○ The Battle of Sekigahara, which took place on September 15, 1600 (October 21, 1600), was arguably the largest civil war in Japanese history, with Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida as commanders, both of which invested more than 100,000 troops, and before the war both sides thought it would be a protracted battle.
○ In the Meiji era, the Japanese Army University hired Major Klemens Wilhelm Jacob Meckel as the school's instructor, and after looking at the layout of the two sides of the Battle of Sekigahara, Merkel thought that the Western Army had a topographical advantage and surrounded the Eastern Army with the position of the Crane Wing Array, concluding that the Western Army was victorious.
○ However, Major Merkel made a judgment based purely on the army's positioning and terrain, without taking into account the human factor. But the paradox is that in wars in human history, the human factor is often the most critical reason for determining the victory or defeat of wars. In the end, why did the Western Army lose its hand in victory? Compared to the old-fashioned Tokugawa Ieyasu, what kind of personality does Ishida Sansei, who is the commander of the defeated army, have? How did he affect the whole war?
○ Ishida Sansei's maiden name was Sakichi, originally a temple minor surname (a juvenile miscellaneous servant of the temple) at a monastery in Omi Kingdom, and one day after Toyotomi Hideyoshi became the lord of Omi Nagahama Castle, he returned from hunting and entered the Buddhist temple where Sakichi was ordained to quench his thirst with a cup of tea.
○ Sakichi, who was just a teenager at the time, did not know who was visiting, but vaguely knew that he was a very high-ranking person, and he brought out three cups of tea with different temperatures three times. Hideyoshi asked him why, and Saki replied, "I see that you are quite thirsty, so the first time you take the largest tea cup with warm tea to quench your thirst; the second time use a smaller tea cup to hold tea with a slightly higher water temperature, and see that you know that you have adapted to the hot water temperature after drinking slowly; the third time you use a smaller cup and a hotter hot water to serve tea, please taste the tea carefully." Hideyoshi was quite pleased with Sakichi's thoughtfulness and cleverness, and took him with him when he left the temple. Although this has been confirmed to be the creation of later generations of writers, Sakichi's carefulness and his humble attitude in the face of powerful people are not excessively outrageous in comparison with his later life.
○ After that, including Hideyoshi's conquest of various places as the commander of Oda Nobunaga's army, and the battles that pacified the world after Hideyoshi took the right to inherit the Oda family after Nobunaga Yoko's death, Ishida Mitsunari was almost unsatisfied, and dozens of battles were accumulated by the Battle of Sekigahara. However, with the exception of the Battle of Shinogi, one of Odawara's series of battles, he did not lead an army as a general. Moreover, the strength of the troops he led in the Battle of Shinogi was only 7,500 people, and if such a force was difficult to control, then the Battle of Sekigahara, which exceeded the strength of more than ten times the strength of the Battle of Shinogi, was even more difficult to master!
○ Ishida Sansei had neither the strategy to win a decisive victory thousands of miles away, nor the courage to take the lead and charge into battle, nor did he have the strength to command the whole army, so he could neither be a military division nor a staff officer, nor could he be assigned as a vanguard, nor could he be related to the general. In other words, at that time, the type of military general or daimyo was either a general general, or a pioneer or a military staff officer, and Ishida Sansei did not belong to the above three types, so his long-term evaluation as a military general was not high, and his advantages were also covered up. In fact, Ishida Had one specialty that was almost unmatched in that era and was crucial on the battlefield, that is, his ability to calculate and dispatch.
○ Ishida was about twenty years old, and Hideyoshi wanted to increase his fortune and called him in and said, "Saki, give you five hundred stone, and I hope you will be more diligent in your future." If you are an ordinary person, you will most likely say gratefully, in the future, I should be more diligent, and live up to the words of the five hundred stones, such as the five hundred stones, but Ishida Sansei is not, he said to Hideyoshi, "If so, please give me the reeds on the Yodogawa River, and let me tax the people who cut these reeds, which is equivalent to ten thousand stones." "At that time, reeds grew naturally on both sides of yodogawa River and could be used as roof grass and reed curtains, but no one ever thought of taxing people who cut reeds. Ishida resigned from the 500-stone shiro, and after obtaining this right from Hideyoshi, he calculated a reasonable tax amount per unit and encouraged farmers to cut off reeds to make products to sell to Kyoto and Osaka, resulting in profits exceeding 10,000 stones.
○ Since Hideyoshi was made lord of Omi-Nagahama Castle by Nobunaga, he recruited talents in his domain, and as a civilian, he regarded class barriers as nothing, and Ishida Mitsunari, Kato Kiyomasa, and Fukushima Masanori were all discovered and reused by Hideyoshi by civilian origins.
○ From 1582 onwards, Hideyoshi conducted "land inspections" in his domain, measuring land that the people had hidden from reporting or land that had just been conquered as a standard for local taxes. This kind of thing cannot be done by ordinary military generals, and only a calculation genius like Ishida Sansei can do it, and Sansei and Nagashiro Nagamori and Nagashiro Masayoshi, who were also from Omi, traveled almost all over Japan for the next ten years, surveyed all over the country, completed the so-called "Taikaku inspection", and stipulated the tax standards of the major names, laying the financial foundation for the Toyotomi regime.
○ In the Battle of Korea from 1592 onwards, Ishida Misei's ability to calculate and dispatch was brought into full play. In the face of 40,000 ships, 200,000 troops, and countless horses, military food, horse feed, gunpowder, bullets, bows and arrows, how to most efficiently transport these combatants and items from Nagoya to the Korean Peninsula in the shortest possible time, the average person has a big head just by seeing such a huge battle. Although Ishida Sansei and others were difficult to make meritorious contributions on the battlefield, they were no less meritorious than those who attacked the city on a different battlefield, and the three of them, together with Asano Nagamasa and Maeda Gensei, were named "Five Pursuits" by Hideyoshi, and were the actual leaders of the government affairs of the Toyotomi regime, and later Ishida became the head of the Five Pursuits.
○ Ishida Mitsunari was finally promoted to daimyō by Hideyoshi at the age of twenty-five or six for his exploits, and although he was a few years later than Hideyoshi's relatives such as Kato Kiyomasa and Fukushima Masanori, who had been brought up since childhood, he was much less powerful, with only 40,000 stones. However, compared to Kato and Fukushima, which are located in the remote islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, 30% of the territory is located near the mouth of Omizumi, near Kyoto, and Omi is not only important in geographical location, but also in economic status, but also the former residence of Ishida Sansei, Hideyoshi obviously regarded Mitsunari as an important confidant.
○ After 30% became daimyō, Hideyoshi asked him which vassals he had recruited, and Mitsunari replied that only one person had been recruited, namely Shimazazo. Hideyoshi nodded after hearing this, and said, "Shima Zuo is a celebrity in the world, and he should not move with a meager Feng Lu, how many Feng Lu do you use to invite him to come?" Thirty percent answered twenty thousand stones. Hideyoshi said, "Wouldn't you have received the same amount of money as him then?" This has not been heard of since ancient times! Sancheng replied calmly: "I recruited Zuo Jin with 20,000 stones, and it seems that I suffered a loss at the moment; but Zuo Jin's talent is enough to help me lay down 200,000 stones, and it is not too worthwhile for me to recruit him with 20,000 stones now?" Ishida Sansei, who had Shimazo as his vassal, later became the lord of Omi Sawa-san 195,000 stones, so there was a saying at the time: "There are only two places where 30% are superior: the left side of the island and the castle of Sawayama." ”
○ But it is also an indisputable fact that 30% are almost at odds with the daimyo under the Toyotomi regime, so what is going on?
○ Hideyoshi was born in Owari, and before he was promoted by Oda Nobunaga to the position of lord of Omi Nagahama Castle, most of his subordinates were from the same village. These people have limited education, come from a reckless background, and gamble their future on Hideyoshi, which is the stock of Hideyoshi's entrepreneurship. After Hideyoshi became the lord of Nagahama Castle, Ishida Sansei, Masuda Nagamori, and Nagasho Masaya, who were from Omi, were discovered by Hideyoshi because of their high administrative efficiency and became civilian officials around them. As Hideyoshi gradually pacified the various places, the feeling that the samurai were not valued could be felt even if they were dull as the Owari takeshi Fukushima Masanori, so it was not difficult to understand that the Owari party would have a grudge against the Omi faction.
○ As mentioned earlier, the Battle of Korea allowed Ishida Sansei to make full use of his ability to calculate dispatches, but like the double-sided blade, it also fully demonstrated the shortcomings of his personality. Originally, "the general will be outside, and the king's order will not be affected" is a matter of course, and the commanders of korea such as Kato Kiyomasa and Kuroda Nagamasa will carry out their tasks independently according to the situation, but in the eyes of the overseer Ishida Sansei, these acts have become challengers to the Hideyoshi system, so he reported the facts he saw in writing to Hideyoshi...
○ As the overseer of the Battle of Korea, Ishida Should Uphold the Impartiality of Equal Treatment and Report the Actions of Front-Line Generals to Hideyoshi. However, his report was more partial to his friend Governor Konishi, and when Kato Kiyomasa made a meritorious contribution, Mitsusei said that he violated military orders first, and the last meritorious person became Governor Konishi, and Kato was dismissed from the post of commander-in-chief. Before the Battle of Sekigahara began, Ishida Misei had already offended the martial arts generals under hideyoshi's regime, and it is no wonder that these generals all defected to opposing camps at the Battle of Sekigahara.
○ The Battle of Sekigahara began when Tokugawa Ieyasu led the daimyōs to Aizu to fight against the disobedient Uesugi Keikatsu, but Ieyasu was just making a show, he did not really want to fight Uesugi, he just used the convenience of leaving Kyoto to lead Ishida Sansei to raise troops, and then turned back to fight 30%.
○ 30% and the Uesugi family's family, Naoe Kane, had agreed to raise troops against Ieyasu in aizu and Kyoto at the same time, with the specific plan being for the Uesugi family to raise the banner of the crusade against Ieyasu in Aizu, and 30% calling on the Nishikuni daimyo in Kyoto to respond. This plan was not implemented in the end, because Sansei could not wait for Ieyasu to enter Aizu and could not wait to raise troops, so that Ieyasu had enough time to turn back.
○ The reason for the defeat of the Western Army in the Battle of Sekigahara was not that the plan was not meticulous, but that it was difficult to impress the neutral military generals by having a person like Sansei who lacked popularity and strength as the commander, and blindly advocating that the military generals should repay the favor of the taikoku, and the favor of the taikoku was not as good as all the military generals. Tokugawa Ieyasu was the daimyō with a domain of 2.55 million stones, he was the head of the five elders, and his official position was from the two ministers of the interior; in contrast, Ishida Sansei was only the lord of Omisa and Yamasa castles with 195,000 stones, and although he was the head of the five nobles, his official position was only from the five subordinate shōsuke, which could be distinguished at a glance.
○ On the eve of the decisive battle, Ieyasu and Sansei constantly wrote letters to win over the military generals who were watching, and the number of letters was enough to surprise modern people! Among them, many military generals also received letters from both at the same time, and almost all the military generals who encountered this situation almost invariably defected to the Eastern Army. Masuda Nagamori, whom Sansei cited as an ally, even privately informed Ieyasu of Sansei's every move.
○ After the Battle of Sekigahara began on September 15, only 30% of the Western Army, Otani Yoshiji, Ukita Hideya, Governor Konishi and other troops were put into the war, and the rest were on the sidelines, the Western Army claimed to have 100,000 troops, but only about 30,000 actually put into battle.
○ The Western Army used this to meet more than 70,000 people of the Eastern Army, but in the six hours before the rebellion of Hideaki Kohayakawa, the two sides fought without distinction between victory and defeat, and the Western Army even forced the Eastern Army to retreat several times, leaving the generals such as Masanori Fukushima, Hosokawa Tadao, Kuroda Nagamasa, and Fujido Takatoro looking at the face, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was watching the battle on Mount Momopai, unconsciously bit his finger because the battle situation was stuck.
○ Ishida Sansei must have hoped that the Maori family on Mount Nangong or Hideaki Kohayakawa on Mount Matsuo would send a force to participate in the war to turn the tide of the war, but his plan failed, and the Maori family made up his mind to adopt a neutral and wait-and-see attitude from beginning to end, Andakawa Hideaki planned to see the opportunity to defect, they would not rush to the aid of Sansei, and the Shimazu family around Sansei annoyed Shimazu Yoshihiro because of Sansei's arrogance and rudeness, and also adopted an attitude of seeing death and not saving. At two o'clock in the afternoon, Hideaki Hayakawa rushed down mt. Matsuo and decided the outcome of the largest civil war in Japanese history.
○ After the war, 30% was arrested on September 21 by the generals of the Eastern Army who were arrested in the Ibuki Mountains, and on October 1, he was beheaded by Governor Konishi and the diplomatic monk Ankokuji Keiji of the Maori family at Rokujō Kawahara in Kyoto.
○ Before the execution, 30% told the guards that he was thirsty and wanted to drink some water, and the people next to him only gave him a few persimmons. In response, Sancheng said: "Persimmons are not good for the body, I don't want to eat them." The guard listened dismissively and said, "So what does it matter!" Anyway, you have to wait a minute and you're going to be in a different place. Sancheng said calmly: "People with great ambitions will still cherish their lives even at the last moment of their lives." ”
○ When any regime is facing the collapse, there will always be a few ill-timed people who are fighting for the continuation of the regime, not necessarily vested interests of the regime, but with the most sincere heart to the invaders who are trying to destroy the regime. Ishida Mitsunari played exactly such a role, but although Mitsei had a bold and loyal heart, he did not have a corresponding leadership, and it may be too reluctant to serve as the leader of the Toyotomi regime. As a result, Ishida Sansei insisted on assuming this position, and instead pushed the military generals who might have joined the Western Army or adopted a neutral attitude to the Ieyasu camp, thereby hastening the demise of the Toyotomi regime. Perhaps it was The Heavens that deliberately destroyed the Toyotomi regime by a stubborn and awkward person like Ishida Sansei.