The defeat of the Choshiu men in their earlier attempt to capture Kioto had had the effect of inducing them to study the art of war as practised in the Occident, and when Iyemochi, in consonance with the imperial command, sought to chastise Baron Mori, and promptly marched his troops through the provinces bordering the Inland Sea as far as Nagato, he found himself confronted by a superior force of riflemen, armed after the modern fashion, who, though they lacked everything in the way of military uniform, had acquired sufficient knowledge of drill and co-operation to render them doughty opponents for any force that the Shogun could place in the field against them at that stage of the national development. The men who bore rifles were not in pre-Restoration days regarded as the highest in rank among soldiers, for the Japanese had of old a predilection for the personal combat, hand to hand, and were prone to despise warfare of the kind in which a missile was hurled at the foe from a comparatively safe distance. Thus the swordsman ranked highest in Japanese estimation down to a very recent period,—but the Choshiu riflemen proved by their able use of modern firearms that a power such as had been before unknown in relation to implements of strife lay in the weapons that they so coolly and dexterously handled to the complete discomfiture of their enemies. And thus was laid, it may be supposed, the foundation of that high standard of superiority which the Choshiu troops have since attained as regards their ability to wage war on modern principles. They developed a natural aptitude for the employment of firearms from a date long prior to the present Emperor’s reign, and for some years were the only force in Japan that might be said to have adopted western armaments, with perhaps the sole exception of a force of foreign-drilled infantry (some 800 in all), belonging to the Shogun, under Kubota Sentaro, which took part on behalf of the Japanese authorities in a review and sham fight that was held at Kanasawa, near Yokohama, on the 21st March 1866, at a time when it was needful to have a few British troops in the town for purposes of defence against a possible sudden descent of some recalcitrant dai-mio’s followers.