for a time, only to abscond with a sum of money entrusted to him by Matsushita Yukitsuna. Service under Nobunaga (1558–1582) In 1558, Hideyoshi became an ashigaru for the powerful Oda clan, the rulers of his home province of Owari, now headed by the ambitious Oda Nobunaga. Hideyoshi soon became Nobunaga's sandal-bearer, a position of relatively high status. According to his biographers, Hideyoshi also supervised the repair of Kiyosu Castle, a claim described as "apocryphal", and managed the kitchen. After Nobunaga noticed his talents, when Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560, he become one of Nobunaga’s trusted retainers. In 1561, Hideyoshi married One, the adopted daughter of Asano Nagakatsu, a descendant of Minamoto no Yorimitsu. Hideyoshi carried out repairs on Sunomata Castle with his younger half-brother, Hashiba Koichirō, along with Hachisuka Masakatsu, and Maeno Nagayasu. Hideyoshi's efforts were well-received because Sunomata was in enemy territory, and according to legend Hideyoshi constructed a fort in Sunomata overnight and discovered a secret route into Mount Inaba, after which much of the local garrison surrendered. In 1564, Hideyoshi was very successful as a negotiator. He managed to convince, mostly with liberal bribes, a number of Mino warlords to desert the Saitō clan. Hideyoshi approached many Saitō clan samurai and convinced them to submit to Nobunaga, including the Saitō clan's strategist, Takenaka Shigeharu. Nobunaga's easy victory at the siege of Inabayama Castle in 1567 was largely due to Hideyoshi's efforts, and despite his peasant origins, in 1568 Hideyoshi became one of Nobunaga's most distinguished generals, eventually taking the name . The new surname included two characters, one each from Oda's right-hand men, , and the new given name included chracters from , . In 1570, Hideyoshi protected Nobunaga's retreat from Azai-Asakura forces at Kanegasaki. Hideyoshi's rear-guard defense of his lord's escape is one of his fabled accomplishments under Nobunaga. Later in June 1570, at the Battle of Anegawa, in which Oda Nobunaga allied with Tokugawa Ieyasu to lay siege to two fortresses of the Azai and Asakura clans, Hideyoshi was assigned to lead Oda troops into open battle for the first time. In 1573, after victorious campaigns against the Azai and Asakura, Nobunaga appointed Hideyoshi daimyō of three districts in the northern part of Ōmi Province. Initially, Hideyoshi based at the former Azai headquarters at Odani Castle but moved to Kunitomo town and renamed it "Nagahama" in tribute to