Chapter 1679: No Further Retreat

Under Zhou Pu's guidance, Tōgō Shigekata finally understood the other party's intention in promoting him, and he very much wished to seize this opportunity to glorify his family name and become a member of the daimyō — even if it might only be a minor daimyō with a fief of twenty or thirty thousand koku.

"Good. Next, you will lead this unit south to the city of Sakai and bring it under our army's control." After he agreed, Zhou Pu continued issuing orders. "If the campaign goes smoothly, you will continue south. If you encounter any enemy forces, do not engage them in a decisive battle. Instead, do your utmost to pin them down while relaying information to our army. Understood?"

"I understand!" Tōgō Shigekata hastily assented.

Sakai and Osaka are very close to one another, and moreover, the merchants on both sides largely share the same origins. Their thinking and conduct are much alike, so Zhou Pu was confident in predicting that they would likely not put up much resistance either. As long as Tōgō Shigekata's detached force reached Sakai, it should be able to open its gates without a fight, just as in Osaka.

After taking Sakai, Tōgō Shigekata would continue south, seeking to pin down more enemy forces while simultaneously scouting the enemy's specific movements, strengths, and weaknesses.

The enemies he would face on this route were not numerous. Due to its geographical position and its status as the political and economic center, the Kinai region had always been an area the shogunate valued highly. For this reason, they deliberately refrained from establishing daimyō here, instead doing everything possible to turn this area into a zone under the shogunate's direct rule.

Thus, in this region, feudal domains were few and their territories extremely small. For example, the Kishiwada Domain held by the shinpan Matsudaira Yasushige was merely a fifty-thousand-koku daimyō. Under the present circumstances, these small domains would presumably be unable to cause Tōgō Shigekata any trouble.

The real concern was the Kishū Domain in Kii Province at the southernmost tip. The Kishū Domain was one of the Tokugawa Gosanke, the three noble branch houses, possessing a total territory of over five hundred thousand koku and immensely formidable strength. They were direct descendants of the Tokugawa house and would certainly do everything in their power to oppose the Great Han. Therefore, one objective of Tōgō Shigekata's southward advance was to monitor the Kishū Domain's movements.

However, because the Kishū Domain had previously dispatched troops to support Itakura Shigemune, they had suffered heavy losses in the earlier disastrous defeat of the shogunate army. Thus, Zhou Pu was not particularly worried that they would still have the strength to raise an army and march to the relief of Kyoto.

In this manner, Zhou Pu informed Tōgō Shigekata of his arrangements. While grateful for Zhou Pu's patronage, Tōgō Shigekata also secretly vowed to fulfill Zhou Pu's instructions and repay this lord with his own meritorious deeds.

After seeing Tōgō Shigekata off, Zhou Pu summoned his highly trusted deputy commander, Tachibana Muneshige.

Just as with Tōgō Shigekata, he also prepared to have Tachibana Muneshige lead a force to take charge of operations in one direction. This force would advance directly east from Osaka, attacking Nara and Iga along the way.

Nara was the ancient capital of Japan and held a strategically vital position, serving as the gateway from the Kinai region to Kansai. As long as they occupied the Nara-Iga line, they could sever the connection between Kyoto — and indeed the entire capital region — and Kansai, greatly supporting the main army's strategy of attacking Kyoto.

It went without saying that this mission was far more important than Tōgō Shigekata's, and the pressure it would face would also be much greater — the shogunate's army would surely fight with all its might to resist, lest they lose all of Kyoto.

Therefore, this force had to be sufficiently strong and had to be commanded by the most outstanding general. After consideration, Zhou Pu decided to have Tachibana Muneshige command this army.

Tachibana Muneshige had been fighting in Japan for many years and possessed rich combat experience, while Shimazu Tadatsune, who could compare with him, was far too self-serving. So, after mulling it over, Zhou Pu had no choice but to send Tachibana Muneshige.

He would also hand over nearly half of the troops under his command to Tachibana Muneshige, so that he could accomplish this arduous task.

After hearing his arrangement, Tachibana Muneshige expressed slight puzzlement — because this would greatly reduce the troops under Zhou Pu's direct command, potentially affecting the campaign against Kyoto.

Zhou Pu, however, was utterly unconcerned.

After their disastrous defeat at Himeji Castle, the shogunate army had become a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow. Their strength had also been severely crippled, and the troops remaining in Kyoto could not be too numerous. Even after dividing his forces, he could still maintain superiority. Moreover, Itakura Shigemune had also been dealt a heavy blow in the previous debacle and surely would not dare to confront the Great Han in a direct clash again.

Thus, for him, as long as Tachibana Muneshige completed his designated mission of cutting off the connection between Kantō and Kinai, Kyoto would be nothing less than an object in his palm.

Besides, he had an even more important consideration for this arrangement — the troops he was detaching this time and giving to Tachibana Muneshige were all the armies of the powerful clans of Kyushu and the western provinces. What remained now were primarily the forces belonging to the Japanese Imperial Court, commanded by Nijō Yasumichi and Hashimoto Sanemura. In other words, the Imperial Court's army would be responsible for serving as the main force attacking Kyoto.

This was precisely what Nijō Yasumichi and the others had urgently requested of him.

One of the Great Han's principal banners in this war was to restore the Japanese Imperial Court's realm and reestablish proper order in Japan. Having an army directly subordinate to the Imperial Court capture Kyoto would further highlight the righteousness of this banner. Moreover, for the first time in centuries, the Japanese Imperial Court possessed an army under its direct command, and they were extremely eager to have a moment of "returning home in glory."

Furthermore, the shadow cast upon these court nobles by the Ōnin War was simply too deep. During that upheaval, which lasted nearly a decade, the great armies of the Hosokawa and Yamana clans confronted and slaughtered each other, nearly reducing Kyoto to a barren wasteland and causing immense suffering to both the Court and the nobles. Thus, none of them wished for such history to repeat itself.

In the eyes of Nijō Yasumichi and the others, although these domain troops were currently allies, they were fierce and savage by nature, practically indistinguishable from wild men. Therefore, they were unwilling to let these people set foot in Kyoto and bring new calamity upon the city.

At their earnest entreaty, Zhou Pu went along with the current and agreed to their request, deciding to have Tachibana Muneshige lead the other troops to attack Nara, while he himself would proceed to Kyoto with Nijō Yasumichi and the others.

Kyoto's status in Japan was extremely sensitive, and the Japanese Imperial Court was a very important chess piece for him — even more so, it was the banner with which to rally all of Japan and strike at the shogunate's prestige. He also knew he needed to consider this issue with the utmost prudence.

After the Battle of Himeji Castle, although the Japanese Imperial Court's army had suffered devastating losses, its surviving officers and men had gained invaluable experience and been tempered into a force that could at least be used for combat. It would not be too difficult to send them against the shogunate's remaining troops in Kyoto.

Besides, he still had under his command a Great Han force that had suffered almost no losses, sufficient to give him the confidence to crush any enemy in Kyoto.

Under Zhou Pu's orders, the large army at Osaka swiftly completed its division of forces and then advanced in their respective designated directions.

Because the shogunate army had been too severely mauled earlier, the advance of each force proceeded very smoothly. As Zhou Pu had predicted, Tōgō Shigekata quickly captured Sakai. Tachibana Muneshige pressed forward all the way toward Nara, while Zhou Pu advanced along the Yodo River, closing in on Fushimi and causing Kyoto to sound the alarm.

For a time, the Great Han army attacked along multiple routes, displaying a momentum that seemed poised to sweep through the entire capital region and cause the total collapse of shogunate rule in Kinai. Most areas chose to surrender without a fight, and some people even felt relieved that they had not been forcibly relocated to Kantō by the shogunate.

An ever-thickening black haze loomed over the skies above Edo Castle.

In the Ōoku at the heart of Edo Castle, this gloom was increasingly suffocating. Recently, it had grown more and more deathly silent here. Only when the latest situation reports were delivered into the Ōoku, or when the Shogun summoned his ministers to discuss countermeasures, was this deathly silence slightly broken.

In the outer hall, a close attendant was quietly reading aloud a report transmitted from Kyoto. Because the contents written in the report were far too grave, he grew increasingly nervous, and his voice became lower and lower.

On the raised tatami platform, the kneeling shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, listened to his narration with an utterly expressionless face. His eyes were slightly narrowed, making him appear as though he had fallen asleep.

Though a man not yet thirty, his face was utterly haggard, with deep, dark circles under his eyes, and fine wrinkles had even appeared at the corners of his eyes, as if all his vitality had been drained dry by the recent, unending stream of catastrophic news.

This young man's childhood had not been happy. His parents, doting on his younger brother, had cold-shouldered him and even intended to depose him from his position as heir. Only with great difficulty, and with his grandfather's help, had he stabilized his position and ultimately succeeded to the shogunate. To consolidate the Tokugawa house's rule over the realm, he had wielded authority arbitrarily all these years, acting imperiously and suppressing both the Imperial Court and the various powerful domains so that none dared defy his will, making the shogunate's power unprecedentedly mighty.

Yet, just at this moment of high spirits, when he felt nothing in the world was impossible, how could he have imagined that a sudden, heaven-sent calamity would descend upon him?

Who could have foreseen that the Great Han would actually launch an invasion of Japan, and that their military edge would be so sharp? Since the start of the war, they had won victory after victory, not only suppressing the shogunate at sea but also proving irresistible on land, and now they had reached the very gates of Kyoto.

This nightmarish reality pressed down upon his shoulders, subjecting this young man to unprecedented pressure. These past days, he had been racking his brains, trying every means to resist the Great Han and maintain the shogunate's tottering rule, exhausting his mental and physical strength. He had also been constantly anxious and sleepless, startled awake by nightmares almost every night — nightmares featuring scenes of his grandfather and father sternly rebuking him, and scenes of himself being consumed by the flames of Edo Castle. So, recently, in order to sleep, he had been drinking large quantities of alcohol every day to numb himself.

Under such terrible torment, he had aged greatly of late. His original high-spirited vigor had been replaced by a muddle-headed, dejected attitude, almost as if he had become a different person. His temper had also become far more prone to violent rage than before, so those around him were now even more cautious, and no one dared to speak to him unnecessarily.

Yet, no matter what, the matters that had to be faced still had to be faced, because he was the Shogun, the heir of the Divine Lord, and the hope of the Tokugawa house.

Because of this, although Tokugawa Iemitsu was utterly furious after listening to his attendant's report, he forcibly suppressed the rage in his heart, striving to appear numb and impassive.

"So, in other words, the Maeda house is absolutely unwilling to send troops to assist, no matter what?"

As he asked, he waved his hand, gesturing for the attendant to leave. The man, as if granted a great reprieve, hastily bowed and departed.

Now, only Tokugawa Iemitsu and his trusted senior ministers remained in the outer hall.

Tokugawa Iemitsu's question was very brief and clear, but when he asked it, everyone chose silence, as if the Shogun had posed an incomprehensibly difficult problem.

However, even if it was unpleasant to hear, someone had to answer — even if it was bad news.

"Yes, Your Shogun." Doi Toshikatsu, the head of the Council of Elders, bowed and replied; this was his responsibility. "From the current situation, the Maeda house has made up its mind to stand aside and watch the war between us and the Great Han. What is even more worrying is that, according to intelligence transmitted by our people in the Sendai Domain, the Date house of the Sendai Domain has recently been constantly seeking contact with the Kaga Domain. The two houses seem to be plotting something in secret, with frequent exchanges of envoys between them..."

Although Doi Toshikatsu tried hard to make his tone sound calm, these few sentences still caused another pang in Tokugawa Iemitsu's heart, and his vision nearly swam. Only with great difficulty did he endure this pain and look at Doi Toshikatsu as calmly as possible.

"What are they plotting? Are there signs of rebellion?"

"Judging from the intelligence we have so far, the Sendai Domain has no intention of rebelling yet, nor have they reinforced the troops on their borders." Doi Toshikatsu immediately replied. "However... they are no longer obeying the shogunate's orders, and they have been continuously mobilizing military forces within their domain. It appears they harbor the intention of watching how the situation develops."

After a brief pause, he continued, "As for the Kaga Domain, the signs are much more obvious. Not only are they standing by and watching, and not only are they secretly communicating with the Sendai Domain, but the mobilization of troops within their domain is clearly much more frequent. What is even more worrying is that, judging from the deployment of their forces, it seems more aimed at guarding against the shogunate... It is conceivable that the Kaga Domain harbors even greater disloyalty than the Sendai Domain."

"They are all birds of a feather; how is any one of them better than the other?" Tokugawa Iemitsu could not help but sneer. "It is simply that the Sendai Domain is located in a remote area, so they can only bide their time, while the Kaga Domain is a stone's throw from Kinai, so they are more restless and eager to stir. All of these people are rebels, every one of them! Not a single one can be trusted!"

Tokugawa Iemitsu could see that, now that the shogunate's rule was tottering precariously, the powerful daimyō in various regions must have developed thoughts of self-preservation, or even of exploiting the chaos to expand their power. As the largest of the tozama daimyō, it was hardly surprising that the Date and Maeda houses would do such things. It was very possible that they were already trying every means to establish contact with the Great Han.

What difference was there between the Date house, the Maeda house, and the Mōri and Shimazu? They were all mortal threats, all great enemies of the shogunate.

At this thought, he bitterly regretted having been far too lenient with these daimyō in the past, to the point that they still had the strength to defect to the Great Han and oppose the shogunate. If only he had brought them all under control back then.

"The General is right." Seeing that Tokugawa Iemitsu was showing signs of anger again, the Great Elder Ii Naotaka quickly spoke up. "No matter what they are thinking in their hearts, since they refuse to obey the shogunate's orders, it is already no different from rebellion. We must punish them severely."

After calming the General with these harsh words, Ii Naotaka shifted his tone. "However, since their behavior differs, we should treat them differently. We must especially take care not to let them unite against the shogunate. Under the present circumstances, we simply cannot bear the cost. Even if we are to punish them, it can only be done later."

After Ii Naotaka's veiled persuasion, Tokugawa Iemitsu finally steadied his temper.

"You are quite right. Since Sendai Domain is still hesitating, it shows they are still timid and cautious. We should go and placate them. As for Kaga Domain... we must respond with resolute firmness. The troops on the border cannot be withdrawn; on the contrary, they must be reinforced, to make them dare not act rashly."

It was obvious that the Maeda clan was a million-koku daimyo, and the strength within their domain was immense. If they truly defected to the Great Han and opposed the shogunate, it would deal a heavy blow to the shogunate, further weaken its prestige, and might even sever the connection between Kanto and Kansai, turning the shogunate's main army in Kansai into an isolated force.

Therefore, the Maeda clan had to be guarded against and intimidated. By now, they no longer planned to command the Maeda clan; it would be enough if they remained neutral and watched from the sidelines.

"Your Excellency speaks truly." Doi Toshikatsu bowed his head and agreed with Tokugawa Iemitsu's opinion. "Your Excellency, we have now reached a juncture that concerns the very survival of the shogunate. Every step we take must be cautious and prudent; we can afford no more mistakes."

Tokugawa Iemitsu understood that he was hinting at following his earlier suggestion — to simply abandon the entire western provinces.

Earlier, Doi Toshikatsu had been deeply pessimistic about the situation in the western provinces. He believed that the people there were not united, that the shogunate's forces there were far too weak, and that reinforcing the western provinces from Kanto was extremely difficult. Thus, the best strategy was to hold fast to the Kanto heartland, delay as long as possible in the western provinces, and if truly unable to hold on, withdraw entirely from the western provinces and defend Kanto to the death.

After the defeat at Himeji Castle, Doi Toshikatsu grew even more pessimistic. He believed that even if the shogunate now sent reinforcements to Kyoto, they might not be able to save it. It would be better to remain in Kanto and use the advantage of home territory to preserve the shogunate's last vestiges of fortune.

Recently, he had been constantly advising Tokugawa Iemitsu in this vein, but Tokugawa Iemitsu, after much hesitation, still had not agreed to this suggestion.

Because he could not bear the cost of losing Kyoto, and even more so because he could not endure such humiliation.

"If we abandon the western provinces, where else can we retreat to?" Under Doi Toshikatsu's gaze, Tokugawa Iemitsu smiled bitterly. "Besides, if the western provinces fall and we retreat step by step, then the Maeda clan, the Date clan, and the others will surely grow emboldened. In the end, we will face the siege of the entire realm."

"But..." Doi Toshikatsu still wanted to persuade him further.

"The General is absolutely right!" At that moment, the Great Elder Ii Naotaka suddenly spoke up, cutting off Doi Toshikatsu. "We cannot retreat any further! The whole realm is watching us. Can we truly sit by and watch Kyoto, and even Mikawa, be lost?!"