Nobunaga burns Mount Hiei
1571 · Event
The warrior monks of Mount Hiei had defied warlords for six centuries from their mountain of temples above Kyoto. Nobunaga surrounds it, burns its temples and, by the chroniclers' account, kills everyone found on the mountain — monks, women, children, by the thousands (excavations suggest the destruction was smaller than the chronicles claim). The message to every power in Japan, sacred or secular: this one does not negotiate.
On these timelines: The Unification of Japan, Japan, Master, Major Religions
More from The Unification of Japan
- Honnō-ji Incident (1582)
- Siege of Osaka (1614)
- Oda Nobunaga seizes Kyoto (1568)
- Battle of Okehazama (1560)
- Death of Hideyoshi — the regents' pact (1598)
- Battle of Nagashino (1575)
- Hideyoshi's sword hunt (1588)
- Azuchi Castle (1576)
Around 1571
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- Spanish Armada (1588)
- Thirty Years' War (1618)
- Spanish conquest of the Incas (1532)
- English Reformation (1533)
- French Wars of Religion (1562)
- William Shakespeare (1564)
- Edo period (1603)
- Mughal Empire (1526)
- Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543)