ugi to repair to Kyoto and explain his obviously
disaffected preparations. The reply sent by Uesugi was defiant.
Therefore, the Tokugawa chief proceeded to mobilize his own and his
allies' forces. He seems to have clearly foreseen that if he himself
moved eastward to Yedo, Momo-yama would be assaulted in his absence.
But it being necessary to simulate trust in Mori and Ukita, then
nominally his supporters, he placed in Momo-yama Castle a garrison of
only two thousand men under his old and staunch friend, Torii
Mototada. Ieyasu planned that Uesugi should be attacked
simultaneously from five directions; namely from Sendai by Date; from
Kaga by Maeda; from Dewa by Mogami; from Echigo by Hori, and from
Hitachi by Satake. But among these five armies that of Satake
declared for Ishida, while those of Maeda and Hori were constrained
to adopt a defensive attitude by the menace of hostile barons in
their vicinity, and thus it fell out that Date and Mogami alone
operated effectively in the cause of Ieyasu.

The Tokugawa chief himself lost no time in putting his troops in
motion for Yedo, where, at the head of some sixty thousand men, he
arrived in August, 1600, his second in command being his third son,
Hidetada. Thence he pushed rapidly northward with the intention of
attacking Uesugi. But at Oyama in Shimotsuke news reached him that
Ishida and his partisans had drawn the sword in the west, and had
seized Osaka, together with the wives and families of several of the
captains who were with Ieyasu's army. A council was immediately held
and these captains were given the option of continuing to serve under
Ieyasu or retiring to join the western army and thus ensuring the
safety of their own families. They chose the former, and the council
further decided that, leaving Date and Mogami to deal with Uesugi and
Satake, and posting for the same purpose at Utsunomiya, Hideyasu,
second son of Ieyasu, the main army should countermarch to meet the
western forces at some point remote from Yedo.

The Tokugawa battalions, following two routes--the Tokaido and the
Nakasendo--made rapid progress westward, and on September 21st, the
van of the division under Fukushima and Ikeda reached Kiyosu. But the
Nakasendo column of thirty-eight thousand men under Hidetada
encountered such desperate resistance before the castle of Ueda, at
the hands of Sanada Masayuki, that it did not reach Sekigahara until
the great battle was over. Meanwhile, the western