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Marshal Enterprises Releases Third Free Game

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Tuesday, July 31, 2012




La Bataille de Mockern Tackles Leipzig Battle

Marshal Enterprises has announced the release of its third free game in less than five months with the publication of La Bataille de Mockern on March 31, 2012.

The game, which is part of the Recession Series of Games released by Marshal Enterprises, covers the battle between the French under Marshal Marmont and the Russians and Prussians under General Yorck on October 16, 1813 and is considered part of the greater Battle of Nations which ended French rule in Germany during the Napoleonic period.

The game can be accessed and downloaded for free by visiting Marshal Enterprise website at Labataille.me and opening up the Recession Series II page.  So far, nearly 2000 people have downloaded for free the previous two games, La Bataille de Halle and La Bataille de Raszyn. 

The webpage has easy to access instructions for the printing of the color counters; maps and charts as well as the deluxe full color special rulebook which has such highlights as a historical reference chart; a Franco-German-English glossery of terms of important usage in 1813 and a historical commentary about the life of Marshal Marmont, one of Napoleon's most controversial marshals.

Mockern was the key battle at the northern end of the sprawling battlefield that is know as the Battle of Nations.  The French, with a better than average corps under Marmont and a cavalry corps under General Arrighi, face Prussians under the soldier of fortune Yorck, and Russians under General Langeron.  The French are charged with stopping the allied Army of Silesia from coming to the aid of the Army of Bohemia in the South.  It was a bitter battle, with artillery duels and cavalry charges a plenty to make it an evenly matched contest.

Features rarely seen in Napoleonic games include the Fortified Town hexes in Mockern; French naval infantry; Prussian Landwehr cavalry and Wurtemburger cavalry that may defect in mid-battle.

When asked whether Marshal Enterprises choosing to do a part of the larger Battle of Nations with La Bataille de Mockern, had some significance for the future, one of the Marshal Enterprises' Household, Monte Mattson replied, "I am not at liberty to say."

Marshal Enterprises is a creative consortium of game designers and cultural commentators who remain the surviving designers of the original La Bataille system.

For further information about this release, contact jgsoto@labataille.me.

Battle of Kettle Hill

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Sunday, June 3, 2012




US Army photo taken near the base of Kettle Hill about July 4, 1898. The soldier is pointing up to the top of Kettle Hill. In the background you can see the block houses on San Juan Hill and the American encampment.

Event Date: July 1, 1898 

The Battle of Kettle Hill on July 1, 1898, was part of the general U.S. Army assault on San Juan Heights, the last major natural barrier to the port of Santiago, Cuba. Kettle Hill was a smaller elevation, located just before the northern extension of San Juan Heights. U.S. Army V Corps troops, commanded by Major General William R. Shafter, had disembarked some 16 miles east of Santiago at Daiquirí on June 22, 1898. Kettle Hill, held by some 750 Spanish troops, was the first objective before San Juan Heights.

While Brigadier General Henry W. Lawton’s 2nd Infantry Division attacked Spanish troops at the nearby town of El Caney, Brigadier General Jacob F. Kent’s 1st Infantry Division and Major General Joseph Wheeler’s Dismounted Cavalry Division advanced toward San Juan Heights. With Wheeler ill, Brigadier General Samuel S. Sumner had charge of the Dismounted Cavalry Division. Shafter, situated at El Pozo two miles away, had envisioned Lawton’s troops defeating the Spanish troops at El Caney in two hours and then moving south to join Kent’s and Sumner’s divisions for a combined assault on San Juan Heights.

The American attack on San Juan Heights, however, was delayed when Lawton’s troops took longer than the anticipated two hours to quell Spanish resistance at El Caney. The men of the 2nd Infantry Division and the Dismounted Cavalry Division were meanwhile coming under fire from Spanish troops on the heights. After waiting for several hours and taking casualties from Spanish fire from the heights, many of the American officers grew impatient waiting for new orders from Shafter. At 1:00 p.m., three hours after the planned time for the assault and on his own responsibility, Sumner ordered an attack. On the left, Brigadier General Hamilton S. Hawkins’s 1st Brigade of Kent’s division moved up the western slope of San Juan Heights. Receiving important fire support from the Gatling Gun Detachment, they reached the summit.

At the same time that the infantry troops were securing San Juan Heights, Sumner’s dismounted cavalrymen on the right flank were moving up Kettle Hill. The 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment led the attack, closely followed by the 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (the Rough Riders) and the 1st U.S. Cavalry. Meanwhile, the 3rd U.S. Infantry, 6th U.S. Infantry, and 10th U.S. Cavalry moved partway up the hill.

Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of the Rough Riders was among the first leaders at the top of the hill. He was one of the very few officers to proceed on horseback, but a wire fence had forced him to dismount near the crest and make the last 40 yards on foot. There were no Spaniards there when the Americans made the summit, as they had withdrawn ahead of the American advance. By 1:15 p.m., 15 minutes after the attack began, the Americans were in possession of Kettle Hill. The Americans on Kettle Hill then opened an intense fire on San Juan Hill to the north. Roosevelt secured permission from Sumner and then led his men down the western slope, past a small lagoon, and up the northern extension of San Juan Hill to secure the part of San Juan Heights north of the El Pozo–Santiago Road. The attack cost the Dismounted Cavalry Division 35 dead and 328 wounded. It also made Roosevelt a national hero. He used reportage of his role in the battle to help win election as governor of New York in 1899 and nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1900. His role in the fight for Kettle Hill was popularized by American journalists and illustrators. New York Sun journalist Richard Harding Davis, the best-known newspaper correspondent of the war, wrote eloquently of Roosevelt’s charge up the hill. Frederic Remington’s painting The Charge of the Rough Riders was even more laudatory of Roosevelt’s heroism. Commissioned by Roosevelt himself, the painting depicts Roosevelt in the background on horseback, pistol drawn, leading the men forward. Although many of the Rough Riders wanted Roosevelt to receive the Medal of Honor, Secretary of War Russell Alger, upset that Roosevelt had written a report demanding the immediate return to the United States of troops suffering from disease, refused to endorse the recommendation. Nevertheless, on January 16, 2001, President William Jefferson Clinton posthumously awarded Roosevelt the Medal of Honor for his actions at Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. Although the award came more than a century after the deed, Roosevelt was the first president of the United States to receive the highest U.S. award for valor.

Further Reading Azoy, A. C. M. Charge! The Story of the Battle of San Juan Hill. New York: Longmans, 1961. Konstam, Angus. San Juan Hill, 1898: America’s Emergence as a World Power. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Samuels, Peggy, and Harold Samuels. Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan: The Making of a President. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997. Walker, Dale L. The Boys of ’98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. New York: Forge, 1999.

Qing Empire Defense, 1800–1912

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Saturday, June 2, 2012




Defense of the Qing Empire initially fell on the shoulders of the Eight Banners (baqi) and the Green Standard Army (lüying). By 1800, both had long ceased to be effective as the country was subjected to Western intrusion and increasing social upheavals.

THE EIGHT BANNERS
Created by the founders of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) prior to the invasion of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Eight Banners was a military force composed of Manchus, Mongols who had submitted to the Manchu, and the Han of southern Manchuria and some other areas. Of the three ethnic components, the Manchu was by far the largest, estimated at 60 percent of the entire force in the late Qing. The Metropolitan Banners were regular units located in and around Beijing, as well as in Zhili and Fengtian. Some of the “bondservants” (Chinese captured when the Han settlements on the plains of southern Manchuria were overrun by the Qing founders) were organized into separate banner companies. Provincial garrisons were widely distributed among four geographical regions: the capital region, the northeast, the northwest, and the rest of China proper. In addition to these, there were banner units consisting of various frontier peoples who were not formally counted among the provincial garrisons. By the late eighteenth century, the Eight Banners, at one time a first-rate fighting force, had been debilitated by long periods of peace, prosperity, and corruption.

GREEN STANDARD ARMY
The Han Chinese Green Standard Army was a larger military force, widely dispersed in small garrisons throughout the provinces. Originally the soldiers of commanders of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) who surrendered to the Qing in 1644 and after, these garrisons were stationed mostly in district or prefectural cities as a constabulary force to maintain local order, and their power could not penetrate the village substructure, where rebellions often arose and flourished. The Green Standard Army was inadequate in times of major social upheaval. Moreover, these troops could be brought together in large bodies only under high commanders specially deputed from the capital during emergencies. The chief officers of each garrison were rotated so that none could establish personal loyalties among his subordinates. As with the Eight Banners, these troops had declined in military power by the late eighteenth century.

TUANLIAN
During the Taiping and other rebellions, the Qing dynasty had to depend on the tuanlian (militia units, grouped and drilled locally) or the yongying (mercenary armies) for its survival. The tuanlian system emerged in the mid-1850s out of the tradition of border-area officials who sought to tighten bureaucratic control over rural society. Such units were later augmented by the militarization of local gentry elite who sought to protect their communities and property from marauding groups of jobless and desperate people, as well as their Confucian way of life from Muslim and pseudo-Christian rebels. Two important examples of militia are the Hunan Army (Xiangjun) formed by Zeng Guofan and the Anhui Army (Huaijun) raised by Li Hongzhang, both of which were trained in traditional fashion, despite the use of some Western arms. Both were loyal to the Qing state, and, as such, local militarization was compatible with the requirements of the imperial state.

Through their loyalty to the throne, and the award of official ranks and titles in return, local elites were drawn into the Qing system and bureaucracy. On the other hand, the tuanlian system contributed to the growth of regional power and posed acute problems for the imperial state, even though central power was not seriously undermined. Once the Taipings were suppressed in the mid- 1860s, both the Hunan Army and the Anhui Army were ordered by the Qing court to disband. However, while large numbers of troops were demobilized, many were also kept at imperial command to quell other rebellions and to defend China against the West and Japan.

Reform of the armed forces began at this time, culminating with the establishment of the New Army in the first decade of the twentieth century, after the Boxer Uprising.

NAVAL DEVELOPMENTS
For most of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the navy began to occupy the attention of Qing officials as well. This focus on naval development represented a major change in Chinese military and strategic thinking. Traditionally, China’s invaders had mainly come overland from Inner Asia and the far north; they were nomadic or seminomadic horse-riding “barbarians.” This threat, linked as it was to the Great Wall and to the army, dominated traditional Chinese military thinking.

Until the second half of the nineteenth century, China had no naval tradition. The only time previously that China had a fleet was in the early fifteenth century, during the reign of the third Ming emperor, Yongle (r. 1402– 1424), when Admiral Zheng He (1371–c. 1433) made seven voyages to Southeast Asia and beyond, with at least four of them reaching the Red Sea ports of West Asia and the shores of East Africa. These voyages, however, did not lead to Chinese maritime expansion and ended in 1433. It took another four and a half centuries for the rulers of the Middle Kingdom to realize that a modern navy was a vital means of defense and a chief index of great-power status. In the mid-nineteenth century, the British taught Qing military strategists that the greatest external threat to the Middle Kingdom came from the sea and from the south and east, and that a different military strategy was required for coastal defense. Even so, there was a twenty-year hiatus between the Opium War (1839–1842) and the start of naval development in China in the 1860s.

The establishment in 1866 of the Fuzhou Navy Yard by Governor-General Zuo Zongtang of Fujian and Zhejiang, with Shen Baozhen as superintendent, was a modest start toward building a naval force. With foreign help, especially from the French, fifteen ships had been built by 1874 and a training program was in full operation. Nevertheless, although new ships were purchased from abroad or were built at Fuzhou and Shanghai, these were not organized into a single national fleet. There were conflicts between those who favored ambitious ship-buying programs and those who wanted to build ships in China. Li Hongzhang, the northern commissioner of trade and the governor-general of Zhili from 1870 to 1895, sought to establish a single national naval command, and he preferred to buy the ships. The result of the conflict was a lack of standardization in China’s fleet.

On the eve of the Sino-French War (1884–1885), China had over fifty modern ships, more than half of them homebuilt. Of the rest, thirteen were British Armstrong gunboats, two were Armstrong cruisers, and two were German ships. There was still no single national fleet and no unified command. The Fuzhou squadron was wiped out in the war with the French. The loss to France was due not so much to French naval superiority as to the structure of the Chinese leadership and the political organization of the imperial state. The insufficiently trained Chinese naval personnel had no grasp of a naval strategy appropriate to China’s new ships.

THE FLEETS, COASTAL DEFENSE, AND NAVAL TRAINING, 1885–1895
In 1885 the Navy Board was created. The following years, especially between 1888 and 1894, saw the emergence of the Beiyang fleet. Headed by Prince Chun (1883–1951), the Navy Board proved to be ineffectual in its efforts to centralize naval affairs. Li Hongzhang, for all his national ambitions, was still operating in regional fashion. He reorganized his Beiyang flotilla into a fleet of twenty-five ships, acknowledging British and German precedents in staff organization. Commanded by Admiral Ding Ruchang (1836–1895), the Beiyang fleet was divided into seven functional squadrons. It was the largest of China’s four fleets, the others being the Nanyang squadron along the coast south of Shandong and two squadrons in Fujian and Guangdong. Coastal defense preparations included shore fortifications at Port Arthur (Luxun), Dalianwan, and Weihaiwei, and numerous forts along the southern coast and the Yangzi. 



Elsewhere, coastal defense was still carried out the old way, and the water forces on the Yangzi River remained traditional. The Shanghai defenses used mines that were often poorly mapped, and the Ningbo defenses used torpedoes. In the south, Governor-General Zhang Zhidong built forts but, as late as 1886, still resorted to harbor blocking by dumping stones in the river in the face of a threat from foreign ships.

The naval academies at Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, and Weihaiwei were in full operation during the 1885–1894 decade. In Fuzhou, there were two naval schools: a French-language construction school and an English- language naval academy for officers in deck and engine divisions. British officers from the Royal Naval College at Greenwich were engaged to help train early groups of students. Later, bright students were sent to England and Germany for advanced training. In 1888, when Li Hongzhang established the Beiyang fleet, he was well served by the Fuzhou-trained men. The faculty of the academy in Tianjin included William M. Lang of the British Royal Navy, who was given an imperial commission and the title of admiral to run the training program in British fashion and to take charge of the Beiyang fleet’s organization and naval yards. He resigned his commission in 1890, after which training at Tianjin went into decline.

PROBLEMS IN NAVAL DEVELOPMENT
Over the years, China’s naval development was hampered by institutional problems and financial difficulties (aggravated by the Qing court’s reluctance to change its system of public financing). Many funds meant for the navy were diverted in 1888 and after into building, or refurbishing, the Summer Palace in Beijing. Naval reforms were undertaken with insufficient coordination among officials, each of whom had his own priorities and preoccupations. There was also a lack of leadership from the center. Few high officials in Beijing took a real interest in the navy. And no one, not even Li Hongzhang, could make the naval service into a respected profession or career in China.

DISASTER IN THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR
The weakness of the Chinese navy was fully demonstrated in the war with Japan (1894–1895). On the eve of the war, the navy had sixty-six large ships, with over 430 torpedo boats. The Beiyang fleet was the strongest; alone it equaled that of Japan in numbers. Li Hongzhang thus was deeply involved in the war, with the Navy Board playing only a subordinate role while the other squadrons looked on. What little help Li received from the southern fleets was given reluctantly. As a result, the Beiyang fleet was wiped out in the 1894 Battle of the Yalu, which demonstrated how disunited China was and how backward it remained in modern warfare.

After the war, the British continued to assist the Qing dynasty with naval reorganization. But the Beiyang fleet never recovered from the Japanese defeat. This led to a reversion of Chinese military and strategic thinking in the post-Boxer decade to the tradition of land defense, when great store was set on the New Army (xinjun).

THE DEMISE OF THE IMPERIAL STATE
After the demise of the imperial state in 1912, the militarization of Chinese society did not cease; it only took a different form. Local elites collaborated with the military regimes at provincial and regional levels to protect themselves and to seek a share of political power in the unstable new order. The New Army in south, west, and central China was largely disorganized, as the revolutionary forces altered the existing military organizations to suit their purposes. New formations of all sorts sprang into existence, with many of the new recruits being unruly elements. In the north, however, the framework of the original New Army organization remained intact, though many divisions had been greatly reduced by war losses and subsequent desertions. Overall, there were too many men under arms. The ascendancy of the military after the 1911 Revolution and the events that unfolded paved the way for a long period of warlord rule in the Republican period.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Fung, Edmund S. K. (Feng Zhaoji) The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution: The New Army and Its Role in the Revolution of 1911. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Kuhn, Philip A. Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Pong, David. Shen Pao-chen and China’s Modernization in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Rawlinson, John L. China’s Struggle for Naval Development, 1839– 1985. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Rhoads, Edward J. Manchus & Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late and Early Republican China, 1861–1928. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. Spector, Stanley. Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Regionalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964. Wang Gungwu. Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science, and Governance. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

The Last Stand of the Swiss Guard

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Friday, June 1, 2012




May 6, 1527

Rome was sacked by the troops of the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Charles V in 1527. When the troops, mostly rabble and mercenaries, of the empire breached the city, they immediately ignored the orders of Charles and pretty much everyone else in command and made straight for Vatican Hill intent on pillaging the richest treasures in Christendom. They also had murder on their mind and Pope Clement VII was high on the list of targets. The famous Swiss Guards, who used to do more than just stand around looking pretty for tourists, formed a fighting square on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica to face upwards of 20,000 bloodthirsty troops who were storming the city. Only 189 Guardsmen remained after the fighting to take the city, but these troops chose to make their stand in hopes of buying Clement time to escape the city through one of the warrens of tunnels under Rome. Clement made good his escape as the Guard managed to hold the porch of the church and prevent the doors from falling, but only 42 Swiss Guards survived and none of them were uninjured.

The Battle
The Habsburg army, composed of Imperial and Spanish troops, was placed under the command of the Constable of France, the Duc de Bourbon, fallen from grace in France and now serving the enemy. The constable's army, with a large contingent of Lutheran mercenaries, had become increasingly mutinous, and the Emperor was preoccupied with other matters, making him unable to pay them.

As a result of his troops' attitudes, Bourbon decided to attack Rome, known to be filled with potential loot. The city, considered to be the untouchable capital of Christendom, was left almost defenseless, and, when the Pope anxiously ordered the citizens to take up arms, only 500 obeyed. Bourbon's troops quickly overwhelmed the defenders and began to plunder the ancient city. Near St. Peter's Basilica, the Swiss Guard, formed in 1506 as the Pope's elite bodyguard unit, deployed. The captain, Kaspar Röist, intended to hold off the attackers long enough for Clement to escape across the Passetto di Borgo.

Joined by remnants of the Roman garrison, the Swiss made their stand in a cemetery well within the Vatican. Captain Röist was wounded and then killed by Spanish mercenaries, in full view of his wife. The Swiss fought bitterly, but were heavily outnumbered and almost annihilated. Some survivors, accompanied by a band of refugees, retreated to the Basilica steps. Those who fled toward the Basilica were massacred, and just above forty survived. This group of forty, under the command of Hercules Goldli, managed to stave off the Habsburg troops pursuing the Pope's entourage as it made its way across the Passetto to the Castel Sant'Angelo.

LINK

Mapping 'Urbicide' in World War II

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Thursday, May 31, 2012

The more removed we get from World War II, the more important it becomes to remember the war that shaped the modern world, and yet the harder it becomes to find fresh angles of remembrance. In a recent issue of the Journal of Historical Geography, researchers David Fedman of Stanford and Cary Karacas of CUNY-Staten Island present visual evidence of the systematic destruction of 65 Japanese cities by U.S. military bombers — a process of "urbicide" they call "one of the most striking gaps in ... U.S. public consciousness regarding the major events of World War II."

Shortly after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the American military mobilized several units of mapmakers that ultimately played a central role in the planning of air assaults on Japanese cities. The Map Division of the Office of Strategic Services alone produced some 8,000 maps throughout the conflict. In their work, Fedman and Karacas use this wartime cartography to show how U.S. bombing of Japanese cities shifted from military targets to urban populations in general after 1943.

Ten of these maps, which are in the public domain, are reproduced in the gallery below. (Karacas also keeps a bilingual digital archive of related resources.)

"Considered together, these maps reflect the evolution of American military strategy, and the eventual embrace of incendiary air raids on entire cities," Fedman and Karacas told Atlantic Cities in a joint email response. "As we spent more time with these maps, and began to consider the ways in which they strip urban space of its humanity, it occurred to us that they also stand as remarkable artifacts of — and windows into — total war."

As the war progressed, U.S. military maps were desensitized in a way that reflected a broader need to dehumanize the enemy. While maps are impersonal by nature, they nonetheless often convey very personal elements of a place: street names, government buildings, school zones, and the like. When the situation required, American military cartographers replaced the civilian, non-combatant markings of Japanese cities with the industrial sites and factory workers that represented a war machine deserving of destruction.

Fedman and Karacas believe the so-called "urbicide" of Japan has been overlooked, for starters, because the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki capture such a large share of American memory when it comes to incendiary raids. The intentional bombing of cities also creates what they describe as "unsettling moral questions" that are difficult to square with simplistic notions of the Good War. But it's precisely the complexity of global conflict — philosophical and practical alike — that stands as an enduring lesson of World War II.

"The key takeaway from our article, we hope, is that the abstraction of enemy space is part and parcel of modern warfare," Fedman and Karacas said. "In hindsight it is perhaps tempting to suggest that these mapmakers bear a share of responsibility for the burning of Japanese cities, but its important to realize that they, like so many other Americans, were simply doing their job, as was demanded by total war."

 
The Map Division of the O.S.S. — a staff of 150 geographers, cartographers, draftsmen, and the like — produced about 8,000 maps during World War II. Often they relied on survey maps produce by the Japanese; that was the case in this map, the "City Plan of Tokyo, October 1944." In addition to general city maps, the O.S.S. division drew maps of urban roads, national urban networks, and specific city functions, such as manufacturing, trade, mining, fishing, and so on. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

To complement the O.S.S. work, the War Department, Army, and Army Air Force created their own maps of urban Japan. Early in the war the targets of these maps were military, Fedman and Karacas report. The concentric circles in this Air Force map from July of 1942, "AAF Target Japan No. 18 - Osaka," aim at crippling the Kawanishi Airplane Company and the fighter planes it produced. (Source: Branner Library, Stanford University)

In May of 1943 the Army Air Force investigated the possibility of "urban Japan's vulnerability to fire," write Fedman and Karacas, since Japanese architecture and furniture tended to be made of wood. The resulting report analyzed the flammability of 20 key cities and included overview maps of 10. One of these, "Tokyo - Inflammable Areas," produced by the O.S.S. in November 1942, notes the flammability of all 35 wards of the city. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

By 1944, write Fedman and Karacas, the U.S. military was ready to exploit the combustibility of Japanese cities in practice. An intelligence report making the case for targeting Japan's six most-populated cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Kawasaki, Nagoya, and Kobe; combined population: 15 million) estimated that destroying 70 percent of housing in these cities would decrease Japan's industrial output by 15 percent. The authors of the report might have consulted maps like "Tokyo: Density of Population, 1940," produced by the O.S.S. in October of 1942. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

In February of 1945 the XXI Bomber Command of the Army Air Force undertook trial bombings of Nagoya and Tokyo, and the following month its B-29s were unleashed on a number of urban areas. Whereas earlier maps had focused on military targets, now sights were set on entire neighborhoods. This XXI Bomber Command map, "Tokyo Area - Target 90.17 Urban," assigns drop zones indicated by large yellow circles. "The inclusion of 'Target Zone 1,' the densely populated Shitamachi district of the capital lying within these four points, stands as an ominous moment in the planning of urbicide," write Fedman and Karacas. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

On March 10, 1945, 279 B-29s released 1,665 tons of bombs over "Target Zone 1" on the previous map. The air raid killed roughly 84,000 people (if not more), injured 40,000, and left a million homeless, Fedman and Karacas report. This image of the bombed-out area, taken shortly after the raid, was published in Air Intelligence Digest. The accompanying text "all but erased the presence of civilians," write Fedman and Karacas, instead using military-related descriptions like "home factories" and "skilled workers." (Source: Library of Congress)

After the bombing of Tokyo on March 10, General Curtis LeMay, head of the XXI Bomber Command, decided to attack Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe as well. By month's end the U.S. military had incinerated 32 square miles of these four cites, inspiring even more raids on Japan's six major cities, which lasted through June. This map, "Tokyo No. 7 Mosaic Map," shows damage to the center of Tokyo up through this time. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

After hitting Japan's largest cities the U.S. Army Air Force turned its attention to medium and smaller urban areas — destroying some 65 cities in all. While larger cities contained enough nearby military targets to justify the raids, that wasn't always true of the smaller ones. The XXI Bomber Command map of Kofu City, "Target Chart 52A, Kofu Area," is a clear example: "no military targets within the entire urban area are listed, and the central focus of the map is on the built-up center of the city," write Fedman and Karacas. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

Following the attack on Kofu City, in July of 1945, the XXI Bomber Command produced this map of the damage (called, fittingly, "Damage Report Map of Kofu City, July 1945"). Featuring no military-related targets, the crude map portrayed a vague outline of Kofu, indicating destruction in black and transmitting no information beyond population. With the city emptied of all signs of lived space, the image stands as "is as clear a visual representation of urbicide ... as any," Fedman and Karacas conclude. (Source: U.S. National Archives)
 
The occupation of Japan that followed its surrender required an immediate re-humanization of the Japanese people. Rather than celebrating the success of air raids, postwar maps removed "even the barest trace of destruction" — something of a "cartographic whitewash," Fedman and Karacas write. This general map of Japan's main Honshu island, included the the Army's "Guide to Japan," exchanges depictions of urban wastelands for what Fedman and Karacas call "a delicate, feminine landscape." (Source: "Guide to Japan," U.S. Army, September 1945)

Eric Jaffe is a contributing writer to The Atlantic Cities and the author of The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. He lives in New York.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598).

Posted by Mitch Williamson in





Handsome design showing two scenes from the life of the great Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who is regarded as Japan's second great unifier. The top image shows Hideyoshi as a child confronted by thieves. After running away from an apprenticeship, the young Hideyoshi lived as a beggar, sleeping wherever he could find shelter. One night while sleeping on Yanagi-bashi Bridge, he was awakened by Hachisuka Koruku and his gang of robbers, who tripped over him in the dark. The resourceful Hideyoshi acquitted himself well in answering their questions, and joined the thieves in exchange for food, soon earning admiration for his cleverness and agility. Below, Hideyoshi is shown in his first battle at Fujikawa. After reaching the battlefield only to discover that the enemy was retreating, he stationed himself in the reeds along a river, ambushing the enemy's general when he attempted to cross the river. He thrusts his spear at the surprised rider, the horse rearing on its hide legs.

‘‘Taiko¯’’ Japanese warlord.
Son of a foot soldier in Oda Nobunaga’s army, he rose through the ranks based upon toughness and drive. He demonstrated his generalship in 1570 during Nobunaga’s invasion of western Honshu. In 1581 he displayed his siegecraft by taking Tottori castle with a novel device: months in advance of the siege he bought up most of the rice in the region, thus speeding starvation of the garrison. When he learned of Nobunaga’s death he marched on Kyoto and defeated the treacherous vassal daimyo (Akechi Mitsuhide) who had betrayed his master at Yamazaki. This act earned Hideyoshi the loyalty of Nobunaga’s army. He fought an inconclusive succession battle with Tokugawa Ieyasu at Nagakute (1584). The two warlords then allied to complete the unification of Japan.

Hideyoshi increased the number of arquebusiers in his armies, razed the castles of defiant daimyo, and hounded to death all he suspected of contemplating rebellion. Like Nobunaga, he also viciously suppressed Buddhism. By the 1580s he commanded the largest armies ever assembled in Japan and campaigned on a truly national scale. With 100,000 men he conquered Shikoku and Etchu in 1585. Two years later he took Kyushu with 200,000 troops. In 1590 he crushed the Hōjō army of 60,000 men with an army of his own numbering nearly 200,000. He reduced garrisons and branch forts and led a three-month siege of Odawara castle, the Hōjō fortress in Sagami province. Having unified the country he sought to pacify it by disarming the population. In 1587 he banned peasants from owning weapons and sent inspectors to seize all swords, spears, bows, and firearms from the non-samurai classes. Four years later he banned training of peasants or townsfolk as soldiers (‘‘separation edict’’). These measures consolidated the military monopoly of the samurai and thereby bought acquiescence to centralized rule, ultimately with Hideyoshi serving as imperial regent.

Hideyoshi could be magnanimous to defeated daimyo when it suited his political interest, allowing them to relocate to lesser domains but keep their heads and their families and retainers. Yet, he was also capable of great brutality and cruelty akin to Nobunaga’s. On numerous occasions he not only killed male prisoners, he impaled their children and crucified their wives and mothers. Among his many victims were one of his heirs, several members of his household, and a number of lifelong companions. When he ‘‘forgave’’ enemies it was for shrewd political reasons. In his last years his rage, paranoia, and cruelty were expressed on a grand canvas. In 1587 Hideyoshi ordered all Christian missionaries to leave Japan, which he affirmed as ‘‘land of the gods.’’ Ten years later he ordered mass executions of Japanese Christians (Kirishitan), whom he feared would act as a fifth column for foreign influence and conquest.

Hideyoshi planned a great empire to include Indochina, Siam, Taiwan, the Ryukyus, the Philippines, Korea, and indeed, all China: there is some evidence that he hoped to displace the Ming emperor and replace him with the figurehead Japanese emperor, with himself the power behind the thrones of a vast Asian empire. In 1592 he sent a force of 160,000 to invade Korea. His army took poorly fortified Pusan within a day, using superior muskets, better trained musketeers employing volley fire, and far more powerful siege cannon than anything the Koreans had ever seen. Three weeks later the Japanese captured Seoul. They took Pyongyang two months after that. Hideyoshi ordered ‘‘mopping-up’’ operations in northern Korea and prepared to invade Manchuria. Instead, he faced intervention by a Ming army advancing from the north. While the Japanese severely damaged this force another Ming army arrived in 1593 while dispersed Koreans waged an effective guerilla campaign. Four years of bloody stalemate ensued. At sea, the Koreans used turtle ships to destroy convoys of Japanese junks, which were armed supply ships rather than true warships. On land, Korean guerilla and Ming regular resistance pushed the Japanese back to Seoul. Cut off from Japan by the Korean navy and running out of supplies, Hideyoshi agreed to a truce in 1593: he withdrew to Pusan in exchange for the Ming army departing Korea. In 1597 Hideyoshi re-invaded Korea with a second massive army. The Ming again counter-intervened. More savagery abounded: tens of thousands of Korean and Chinese ears and noses were sent to Kyoto to form a great ‘‘victory mound.’’ On land the Japanese were stopped again at Chiksan (1597), south of Seoul; a week later they were defeated at sea, at Myongnyang.

Hideyoshi’s major accomplishments were to complete unification of Japan and begin the domestication of daimyo and samurai so that they became the permanent floor of a quiescent Japanese social order under the Tokugawa shoguns. On the other hand, the price in lives of his megalomaniacal foreign military adventures was high. The price in lasting Korean and Chinese animosity was higher still.
Suggested Reading: Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (1982).