CHAPTER 321: CHAPTER 230 ENDURANCE

Oda Nobunaga was actually already giving Asai Nagamasa plenty of face, having invited the two allies early to wait, all to show the sincerity of an alliance. In the end, Asai Nagamasa didn’t show him any respect at all; what had been agreed upon early was suddenly changed, with no regard for him as a person.

Harano hadn’t expected such a bizarre twist to happen halfway through, either. From a historical perspective, the early cooperation between Oda and the Asai Family had actually gone quite well. During Oda Nobunaga’s campaign against Minoh, Asai Nagamasa did indeed pin down the Rokkaku family, making Oda’s conquest of Minoh unusually smooth. Who would have thought that even reaching an alliance agreement at first was full of bumps and snags.

This doesn’t make much sense, either. Oda Nobunaga needed Asai Nagamasa’s help, but Asai Nagamasa also needed Nobunaga’s support. In terms of strength, the Oda Family was miles ahead of the Asai Family—actually, it should have been the Asai Family begging for a deal with the Oda Family. After using every ounce of effort, Asai Nagamasa could only mobilize a little over ten thousand troops, whereas Oda Nobunaga could easily send out that many soldiers now without breaking a sweat.

If you add Matsudaira Mototaka and Harano into the mix, three against one, they could wipe out the Asai Family in a matter of minutes.

Harano didn’t quite understand what Asai Nagamasa was thinking, so he asked A-Qing, "Has it been figured out what new demands the Asai Family has made of the Oda Family?"

This wasn’t hard to find out. Oda Nobunaga had lost his temper at the time and even kicked over the desk. There were a lot of people present. A-Qing simply pulled out her little notebook and said quietly, "It’s been confirmed: the Asai Family demands that the Oda Family not advance against the Asakura Family during the alliance. If there’s a special circumstance requiring an attack on the Asakura Family, the Asai Family must be informed in advance and permission obtained."

"The Asakura Family?"

Harano was stunned, not expecting the business here to involve the Asakura Family of Echizen Province, and stroked his chin, pondering.

The Asakura Family and the Oda Family actually have the same roots; they both once worked for the Hoshina family. Later, during the "Ōnin War," when the eastern and western armies clashed, the Asakura Family took the chance to betray them and seized the Hoshina family’s former base of Echizen Province.

The Hoshina family then fled to Owari, causing the Oda Family to split into the Upper Four Provinces and Lower Four Prefectures, fighting messily for decades.

By now, the Hoshina family was almost entirely wiped out in the Oda Family’s civil war. But in name, the Oda Family still supported the Hoshina family, acknowledging them as titular Guardians, so with the turncoat Asakura Family, it was naturally an invisible hostile relationship.

In fact, the Asakura Family had always supported the Saito family. Back in the "Tiger of Owari" era, when Oda Nobuhide fought Saito Dosan, the Asakura Family would frequently help out in Minoh.

Harano was lost in thought, while A-Qing thought he was asking her for more details, so she lowered her head and continued to recite from the notebook: "Yes, it’s said that ever since the Asai Family took control of North Omi, for three generations they’ve been on good terms with the Asakura Family. During their struggles against the Rokkaku family, they received help from the Asakura Family many times, and top retainers frequently intermarried. Thus, I’ve heard that many of the Asai Family’s senior retainers, who are also related by blood, are opposed to an alliance with the Oda Family, and it’s caused quite a commotion lately."

She paused, closed her notebook, then added, "These details also came from inside Oda Nobunaga’s residence—some Oda samurai have already publicly announced that they’ll teach the Asai Family a lesson."

"So that’s how it is..." Harano nodded slowly, more or less figuring out what was happening. Asai Nagamasa was simply different from them.

Oda Nobunaga had always been implementing "separation of soldier and peasant," and wished he could eliminate all secondary lords to seize more power for himself. Although he hadn’t seen great results yet, he took great care to cultivate his direct forces, enough to dominate the entirety of Owari. His prominent vassal clans like Shibata, the Hayashi, the Niwa—they wouldn’t dare make a peep, and smaller houses like Maeda and Sasa didn’t even dare exhale without permission, and if they did, they’d swallow it back.

No need to mention Harano; he’d already kicked all the samurai off the Chita Peninsula, demolished every temple and shrine showing even a hint of impropriety, and established a true "one-voice rule." He didn’t have a single secondary lord under him—he lived the most carefree.

Matsudaira Mototaka was a bit weaker in this regard, with a lot of secondary lords under him, some of whom liked to act on their own. But because there was an even worse Imagawa family looming over him, and because he was personally skillful and quite charismatic, the Sanhe nobles basically all listened to him for now, with almost no cases of overt or covert resistance.

However, it seemed things weren’t the same for Asai Nagamasa; he simply couldn’t keep the North Omi noble houses in check.

That’s also understandable. After all, the reason Asai Nagamasa rose to power in the first place was because the North Omi nobles drove out his father. If they could even expel the family head, the Asai Family’s direct forces were probably terribly weak, maybe even nonexistent. Besides, Asai Nagamasa was only seventeen or eighteen—a barely grown youngster. So, in this situation, unable to keep those nobles in line isn’t so surprising.

Oda Nobunaga, when he was seventeen or eighteen, was tormented by the Owari nobles too—Harano had witnessed that firsthand, and he doubted North Omi was any better off than Owari.

In a sense, Asai Nagamasa was really just a puppet jointly installed by the North Omi nobles. The so-called "Eagle of Omi" was all reputation and nothing more—his word meant little when it came to most matters.

If not for the immense pressure from the Rokkaku family, and the need for the North Omi nobles to band together, the North Omi lordship might never have gone to Asai Nagamasa at all—they’d have fought each other into a mess long ago, until a true powerhouse emerged.

So for now, it looked like Asai Nagamasa really did want an alliance with the Oda Family—it would help him hold on to power in North Omi. But for some of the nobles under him, that alliance was far less appealing; presumably they didn’t want the family head’s power to grow unchecked, which is why there was this absurd, last-minute "raising the stakes."