This struggle between the Tokugawa and a subordinate vassal was their last and supreme effort to regain power. Unfortunately for them, they were crushed in the attempt, and their military prestige was for ever destroyed. The Regent Hitotsubashi, who succeeded the young Shogun, who died on September 19, entertained no illusions as to the gravity of his position. He was by this time firmly convinced that it was absolutely necessary radically to modify the constitution of the country, and feeling certain that it would be useless any longer to resist so powerful and popular a wave of progress, he determined to associate himself with the new ideas, in the hope thereby of preserving some measure of his family’s former influence. He therefore entreated the Emperor to summon a council of the principal daimios, who accordingly assembled at Kioto in 1868, with the result that they one and all advised the Emperor to allow the centralization of the Government to take place at once, as being absolutely necessary to the welfare of the country. The Prince of Tosa, one of the chiefs of the south, addressed a letter to the Shogun, in which he informed him of the results of the meeting, and that they had acknowledged the supremacy of the Emperor. Hitotsubashi, seeing that resistance was of no further avail, sent in his resignation, which was accepted, with the condition, however, that he should continue to direct public affairs until after the general assembly of all the daimios. The southern clans, fearing that the Tokugawa might still be able to recover their power, made a bold move, and attempted to seize the person of the Mikado. On January 3, 1868, the Imperial seal was stolen, and a decree issued handing over the guardianship of the palace to the _samourai_ of Satsuma, Hizen and Tosa. On the following day the Shogunate was formally abolished. Hitotsubashi retired to Osaka with his army, where, trembling lest he might fall into some trap skilfully prepared by his enemies, and refusing to listen to any overtures, even the offer of a high position in the new Government, he marched with his men on Kioto; but the unfortunate Shogun was now treated as a mere rebel, and when he beheld the troops of the hostile clans carrying the embroidered standard of the Mikado, he realized that he was betrayed by his own people, and fled by sea to Yedo, where he surrendered unconditionally to Prince Arisugawa, commander of the ‘Army of Punishment,’ The princes of his family were the first to rally round the Emperor; others of his partisans struggled for a brief time with an adverse fate, but were finally overcome, and thus a revolution which began with the cry of ‘Down with the foreigners!’ and was provoked by the daimios and the _samourai_, the representatives of feudalism, against the authority of the Shogun, ended in the destruction of feudalism, and in the definite introduction into Japan of Western civilization.