Nagashino 1575: Slaughter At The Barricades (Praeger Illustrated Military History Series)

Features of Nagashino 1575: Slaughter at the Barricades (Praeger Illustrated Military History Series)

Product DescriptionWhen Portuguese traders took advantage of the constant violence in Japan to sell the Japanese their first firearms, one of the quickest to take advantage of this new technology was the powerful daimyo Oda Nobunaga. In 1575 the impetuous Takeda Katsuyori laid siege to Nagashino castle, a possession of Nobunaga's ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu. An army was despatched to relieve the siege, and the two sides faced each other across the Shidarahara. The Takeda samurai were brave, loyal and renowned for their cavalry charges, but Nobunaga, counting on Katsuyori's impetuosity, had 3,000 musketeers waiting behind prepared defences for their assault. The outcome of this clash of tactics and technologies was to change the face of Japanese warfare forever. Stephen Turnbull examines the battle that ended the supremacy of one of the great samurai warrior clans - the Takeda.About the AuthorSTEPHEN TURNBULL is recognised as one of the world's foremost military historians of the medieval and early modern periods. He first rose to prominence as a result of his book published in 1977, The Samurai: A Military History, one of the few hardback books ever produced by Osprey. Since then he has achieved an equal fame in writing about European military subjects and has had 30 books published. He has always tried to concentrate on the less familiar areas of military history, in particular such topics as Korea, Eastern Europe, the Baltic states and the Teutonic Knights. Stephen Turnbull took his first degree at Cambridge University, and received a PhD from Leeds University for his work on Japanese religious history. He has travelled extensively in Europe and the Far East and also runs a well-used picture library. His work has been recognised by the awarding of the Canon Prize of the British Association for Japanese Studies and a Japan Festival Literary Award.