Battle of Sekigahara

Daimyo Tokugawa Ieyasu never intended to become the supreme ruler of Japan. Yet, this was the future left to him following the bitter and bloody battles of the Sekigahara campaign, a conflict that engulfed the ruling classes of Japan in a feud for power, and ended in a military dictatorship that would last for more than 200 years. It took twelve years for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a feudal daimyo turned Imperial minister, to consolidate the territories of Japan into a proper hegemony, a feat only marred by his failed attempts to invade Korea in the final years of his life. Still, even as his health waned and his power grew threatened by eminent death, Hideyoshi took steps to insure his family’s claim to power. In 1598, the year he died, Hideyoshi appointed a group of feudal lords, the Five Regents, to watch over his young heir and protect the boy’s interests until adulthood. Unfortunately, all of these men had ambitions and agendas of their own, and none more so than Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most powerful of all the remaining daimyo. With Hideyoshi’s death, Ieyasu quickly moved into position to fill the power vacuum, forming provocative alliances and occupying several regions and fortresses, including Fushimi Castle, a stark symbol of Hideyoshi’s former power. The other regents watched Ieyasu’s actions with increasing concern, suspicious of his brashness and disrespect. Within just a few months, unified Japan began to split apart with provincial lords drifting to the support of the two sides: Ieyasu’s eastern army and a western army commanded by Hideyoshi’s former administrative minister Ishida Mitsunari, who chose to remain loyal to the Toyotomi dynasty. While Mistunari’s motives were unclear, many believed that the former administrative minister, who was known more for his adherence to ceremonial duties than his skill on a battlefield, was in his own way hoping to claim a piece of the shattered power left in the wake of Hideyeoshi’s death. But few of Mitsunari’s generals had confidence in his leadership, and it was this lack of faith that proved his undoing. In a period rife with treachery and meaningless alliances, Mistunari did possess enough charisma to draw pivotal generals away from the powerful Ieyasu and to the loyalist cause. In the end, Ieyasu’s leadership and vision convinced many generals from the enemy camp to betray their loyalties and join him, often at a crucial moment in battle. After two years of bloody skirmishes across central Japan, the two sides prepared for a final, decisive confrontation; but no one was sure where exactly it would occur, or when. In October 1600, the Battle of Sekigahara erupted on the muddy ground below the Mountains of Sasao, Matsuo, and Nangu, outside the village of Sekigahara in the northern region of central Japan. Fate had chosen no side in this epic struggle, as both forces rode into the fray unsure of which was the stronger, and which possessed the overall advantage. At the end of that rainy, foggy day, Ieyasu’s army had taken more than 60,000 enemy heads, and the loyalist army had ceased to exist. With the whole of the country at his feet, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to reward those who had shown him their loyalty, just as he had once promised to remain loyal to the deceased Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1603, Ieyasu was named Shogun by the emperor of Japan, officially beginning the reign of the Tokugawa family shoguns, also known as the Edo Period. It would last until the year 1868.

From the game's History encyclopedia, AoE3: DE 100.19.18309.