Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/151

 tolerance but also of official patronage. Then, indeed, events might have justified the premature pœan of the Dillingen chronicler, that Japan had been "won over and incorporated into the true fold of the Christian Church." Such a prize was worth playing for at heavy risks. The Padres played for it and failed. Iyeyasu's sentence of banishment and extermination overtook them in 1614, and in the following year Osaka Castle was given to the flames after a struggle that is said to have cost a hundred thousand lives.

Yet another reason for the Tokugawa chief's recourse to drastic measures must be noted. The Dutch, concluding a commercial convention with Japan in 1610, naturally sought to oust the Portuguese from the monopoly that they held of Japanese trade, and to that end they roundly accused both Portuguese and Spaniards of prostituting Christian propagandism to political intrigue, and of concealing designs against Japan's integrity under the cloak of her religious regeneration. The English, who soon afterwards gained access to Japan's markets, adopted the tactics of the Dutch. It was easy to show from contemporary history that such accusations rested on bases at least highly plausible. Nobunaga had more than suspected something of the kind thirty years before either Dutch or English preferred the accusation; the Taikō had shared the suspicion, and Iyeyasu, with a wider range of experience to guide him, would probably have passed from sus-