In March 1868, a French frigate was moored in the port of Osaka, and a group of French officers and soldiers traveled to the city of Jie, which is adjacent to Osaka. According to the agreement between the French government and the Tokugawa shogunate, the French could land in the Osaka area, but the Fallen Army had just recaptured Osaka a month ago, and it was obviously inappropriate for the French soldiers to rush in without the permission of the Fallen Shogunate. Not only that, but after the French soldiers came ashore, they chased and teased women in the streets.
This kind of misconduct annoyed the Japanese, and the Tosa clan soldiers stationed in the city of Tosa told the French soldiers to immediately roll back to the ship, but the French soldiers did not take them seriously at all, and they were very rude. Due to the language barrier, the two sides looked at each other. The vast majority of these Japanese soldiers were junior samurai, with the power to "fit the imperial exemption (kill the disrespectful person who offended them on the spot without punishment)", and the rude eyes of the samurai also met the conditions of "suitable for the imperial exemption", so they suddenly moved, slashed and shot, killing nine French soldiers on the spot, and the remaining French soldiers fled back to the warship, and two of them died the next day.
The onlookers clapped their hands and applauded, and the parties concerned also felt that they were defending their families and defending the country, not knowing that they had run into a catastrophe: killing 11 French soldiers was almost equivalent to directly declaring war on France.
Of course, France could not sacrifice its soldiers in vain, so it united a group of European countries to exert pressure on Japan, and put forward five conditions: the Meiji government apologized, compensated 150,000 Eagle Ocean (Mexican silver yuan), executed the murderer in front of the French, opened the port of Osaka, and withdrew the Tosa soldiers stationed there. Although the Meiji government had already won a decisive victory in the civil war at that time, because the Tokugawa shogunate had not yet been completely eliminated, the civil war was still continuing, and the Meiji government was unable to fight against so many Western countries, so it agreed to the French request.
Soon, the 20 clan soldiers involved in the killing of French soldiers were publicly executed in the presence of officers and men of French warships and diplomats of the French and Meiji governments. The French were on their toes and hoped to turn the execution into a public trial that would show justice and western majesty, but things soon turned strange.
The Meiji government's so-called "public executions" actually ordered the 20 people to commit suicide by cutting their stomachs. In the eyes of the Japanese, this is a dignified way to die, not to mention that these 20 people do not believe that their actions are wrong.
The first to die was the captain of the clan soldiers, who first wrote down the death poem on a blank piece of paper according to the etiquette of cutting his abdomen, and then roared angrily at the French officers and soldiers present: "Listen, today is not for er and other Yi people, but for the imperial kingdom, let Er and others see the soul of Japanese boys!" "Say that he stabbed him in the stomach with a short knife and pulled out a cross-shaped wound on his stomach. Then he suddenly stretched out his hand to the wound, pulled out his intestines, and prepared to throw it at the Frenchman, who was stunned. When the wrong person (the one who beheaded the beheading of the man who cut the abdomen) saw the situation, he was deeply afraid that he would cause more trouble, so he immediately cut him down the neck with a knife, but failed to cut off the cervical vertebrae, and he shouted: "Come again!" The third knife of the wrong person completely decapitated his head. French officials and soldiers looked at each other in shock, which was very different from what they had imagined, but they could only watch it hard.
These samurai used the execution meeting as a stage to express their patriotic pride, competing to show their heroic spirit and generous death, and the scene became more and more bloody and cruel. Meiji government officials who were supervising the execution were moved to tears and looked at the French officers and soldiers with resentment. Gradually, the French could not sit still. By the time the 12th man was ready to cut his abdomen, the French finally could not stand the tragic and bloody picture, and the pale-faced French captain led the entourage away without a word, and the execution was temporarily suspended.
The Meiji government told the French government that if the French government agreed, it could choose another time to continue the executions. The French government told the Meiji government that one life for one life was enough to achieve justice, and for humanitarian reasons, proposed that the remaining nine samurai be exiled.
The 11 samurai who committed suicide, known as the "Sakai City Eleven Dead Soldiers," were buried in their place of death, Myokuni-ji Temple, a cemetery that was used as a propaganda tool by Japanese militarism during World War II, thus becoming a "holy place." (Mr. Liu, a fantasist)