Chapter 20: The Long Winter (I)
A few months ago, Hojo Shiyasu died of illness, the Kosho alliance was restarted, and Takeda Shingen's predecessor Sekihaku Konoe was long ago, so the widow of the prince and others officially set off to the west, and was supported by Echizen Asakura, Yamato Matsunaga, Ise Kitabatake and other forces, quite swept the world, and changed the day.
However, there are also a lot of people who stand on the opposite side of it, Oda and Tokugawa bear the brunt, followed by two well-known wise generals Hinote Tsuhide and Shigeharu Takenaka, and Asai Nagamasa, who is named to participate in the battle. Not to mention that Ashikaga Yoshiaki is still a genuine general who has been supported by the imperial court and recognized by public opinion.
Some well-wishers thought that this would be another large-scale nationwide war since the Onin Rebellion, and gave the two sides the titles of "Eastern Army" and "Western Army" respectively.
Even religious forces were involved, and the Enryakuji Temple of Mt. Hiei of the main mountain of the Tendai sect openly sheltered the defeated army of Matsunaga, while the Ishiyama Honganji Temple of the Ichijo sect stepped up to marry the Heite family. Although the other Shingon, Rinzai, Nichiren, and Soto sects did not explicitly take sides, many monks also participated in their activities in their individual capacities.
The two giants, Echigo Uesugi and Aki Mori, paid lip service to the shogunate, but did not take action. The former concentrated his forces in Kaga and Noto, and competed for territory with the local clans; The latter is clearly more concerned about the vested interests of San'in, Sanyo, Kitakyushu, and even Shikoku.
Uesugi Kenshin had a deep friendship with Konoe Maehisa and Ashikaga Yoshiaki, but he had little contact with Ashikaga Yoshiaki, while Mori Terumoto was the same as his ancestor and had always had a "good reputation" for seeing the wind and steering the rudder. As a result, many "well-informed sources" believe that the two could change their stance at any time, or that they could take advantage of the defeat of both sides.
Just when the saber was tense and imminent, everyone in the world was dumbfounded and did not dare to miss any moment of plot development, but the sky suddenly fell a severe cold, so that this drama had to come to an abrupt end before it was completely opened.
The winter solstice is to the small cold, the small cold to the big cold, and the winter of the four years of the Yuan turtle is getting colder and colder.
At first it was Okuwa, then Hokuriku, and gradually it covered the Tokai and Nakayama, then it patronized, not forgetting Kansai and Shikoku Island, and only Kyushu survived. The cold fog went from northeast to southwest, and everywhere it went, it became ice and snow.
If you want the army to be stationed outside the city, you need to equip all the soldiers, including the logistics staff, with enough warm clothing and firewood, and adding more load to the logistics personnel means that the individual supply efficiency is greatly reduced, and more civilians have to be transferred from the territory. Under these conditions, the military cost of field warfare would be terrifyingly astronomical.
Naturally, the daimyo had to die down and go home.
The Takeda Army was limited by supplies, and the battle line was greatly reduced, and only the northern half of Enoe and the two eastern counties of Mikawa were retained, and the main force returned to Suruga. The Tokugawa family, who had resisted stubbornly for several months in several coastal strongholds after a disastrous defeat in the field, were given a precious respite. The Oda army, which had suffered a minor setback on the western border of Mikawa, returned to Cheongju Castle to recuperate.
The Asakura army on the northern front did not have much enterprising strength, even if there were 20,000 or 30,000 people, they could not do anything about the 6,000 miscellaneous cards of Takenaka Shigeji, and now they could not be stationed at all. In Ise on the southern line, the Kitabatake family and Takigawa Kazuki are still very patient confrontations, the only thing that has changed is that there are rumors that Nobunaga forcibly stuffed the tea whisk pill that used to be an adopted son, and was secretly killed by the people of the Kitabatake family, and I don't know if it's true or not.
And Asai Nagamasa, whether he really gave up Kinai or the strategy of attacking the west, he can't come back at all anyway, so he can only sit down and digest the results of Kansai with peace of mind. This will obviously also affect the fate of Urakami Sokei and Ukita Naoka, and the subsequent changes are difficult to predict.
The change in the weather caught everyone off guard, and like his peers, the arrangement of the tie show was completely disrupted.
In order to continue the good momentum without being interrupted, it was only possible to arrange for more than 5,000 bannermen to remain assembled and live in Yashiki in Kishiwada Castle, but the troops of the foreign countries could not be fed, so they could only return to their own families, and as for the affiliated guest troops who came to join in the fun, they had long since disappeared.
That's the limit of what can be done at the moment.
Both from an economic point of view and from the point of view of the city's capacity ceiling.
The price of fuel has more than tripled due to transport disruptions and soaring demand, making it a prohibitive luxury, and this winter will be very difficult for the poor, who do not have much to offer.
Fortunately, the people of Izumi and Awaji are relatively rich, and the Kii Mountains are densely forested and there is no shortage of firewood, so theoretically there will not be too many problems.
However, the draw still squeezed out additional funds and ordered the commissioners to set up four large shelters under the banner of "righteous houses" on the key sites of the transportation hubs.
Everywhere there are temporary structures lined up with straw to barely shelter from the wind and rain, communal fires and stoves are arranged, and porridge with barely visible grains of rice is served free of charge.
This is not just out of compassion, but also because of the fear that the influx of refugees will cause instability.
Therefore, the shelter also has to take care of the work of collecting corpses in secret. In the unfortunate event that a victim who comes to us for help dies, it is necessary to deal with it immediately to prevent the possibility of disease after the snow melts.
At the same time, it is also convenient to do things that were not convenient before.
The total budget of the four "righteous houses", materials, manpower and management, is close to 3,000 yuan, which is much more than expected.
Pingshou Fanxiu was born at the grassroots level, not the second generation of Zhang Yushen's wife, he subconsciously doubted it. However, the newly appointed "mathematical genius" Changshu Masajia took apart the figures of 2,864 and 520 characters one by one, and wrote them clearly and clearly, and could not find any mistakes at all.
It can only be said that in the cold and freezing, the cost of all people and things is increasing sharply.
Even to recruit people's husbands, they have to pay two or three times the salary on weekdays before anyone is willing to accept them.
Even the possible exiles have been considered, and the treatment of the samurai class will naturally not be ignored. Heishou Hoshu immediately transported the necessary materials to seven strongholds and selected the person in charge, and ordered the direct retainers and close countrymen in the territory to shrink to these nearby strongholds with their families to spend the winter.
If the external subordinate forces with which the relationship is weak in Pingsuri come to the door to ask for help, the adherents everywhere can also receive them as appropriate if conditions permit, and this is a good time to attract people's hearts.
Especially on the island of Shikoku.
Compared to Izumi, Awaji, and Kii, the residents of Shikoku have been in dire straits lately, and it is likely that there will be a large number of people who are strapped for money and cannot survive the harsh winter.
It's a pity that when the tie thought about this, it was too late for the sea route. A small amount of ice floes from the north appeared on the surface, greatly hampering the transportation of the fleet and drastically reducing the port's throughput capacity.
Therefore, Kawada Naga was granted temporary moderation rights, allowing him to requisition all the supplies of all the "Sankaya", "Harutaya" and "Jade-Yueya" branches on Shikoku Island to deal with emergencies.
Those branches should still have some much-needed fuel and winter clothing in stock. It may not be abundant, but in general, it should be enough to offset the results of Kobayakawa Takakei's months of hard work.
It is basically impossible to get a positive response from a certain prince-level bigwig for no reason, and most of them will be considered as having ulterior motives. However, if you exert kindness to a large number of low-level local tyrants and landcoupers, and conclude contracts, it can often have good results. This is the wonderful thing about political rules.
Further, if we can devote enough energy and resources to care for the suffering of the people of the four countries in the post-disaster reconstruction process tomorrow spring, the benefits will undoubtedly be even higher.
However, it is estimated that the Takeda family will not give it a chance.
Even during the Xiaoice River period, which has not been encountered for 10,000 years, it is impossible to turn the Fuso Islands into Siberia, and the cold is only temporary after all, and sooner or later there will be a day when winter will go to spring.
Once nature has put away its majesty, it will be time for humans to draw their swords and kill each other.
Even on the days of the truce, everyone was calling for friends and forming factions, and they still could not be idle to reunite with their families.
Heite received requests from Oda, Honganji, and Takenaka, and replied to each one in a friendly but vague manner. Of course, the more friendly the merrier, but it is only the price of the exchange of interests, so we will have to talk about it for a while.
And his own energy is focused on the center.
The undercurrents inside the shogunate were uneasy in the dormitory, but it was impossible to find out. It just so happened that Mt. Hiei near Kyoto was deliberately going to the war, and it was the right time to disrupt the situation and kill two birds with one stone.
If everything is handled properly, we will first figure out the matter of Kyoto, and then wave 20,000 troops to the east, and repel Takeda at the end of the strong crossbow, and triumph smoothly.
What's next......
I'm afraid that some of them are not suitable for public and explicit preaching.
Every time I think of this, I am full of expectations for the time after the snow melts in spring.
I thought it would be very pleasant to have a rare opportunity to reunite with my family and enjoy my family regardless of mundane things, but I was not as happy as I imagined.
Shuramaru, Umerumaru, and Akemi, three cute little babies, babbling and crawling around, curiously looking at the infrequent behemoth called "Father" with innocent eyes. It's supposed to cause a reaction in the softest part of the heart.
But in his heart, he still remembers the temple and the soldiers.
When he found this, Hirate himself was surprised and frustrated.
Is it because of the increasing number of children, or is it because of something else?
What a scary question......