The World полностью

In this he was aided by a remarkable rival and ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu, a daimyo who shared his acumen but not his impatience. Once Ieyasu backed someone, he never betrayed them but he regarded patience, not strength, as the essential quality for success. Early in his life, he had been a hostage and almost lost his family’s power, but he rarely lost a battle and showed his mettle when his wife and son were denounced for disloyalty: he had his wife Lady Tsukiyama beheaded and forced his eldest son to commit suicide by seppuku, slicing open the belly. He was already devoted to a twice-married girl whom he chose for her looks and political wisdom: Lady Saigo¯. A contributor to his rise, she died young at thirty-seven, leaving two healthy sons who became his heirs.

Hideyoshi, appointed regent, now regarded himself as the Sun Child, his mother having been impregnated by a ray of the sun, the World Emperor, pivoting towards China. The Ming emperors received nominal tribute from Japan and recognized the regents as kings of Japan. But now the Sun Child called Japan ‘Land of the Gods’: ‘To take by force this virgin of a country Ming will be as easy as for a mountain to crush an egg!’ The plan was to ‘slash his way’ through Korea, but its king refused to allow Japanese passage. While Ieyasu cleverly kept his troops at home, Hideyoshi dispatched his armada, which enjoyed instant success. Three weeks after the first landing, the Japanese defeated the Korean army, took the capital Seoul and invaded Manchuria. But the Japanese soon faced a Korean insurgency. All Korean officials captured were executed along with their wives and children. So many noses and ears were salted, packed in crates and sent back to Hideyoshi that he built the Mimizuka – Mound of Ears. One detachment recorded 18,350 noses and was rewarded accordingly. Another 60,000 Koreans were enslaved by Japanese merchants: ‘Having tied these people together with ropes around the neck, they drive them along. The sight of the fiends and man-devouring demons who torment sinners in hell must be like this.’ Then the invasion went wrong.

In February 1593, the Celestial Army of the Ming, 400,000 strong, burst into Korea, routing Hideyoshi’s army and slaughtering more Koreans. Hideyoshi opened negotiations, demanding Korean territory. Instead Beijing offered the traditional recognition of Hideyoshi as its vassal king. Hideyoshi sent another army of 100,000 while he messily tried to manage his own family: he had dreamed of founding his own dynasty, appointing his arrogant nephew Hidetsugu as regent while he took the title of taiko, retired regent. The arrangement was already strained when Hideyoshi’s concubine Lady Chacha gave birth to another son, Hideyori, whom he named as his successor. Hideyoshi then decided to exterminate his nephew and his entire family. Hidetsugu was made to commit suicide and his thirty-nine concubines and children were all beheaded. Meanwhile the daimyos led by Ieyasu swore allegiance to the baby, signed in blood.

Hideyoshi was weakened by his Korean quagmire, which had killed nearly a million people, 750,000 Koreans and 100,000 Japanese, but it also fractured the Ming of China, opening the gates for a ‘barbarian’, Nurhaci, khan of the northern horsemen the Jurchens,^* who offered to help the Chinese. Within twenty years, Nurhaci united the Jurchen and Mongol tribes. It was just the start: his Manchu dynasty would destroy the Ming and rule China until the twentieth century.

In 1597, the ailing Hideyoshi turned on Japanese Christians, provoked by a Spanish captain who had revealed how Spain used priests as the vanguard of its colonial conquests. Portuguese Jesuits and Spanish Franciscans had converted 300,000 Japanese and secured Nagasaki as a base. Hideyoshi had copied Portuguese designs for his ships and musketry, but now he declared, ‘My states are filled with traitors … serpents I cherished in my bosom.’ In Nagasaki, he crucified twenty-six Catholics.

When this news reached Madrid, Philip was horrified. He had already faced a much greater fiasco in his English war. The failure of the Armada ‘hurts so much’, he wrote. ‘And if God doesn’t send us a miracle (which is what I hope from Him) I hope to die and go to Him.’ But he did not, micromanaging his empire from his relic-infested apartments in the vast Escorial as his Protestant enemies, English and Dutch, were shaped and energized by his enmity and enriched by his treasure. As Philip mustered his second armada, he anxiously watched the libertine antics of his nephew Emperor Rudolf who was shocking Europe.

THE MAD EMPEROR OF PRAGUE

The corridors of Prague Castle were stalked by Rudolf’s bizarre cast of necromancers, magi, scientists, artists and rabbis, along with a gold-nosed Danish astrologer, a swinging English hierophant, an earless Irish devil-worshipper, an Italian mistress, a converted Jewish lover, a psychotic son named Julius Caesar – and uncaged pet lions.