After Shonyu and his son had departed on the morning of the ninth, Hideyoshi summoned Hosokawa Tadaoki to his camp at Gakuden and gave him, as well as several other generals, the command for an immediate attack on Mount Komaki. After they attacked he climbed the observation tower and watched the progress of the battle. Masuda Jinemon waited at his side, looking out into the distance.
"You know, as hot-blooded as Lord Tadaoki is, won't it be a problem if he penetrates too deeply into the enemy?"
Worrying about how close the Hosokawa forces had come to the enemy ramparts, Jinemon looked at the expression on Hideyoshi's brow.
"It'll be all right. Tadaoki may be young, but Takayama Ukon is a man of good sense. If he's there with him, it will be fine."
Hideyoshi's mind was far away. How had Shonyu fared? All he could think about was the good news that he hoped would come from that quarter.
At about noon, a number of mounted men rode up, having withdrawn from Nagakute. With wretched looks on their faces, they related the tragic news: the main army of Hidetsugu had been completely crushed, and it was unclear whether Hidetsugu was alive or dead.
"What! Hidetsugu?" Hideyoshi was plainly surprised. He was not someone who could look unperturbed at hearing something shocking. "Well, what an oversight!" He said this not so much to criticize the shortcomings of Hidetsugu and Shonyu as to admit his own failure and praise the insight of his enemy, Ieyasu.
"Jinemon," he called, "blow the conch shell for the men to assemble."
Hideyoshi immediately sent out yellow-hooded messengers to each of his divisions with emergency orders, and within an hour, twenty thousand soldiers had departed from Gakuden and hurried toward Nagakute.
That rapid shift did not go unnoticed at the Tokugawa headquarters on Mount Komaki. Ieyasu was already gone, and a small number of men had been left for its defense.
“It appears that Hideyoshi himself is at the head of his army."
When Sakai Tadatsugu, one of the generals left in charge of Mount Komaki, heard that news, he clapped his hands and said, "This is turning out just as we expected! While Hideyoshi is gone, we can burn his headquarters at Gakuden and the fortress at Kurose. Now is the time to make the kill. Everyone follow me for a grand attack!"
But Ishikawa Kazumasa, another of the generals left in charge, opposed him directly.
“Why are you being so hasty, Lord Tadatsugu? Hideyoshi is almost divinely inspired in his military strategies. Do you think a man like that would leave an incapable general in charge of defending his headquarters, no matter how much of a hurry he was in to depart?”
“Any human being may not be up to his usual capacities when he's acting in haste. Hideyoshi had the conch blown to assemble, and he departed in such a hurry one may suppose even he was confused at the news of the defeat at Nagakute. We shouldn't miss the chance now to set fire to Lord Monkey's tail."
“That's superficial thinking!" Ishikawa Kazumasa laughed out loud and resisted Tadatsugu all the more. "It would be Hideyoshi's style to leave behind a considerable military forrce to take advantage of the situation that would exist if we left our own fortificacations. And it would be ridiculous for a small force like ours to sally out now."
Disgusted with all the confusion, Honda Heihachiro stood up indignantly. "Is this a discussion? People who like discussions are just prattlers. Personally, I can't just sit here idly. P'ardon me for leaving first."
Honda was both a poor talker and a man of strong character. Both Tadatsugu and Kazumnasa had been insisting on the validity of their own arguments and engendering a controversy. They now looked in shock at Honda's indignant departure.
“Honda, where are you going?" they asked hurriedly.
Honda turned around and spoke as though he had come to some deep conclusion. "I have been my lord's retainer ever since I was an infant. Considering the situation he's in, I can do nothing but go to his side."
“Wait!" Kazumasa appeared to think that Honda was simply being hotheaded, and raised his hand to restrain him. "We were commanded by our lord to defend Mount Komaki in his absence, but we were not commanded to do just as we pleased. Calm down a little."
Tadatsugu also tried to calm him down. "Honda, will it achieve anything if you go out alone right now, of all times? The defense of Mount Komaki is more important."
Honda's mouth curled up in a thin smile, as though he pitied their narrow thinking, but he spoke politely, as the two other men were superior to him in both rank and age.
“I'm not going with the other generals. Each of you can do as he pleases. But Hideyoshi is leading a fresh army toward Lord Ieyasu, and as for me, I can't just stand here without doing anything. Think about it. Our lord's forces must be exhausted from fighting last night and this morning, and if the twenty thousand men Hideyoshi is leading join the rest of the enemy in an attack from both the front and the rear, how do you suppose Lord Ieyasu will get away safely? The way I see it is, even if I am wrong in rushing off to Nagakute alone, if my lord is killed in battle, I am resolved to die with him. That should not trouble you."
At those words, all murmuring stopped. Honda led out his own small force of three hundred men and dashed away from Mount Komaki. Infected with the man's spirit, Kazumasa also collected his two hundred men and joined the determined party.
Their joint forces numbered fewer than six hundred men, but Honda's spirit enveloped them from the time they left Mount Komaki. What was an army of twenty thousand men, after all? And who was this Lord Monkey, anyway?
The foot soldiers were lightly armored, the banners were rolled up, and as the horses were whipped, the dust from their little force flew up like a tornado hurrying toward the east.
As they came out to the southern bank of the Ryusenji River, they found Hideyoshi's army moving along the northern bank, troop after troop.
"Well, there they are!"
"The commander's standard with the golden gourds."
"Hideyoshi must be surrounded by his retainers."
Honda and his men had ridden up without stopping, and were looking over at the opposite bank, noisily pointing and holding their hands over their eyes. All of them shook with excitement.
It was such a short distance that if Honda's men had yelled out, the enemy's shouts would have reached right back to them. The faces of the enemy soldiers were visible, and the footsteps of twenty thousand men mixed with the clatter of innumerable horses' hooves crossed the river and reverberated against the chests of the men who were watching.
"Kazumasa!" Honda yelled behind him.
"What is it?"
"Do you see that on the opposite bank?"
"Yes, it's an immense army. Their line looks longer than the river itself."
"That's just like Hideyoshi," Honda laughed. "It's his skill to take an army of that size and then move it as though the men were his own hands and feet. He may be the enemy, but you have to give him credit."
"I've been looking at them for a while. Do you suppose Hideyoshi is over there, where you see the commander's standard with the golden gourds?"
"No, no. I'm sure he's hidden somewhere in the middle of another group of men. He's not going to ride out in the open where he'd be the target for someone's gun."
"The enemy soldiers are moving quickly, but they're all looking over here with suspicion."
"What we must do here is delay Hideyoshi on the road along the Ryusenji River, even if just for a few moments."
"Should we attack?"
"No, the enemy has twenty thousand men, and our own forces only number five hundred, so if we attacked them it would take only an instant for the surface of the river to be dyed red with our blood. I'm resolved to die, but not pointlessly."