Narrow Road To The Deep North 16

In the winter of 1572 Takeda Shingen, meanwhile, at the urging of Shogun Yoshiaki, decided to make a drive for the capital, starting with an invasion of Tokugawa's territory. Takeda led a large army down from Shinano into Totomi and threatened Ieyasu's headquarters at Hamamatsu castle. Ieyasu requested military assistance. Nobunaga hesitated, despite the aid he had himself gotten from Ieyasu in the past, because not only was he still technically allied to Shingen, he was also tied down on the Western front. Ieyasu responded that there was little that might stop the Tokugawa from joining the Takeda, a scenario that would put the Oda in a precarious position. Nobunaga agreed to help as much as his own situation allowed. He sent a few thousand men under three lackluster generals of mixed quality, not enough to stave off the defeat that followed, but enough to eliminate any pretext of civility that may have existed between him and Shingen. However, after his defeat at the Battle of Mikatagahara, Tokugawa's forces launched a night raid and convinced Takeda of an imminent counter-attack, saving the day with a bluff. Ieyasu was developing a pivotal and inevitably successful philosophy of strategic patience in his campaigns with Nobunaga. Takeda troops went on to capture the imposing Oda castle at Iwamura, an embarrassing event that made Nobunaga furious.
However, fortune would begin to smile on Nobunaga, in May of 1573. Takeda Shingen was dead, from either an old war wound or pneumonia. The timing could not have proved worse for Yoshiaki, who had fortified Nijo Castle and dispatched letters to Nobunaga's enemies, urging them onward. With all of the furious determination he would become famous for, Nobunaga turned on his remaining enemies. He surrounded Kyoto and caught Yoshiaki unprepared, forcing him to negotiate. An uneasy truce was arranged through the intercession of the Emperor, one that neither side expected to hold for long.
In July of the same year, Nobunaga returned to Nagashima with a sizable force containing a large number of arquebusiers. His commanders, Sakuma Nobumori and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the sandal bearer that would become the heir to Nobunaga’s unification enterprise, led a diversionary attack from the west, while Nobunaga planned to charge forward behind his gunners. But the Second Siege of Nagashima would turn out to be one of his most famous failures, a near mirror reverse of his success in the Dengaku-hazama gorge a dozen years earlier. The rainstorm that hit him, just as he was about to open the battle, rendered 90% of his arquebuses useless, and left his men in a terrible defensive position. Ikkō-ikki troops, also known for their expertise with firearms, counterattacked immediately, with covered weapons. Nobunaga himself was almost killed in the retreat. 
The setback goaded Yoshiaki into open rebellion. The first week of August he barricaded himself in a fort on the Uji River, intending to hold off Nobunaga long enough for the Asai, Asakura, and Honganji to fall on the Oda from behind. Yoshiaki had miscalculated. Nobunaga acted swiftly. By August 18 had breached the stronghold's outer defenses. Yoshiaki pleaded for his life and was exiled, the last of the Ashikaga shoguns. From then until his death, Nobunaga would be the de facto Shôgun.
He turned his attention to the Asai and Asakura, once and forever. Marching north against the Asai castle at Odani, Nobunaga ambushed and defeated the Asakura army dispatched to relieve it. Leaving a force to maintain the siege until he could return, he chased the fleeing Asakura into Echizen, captured Ichijo-ga-tani, and presided over Yoshikage’s suicide in a temple on 16 September. Back at Odani, before his own seppuku, Nagamasa sent his wife, Nobunaga’s sister Oichi, and their three daughters back to live with Nobunaga, but hid his son, Nagamasa's male heir, Manpukumaru, in a far place known only to them. But Nobunaga convinced his sister to reveal the hiding place by pretending he only wanted to raise the boy as family. Hideyoshi executed Manpukumaru, and displayed the head on a stake. Nobunaga had the skulls of Nagamasa, his father, Hisamasa, and the Asakura leader lacquered, so that they could be used as cups. Kill it if it does not sing.