law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles
had been sent to work the mines, Iyéyas[)u] believed he had obtained
documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long
suspected--the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts
and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject
state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he
believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo
Sh[=o]gun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January
27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple
enemies--of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This
proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come
to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp
possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof
of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in
this state paper, Iyéyas[)u] shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese
patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he
tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two
Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen
foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists,
were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of
combustibles to Macao.

Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves
in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and
continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of
the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hidéyori would mount to
power; but in 1615, Iyéyas[)u], finding a pretext for war,[19] called
out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the
most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it
is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished.