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366 HONDA THE SAMUEAI.
the batteries at Shimonose'ki during two days, and
then, landing a force of infantry, sailors, and marines,
destroyed the batteries and " cleaned out the den."
The result of this tremendous chastisement is told
by a Japanese.
" The effect of this affair was decisive.
Some of the most enthusiastic adherents of
the anti-foreign party participated in the engagement,
and they became convinced that the 'outsiders
' were far stronger and, in many respects,
superior to the Japanese. It is fair to state that
the anti-foreign sentiment in Japan was smothered
this event." Hitherto most of the sword-wear-
by
ing samurai were like young Indians of the plains,
who do not know the power of the forces opposed
to them in the nation ;
but now the energies of the
" Mikado-reverencers " were turned away from the
foreigners and concentrated in destroying the Yedo
government.
Now began a campaign led by
the flower of
Choshiu, men of ideas, students of modern ideas
derived from the Dutch books, armed with American
rifles, having cast off their armor and being
lightly dressed, their recruits being not only samurai,
but chosen from the common people, well paid and
full of enthusiasm and obedient to discipline. The
result of the movements in the summer of 1866 was
that this handful of alert men of courage and ideas
beat back and defeated the motley army sent from
Yedo. The prestige of the bakufu was now forever
gone.
On the death of the young Tycoon, September 19,