Long lines of coerced, machine-made, and let-live mortals wended the broadening valleys leading from the seat of empire, Kyoto’s mouldering gate, Fushima, toward the walled-in adjuster, Ozaka, under whose shelter there throbbed in every archer and each spearman the impulse that leads to liberty.

A mighty task confronted these invaders, the mercenary half of a nation. Obedience to an over-mastery had become their watchword; through long ages the spark that enlightens had been drubbed and coaled into nothing more than the droll leaden heat of an improvident toll, and the hills on either side echoed from one to the other only such monotonous rhythm as dulled or tinkled in the ears of baser content or lulled to sleep any instinct born of more than earth’s paid transient competence.

“Law and order is the order and the law,” growled Ieyasu, as the last one of those corpulent commanders eased back upon the tired, stooped shoulders bearing him hence—to what and where only the lost and fading records of regardful time could or would flaunt in the faces of a blushing posterity.

“Are the spears sharp,” demanded he, when the train had as diligently ranked apace.

“I’ll inquire, sir,” responded the orderly, thinking only of the wage he had contracted—and the echo answering back, from the farthest spoke in the wheel, sounded like:

“All’s well, sir.”

“Avast! I warrant,” muttered Ieyasu, “not one of them knows the meaning, however prodded or ribbed. A heartless task, this; and, I do believe the soul cries—but to the work:

“Forward, march!” and the drive began; the machine creaked; the master builder, however, oiled methodically its thirsty bearings and adjusted as economically the squeaking parts.

“It’s a time-keeper, if ugly,” muttered he, as the trodden ground, too, responded with agony to the listless demands of an overly candid, if seldom understood, “tramp, tramp, tramp”—and the knowing few, constant criers of, “hands off, hands off, hands off,” paled at the prospect of their own befouling—Christ’s blood bore no relation to the parboiling blue of their ensemble; Pontius had exemplified the wiser conduct.

Anxious hearts and eager eyes, over there, on the other side, amid the burnings and yearnings of betterment, atop privilege and opposed to lying, their honor at stake and a lighted beacon in the hand, singing songs of gladness and shouting defiance at sin, a mission to perform and life ahead—these were the men and women who manned the ship whose supercargo responds only to healthful dictation and whose decks are freighted with the fragrant odor of valorous deeds.

“Let the work be quickly done,” advised Yodogima, high at the helm’s guidance, aloft the citadel of manlier entente. “Strike the vibrating thing at its weakest point, and when these carping conservatives shall have once scented the cost of healthier action their flagrant confidence must fall of its own overweight. The very thought is shocking, but truth is most obvious: the only way to rid a body is to gouge an evil growth. Your hearts are strong; see that you strike deep, and nobly.”

Not a man faltered, no one questioned his rations; the prize savored of freedom, the penalties were of trifling consideration, and these men deployed their forces with a vim and an assurance that sounded afar the masked countenance of those they defied.

Kuroda and Fukushima hearkened, sickening at their own stupid estimate. The two of them, lifelong servers of a better fortune, respected supporters of Hideyoshi, had sworn, sealing the oath with their own blood, to defend and uphold the cause that Hideyori, an infant, had inherited and Yodogima, his mother, now sought with fearless energy to conserve, that Hideyoshi, the builder, had inaugurated, and that Nobunaga, a beginner, had conceived. A terrible retribution bore down hard, as their foolish mistake and her upright stand fairly began to dawn. Committed and hemmed in, there seemed no escape—Ieyasu solved the problem.

“Banished,” snarled he, to Hidetada, his chief counsellor, and in the presence of other barons assembled for that purpose; “and that their example may prove salutary, in the case of any like minded or weak kneed, it is my instruction that you kill these upon the slightest show of rebellion. To Yedo with them, and dagger athwart.”

Only Maeda, the younger, responded; he had witnessed the dispatch of his father, sometime guardian over Hideyori, and jumping to his feet, vowed undying fidelity to Ieyasu; he knew the forced intriguer’s methods, perhaps divined some advantage in his tactics, for he had inherited untouched his father’s estates, if not a better security—Ieyasu then made him head commander, under Hidetada, his chief, subject only to himself as dictator, obeyed, if despised.

“Then it is Maeda that Ieyasu, a wooer, would pit against my Sanada, a patriot?” replied Yodogima, when advised of the circumstance—no doings on either side escaped her; Kyogoku, now, again, for the one, and Honda, Ieyasu’s secretary, with the other, proved good intelligencers, if shaky, or resolute, otherwise. “Perhaps he, Maeda, too, will have changed somewhat when he has unexpectedly discovered that smoking powder, and not farmers’ arrows, await him. Sanada may sleep at the gate, but Maeda shall never cross these walls—no doubt there are others in Ieyasu’s train of the same mind as Kuroda and Fukushima: we shall see, well before the wise Ieyasu has bought or defeated a man of mine; freedom and failure are antithetical in fact.”

Ridding his camp of the last, as he believed, who dared shake at the knees, and shouldering the remaining daimyos with the brunt of fighting and danger, keeping his own immediate levies, the Tokugawas, in reserve at the rear, where neither spear or arrow nor powder and shot could do them harm, Ieyasu gave out the orders:

“Form a semicircle, the rest of you, my doubtful daimyos—I shall test your backbones; single-handed, and with no shelter available, you shall fight or turn traitor; Yodogima’s methods and mood are well known—from Settsu to Idzumi, surrounding from shore to shore the enemy’s grounds: they will hardly take to the water; there are no ships available: Maeda shall lead well round the Yamato (Nara) hills and approaching Ozaka from the south, with Hidetada at his rear and myself close after, strike them at their strongest point. The arm is strong, we have two to their one, and every hot-head fallen is an abiding guarantee of peace. It is a shame that these beautiful engines of war should needs be put to use, but—well, I have exhausted every recourse to bring Hideyori to my way of thinking: he is foolishly ambitious, wickedly rooted, and must be removed.”

Two hundred thousand of them thus moved upon Yodogima, the mother, perhaps responsible for some of Hideyori’s real traits, however misjudging or particular Ieyasu had taken it upon himself to be. Nor had she been less pronounced in her convictions.

“Remove the cause for all this war paraphernalia, and the effect shall be at once to relieve humanity of its needless building: the very best way to do that is to use well what we have got—here and elsewhere, now, before our resources shall have been exhausted with trying to bluff each other,” she had said to Ieyasu. repeatedly, upon his showing the white feather, to Hideyoshi, his earliest rival.

They came on, these derelicts, of duty, their banners waving and mouths sustaining, the advancing heavy-weights skirting the mountains to the eastward, with the singly doled daimyos holding down their respective posts as assigned. Yodogima surveyed the situation, as she could, from her central position. The semicircle occasioned no uneasiness; as she surmised—Ieyasu had overlooked it—every one of them considered his place a most advantageous roost from which to observe results in front, sliding down on either side as convenience should dictate.

They did serve their would-be master, however, in quite another respect: their absence relieved Ieyasu of the necessity of lumbering more than Maeda’s contingent around those hills and over the plains, where bubbled the waters and grew the seed Yodogima had sprung or sown in lavish abundance. Patriots were budding like cherries in springtime, and a driven march but made the fragrance smell the sweeter.

Now, Maeda swung into the open, a formidable army loomed to the southward, and Yodogima breathed easier; her estimate thus far had proven correct; the attack would come as expected; Ieyasu had employed the only tactics he knew—Sanada apparently slept at the nearest gate.

Directly across the intended battlefield, well in advance of the outer moat, running from the water front on the right to the river Nekogawa at her left, a low embankment, some ten feet in height, had been unexpectedly thrown up and faced of rock, with a deep water-trap hugging the farthest side, from end to end.

The invaders mistook this to be the outer moat: the patriots lay low, behind Sanada; who, to their astonishment, only snored.

Then, Hidetada wheeled his van, the flower of Yedo, well onto the plain; they were loyal men, but as yet in the measurement, as to their fullest capacity; the commander-in-chief had recruited of the newer Tokugawa, and any sudden charge might be expected to stampede the whole, in case of Maeda’s rout, in advance—Harunaga, mobilized just inside the last regular moat, at the right-hand gate, awaiting only a chance.

Yodogima had not as much confidence in his boldness, as respect for his courage; their strategy, like the enemy’s valor, must abide younger heads or hearts than those of Harunaga and Ieyasu.

Lastly, Ieyasu showed his face, and the veterans of his experience, samurai tried and found true, on many a scarred and fought-to-the-finish contest, their steps more studied and ears better cocked, these trusties ranked in, on the farthest side of the broad open, still beyond, in the rear. This, then, were the division that Hideyori, young and untried, should meet, if needs be, in a final determination of their destinies: the decisive conflict of an age.

Hideyori at the beginning: Ieyasu at the end of a career.

“It is blood against experience, and who would change it?” half whispered, half shouted Yodogima, a mother, as she swept the horizon with those eyes that had never failed her, looked into the faces which had gathered, and drilled, and armed, in behalf of manliness.

“My dear men,” said she, turning to them, from her seat above, “you cannot fail. Whatever may become of me, however I or mine may demean himself, manhood is the secret buried underneath or revealed of any and every godlike doctrine, thought, or action. It is Godly, and the trend of the devil is toward the flesh. A strong heart knows its haven: a weak one abides the fires that consume. Manhood has made this world what it is, perhaps soared here, to this, from planets above; is making the world of to-day, however prosperous lying may seem; shall continue to make it, till there remains no need of a hell—thus and then, only, may heaven be attained. On with the work, and let no guilty thing escape!”

Ieyasu, too, had spoken; climbing to a hill-top, Chausu, close at hand, on the right, the would-be besieger levelled his glasses, scanning the field before him. His own division of some sixty thousand samurai occupied the open lying between the hill on which he stood and the sea to the left; on the extreme opposite side of the field to his right stood Hidetada and his army of equal size, extending on toward the eastward, till the hill Okayama, rearing up as a sentinel, shut out all intervening space between his forces and the river Hirano: the top of which hill afforded also the commander-in-chief, Hidetada, a most excellent vantage point.

At the extreme front, toward the center, lay Maeda, with his perhaps forty thousand Kaga bloods, including their allies, ready to do when bid. To his, Maeda’s, right and to his left, spanning the distance from Hirano river, the eastern field border, to the sea at the west, stretched, together with his own—an intended battering ram—minor forces of the doubtful daimyos who had been placed to form the famed semicircle, as well as such others as had been brought up to strengthen the contemplated charge. Still in front of all, near by, lay the small hill Sasayama, coveted by Maeda, but held as an outpost by Sanada—apparently sleeping, farther on, at the gate post.

“We have the foe, safe enough, in front of us: our rear is free from molestation,” chuckled Ieyasu, to Hidetada, his son, who had come over, in the evening, to consult about the proposed early morning attack. “With the enemy before them and the Tokugawa behind, what chance have these dilatory daimyos of ours? Why, they’ll be chowdered before the sun is risen.”

“Then Hidetada shall pounce upon the foe with the freshness of morning,” replied he, elated, if over-anxious, “and before the dew is fairly dried they shall have gone, to their happy hunting-ground.”

“Well said, my son,” ejaculated the forgetful hero of Sekigahara, “and Ieyasu shall dine in Ozaka.”

“Alone, father?”

“Why do you ask; have I ever denied you, my boy?”

“Oh; I had another thought in mind.”

“It had been better, were it a view.”

“I don’t just like, so very much, fighting in the dark; but, as it may take the enemy some time to obliterate Maeda—and the rest of them, the sneaking daimyos’ lines—I may not have to expose myself, till daylight, at best,” surmised Hidetada, the Taira-wed branch of the family, descended Minamoto.

Ieyasu made no answer; he could not, had he tried; Yodogima rose to mind, and he thought only of what might have been, had he but taken advantage of Hideyoshi’s bluffing, long ago, at Fuchu, the elder Maeda’s once upon a time seat of true chivalry. Esyo had in fact, as observed, exercised an influence over her husband: what might not the sister have done, had she been the mother.

“Oh, well; it is too late, now,” muttered the taiko’s once trusted ally, giving the order, in reality, for an unrecallable, before-the-day-break assault; then staggering to the ground, helplessly, under the weight of his own remorseful thirst, as he did the quenchless deed. “Stab; yes, stab her, too!”

And Yodogima answered, that final test, as became a weaker hand, if stronger heart.

Fog clouds hung low, the darkness grew intense, and these men could scarcely see their way; dread uncertainty had laid hold on shrivelled hearts; Maeda’s advance groped its way round the hill Sasayama; Maeda and some few others climbed up.

“Where is he?” asked they, of one another; “these grounds seem deserted.”

“Hark!” ventured someone.

“Did you hear that snore?” inquired another.

“It is Sanada; he sleeps; over there; at the outer castle gate; let us strike him; he is foolish.”

They stumbled forward, in the darkness, and coming upon a man propped against a stake. Date prodded him; this daimyo had been doing similar service since the days of Odawara.

“What are you doing here; do you not know that we are enemies?” inquired Mori, another of Hideyoshi’s upon-a-time staunch supporters.

“I wait to see, that we make no mistake; we have some farmers’ arrows to shoot with, but would do no harm, to a friend.”

“Hear you,” said they, all alike, one to another, “he makes sport, in the face of danger; avenge our good name, Maeda, and let us make short work of the rest. Did you hear what he said? They ‘have some farmers’ arrows’—a pretty weapon to use against such as we! Spread the word, and we’ll scale those walls before a soul of them has half finished sleeping.”

Junkei therefore paid the penalty, without resistance; he had truly slept his sleep, for it was he and not Sanada who snored those daimyos to their doom.

Eighty thousand of their force rushed forward to scale the walls, and that blind ditch of Yodogima’s provisioning emptied its waters to make room for the drowning invaders. Others rushed over these and against the embankment, where Sanada stood, his sleepless forces unscathed, to chop and slash them down. For hours they mired and fought, trapped and headless—but to no purpose; every stone’s width in that wall had its defender, with another and still others within reach to take his place should chance or fatigue down and disable him. There was no shouting of orders; the word had gone round and around till every man of them knew by heart the role he should enact. Neither had a shot been fired; the guns lay loaded, and the powder unburned, behind still other walls of huger import and loftier building.

Practically one-third of Ieyasu’s strength—for those scared hirelings did fight, when cornered, quite as stubbornly as the liege master’s aged samurai could have done—his most valiant commander, under Hidetada, Maeda, and nearly all of those doubtful daimyos—a few of them yet remained behind Ozaka, still in the semicircle—were either killed, routed, or scared into further uselessness. Nor was this all, for inside the fortifications a newer confidence sprang to the fore, impulse beat harder against the dictates of judgment, and but for Yodogima’s influence alone they had rushed one and all thirstily upon the waiting reserves.

“Calm yourselves, my friends,” urged she, confident in their strength; “if you would follow one victory with another, then buckle your armor the closer. Madness means weakness, and you shall yet have enough to do before Hidetada is worsted; he will not expose his strength under cover of night; he has had better training. And there is Ieyasu, behind him; an inverted pyramid, with both sides blocked by natural barriers. Mind what I say: Ieyasu planned well, but his strategy is ancient; no doubt it served in the days of Confucius, but a new warfare has come; I command you: do not fire a gun, not a man of you, till you can count the teeth, each and everybody in his target’s head.”

They waited; no one would disobey, and only one so much as sold himself—Nanjo, a subordinate captain, for a miserly price ventured to carry Ieyasu’s fiefly proposals to Sanada; who scorned the proffered estates, publishing everywhere the traitor’s head as an example. Here, at last, Ieyasu, the wise, had found exemplified the truth, to his betterment, that honor and not gold measures the content of highest living.

“I am doubtful about an open charge,” cautioned he, of Hidetada, as the cover of night began breaking, yet far to the eastward.

“I am not,” replied the younger man, more doubtful about covers, or chicanery, of any kind.

“Then you shall have to face them—I am ill.”

“At ease, I trow; and if you think you can bribe a Taira into retirement—see here, father; you should have tried first my wife; I think I know her breed; I am going to fight.”

The clouds rose, and the day opened glad, if not inspiring. Hidetada bestirred himself with the first lifting of night, and as the gray fogs banked over against the gorged-out mountains, with here and there a village or a temple hung defiantly or standing gracefully upon some jutting point or sloping greensward, those more sympathetic, if rawer, recruits, from the Tokugawa domain, took up the forward advance, and refacing the broken fragments of Maeda’s demolished command now at first made that valley resound with the frenzy of rallying blood-tasted savagery.

Hidetada led them, and like with him the reward of valor had justified the risk. Stringing out his long formation into V shape, his right resting upon the solid Hirano, the left hard upon the seashore, and a solid oblong breaking and forming the V’s middle, they tramped straight ahead, thus in zigzag alignment, toward a solid defense, from river to sea, behind the fortifications at Ozaka.

“They mean to break our walls midway, disregarding altogether the gates, then quarter about and march each half to the opening thus made,” said Yodogima, to Hideyori, her readiest counsellor. “I wonder what means they have to batter down barriers so thick and high—a hundred and twenty feet, I presume, just there.”

“Let them come,” replied the son. “And if they do make the breach, I promise you that I and not they shall be the first to sally through; Harunaga’s guns are trained, and he is going to count their teeth. Depend upon it.”

Sanada lay close, under shelter of the low, temporary embankment: his ranks had been little impaired; Yodogima remained high up in the citadel—Hidetada advanced, to the wall where lay Sanada.

“What kind of hunting do you have out there? You might find it better on this side the wall,” said Sanada, to Hidetada.

Hidetada made no answer, but began hopping his men over—the center first, and then others, as they came up—charging toward the outer main walls, as Yodogima had surmised.

Sanada fell back, coaxing them on.

They had come well within range of Harunaga’s matchlocks, the main body facing them squarely, when suddenly there rang out the unexpected:

“Fire!”

The enemy fell like rice heads underneath a sickle bar, and Sanada, wheeling, charged those reeling columns that Hidetada had marched to no better results than Maeda’s.