Nagashino Castle, in the Mikawa province of…
1575 CE
Nagashino Castle, in the Mikawa province of Japan, threatens Takeda Katsuyori's supply lines, and he therefore puts it under siege from the seventeenth of June, 1575; Okudaira Sadamasa, a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu, commands the defending force.
Both Tokugawa and Nobunaga on June 28 send troops totaling thirty-eight thousand men to lift the siege and devastate the Takeda clan with the strategic use of arquebuses.
Nobunaga compensates for the slow reloading time of the arquebus by arranging the arquebusiers in three lines.
After each line fires, it ducks and reloads as the next line fires.
The bullets are able to pierce the Takeda cavalry armor.
Ashigaru spearmen stab through or over the stockades at any horses that make it past the initial volleys, and samurai, with shorter swords and spears, engage in single combat with any Takeda warriors who make it past the wooden barricades.
Strong defenses on the ends prevent the Takeda forces from flanking the stockades.
The Takeda break by mid-afternoon, flee, and are pursued and cut down without quarter.
Takeda suffers a loss of ten thousand men, two-thirds of his original besieging force.
Eight of his famous 'Twenty-Four Generals' are killed in this battle, including Yamagata Masakage and Oyamada Nobushige.
The victory of Oda's Western-style tactics and firearms over Takeda Katsuyori's cavalry charge is often cited as a turning point in Japanese warfare; many cite it as the first 'modern' Japanese battle.
Ironically, while Takeda's cavalry charge represents the old, traditional, means of warfare, it had been invented by his father, Takeda Shingen, less than a generation earlier.
Nevertheless, while others had used firearms previously, Oda Nobunaga is the first to conceive of the wooden stockades and rotating volleys of fire that had led to the decisive victory at Nagashino.
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