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.