But the joy of the missionaries at the success of an army led by one of their adherents, and so largely composed of converts, was not a little damped by a side blow from another and an unexpected quarter. So anxious was the Spanish governor of Manila to improve every chance for opening a trade with Japan, that, in spite of the imperious character of the emperor’s letter, he sent an answer to it by a Spanish gentleman named Liano, in which, indeed, he evaded its demands by suggesting that the mean quality of the person who had brought it, and his not having heard anything on the subject from the Jesuits at Nagasaki, had led him to suspect its authenticity. Liano, accompanied by a Dominican friar, landed in Satsuma, where he met with Solis, the Spaniard from Peru, still busy with his ship-building enterprise, and in no very good humor with the Portuguese and the Jesuits. To confer with Harada, the envoys proceeded to Nagasaki, which city they left again without any communication with the Portuguese merchants, or the missionaries; and, accompanied by Harada, and his Japanese friend, Hasegawa, they hastened to the northern coast of Shimo, where the emperor then was. Hasegawa and Harada translated so ill the letter of the governor of Manila, as to make it express something of a disposition to comply with the emperor’s pretensions, who thereupon wrote a second letter, declaring the other to be genuine, and renewing the demand which it had contained of submission and homage. The envoys, without fully understanding its contents, consented to receive this letter; and in the hope that, if the Portuguese were driven away, the commerce of Japan might fall into the hands of the Spaniards of Manila, they proceeded to suggest heavy complaints against the Portuguese at Nagasaki, whom they not only charged as guilty of great harshness in support of their commercial monopoly, but also with protecting the Jesuits, great numbers of whom, in spite of the emperor’s edicts, still continued to be sheltered in that city and its neighborhood. The emperor either was, or had affected to be, ignorant of the extent to which his edicts had been disregarded. This information put him into a great rage; and he issued instant orders for the destruction of the splendid church at Nagasaki, hitherto untouched, and also of the house of the Jesuits, who had now no place of residence left there except the hospital of Misericordia. But these wicked Spaniards did not long go unpunished. Solis, on his way back to Satsuma, perished by shipwreck, as did the Spanish envoys on their return voyage to Manila. It was stated, too, that the emperor’s mother died at Miyako, at the very moment of his signing the order for the destruction of the church,—judgments so striking as to become, so we are told by the missionaries, the occasion of many conversions. Such was the state of affairs when Father Valignani, leaving Japan for the second time, sailed for Macao in October, 1592. CHAPTER XV