This was a general named Shibata, who took the field in defence of the claim of Nobutaka, a son of the slain regent. He did not realize with whom he had to deal. The peasant general was quickly in the field at the head of his veteran army, defeated Shibata at every encounter, and pursued him so hotly that he fled for refuge to a fortified place now known as Fukui. This stronghold Hideyoshi besieged, establishing his camp on the slope of a neighboring mountain, from which he pushed his siege operations so vigorously that the fugitive gave up all hope of escape. In this dilemma Shibata took a resolution like that of the Epicurean monarch of Assyria, the famed Sardanapalus. He gave a grand feast in the palace, to which all the captains and notables of his party were invited, and at which all present danced and made merry as though victory hung over their banners. Yet it was their funeral feast, to be followed by a carnival of death. In the midst of the banquet, Shibata, rising cup in hand, said to his wife,-- "We are men, and will die. You are a woman, and have the right to live. You may gain safety by leaving the castle, and are at liberty to marry again." The brave woman, the sister of Nobunaga, was too high in spirit to accept this offer. Her eyes filled with tears, she thanked her lord for his kindness, but declared that the world held no other husband for her, and that it was her sole wish to die with him. Then, reciting a farewell stanza of poetry, she calmly stood while her husband thrust his dirk into her heart. All the women and children present, nerved by this brave example, welcomed the same fate, and then the men committed _hara-kiri_, the Japanese method of suicide, Shibata having first set fire to the castle. Soon the flames curled upward round the dead and the dying, and the conqueror found nothing but the ashes of a funeral pile upon which to lay hand. Hideyoshi, all resistance to his rule being now at an end, set himself to tranquillize and develop Japan. Iyeyasu, one of Nobunaga's favorite generals, became his friend and married his sister; Mori, lord of the West, came to the capital and became his vassal, and no man in the empire dared question his power. His enemies, proud nobles who were furious at having to bend their haughty heads before a peasant, privately called him Sava Kuan ja ("crowned monkey"), but were wise enough not to be too open in their satire. Their anger was especially aroused by the fact that the mikado had conferred upon this parvenu the lofty office of kuambaku, or prime minister of the empire, a title which had never before been borne by any one not a noble of the Fujiwara clan, for whom it had been expressly reserved. He was also ennobled under the family name of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.