Battle of Mikata-Ga-Hara

The battles of Mikata Ga Hara (三方ヶ原の戦い - Mikata ga Hara No tatakai) is one of most famous of Shingen Takeda and one of its best demonstrations of its talents of military strategist.

While Shingen Takeda moved towards the south to attack Ieyasu Tokugawa with its fortress of Hamamatsu, its forces ran up against those of Ieyasu, in the full one with Mikata, in the north of the fortress. Shingen seeing its numerical superiority then organized its troops according to the formation gyōrin (scale with fish), Ieyasu incentive to be attacked. Ieyasu placed to him its troops on line in order to have a better use of its Arquebusier S.

In the 4 hour old neighborhoods of after midday, snow started to fall and the arquebusiers of Ieyasu opened fire. The firearms were new in the Japanese wars and Ieyasu had to think that its arquebusiers would be enough to counterbalance the tactics of Shingen based on its riders. However, Shingen launched its riders to the attack and its ridden lancers crossed the arquebusiers, with rather important losses all the same.

Seeing the close defeat, the Tokugawa clan decided to protect the life from his lord and amorça a retirement (advised by Yoshinobu Natsume) towards the fortress of Hamamatsu. To retain Shingen, Ieyasu launched most of its army.

It is said that when Ieyasu returned to the fortress, it was accompanied only by 5 men. It left then the doors of the fortress opened, making believe that it used the tactics of the " extremely vide" (tactic consisting in making believe that a fort is empty so that the attackers return there whereas a embuscade" was prepared;) whereas it had very few soldiers remainders in the fort. After being itself removed from the army of Ieyasu which blocked the passage to him, Shingen moved towards the fortress believed that Ieyasu tightened a trap to him. It made half-turn then. If it had tried to take the fortress, Shingen would have most probably succeeded, and could then have killed its Ieyasu rival.

Random links: