STW War Story Part III - Western Uprise
Chapter 6 Ise & Yamashiro
It might take the Mori Clan a good 5 to 6 years to completely conqurer the east - yet in the meantime, Mori has no guarantee that the ronins in Yamashiro and Ise will be stable. If we are attacked by these powerful forces while we concentrate all forces on the east, then Mori will be in big trouble.
As a result, Mori Motonari now left the province of Suruga to his trusted R3 general Miyoshi Hideyasu, and Shinano to his first heir, Mori Yoshinari. With new recuits from Aki, Owari, Mimasaka, and Totomi, a few seasons later Mori gathered a fresh full-strength army.
p.s. Actually Mori Yoshinari has no relationship with Mori Motonari. The two mori were wrote differently in Japanese - they were entirely two different familys. Mori Yoshinari was actually a loyal general of Oda. His third, young, good-looking son was very, very close to Oda Nobunaga - an open secret in this chaotic Sengoku Jidai.
Autumn 1540
One year has past, and Mori was finally ready for their clean-up action in Kinki. Mori Motonari's large army now faces the tough foes in Ise!
Ise: Mori (940) vs. Ronin (552)
The number suggests that Mori should win this battle easily, if nothing serious goes wrong. Expecting the enemy hiding on the top of one of the hills, the Mori soldiers were surprised to find the famous proud enemy Taisho hiding in the woods on the right.
We would not leave him alive! But look, vast numbers of white army emerge on the top of the slope and charge down! It was a trap set by the enemy! Mori Motonari soon direct all archers to shoot at the enemy up the slope, while the entire left flank to climb up as soon as possible. The right flank should kill the enemy Taisho using as little time as they could!
The enemy emerged like tides of waves. They already occupied the hills, so any climb-up attemp from the left will be effortless. The key is whether we can kill the enemy Taisho first, and maybe breach a hole on the enemy on the right! Yet the enemy Taisho certainly runs very fast! Only few of peasants were chasing him from behind...
Just at the moment we are going to lose this lone, but fast-running taisho, he bumped into a group of their own archers, and was blocked for a few seconds! Grabing this important moment, one of our ashigaru made it to his back and poke him down! The enemy Taisho has been killed right at the center of the enemy soldiers, and now the enemy was greatly shakened! Our right flank also penerated onto the enemy's back!
We must admit that the ronins do have a better quality. Although they retreated in a hurry, not too many of our men could catch up. Only on the left flank we could intercept quite a large number of enemy units who have already engaged with ours on the slope.
The battle was won in a heart-breaking manner. Mori Motonari himself took 15 heads from the enemy!
Celebrating our victory in Ise, the 1540 harvest was excellent! The 8000 koku income offered the Mori clan a boost on castle upgrades and armoury construction. Following Kii, a buddist temple was now started in Mimasaka - looking forward some heavily-armoured monks in the future!
Spring 1541
Leaving the castle siege in Ise to "the daimyo's tail" Mori Saigo Iezane, Mori Motonari soon made up the army size and challege Yamashiro, where the emperor resides. The battle was supposedly much harder as the enemy had a greater number...
Yamashiro: Mori (841) vs. 900 (Ronin)
Knowing the very-large portion of enemy were monks and no-dachi, Mori Motonari has brought even more archer units this time. As long as we can hold the monks at front, we should have the chance to deal large damage to these fearless, armorless fighters.
However, the enemy was now all concentrated on the mountain in the corner, making our assault very difficult. Motonari could only order the archers forward, maybe luring the enemies to come down.
Soon the pround warrior monks charged down - their fast action made our archery fire not very effective. Our right flank was ordered to back attack any enemy coming down from the center. Yet the second wave of enemy attacked their back, while they were also attacked by our second flanking group, and this group was also back attacked, and the enemy were in turn back-attacked... the battles becomes very nasty on the right (close to the camera).
Finally, under the coverage of more than half of the archery fires, the right-flank enemy collapsed. We don't want to waste this chance to rout the formidable no-dachi and monks out the battlefield, so Motonari assigned almost the entire YS and YA to chase down the enemy. However, this soon leaves our left flank defenseless and the once-routed enemy monks are now back destroying our archers...!
Mori soon pulled back most units to rescue the left, leaving only the ashigarus to chase down the almost-completely-routed enemy right flank. Only praying that they do not turn back and see only 1/10 of their size is chasing them!
On the other hand, Mori also caught the enemy general half way!
The brave Motonari had no trouble killing the enemy taisho with the help of one of the yari samurai groups! Now the enemy rout even faster, yet the situation on our left flank did not improve any slight bit... even our yari samurai who were sent back to rescue were totally losing the the woods...
Our entire left flank finally surrendered to only about 100 warrior monks of the enemy! Mori Motonari now pull back the entire right flank who had finished their chasing job. The two sides had not much left at this moment, but the nasty fights continued until the the monks were killed down to 1 digit...
With most of their soldiers routed, the monks, although strong and fearless, were finally eliminated. The battle ended up 1060 corpses on the field of Yamashiro. Mori Motonari himself killed 11, and many of our surviving fighters gained good honors, a gift from their dead comrades.
The harvest of 1541 was normal, giving Mori a budge of 5000 koku for the coming year. The clan is getting richer now, but the rival clans on the east are still richer (actually, infinitely richer)...
An astonishing news was that the Uesugi clan has conquered Kaga! Now our weakly guarded norhtern border is truly threatened - hopefully Uesugi still likes to keep a good relationship with Mori. At this moment, none of the east clans were at war. Imagawa allied with Takeda, who Uesugi allied with Hojo.
The Kinki area has now completely fallen to Mori. With Iezane now supervising the siege of the famous Kyoto castle, Mori Motonari faced the choice of the next step. Should the army go for Uesugi to secure the northern borders first, or continue to the southwest?
A news from Buzen made up Mori Motonari's mind. Shimazu has now lost their homebase, Satsuma, to Imagawa! The son of Imagawa Yoshimoto is truly a good general. The end of Shimazu might be close, so to avoid fighting at the two ends at the same time, Mori Motonari decided to go south!
