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(Yes, I know, witch hunts only occured around Europe and America, but if japanese media can have King Arthur be a girl who fights in modern day japan, why can't I have witch hunts in 16th century Japan?)
I manually faught it out with the garrison.... a general I had just recruited and my son who was having an army built for him..... didn't matter full stack katana and yari samurai swamped my measily garrison.
Lost my capital my son.. a general... took it back next turn and destroyed their army but they had magically destroyed most of my high tier buildings because trololol...... It took my general with full upgrades in movement two turns to reach Omi......
Sounds like what Ieyasu's original heir did. He was caught and forced to commit suicide.
Nobunaga had a son that was also similarly treacherous, instigating an uprising he really didn't have a prayer of winning, allied with a totally impotent ally, making peace, then starting a war again 😄
Takeda Shingen's father, for reasons no one has ever figured out to this day, just abruptly one day decided Shingen should be banished, maybe even killed. None of his senior retainers could see any logical reason for it either, with the result that, once Shingen caught wind of what was going on, they joined Shingen in getting rid of his father.
The samurai era in Japan was rife with this type of Shakespearean intrigue.
That included women occasionally having ridiculous influence over samurai leaders, with correspondingly ridiculous outcomes.
One of the most famous was Hideyoshi's son Hideyori and his mother, whom he listened to way too much. The famous incident was the siege of Osaka castle: the Toyotomi forces were actually defeating the Tokugawa forces and had the strategic advantage, both around the castle and out in the provinces. But when Tokugawa forces fired cannon at the main keep where Hideyori and his mother were staying, she became so scared of the cannon that she asked Hideyori if he could stop the war...so he asked Ieyasu for peace terms and ordered his own retainers to stand down.😄
Hideyoshi himself started treating his original wife like crap and making all sorts of stupid governance decisions late in his life largely because he became infatuated with a new woman.
One of Ieyasu's wives was ordered to be killed on Nobunaga's orders because she was plotting to stage an uprising with a son, an insane plot that was actually moving forward for some reason.
Minamoto Yoritomo's wife played a huge part in establishing the Hojo Regency after Yoritomo's death, and then basically single handedly convinced the influential samurai of the Kanto region to defy the imperial authority, in both cases simply because most of these men respected and revered her so grearly.
Otomo converted to Christianity and encouraged his retainers to do so too because his wife thought Christianity was a superior religion.
On the opposite end of things, but in the same vein, Uesugi Kenshin stayed celibate his entire life largely because he thought women in a man's life made it impossible to be an effective leader 😄, with the result being he had no blood to become an heir, or assume inheritance of any vassal houses, basically condemning the entire Uesugi domain to splintering and internal destruction once he died.
So a lot of seemingly illogical or even pointless episodes happened for personal reasons.
He was the guy who betrayed Mitsunari during the battle of Sekigahara, tipping the balance in forces and position, allowing Ieyasu to win.
He had been promised, by Mitsunari, two more domains to add to his holdings, and the position of kampaku, the 'chief regent' position that was essentially the leader of the entire country.
To add to that, the odds were against Ieyasu because they had lost some strategic forts in the campaign area, and Ieyasu's son had foolishly decided to waste time besieging an unimportant castle, leaving the Tokugawa army outnumbered. And at the battle site, the Mitsunari forces held the high ground and commanded the flanks.
So the Mitsunari forces, and by extension, Hideaki, were looking at almost certain victory.
But Hideaki decided to just say "♥♥♥♥ it" to all that and betray Mitsunari...because Mitsunari had accused him of acting rashly and not being noble enough during some battles in the Korean Invasion years earlier.
So Ieyasu picked up on that and started secretly communicating with him, asking him to betray Mitsunari, and basically promising him nothing, save the delight of seeing Mitsunari's head on a pike 😆.
And Mitsunari obviously thought that made total sense, because he did it.
I thought Ieyasu gave him one of the two domains Mitsunari promised him and a lump sum of money equal to three years of Hideaki's income? I don't know if he promised him anything other than the delight of seeing Mitsunari's head on a platter, but I'm pretty sure he didn't come up empty handed (although this isn't in wikipedia, so maybe this book is wrong).
The odds were not that bad against Ieyasu. Oda Nagamasu personally brought 450 men he directly commander for the battle plus he also brought in 10K Oda loyalists and put them under the command of Ieysu. Why does his 10K men matter so much? It was a samurai and cavalry heavy army. More imporantly most of them were veterans of Odawara, Hieyoshi's unification, and the first (although not seocnd) invasion of Korea. These who had been fighting for Oda long after the fall of Oda Nobunaga knew how to fight and were probably waiting for their masters to turn agaisnt Hideyoshi. This was the only block of men more than 1K that are confrimed to have fogut in a non siege battle in the mud.
Another reason is that even with Hideaki's cavarly not defecting, the Eastern Army would have the same cavarly in raw numbers and more battle tested cavarly (and like in the game, they can always dismount in situations where the horse doesn't give an edge). A third advantage Ieysau had was that his army was marching leasurly while his enemy had essentially been in forced mach for 7 days in rain.
Almost every Japanese historial put the odds against Ieysu if Hideaki didn't show up (and some give him the odds even if he defected to Ieysu before the battle) because the Western Army had more people. However with those three advantages Ieysu had weren't meaningless. I'd give it more like the MLB's team with the best record against a team leading the wild card race than the MLB's best team vs the worst team in their own division that also had an injured closer.
Ummm... I'm pretty sure Hideaki didn't change the outcome of the battle for a few reasons. Ōtani Yoshitsugu simply fired three volleys into Hideaki's troops as Hideaki was expecting their powder to be wet and useless. Whoops. Some of the cavarly did reach Ōtani Yoshitsugu's troops, but the impact of the charge was minimal as most of the surviving cavarly lost their mommentum and in effect became mounted infantry... without a battle plan.
I though Ōtani Yoshitsugu was defeated by Oda Yūraku, Kyōgoku Takatsugu, and Oda Nagamasu (who outnubmered him), not Hideaki's betrayal.
But yeah, even thought I don't think Hideaki's betrayal did much it was a pretty big vendetta.
It is definitely a topic hotly debated by Sengoku historians 😀
I think one of your strongest points is that the Edo period histories always make Ieyasu out to be the cunning, epic strategist that barely saved the day, or that fate was conspiring on his side, so you are completely correct: we have to take what we read with a huge ass grain of salt. Especially stories like the famous 'leprosy and the tea ceremony.' 😉
And you also state a very important truth: we simply can't do the "what if" with any real certainty. There is no way we can know how the battle would have went in the end if the scenario had changed, taking into account all the characteristics of the forces, troop quality, and such that you mentioned. Ieyasu could have won without Hideaki, in the end. Even if Ieyasu had lost Sekigahara, he may have still won the campaign, or the ultimate end of becoming the hegemon.
EDIT: It's worth noting that Ieyasu has never been regarded as a brilliant field general, even by the favorable histories, and he himself admitted that he was terrible at sieges. He was a much better strategist than he was a field commander. Some of the absolute best field commanders of the late Sengoku were on the Western side./
That said, there is no denying that Hideaki commanded a very formidable contingent of men, and that the terrain and positioning of forces favored Mitsunari's host. These things are not enough for us to say Mitsunari had it in the bag, true; but they definitely did not help Ieyasu's situation one bit, that is certain.
Lets not forget the morale and psychological impact either. There were other daimyo in Mitsunari's force that had reservations, and felt they were being unfairly or unnecessarily mauled in the battle. Seeing Hideaki defect at the crescendo point must have had a huge impact on the resolve of these men to hold to the Mitsunari cause.
And yes, the Otani contingent was engaging like you describe. Like many samurai battles, the battle was really a bunch of isolated battles occurring between different clan forces, clustered around the valley.
EDIT: We need to remember too though that Otani was one of those daimyo with reservations about Mitsunari. The surviving evidence makes it clear that Otani actually wanted to fight for Ieyasu in the brewing war. And the reasons for his deciding to go with Mitsunari are unknown to this day. The several theories all center on some sort of personal attachments, emotions, or the welfare of his daughter, making him yet another example of the part personality, emotion and inter-personal relationships played in the Sengoku.
So like many daimyo at Sekigahara, he wasn't exactly looking to recklessly throw his men into the fray.
This was true for both sides in general: the combat was actually fairly lackluster and restrained until it became a rout for the Western host, then everyone got vigorous.
Hideaki's contingent was very large. It basically flowed around the small Otani contingent and bottled them up, making their position untenable./
So we can't forget the overall layout of the two armies. After the Hideaki betrayal, the Western host's central and right flank contingents started getting hit in the flank and rear. This must have had at least some significance. And not just directly either; indirectly, it is arguable that this only further contributed to the Western contingents on the left flank and center from not engaging. The Eastern forces thus gradually gained momentum, and the Western disposition became gradually more reactive and impotent rather than proactive and aggressive.
The Shimazu charge at the end is interesting, and another big topic of debate. Was Shimazu simply trying to escape, or was it an attempt to make a bold tactical move to try and turn the battle? Again, I agree with you that we simply will never truly know with these types of things. All we know is the charge didn't change anything, aside from a several prominent leaders dying.
As to Ieyasu's intrigues with Hideaki, I didn't mean that Ieyasu didn't offer any enticements to Hideaki; I'm just saying he couldn't promise those enticements, and was in less of a position to make promises than Mitsunari was, the latter being the "rightful standard bearer" for Hideyori. Ieyasu certainly couldn't promise something like taking the kampaku title.
All Ieyasu could guarantee Hideaki was that if he betrayed during the main battle to come, it would ruin Mitsunari's day 😄 And that seemed to be more important to Hideaki than anything else, which was my main point, in the spirit of this thread about samurai turning coat or acting out for what can look like illogical reasons.
And this comes back again to the debate as to how cunning Ieyasu actually was. The story is that Mitsunari had influenced Hideyoshi to strip Hideaki of his domains to begin with. But did Mitsunari actually do that, or did Ieyasu only convince Hideaki that Mitsunari did? We have evidence for both possibilities, and depending on which was the case, that can make Hideaki's betrayal seem either more logical, or more emotional.
Maybe it was a little of both? 😕