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| Siege of Miki | |||||||||
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| Part of theSengoku period | |||||||||
 The encirclement of Miki by Hashiba Hideyoshi | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Forces ofOda Nobunaga | Forces ofBessho Nagaharu | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Hashiba Hideyoshi Hachisuka Koroku Takenaka Hanbei Kuroda Kanbei Araki Murashige Fukushima Masanori Otani Yoshitsugu Wakisaka Yasuharu | Bessho Nagaharu † Bessho Harusada † Bessho Yoshicika  | ||||||||
  Siege of Miki (Japan) Show map of Japan | |||||||||
Thesiege of Miki (三木合戦) lasted from 1578 to 1580.Toyotomi Hideyoshi tookMiki Castle ofHarima Province, located in what is nowMiki,Hyōgo,Japan, fromBessho Nagaharu, an ally of theMōri clan.[1]
The originalShugo (governor) of the Harima province was theAkamatsu clan, with theBessho clan andKodera clan asShugodai (deputy governor).
The Akamatsu clan were one of the most powerful Shugo of the previous Shogunate, having at one point being the Shugo of four separate provinces. However, by this time they had already greatly decreased in power and only nominal leaders were banding together to form a coalition of the collapsing clans in Harima.
WhenHashiba Hideyoshi entered the province on the order ofOda Nobunaga in late 1576, the Akamatsu clan leaderAkamatsu Norifusa decided to simply surrender to the Oda, while he still had a decent deal on the Harima coalition. Soon after the Bessho clan and Kodera clan also submitted.
Having apparently taken all of Harima without bloodshed, Hideyoshi proceeded to move his base of operations toHimeji, the former residential castle of the Akamatsu, and began preparing for a showdown with theMōri clan.
However, during this time, Bessho Nagaharu's uncle, Bessho Yoshichika, was reported to have felt insulted over having to submit to Hideyoshi, who was born a commoner. He managed to convince his nephew to rebel, and also set up a secret alliance with the Mori clan. Soon, after his rebellion, the Kodera clan joined in.
Once the first shot was fired, Hideyoshi was suddenly in a dangerous position, trapped between the powerful Mori clan in the front and rebelling clans behind him.
Later, Hideyoshi decided to lay siege to Miki castle, hoping to destroy the source of the rebellion.
In 1578, Hideyoshi's force gradually took out the Bessho clan's outlying castles and eventually surrounded them in Miki Castle.
However, the Bessho held out for an extraordinarily long time, at first due to a large stock of food, and then secret resupply missions by the Mori navy, though these ended long before the siege would. They attempted to break the siege on a few occasions. During one of these attacks on the much larger Oda forces,Bessho Harusada, the younger brother of Nagaharu, was killed. After nearly three years since the beginning of the rebellion, Miki castle finally surrendered. Bessho Nagaharu committedseppuku and his uncleBessho Yoshichika, the instigator of this rebellion, was killed by his own soldiers.
In the meantime, during the siege,Araki Murashige suddenly left the battle front and returned to his home base at Arioka Castle (also known asItami Castle). This was a rebellion against Oda Nobunaga. The reason for his rebellion may have owed to Nobunaga's severe attitude toward his subordinates. Later, Nobunaga launchSiege of Itami (1579) against Murashige.
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