6 
In fact the Daimios soon engaged, each on his own account, in more or less 
official transactions with the foreigners. The Taicoon obtained from Napoleon 
III the sending of the first military mission, and the Prince of Satzuma engaged 
the Ctrnite de Montblanc, who brought over several retired N.C.O’s. to instruct 
the Prince’s troops. All the Princes, urged on by foreign merchants, often little 
scrupulous, began to dissipate their fortunes in the purchase of arms, munitions, 
steam vessels, and the most preposterous European trinkets. It was the recom¬ 
mencement of anarchy, but still more dangerous than in the sanguinary struggles 
of former times ; for it was being done under the eyes of foreign powers, among 
whom several had already calculated on gathering up the spolia opima of the dis¬ 
membered Empire of the Rising Sun. 
marshal saigo. —Among the statesmen who understood the danger the most 
interesting personage was Marshal Saigo. He w T as the chief, or Karo , of the 
Prince of Satzuma’s soldiers. At the same time he was a sort of prime minister, 
a real mayor of the palace, who generally exercised power in the name of the 
Prince. It will be interesting to show what these warrior-statesmen were who 
accomplished the fall of the Taicoon and the abolition of feudalism. To trace the 
career of the Marshal it will be necessary to anticipate events. 
One day in 1873 Marshal Saigo, who had now become after the revolution 
commander-in-chief of the new army, was dining at the French Mission at Yedo. 
He wore the old Japanese costume, differing in that from most of his countrymen, 
who on the morrow of the revolution adopted a hasty and somewhat puerile imi¬ 
tation of European costumes. His great pagoda sleeves left his arms bare up to 
the elbow. His right arm had a deep scar shewing that the fore-arm had been 
ripped up. The explanation of it was as follows:—At the time when Saigo 
was traversing the southern provinces of Japan to concert with the other Karos 
upon a plan of revolution he was pursued and tracked by the Taicoon’s agents 
and was obliged to take refuge in a monastery of Buddhist bonzes. One night 
he was discovered and the assassins disguised penetrated his hiding place. These 
bonzeries, like our monasteries of the middle ages, are generally fortified and 
surrounded with large moats full of water wherever the ground admits of it. 
Saigo, pressed by the assassins in the night, had only just time to jump from the 
rampart to swim across the moat; the two assassins did the same and he fought 
with them in the water and succeeded in stabbing them both, but his arm was 
ripped up by a dagger from the elbow to the wrist. 
Saigo had the sagacity to foresee—-what is now being realised in Corea—that 
one day the interests of Japan would clash with those of Russia. His end was 
as dramatic as its commencement. Finding, not without reason, at a given mo¬ 
ment, that the revolution was going too far and passing the limits he would have 
assigned to it, he withdrew from the councils of government and returned to live 
in his province of Satzuma at the southern extremity of Japan. Convinced, 
rightly or wrongly,—the point has never been cleared up—that one of the minis¬ 
ters had fomented a plot to assassinate'him he placed himself at the head of a 
number of discontented Samourais, offspring of the revolution, and in 1877 lie 
raised the standard of revolt, not, be it understood, against the Emperor, but 
against His Majesty’s advisers. At the head of 40,000 men badly organized, still 
armed for the most part with their ancient swords, but who were devoted to him, 
body and soul, he maintained for eight months an arduous struggle with the 
government troops which numbered some 70,000 men. He gave proofs of true 
military genius : resisting step by step, escaping with agility when nearly sur¬ 
rounded, and by rapid marches in an almost impracticable mountainous country 
falling upon the flanks and rear of the Imperial army. But the fight was too un¬ 
equal ; and Saigo, by a strange reversal of fortune, was destined to be crushed by 
the national army of which he was the creator. 
