But if ever events create the men to deal with them, such was the case in the second half of that century. Three of the greatest captains and statesmen in Japanese history appeared upon the stage simultaneously, and moreover worked in union, an event altogether inconsistent with the nature of the age. They were Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi (the _taiko_) and Tokugawa Iyeyasu. Nobunaga belonged to the Taira family and was originally ruler of a small fief in the province of Owari. Iyeyasu, a sub-feudatory of Nobunaga's enemy, the powerful daimyo[2] of Mikawa and two other provinces, was a scion of the Minamoto and therefore eligible for the shogunate. Hideyoshi was a peasant's son, equally lacking in patrons and in personal attractions. No chance seemed more remote than that such men, above all Hideyoshi, could possibly rise to supreme power. On the other hand, one outcome of the commotion with which the country had seethed for more than four centuries was to give special effect to the principle of natural selection. The fittest alone surviving, the qualities that made for fitness came to take precedence of rank or station, and those qualities were prowess in the battlefield and wisdom in the statesman's closet. "Any plebeian that would prove himself a first-class fighting man was willingly received into the armed _comitatus_ which every feudal potentate was eager to attach to himself and his flag." It was thus that Hideyoshi was originally enrolled in the ranks of Nobunaga's retainers.