The forces of the Taira and the Minamoto fought many battles in the Kiushū and Chūgoku districts, the gains and losses being tolerably even on both sides. But by degrees the military magnates along the Sanyō, Nankai, and Saikai lines joined the Taira army, and its strength became so irresistible that it marched back toward Kyōto, escorting Antoku. Thus the Taira saw themselves once more established at Fukuhara, to which Kiyomori had for a brief period removed the capital from Kyōto. They organized their lines of defense, making Fukuhara their base, and Ikuta and Ichinotani their eastern and western outposts, respectively. Meanwhile Yoshinaka, the Minamoto leader, had become so insolent as to be imprecated and dreaded by friend and vassal alike. He also quarreled with Yoritomo, who had hitherto confined his military operations to the eastern provinces, but who now sent his two brothers, Noriyori and Yoshitsune, to attack Yoshinaka. The latter was defeated at Seta in Ise, and killed in the midst of a rice-field by a stray arrow. The victors then marched on in triumph to Ichinotani to attack the Taira. The first conflict was successful for the Minamoto. The Taira lost many a stout soldier. Munemori and the remnant of his troops retreated to Yashima, in Sanuki, continuing as before to carry with them the child emperor, Antoku. Yoshitsune's forces pursued the retreating army to Sanuki, where a fierce fight ended in the second defeat of the Taira. The latter receded still further to the bay of Dannoura in Nagato. There the decisive battle was fought, and for the third time the Taira were utterly routed. Nearly all their warriors were killed. When the issue of the battle had ceased to be doubtful, the empress-dowager plunged into the sea with the infant emperor in her arms and bearing the sword and seal. Antoku was drowned but the Minamoto soldiers rescued his mother. The seal was afterward recovered from the sea, but the sword, which was itself a copy, was irrevocably lost. Thenceforth the sword called _Hirugoza-no-tsurugi_ was employed for ceremonial and official purposes. The Taira chief Munemori and his son were captured and subsequently executed. Thus, after some twenty years of power and prosperity, the great Taira clan was broken and destroyed. Often in subsequent centuries men talked of the meteor-like rise of the Taira, of the extraordinary heights of autocracy and affluence to which the illustrious family attained, and of the terrible and tragic scenes that marked its rapid and final fall. "The vain house of the Taira did not endure" (_ogoru Heike wa hisashikarazu_), is a familiar Japanese adage suggestive at once of the moral import of the tragedy and of the swift and extreme vicissitudes of fortune which characterized those lawless ages. FOOTNOTE: [1] Table showing lineage and chronology of sovereigns.