“You are not, perhaps, aware that the Portuguese, although anxious to secure for themselves a country discovered by their enterprise and courage, and the possession of which, I fear, has cost them many crimes, have still never lost sight of one point dear to all good Catholics—­that of spreading wide the true faith, and planting the banner of Christ in the regions of idolatry.  Some of our countrymen having been wrecked on the coast, we were made acquainted with the islands of Japan; and seven years afterwards, our holy and blessed St Francis, now with God, landed on the Island of Ximo, where he remained for two years and five months, during which he preached our religion and made many converts.  He afterwards embarked for China, his original destination, but was not permitted to arrive there; he died on his passage, and thus closed his pure and holy life.  After his death, notwithstanding the many obstacles thrown in our way by the priests of idolatry, and the persecutions with which they occasionally visited the members of our faith, the converts to our holy religion increased greatly in the Japanese islands.  The religion spread fast, and many thousands worshipped the true God.

“After a time, the Dutch formed a settlement at Japan, and when they found that the Japanese Christians around the factories would deal only with the Portuguese, in whom they had confidence, they became our enemies; and the man of whom we have spoken, and who at that period was the head of the Dutch Factory, determined, in his lust for gold, to make the Christian religion a source of suspicion to the emperor of the country, and thus to ruin the Portuguese and their adherents.  Such, my son, was the conduct of one who professed to have embraced the reformed religion as being of greater purity than our own.

“There was a Japanese lord of great wealth and influence who lived near us, and who, with two of his sons, had embraced Christianity, and had been baptised.  He had two other sons, who lived at the emperor’s court.  This lord had made us a present of a house for a college and school of instruction:  on his death, however, his two sons at court, who were idolaters, insisted upon our quitting this property.  We refused, and thus afforded the Dutch principal an opportunity of inflaming these young noblemen against us:  by this means he persuaded the Japanese emperor that the Portuguese and Christians had formed a conspiracy against his life and throne; for, be it observed, that when a Dutchman was asked if he was a Christian, he would reply, ’No; I am a Hollander.’

“The emperor, believing in this conspiracy, gave an immediate order for the extirpation of the Portuguese, and then of all the Japanese who had embraced the Christian faith.  He raised an army for this purpose, and gave the command of it to the young noblemen I have mentioned, the sons of the lord who had given us the college.  The Christians, aware that resistance was their only chance, flew to arms, and chose as their generals the other two sons of the Japanese lord, who, with their father, had embraced Christianity.  Thus were the two armies commanded by four brothers, two on the one side and two on the other.