He was thirty-eight years old. His brave little band were slain by arrows, or killed themselves with their own hand, that they might die with their master. The enemy could not recognize Nitta, until they found, beneath a pile of corpses of men who had committed hara-kiri, a body on which, inclosed in a damask bag, was a letter containing the imperial commission in Go-Daigos handwriting, “I invest you with all power to subjugate the rebels.”
Then they knew the corpse to be that of Nitta. His head was carried to Kioto, then in possession of Ashikaga, and exposed in public on a pillory. The tomb of this brave man stands, carefully watched and tended, near Fukui, in Echizen, hard by the very spot where he fell. A shrine and monument were erected in his native place during the year 1875.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
