The "spy group" of fifty people seems to be large in scale, but when it spreads to the entire Japan, it is actually just that. For many less important forces, Gao Mo didn't even arrange a single spy.
If we talk about how many of these forces are considered "key attention objects", then obviously, in addition to the Toyotomi family, the five later elders, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Maeda Toshiie, Ukita Hideie, Mori Terumoto, and Kobayakawa Takakage, must be among them. .
In addition, the forces of "Sekigahara War God" Kobayakawa Hideaki and Kyoka Bridgehead Shimazu Yoshihiro will definitely send people to infiltrate. Even the characters who played a more or less role in the later Sekigahara War were all arranged and infiltrated by Gao Mo.
And specifically within the Toyotomi family, Gao Pragmatic even divided into factions to carry out "parallel infiltration". What faction? Lady faction.
This is not a joke, but a very critical situation within the Toyotomi family currently or in a few years.
Nene Asano of the Northern Political Bureau was Toyotomi Hideyoshi's first wife, and he followed Hideyoshi when he was an infantryman. After Hideyoshi ascended to a high position, he did not dislike his poor wife. He often thought about Ning Ning when he was fighting abroad, and wrote to ask her about her daily life. The two had a very good relationship and became a role model for the Toyotomi family samurai. .
Mrs. Homasa was born in Owari Asahi Village, so she took special care of the samurai who was born in Owari. After Hideyoshi's death—or even during his lifetime—the Owari Samurai Group, with Mrs. Hokage Shosho as its core, gradually formed within the Toyotomi Group. Among the more famous daimyo include Kato Kiyomasa, Fukushima Masanori and others.
Because Hokusei never gave birth to a son for Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi's side chamber Asai Chacha finally gave birth to Hideyori, so in the last few years of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's life, the status gap between Chacha and Ningning Gradually shrink.
After Hideyori was born, the Omi Samurai Group was gradually formed with Chacha who was born in the Omi area as the center. The most famous daimyo among them was Ishida Mitsunari.
Since then, the Omi Samurai Group has been in confrontation with the Owari Samurai Group in the Hokizhengsho. It was also from this time that Chacha's status gradually became higher than that of Ningning, and the Owari Samurai Group began to be at a disadvantage.
However, most of the Owari samurai around Ning Ning followed Hideyoshi before he rose to prominence, fighting for Hideyoshi in all directions, somewhat like the military meritorious aristocracy in the early Ming Dynasty. However, after Hideyoshi gained power, he quickly began to reuse civil servants from the Omi area, such as Ishida Mitsunari, Ohno Harinaga and others.
The reason why Hideyoshi did this was of course because there were fewer and fewer wars at that time and the role of generals was gradually declining. Ishida Mitsunari and others were better at managing internal affairs, which was more in line with Hideyoshi's needs at that time.
But no matter what the reason was, Hideyoshi's move had already made the Owari samurai dissatisfied, but they dared not speak out. After Hideyoshi's death, the centripetal force of these Owari samurai towards the Toyotomi family further weakened, and it was reasonable to seek refuge with Tokugawa Ieyasu.
For example, in the subsequent battle between the Eastern Army and the Western Army, Hideyoshi's former general Fukushima Masanori actually took the initiative to serve as the vanguard of the Eastern Army, which shows how resentful he was towards the Omi samurai group of Ishida Mitsunari's faction.
One thing to pay special attention to here is that Kobayakawa Hideaki, who fell to the Eastern Army in the Sekigahara Battle, was also born in Owari, and he was even the nephew of Mrs. Homasado. As we all know, it was his defection that brought the Eastern Army back to life, defeated the Western Army in one fell swoop, and won victory.
Another factor that contributed to the defeat of the Western Army in the Sekigahara Battle was Ishida Mitsunari's personal reasons. Although Mouri Terumoto was elected as the general leader of the Western Army at the time, the actual controller and commander of the Western Army was Ishida Mitsunari.
Because of the Sanxian tea incident in 1574, Hideyoshi valued Mitsunari particularly and regarded him as a confidant. Mitsunari did not disappoint Hideyoshi. Even after Hideyoshi's death, he was completely loyal to his young master Toyotomi Hideyori. Without the efforts of Ishida Mitsunari, Tokugawa Ieyasu's process of conquering the world would have been easier.
However, this statement is based on the level of Japan as a whole. If the pattern is narrowed and only talked about within the Toyotomi Group, Ishida Mitsunari's performance has to some extent led to more serious internal divisions and more irreconcilable conflicts. .
Why do you say that? Because Toyotomi Hideyoshi was too fond of Ishida Mitsunari, many daimyo and military commanders of the Toyotomi family were dissatisfied with him. In addition, Ishida Mimoto himself did not know how to keep a low profile and did not understand the principle of "a strong dragon has regrets". As a result, he was usually domineering and exposed, so he attracted the disgust of many people.
At the same time, Tokugawa Ieyasu was the complete opposite. In order to hide his ambitions, Tokugawa Ieyasu was cautious in his daily life and treated other daimyo and generals more generously. In contrast, he easily won the favor of most people.
People's support determines success or failure. After the Sekigahara War began, many daimyo simply refused to accept Ishida Mitsunari's orders. Originally, the reason why some of them joined the Western Army was simply because they had served as retainers of the Toyotomi family, and they were worried that joining the Eastern Army would lead to the reputation of being disloyal.
In this case, coupled with Ishida Mitsunari's insufficient reputation, it is of course very easy to find it difficult to mobilize these big names. For example, two hours after the Battle of Sekigahara began, Ishida Mitsunari issued an order to Shimazu Yoshihiro, asking him to quickly dispatch reinforcements to support the front line, but was flatly rejected by Shimazu Yoshihiro.
After Kobayakawa Hideaki defected, an unstoppable chain reaction occurred in the Western Army camp. Many daimyo led their troops to surrender to the Eastern Army, either surrendering or directly turning to attack the Western Army, resulting in a disastrous defeat for the Western Army.
It is mentioned in "Allying Nobunaga and Submitting Hideyoshi, Joining Takeda to Decisively Defeat Sekigahara - Tokugawa Ieyasu's Way of Struggle for Hegemony": "Anguoji Temple Keqiong, Nagasuke Masaie, Mouri Hidemoto and Yoshikawa Hirie at the eastern foot of Nangong Mountain Defeated and fled. Ended with a great victory for the Eastern Army."
Let’s make a hypothesis: If Ishida Mitsunari had asked Mouri Terumoto to take charge, or at least issue orders in Terumoto’s name, he might not have suffered such a tragic defeat, at least there wouldn’t have been too many people defecting in the face of the battle.
Moreover, judging from the situation at the time, the number of troops sent by Mouri Terumoto and his family was as high as 15,000, and the combined army of the entire Mouri Group (including Mouri Terumoto, Terumoto's adopted son Mouri Hidemoto, Yoshikawa Hiroie, etc.) was even more powerful than the Western Army. The most powerful force in the world, but in the end, because he had no command authority, he was almost collectively involved in soy sauce. This in itself is also a fatal waste.
As for Kobayakawa Hideaki's defection, it was not an inexplicable behavior. There were very clear internal factors. His father was a member of the Kinoshita family and was the brother of Ning Ning, the wife of the Hoi Political Office. In other words, Kobayakawa Hideaki was Ning Ning's nephew. In addition, he was born in Owari, so he had a very close relationship with Ning Ning.
At the same time, he was once the adopted son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi - logically speaking, it is for this reason that theoretically he should never betray the Toyotomi family. However, in fact, it was precisely because of Hideaki's defection that the Toyotomi family perished.
The topic finally returned to the issue of "factions within the Toyotomi Group" mentioned at the beginning: the main reason for Kobayakawa Hideaki's defection was his discord with Ishida Mitsunari, and it can even be said that the conflict was extremely sharp.
Let me say one thing first: During the Battle of Korea, Hideaki Kobayakawa and Governor Konishi led reinforcements to Ulsan City to support the city that was besieged by the Ming army. Although Xiuqiu performed very bravely in the Battle of Ulsan, he was disgusted by Hideyoshi because of the massacre of women and children in the city, and his territory was even confiscated because of this.
Hideyoshi's behavior is obviously extremely abnormal. The general is fighting bravely and loyally, but you confiscate all his fiefdoms because he killed enemy civilians?
This is not the 21st century, and there is no such requirement in Japanese tradition at this time, not to mention that Hideaki is still a typical "one of our own". Toyotomi Hideyoshi's handling was very un-Japanese. On the contrary, it was in the style of the Ming Dynasty's internal counter-insurgency operations.
Therefore, Hideaki insisted that Ishida Mitsunari must have been the one who caused the obstruction and instigated Hideyoshi to some fallacies such as "will cause the Korean people to intensify their resistance." Therefore, he was extremely resentful of Ishida Mitsunari.
This matter even reached 1599, because Tokugawa Ieyasu interceded for Hideaki (Hideyoshi was dead at that time), so that he could restore the confiscated territory.
There is no doubt that from then on, Kobayakawa Hideaki felt great gratitude to Tokugawa Ieyasu, so it was completely reasonable for him to abandon Ishida and fall to Tokugawa during the Sekigahara War.
It is recorded in the "Ii Family Keicho Chronicles": "During the joint battle, in order to urge Kingo Chunagon to join Kamimou's side, the Todo team fired iron cannons in Kingo's direction, but there was no response."
The reason why Ieyasu fired artillery at Hideaki's position on the battlefield was probably because he guessed that Hideaki was in the midst of a difficult decision at the time, so he used this to urge him to quickly send troops to support the disadvantaged Eastern Army.
However, as Hideyoshi's adopted son, Hideaki's current power mostly relies on Hideyoshi's gifts. If he defected in the face of battle, he might be ridiculed by the world. After being urged by Ieyasu's shelling, Hideaki thought for a long time and finally made a decision. He commanded his samurai to kill down the mountain, breaking Hase Yoshitsugi's army formation, and the Western Army collapsed immediately.
From this, looking at the situation before the outbreak of the Sekigahara War, it is not difficult to see that the Western Army completely occupied the favorable terrain. Not only did the Eastern Army have no danger, it was also faced with the delay in the arrival of the main force of the Tokugawa Army led by Tokugawa Hidetada. There was a problem of insufficient troops, but the final outcome was that the Eastern Army won a complete victory in this decisive battle.
The fundamental reason why the Western Army was defeated was that Hideyoshi did not properly handle the conflict between the Owari Samurai Group and the Omi Samurai Group.
After Hideyoshi took the position of Sekihaku, he reused Omi as a civil servant to focus on managing internal affairs, but ignored the Owari samurai who had fought bloody battles with him on the battlefield. Coupled with the huge losses in the Korean War but little benefit, many daimyo were seriously dissatisfied with Hideyoshi, which eventually led to the separation of the Toyotomi family.
Under such a premise, how could Gao Pragmatic, a person who always likes to make plans in advance, not make good use of the contradiction between the two factions?
However, taking advantage of this kind of thing has always been a technical job. Especially now that Toyotomi Hideyoshi is not dead and the Korean War has not started, this kind of use obviously cannot be exposed at all, and can only lay some "lines" secretly.
No matter who you want to take advantage of, you must first clarify two points: the first is what the other party has, and the second is what the other party wants.
What does the Owari Samurai Group own? It has the main force of the Toyotomi family and is also stronger than the Omi samurai group in terms of fiefdom.
What does Omi Samurai Group own? He has actual control over the "Toyotomi Court" and the ability to dominate Japanese commercial power. Of course, to a certain extent, they will still have theoretical "righteousness" after Hideyoshi's death - because Toyotomi Hideyori was actually under their influence (but it did not play a big role in the end).
So, what does the Owari Samurai Group want? Of course they want status, political power, and not to be suppressed by "civilian officials."
In turn, what does the Omi Samurai Group want? Naturally, he wanted to continue to control the government after Hideyoshi's death and suppress the Owari samurai group and other factions - such as the foreign daimyo represented by Tokugawa Ieyasu.
After understanding this, Gao Pragmatic has to make his own choice, because he cannot regard himself as Toyotomi Hideyoshi and hope to unite the two factions.
The attitude of the Owari samurai group in the Sekigahara War was inconsistent. Some of them directly joined Tokugawa Ieyasu's Eastern Army, while others who were worried about their reputation being damaged reluctantly joined the Western Army.
From this perspective, the Owari Samurai Group cannot be said to be a river crab, which affects its original strength.
The Omi Samurai Group was essentially a civilian group that controlled the government - but this didn't mean much after the war broke out. In addition to government affairs, their main strengths are only two points: financial resources and righteousness.
But there is another problem here: both financial resources and righteousness are inseparable from Osaka, Toyotomi's first city, because Osaka was the commercial center of Japan at that time. It was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to defeat Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle. The largest city in Japan. Without Osaka Castle, the actual financial resources controlled by the Omi Samurai Group have been significantly reduced.
The issue of justice is also related to Osaka, because after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his legal heir was undoubtedly Toyotomi Hideyori, but Toyotomi Hideyori did not meet his mother Yodono, also known as Asai Chacha, until the failure of the Summer Battle in Osaka. He committed suicide and never left Osaka Castle.
Therefore, it can also be said that the strength of the Omi Samurai Group is also incomplete.
In this case, Gao Pragmatic decided to put aside "helping the weak to defeat the strong" or "helping the strong to defeat the weak" and think about which side was more beneficial.
The first thing that can be ruled out is Tokugawa Ieyasu. This guy is a good person, and one of his characteristics is that he can endure thieves, which is very similar to Sima Yi. Although there is a saying that "in the face of absolute strength, all conspiracies and tricks are in vain", but it is better to do less than to do more, so why bother to act with Tokugawa Ieyasu? Naturally, the hidden dangers that can be dealt with should be dealt with as early as possible.
What about the Owari Samurai Group? They have more fiefdoms on hand, and the basis of their status is the army, which is very bad. Because this means that if Gao Pragmatic wants to disarm and establish a garrison in accordance with the traditions of southern Xinjiang in the future, they will inevitably form a lot of resistance, so they should not be considered to support them unless it is absolutely necessary.
From this point of view, it seems that the Omi Samurai Group should be supported?
Gao Pragmatic thought about it, but felt that this might not be the case. This group of people, such as Ishida Mitsunari, have a very obvious characteristic, that is, they are loyal to Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Toyotomi clan. Although his actions actually ruined the Toyotomi family, from his subjective consciousness, he He should think that everything he does is for the Toyotomi clan.
So looking at it this way, it is not only difficult to control the Omi Samurai Group, but the actual effect may not be very good.
Who is the best person to control? Countless usurpers in Chinese history would raise their arms and shout: "Of course they are orphans and widowers!"
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