$ Chapter 424 27. Takeda Harunobu’s Great Defeat
The Yamanouchi family prepared their military and defended the country, looking peaceful and tranquil. The Takeda family would not sit idle, and every day in the Warring States period was a day of fighting.
Takeda Harunobu looked around, and the old man, Yamanouchi Yoshiharu, was not dead yet. There was no benefit in confronting him head-on. Suruga had already been swallowed up, and Hojo Ujinao was his son-in-law. There were only two soft persimmons left in his eyes.
One was Takanari Masayoshi and his son in Kaizu Castle, but Takanari Masayoshi had a big nephew, Uesugi Terutora, who was not easy to deal with. The other was Nagano Yoshimasa, the lord of Nishi-Ueno Minowa Castle, who had never been very famous. Takeda Harunobu now believed that this old man was at most a self-defending thief, and he could be captured while he was sitting.
Of course, whether this was the case, he needed to see it himself.
Since Takeda Harunobu had determined the target, he was not vague. He immediately took Takeda Taro Yoshinobu as the first mover and led 5,000 people including Iitomi Toramasa, Naito Masatoyo, Baba Nobuharu (Oh my god, Kyorai Ishiminbe Kagemasa finally succeeded in changing his name!), and Murozumi Masakiyuki.
His own 13,000 troops were the elite, including the attacking ace Yukinaga Sanada who shone in the small county attack, and the escape ace Masanobu Kosaka who fought freely when he stayed in Katsurao.
And Takeda Norimichiraki, Suwa Shiro Katsuyori, Takeda Nobumasa, Ichijo Uemon Daifu Nobutoryu, Anayama Izu no Kami Nobuyuki, Iitomi Saburobei Masakage, Akiyama Hoki no Kami Nobutomo, Oyamada Bichu no Kami Nobushige, Yamamoto Taito Haruyuki, Saegusa Kankai Yumoritomo, Hoshina Danma Masatoshi, and so on.
When Nagano Yoshimasa heard that Takeda's army of 18,000 troops was sweeping in, he summoned all the generals of Nishi-Ueno to Minowa Nagatsune Temple, and formed the general defense organization of Nishi-Ueno "Higan-Ofugi Ichishin" with Nagano Yoshimasa and Nagano Yoshimori as the flag bearers and 12 sons-in-law as the backbone.
On the one hand, he asked for reinforcements from Uesugi Terutora of Kasugayama in Echigo, and on the other hand, local samurai known as the "16 spears of Nishi-Ueno" gathered under the command of the veteran and his father-in-law Nagano Yoshimasa.
The former governors of the Uesugi clan, led by the famous "Sword Saint" lord of Ogo Castle, Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami Hidatsuna, responded to the order with awe, and each of them gathered their troops to support Nagano Yoshimasa, and the general defense system of the 320 castles of Ueno was put into operation.
However, two days later, Takeda's first-hand Takeda Yoshinobu's team crossed Tsuchihidaira and entered Binjiriguchi to fight against the 8,000-strong Nagano army.
Don't think that the Nagano group is weak. Nagano Yoshimasa's brother-in-law Obata Kenshige and son-in-law Obata Nobumasa led the Kunimine Obata Party of 400 riders to drive the left wing of the Takeda army. The lord of Annaka Castle (son-in-law) Annaka Tadamasa and the lord of Wada Castle (son-in-law) Wada Yoshishige led the elite hill infantry with short spears to continuously attack the right wing of the Takeda army.
Nagano Yoshimasa led the Minowa group, with Nagano Yoshimori as the spearhead, and the outstanding martial arts Kamiizuna and Kamahara Yukishige (son-in-law) as the two ribs, advancing in unison and fighting the Takeda army.
Takeda's Baba Nobuharu attacked Kamiizumi Daigo fiercely, and the two sides even fought one-on-one in front of the battle. Even so, the Takeda army found it difficult to break through Nagano Yoshimasa's defense line.
The two sides fought for three days at the Binjiriguchi, and the Takeda army could not move forward until Takeda Harunobu's main force arrived.
The 8,000 Nagano people were unable to defeat the 18,000 armored troops, so they slowly retreated under the command of Nagano Yoshimasa.
The Nagano people's hard work bought precious time for the people of Nishi-Ueno to clear the fields, and almost all the people and supplies of the entire Nishi-Ueno retreated into the fortress. Nagano Yoshimasa completely achieved the strategic goal of not giving Takeda Harunobu a grain of rice or a penny.
The Takeda army went out to capture people randomly, otherwise they would be mobilized two or three times a year. The wives and children worked hard at home to farm, and the farm work was delayed. If they didn't suck blood from others, they couldn't make up for their own blood loss.
But it was a headache to not be able to grab anything.
You said that every village had a fortress, and a certain amount of food was stored in it, but the fortress was full of local farmers who were defending their own homeland food. Once the Takeda army passed, everything would be destroyed. They must have fought to the death, and their morale was extremely high.
It was not difficult for the Takeda army to break through such a village fortress, but for a hundred or ten stones of grain, sometimes more than ten or twenty people had to die, which was not worth it for Takeda Harunobu.
In the end, Takeda Harunobu decided to capture the leader first and conquer Minowa, so that Nishi-Ueno would definitely be conquered, and grain and money would be at hand.
Matsui-da Castle, Annaka Castle, and Wada Castle along the way were all left alone, leaving only a small number of troops to monitor, and the army gathered at Minowa Castle. As long as the armor army struck with thunder, everything would be fine after the city was broken.
When he arrived at the city, Takeda Harunobu realized that he was wrong. The thief Nagano Yoshimasa built the city exactly like a turtle shell. As a strong city on the rolling hills, the special shape of a city and a city wall made it impossible for the 18,000 Takeda troops to completely surround the entire city, and they could not launch a large-scale attack to exert their military advantage.
But since they were here, there was nothing to say, they couldn't return empty-handed. Takeda Harunobu was still prepared to bite the bullet and try to find out the truth inside the castle.
Moreover, Takeda Harunobu was not a reckless man. Sanada Yukinaga had been a guest general of Nagano Yoshimasa and had several acquaintances. He ordered him to try to contact the samurai in the castle. If there were any willing to communicate with the inside to guarantee safety, he would be given a higher title.
In addition, Takeda Harunobu also immediately recruited the Kindari. Since Minowa Castle was built on a hill only a few dozen meters high and there were no steep mountains, Takeda Harunobu naturally hoped to dig a tunnel directly and suddenly enter the castle.
In conjunction with this, there was also a frontal attack by selecting capable people, mobilizing the Nagano army, and launching a fierce round-robin battle against Minowa Castle with the Takeda army's superior forces, using multiple approaches.
As a result, after two days of fighting, the Nagano army was struggling and increasingly weak, while the Takeda army was getting better and better, and felt that victory was just around the corner.
That night, the Nagano army sent people out of the city through the secret door and attacked the Takeda army at night. Takeda Harunobu smiled contemptuously. He had been prepared for it, and all the camps did not move, leaving only one mobile elite soldier to fight the enemy.
After fighting like this for another three days, the night attack of the Nagano army became increasingly weak. After making a lot of noise in the middle of the night, the sky was slightly bright, and then they stopped and retreated to the city in dejection.
When Takeda Harunobu saw that it was already light, he thought there would be no more ambushes, so he immediately sent a thousand people to follow the Nagano army's attack team, trying to follow them into the city in the chaos.
He also arranged two and three teams of people to be ready to follow up at any time, trying to break the city in one fell swoop.
But when the Takeda army followed the Nagano army to Minowa Castle and Takadome Castle (beside castle), the situation suddenly changed. Countless Nagano soldiers holding iron cannons and longbows appeared on the castles on both sides.
At the same time, the fake screen on the castle was suddenly knocked down, and a large number of logs swept down from both sides of the hills, and the Takeda army was smashed to pieces.
Hundreds of iron cannons and longbows fired at the same time, and the valley between the hills suddenly became a hell on earth. The Nagano army, which had pretended to retreat, turned around and rushed into the battle, and countless Nagano soldiers also poured out of the secret door.
The Takeda army was defeated!