The Three Chinas, 1580 to 1582
Emperor Momozono, May 1576 -
The Yamashiro incident had set Japan on a collision course with Qin, but it seemed likely that any offensive moves on Momozono's part would bring Wu into the war as well.
Try as he might, the Emperor could see no way of resoving this situation. Eventually it was decided that Japan had to take the plunge or risk stagnating out of fear of the consequences.
Momozono's war aims were simple, the first phase of the war was to be essentially a defensive operation, with Japanese troops holding the line against the superior forces of their combined enemies.
When an opening presented itself Japan would pounce using local superiority to make up for the overall deficiency in troop numbers.
In a war as great as the one Momozono now found himself in sacrifices had to be made. Reluctantly he ordered that Henan province be laid waste to deny supplies to the oncoming enemy. The Emperor consoled himself that Henan was a Chinese province which not long ago had resisted Japan. Now it would serve her as the front line of the war.
The lone cavalry unit which had burnt the fields of Henan was immediately ordered to pull back as soon as the war became official. Fortunately it was able to reach the safety of Jinan before the enemy could catch up.
The Northern Front
Before Japanese attention could be fully focused on the south the Qin enclave of Xilin Gol had to be dealt with. In order to settle the matter quickly, Momozono dispatched 20,000 troops under General Yoshio Toda against the province's 13,000 defenders.
The Qin troops were poorly led and General Toda was able to put them to flight shortly after his arrival in Xilin Gol. Having nowhere else to go the enemy slipped past Japanese lines and into Chengde hoping that they could cross back into Qin territory before the General Toda could catch them.
They were too slow, however, and the battle of Chengde marked Japan's first major success of the war. The northern campaign had been swifter than Momozono and his commanders could have hoped for and General Toda was now able to bring his 20,000 troops into the fight for the south.
The Handan-Henan Campaign
The battles for the neighbouring provinces of Handan and Henan decided the course of the war. The Japanese had believed that the bulk of the Chinese armies would remain in Henan and on this basis had ordered the province scorched.
However, while Wu's armies were initially content to struggle on in the burned and battered province, Qin forces pressed northward in an attempt to link up with their comrades retreating from Xilin Gol.
Not wishing to see the northern front reopened Momozono ordered troops into Handan to cut the enemy's line of advance. Though they arrived too late to stop Qin entering the province they were able to push the intruding army back into Henan thanks to their superiority in both numbers and morale.
Sensing that this was the opening he had been waiting for Momozono followed up the battle of Handan with a general advance on Henan. Initially it had been thought that many of the battered formations currently besieging the province would have pulled out before the Japanese armies arrived, but this was not to be the case.
Although it had not been conceived as such, the battle for Henan would be the decisive battle of the war. The memory of Oogimachi's fatal obsession with winning in a single blow was still in the minds of Japanese commanders as they advanced to meet the allied troops.
In a reversal of fortune from the wars of the 1520s it was the ruler of Wu who participated in this battle rather than a Japanese emperor. While there was a certain amount of admiration for the man's bravery, Momozono's generals were quietly pleased that their leader left the fighting to professional soliders. In any event the presence of Anwang Gao did the Chinese forces little good.
At the same time as General Miyoshi was crushing the allied armies at Henan a smaller Japanese forces routed and then destroyed another of Qin's armies. The fortunes of war were decidedly in Japan's favour.
Following the victory at Henan Japanese forces were ordered to pursue the broken remnants of the allied armies. Momozono's unlooked-for war was going better than he expected and he was not about to let the momentum slip from his grasp now.
General Toki's victory in the battle of Yichaun was yet another great success for Japan and prevented Qin forces from recovering, but news of his efforts were overshadowed by reports from Anhui where General Miyoshi sealed his reputation by completely destroying Wu's northern army.
The allied forces had started the war far outnumbering the Japanese, but now the tables had turned. Japan had won the victories she needed to move from the defensive and to begin to realise her war aims.
The Qin Campaign
Momozono's first move was to buy Wu out of the war. Although some of his nobility urged that he should not agree to a peace in which Japan seemed to lose face the Emperor argued that the greater aims of the war all lay in reducing the power of Qin.
There would be a reckoning with Wu, but for today their withdrawal from the fight would turn a Japanese advantage into certain victory.
It is unarguably true that the Japanese forces were little troubled after peace was made with Wu. Qin formations were regularly wiped from the map and the loss of 2,000 soldiers at the battle of Guyuan has the dubious distinction of being the only total loss suffered by Japan during the war.
The annihilation of Eje Xuan's army at the battle of Sichuan Pendi destroyed Qin's power outside the northwest of their country. Japanese forces were free to spread out and lay siege to the Qin heartland.
The rest of the war was a matter of waiting for siege armies to reduce the defences of Qin's cities. It was clear that enemy's general populace were heartily sick of the war, while the Japanese capacity to fight was scarcely diminished.
Japan now had the superior armies in terms of numbers as well as in terms of morale and training. All that remained was forcing her demands upon Qin.
The peaced deal that followed was brutally punishing. Not only did Momozono insist that Qin surrender some of her richest provinces, but the cession of Fengyuan and Yichaun left the country divided into six parts with access to all controlled by Japan.
Qin's defeat had been so total that she could do nothing but concede.
The war of the Three Chinas was over and Japan had emerged victorious. With the power of one of her rivals broken, perhaps forever, Momozono now looked to Wu and began to plan its downfall.