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These gifts, together with his own money, and what he had received from the prince, made up a sum of two hundred and fifty ounces of silver, with which and his Sukésada sword he escaped under cover of darkness, and went to a sea-port called Marugamé, in the province of Sanuki, where he proposed to wait for an opportunity of setting sail for Osaka.

Shimazu of Satsuma, at the head of a handful of samurai, cut his way through the lines of Ieyasu, and reaching Osaka, embarked hastily for Kyushu. Ishida Katsushige lay concealed in a cave for a few days, but was ultimately seized and beheaded, in company with Konishi Yukinaga and Ankokuji Ekei, at the execution ground in Kyoto. This one battle ended the struggle: there was no rally.

Beyond all this the walls and gate of the outer temple court appear, and beyond them, the roofs of the great haiden, and the pierced projecting cross- beams of the loftier Go-Miojin, the holy shrine itself, relieved against the green of the wooded hills. Picturesque junks are lying in ranks at anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka.

Thus, in the year of Ieyasu's decease, his sixth son, Matsudaira Tadateru, was deprived of his fief 610,000 koku and removed from Echigo to Asama, in Ise. Tadateru's offence was that he had unjustly done a vassal of the shogun to death, and had not moved to the assistance of the Tokugawa in the Osaka War.

But Hideyoshi's death in 1598 enabled the Jesuits to hope for better fortune. His successor, the cold and cautious Iyeyasu, allowed them to hope, and even to reestablish themselves in Kyoto, Osaka, and elsewhere.

Presently, their number received an access of three friars who came bearing gifts from the governor of Manila, and now they not only established a convent in Osaka, but also seized a Jesuit church in Nagasaki and converted the circumspect worship hitherto conducted there by the fathers into services of the most public character.

Imitation for imitation's sake is, or was, in his opinion, a growing evil in Japan. A certain gentleman, he relates, a wealthy merchant of Osaka, desired to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of a copper mine coming into the possession of his family. The plan he finally decided to adopt was to present each of his three hundred employees with a swallow-tail coat.

For alike at Hirado and at Nagasaki, the foreign traders "were exposed to a crippling competition at the hands of rich Osaka monopolists, who, as representing an Imperial city and therefore being pledged to the Tokugawa interests, enjoyed special indulgences from the Bakufu.

At first there were only two of these soshaban, but subsequently their number was increased to twenty-four, and it became customary for one of them to keep watch in the castle at night. They were generally ex-governors of Osaka and Fushimi, and they were necessarily daimyo who had the qualification of direct vassalage to the shogun.

In fact, the difficulties encountered by Nobunaga in his attempts to bring the whole empire under the affective sway of the Throne were incalculably accentuated by the hostility of the great Shin sect of Buddhism. He dealt effectually with all except the monastery at Ishi-yama in Osaka.