"Then it is Maeda that Ieyasu, a wooer, would pit against my Sanada, a patriot?" replied Yodogima, when advised of the circumstance--no doings on either side escaped her; Kyogoku, now, again, for the one, and Honda, Ieyasu's secretary, with the other, proved good intelligencers, if shaky, or resolute, otherwise. "Perhaps he, Maeda, too, will have changed somewhat when he has unexpectedly discovered that smoking powder, and not farmers' arrows, await him. Sanada may sleep at the gate, but Maeda shall never cross these walls--no doubt there are others in Ieyasu's train of the same mind as Kuroda and Fukushima: we shall see, well before the wise Ieyasu has bought or defeated a man of mine; freedom and failure are antithetical in fact." Ridding his camp of the last, as he believed, who dared shake at the knees, and shouldering the remaining daimyos with the brunt of fighting and danger, keeping his own immediate levies, the Tokugawas, in reserve at the rear, where neither spear or arrow nor powder and shot could do them harm, Ieyasu gave out the orders: "Form a semicircle, the rest of you, my doubtful daimyos--I shall test your backbones; single-handed, and with no shelter available, you shall fight or turn traitor; Yodogima's methods and mood are well known--from Settsu to Idzumi, surrounding from shore to shore the enemy's grounds: they will hardly take to the water; there are no ships available: Maeda shall lead well round the Yamato (Nara) hills and approaching Ozaka from the south, with Hidetada at his rear and myself close after, strike them at their strongest point. The arm is strong, we have two to their one, and every hot-head fallen is an abiding guarantee of peace. It is a shame that these beautiful engines of war should needs be put to use, but--well, I have exhausted every recourse to bring Hideyori to my way of thinking: he is foolishly ambitious, wickedly rooted, and must be removed." Two hundred thousand of them thus moved upon Yodogima, the mother, perhaps responsible for some of Hideyori's real traits, however misjudging or particular Ieyasu had taken it upon himself to be. Nor had she been less pronounced in her convictions. "Remove the cause for all this war paraphernalia, and the effect shall be at once to relieve humanity of its needless building: the very best way to do that is to use well what we have got--here and elsewhere, now, before our resources shall have been exhausted with trying to bluff each other," she had said to Ieyasu. repeatedly, upon his showing the white feather, to Hideyoshi, his earliest rival.