi City Historical Discussions - (The Battle of Nagashino and the Fall of the Takeda Clan) - 125