Chapter 200 4. Yiwu Yingyang Goes to Luojing
Xiao Pingtai spent a difficult winter month in his wild thoughts. Every day, he calculated how many roads there were in Donghai Street? How wide was the road? How many soldiers could pass at a time? Would the long march cause damage to the road and cause the team to be out of touch?
He hadn't finished thinking about all the messes yet, and was considering whether to go to Minghai Dagu and other cities to buy a few farmers in advance. If Okehazama really happened, let them come to report to him as soon as possible, or if nothing happened and everything was stable?
He was also thinking about if the timeline was closed and Imagawa Yoshimoto really died from flying dragon riding, should he take the opportunity to rush into Mikawa Totomi and eat him up. Or pick one or two agents in Mikawa, stir up trouble, and mess up the boundaries, so that it would be convenient for Yamanouchi Yoshiharu to deal with these noobs in the future.
He spent three months of winter in a daze, and even the thought of making money faded. After all, the Okehazama surprise attack, one of the three major surprise attacks in the Warring States period, was about to happen in front of him, and the distance was so close that he couldn't believe it.
Before the spring, Asahina Suruga no Kami Yasutomo, the lord of Kakegawa Castle in the Totomi garrison, came to Ejiri with a document signed by Imagawa Yoshimoto himself, and sent 3,000 taels of gold, asking Kobayata to launch a general petition, and to make sure that after the spring plowing, the bridges on the Tenryu River and the streets of Ejiri would be fully prepared to accommodate 40,000 to 50,000 troops.
After the cold winter, the melting of snow will certainly make agricultural water available. But it will also bring about great spring training, destroying the roads and bridges along the coast. Nowadays, almost all the streets are ordinary mud roads, and the so-called rammed earth road surface actually only exists on paper.
The damage caused by flooding to these mud roads is great, and many sections of the road have become silted, and repairing the roads every year is a hard job. Now that Imagawa Yoshimoto, a rich man, has taken the initiative to pay for it, it would be best for him to be the sucker.
Kobayata did not dare to neglect Imagawa Yoshimoto's document, after all, he was a top boss, and he was just a small castle lord. Imagawa Yoshimoto was furious, and Kobayata was so angry that he immediately asked someone to carry gold back to Yamauchi for instructions and began to mobilize the elite soldiers in the territory.
A few days later, Yamauchi Yoshichika brought hundreds of hatamoto samurai foot soldiers assigned to him by his father Yamauchi Yoshiharu, and Konishihara Saemon Harunaga came to Ejiri with the deputy general of the force. Kobayata nodded at the heads, and surprisingly, none of them were mobilized soldiers, all of them were regular soldiers. Although Yamauchi Yoshiharu didn't pay much attention to the training of this youngest son before, he was indeed his own son, and he invested a lot of money.
At the same time, Kobayata also received an order from Yamauchi Yoshichika that Yamauchi Yoshiharu allowed him to launch a large-scale road construction in Ejiri, so he could only forcefully mobilize 3,000 people in the territory when the spring plowing was still busy, and temporarily give up farming to start preparing roads.
In addition, Imagawa Yoshimoto certainly would not waste the time in the preparation stage before going to Kyoto this year. The brothers Okabe Motonobu and Okabe Masanaga were assigned to Mikawa to cooperate with Yoshida Castle Lord Udono Nagakatsu and began to test the attack on Oda Nobuhiro in Ansheng Castle with a small-scale force. And pulled out the branch castles near Ansheng Castle one by one to ensure that the flanks of the road to Owari were not threatened.
Then it was to drive those country nobles in western Mikawa who were not convinced, especially the most troublesome Honda, Ishikawa and Sakai. Let these cheap cannon fodders continue to enter the Owari territory south of Atsuta to attack the villages and towns of the Oda clan, and make the army look good. At the same time, consume the already insufficient strength of the Oda clan in the southern part of Owari, bleed Oda Nobunaga, and make his head hurt for a few more days.
As for the father and son of Yamaguchi Kyotsugu of Narumi Castle, who were willing to work hard for Imagawa Yoshimoto last year, they had long been abandoned by Imagawa Yoshimoto, and they didn't care about their lives. So, Yamaguchi Kyotsugu and his son were killed by Oda Nobunaga when they ran out of ammunition and reinforcements. At this moment, the person Nobunaga relied on to guard Narumi was Oda clan elder Sakuma Daigaku Shigeshige, a general who was famous in Kaido during the Nobuhide era.
At the same time, there were more than 400 defenders in the city, and it was absolutely impossible to capture it for a while. Oda Nobunaga planned to use Narumi as a fulcrum city to resist the invasion of Suruga. As long as Narumi could be defended for three to five days and block the front of Imagawa Yoshimoto, Oda Nobunaga would have time to fully mobilize the Owari people and make a desperate fight.
At this point, the two sides kept probing and fighting on a small scale. Anyone could see that a fierce confrontation was just around the corner. The messenger with Suruga's gold kept secretly traveling among the lords and samurai of Owari, trying his best to buy them off and divide them. After all, in front of gold, loyalty and love can be negotiated.
Finally, the spring ploughing in Kaido ended with the rumbling of war drums. Flags were flying inside and outside Suruga Fuchu Castle. A huge army of more than 25,000 people surrounded Imagawa Yoshimoto, who was known as "Kaido Ichi-no-bumitori", "Giant of the East Sea", "Unparalleled General in Ancient and Modern Times", and "Mineji's Most Powerful Elder".
The Imagawa clan was finally going to challenge the whole world from a humble branch of the Minamoto clan, and challenge the supreme throne of the world's samurai. The accumulation and efforts of ten generations of the Imagawa clan for more than 200 years finally flourished in Imagawa Yoshimoto.
At this moment, almost everyone firmly believed that with such a huge army, they would plow the fields and sweep away the dust of the bandits. Perhaps at the end of the year, in the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, it would be Imagawa Osamu Daisuke Yoshimoto, the Minamoto courtier, who would sit beside His Majesty the Shogun and issue orders to the whole world.
After joining Takeda Yoshinobu in Kai, the Imagawa teams moved forward one after another. Yamanouchi Yoshichika was reinforced by the regular foot soldiers of Tsunayoshi's uncle and the Totomi people of Matsushima Ichimoto, and gathered an army of more than 2,000 people. He followed the main force of his father-in-law Imagawa Yoshimoto and headed for Mikawa with great enthusiasm.
Before leaving, Kobayata repeatedly warned his uncle Tsunayoshi to take care of himself, hide if he could, retreat if he could, and be careful in everything.
But the effect did not seem to be very good. At this moment, the Imagawa army, which already had more than 30,000 people, had a majestic momentum to crush everything. Being in such a huge army, even if the gods and ghosts came, he would be afraid. How could there be any danger?
What else could Kobayata do? He could only watch the Imagawa army that took three days to pass through the Ejiri Castle. When they arrived at Yoshida Castle and joined the samurai group in Higashi Mikawa, the entire army would expand to more than 40,000 people.
There was another piece of news. Since Imagawa Yoshimoto believed that this battle would be won, the 17-year-old Imagawa Ujizane's first battle was arranged for this battle of Shangluo. The affairs of staying in Suruga were handed over to Imagawa Yoshimoto's mother Shou Guini, who was as smart and capable as any man, and his own confidant, Okabe Chikatsuna.
All the men of the Imagawa family, including the sons-in-law, were mobilized collectively and participated in the expedition to Kyoto.