army had pushed
steadily eastward. Its first exploit was to capture and burn the
Momo-yama castle, which was splendidly defended by the veteran Torii
Mototada, then in his sixty-second year. With a garrison of only two
thousand men he held at bay during eleven days an investing force of
forty thousand. The torch was set to the castle on the 8th of
September by traitors in the garrison, and Mototada committed
suicide. Thereafter, the van of the western army advanced to Gifu
along the Nakasendo, and the main body, making a detour through Ise,
ultimately pushed forward into Mino.

With this army were no less than forty-three generals of renown, and
the number of feudal barons, great and small, who sent troops to
swell its ranks was thirty-one. Undoubtedly these barons were
partially influenced by the conception generally prevalent that the
fortunes of the two great families of Toyotomi and Tokugawa depended
on the issue of this struggle. But it must also be admitted that had
Ishida Katsushige been as black as the Tokugawa historians paint him,
he could never have served for the central figure of such an array.
He is seen inciting the besiegers of Momo-yama Castle to their
supreme and successful effort. He is seen winning over to the
Toyotomi cause baron after baron. He is seen leading the advance of
the western army's van. And he is seen fighting to the end in the
great battle which closed the campaign. Some heroic qualities must
have accompanied his gift of statesmanship. The nominal leader of the
western army, which mustered 128,000 strong, was Mori Terumoto, and
under him were ranged Ukita Hideiye, Mori Hidemoto, Shimazu
Yoshihiro, Konishi Yukinaga, and many other captains of repute. Under
the Tokugawa banners there marched 75,000 men, their van led by Ii
Naomasa and Honda Tadakatsu.

On October 21, 1600, the great battle of Sekigahara was fought. The
strategy on the side of the western forces was excellent. Their units
were disposed along a crescent-shaped line recessed from the enemy,
so that an attacking army, unless its numerical strength was greatly
superior, had to incur the risk of being enveloped from both
flanks--a risk much accentuated by the fact that these flanking
troops occupied high ground. But on the side of the western army
there was a feature of weakness which no strategy could remove: all
the battalions constituting the right wing were pledged to espouse
the cause of Ieyasu at the crisis of the str