Oda Nobunaga

[AggonyDuck]

It would be better to keep Sengoku Jidai banter in the SJ thread.

As to Nobunaga, I can't help but agree with Masamune and Swordsmaster, because they're absolutely correct. Nobunaga was one of the greatest daimyo of the Sengoku era, but he was only a good general. It was his qualities as an administrator and organiser that ended up giving the Oda clan the advantages they enjoyed on the battlefield and what ultimately made Oda one of three unifiers.

[nokhor]

i think to discount nobunaga's genius and not to consider him an excellent general is a false notion. when nobunaga came to power, the oda controlled only a part of a province, and there were more established clans led by famed daimyo that held much more land than he did, like the shimazu, mori, takeda, and uesugi and yet the oda lands eclipsed the others over nobunaga's lifetime. how was this possible if not for nobunaga's military skill?

the oda did not have the huge base army of samurai that those other major clans had developed over time, so nobunaga decided to neutralized their advantage in his own special way. he based his own forces on peasent conscripts and to equalized the years of training a professional samurai based force would present, he armed his men with long spears and guns.

as for his tactical skill, much has been said about okehezama so i will not repeat it, so let us move on to nagashino. nobunaga brought the stockade with him, and set up behind the stream to impede the cavalry charge. when his first navy was defeated by blockade runners at osaka, he built a new one based around iron plated hulled ships that proved impossible to defeat.

but it is in the strategic arena that nobunaga shines, because the warfare he was involved in was coalition warfare, akin to what frederick the great and napoleon faced. he was fighting a multi front war for over 3 decades, usually against 4 or 5 opponents. on multiple occasions, nobunaga would be within inches of totally obliterating an enemy, and to his far rear another enemy would breakthrough one of his vassal's fronts, or a vassal would defect, or an ally would switch sides, forcing him to withdraw and deal with the new threat. and just when he was strectched taut and could not spare any more soldiers, there would be another religious uprising in a corner of his domain that would just throw the whole outcome up in the air again.

meanwhile, if he did manage to eliminate one of his opponents, they would almost automatically be replaced by a stronger, better led clan with more troops. the foolish imagawa were replaced by the asai/asakura which were replaced by the mori, takeda, uesugi. so even as he expanded, his enemies got correspondingly tougher. from my perspective, the oda domain was always on the verge of collapse, and it was through sheer will power that he held it together.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Mount Hiel Was more of a massarce to me then a Battle, but that's just my opninon.

[Watchman]

By what I understand of it the sohei of Hiei were a serious enough military force, and it didn't exactly hurt that their fortified temple was on a mountain. That Nobunaga had the whole bunch massacred after breaking them militarily is beside the point, and not exactly unusual for the time and place - or the time in general.

And yeah, I agree with the notion that being able to bring a superior force to bear against an opponent is a show of capable enough warlordship in itself - after all, "never give a sucker a fair fight" has been a military maxim for a long time. Nobody ever voluntarily fought at a disadvantage, assuming of course he realized he was in such straits.

Of course if you manage to lose anyway it's a bit different...