ughters were accordingly sent away, and she
herself joined in the night-long feast which Katsuiye and his
principal retainers held while Hideyoshi's forces were marching to
the attack. When the sun rose, the whole party, including the ladies,
committed suicide, having first set fire to the castle.

YODOGOMI

One of the three daughters of Asai Nagamasa afterwards became the
concubine of Hideyoshi and bore to him a son, Hideyori, who, by her
advice, subsequently acted in defiance of Ieyasu, thus involving the
fall of the house of Hideyoshi and unconsciously avenging the fate of
Nobunaga.

NOBUTAKA

Nobunaga's son, Nobutaka, who had been allied with Katsuiye, escaped,
at first, to Owari on the latter's downfall, but ultimately followed
Katsuiye's example by committing suicide. As for Samboshi, Nobunaga's
grandson and nominal heir, he attained his majority at this time, but
proving to be a man of marked incompetence, the eminent position for
which he had been destined was withheld. He took the name of Oda
Hidenobu, and with an income of three hundred thousand koku settled
down contentedly as Hideyoshi's vassal.

OSAKA CASTLE

Hideyoshi left behind him a striking monument of his greatness of
thought and power of execution. At Osaka where in 1532 the priests of
the Hongwan-ji temple had built a castle which Nobunaga captured in
1580 only after a long and severe siege, Hideyoshi built what is
called The Castle of Osaka. It is a colossal fortress, which is still
used as military headquarters for garrison and arsenal, and the
dimensions of which are still a wonder, though only a portion of the
building survives. Materials for the work were requisitioned from
thirty provinces, their principal components being immense granite
rocks, many of which measured fourteen feet in length and breadth,
and some were forty feet long and ten feet wide. These huge stones
had to be carried by water from a distance of several miles. The
outlying protection of this great castle consisted of triple moats
and escarpments. The moats were twenty feet deep, with six to ten
feet of water. The total enclosed space was about one hundred acres,
but only one-eighth of this was the hominaru, or keep, inside the
third moat.

It will be seen that the plan of the castle was to have it divided
into spaces separately defensible, so that an enemy had to establish
his footing by a series of repeated efforts.

And the second respect in which it was a nov