Two important games were in progress. Yedo was the field on which one of these was to be decided, and the players were the representatives of the treaty powers on the one side, and the shōgun’s government on the other. Victory had already been virtually declared in favor of an open country and foreign intercourse. The other game was being played at Kyōto between the shōgun’s friends and his enemies. The stake was a momentous one, namely, to determine whether the present dual government was to continue and who was hereafter to wield the destinies of the empire. The government of the shōgun had long been convinced that it was necessary to make the best of the presence of foreigners in the country and that it was vain to make further exertions for their expulsion. But a vast number of the feudal retainers of the daimyōs were still bitterly hostile, and took frequent occasion to commit outrages, for which the government was held responsible. Besides the cases which have been already mentioned, a new legation which the British government had built in Gotenyama, a site which the Japanese government had set apart in Yedo for foreign legations, was burned to the ground in 1863. In the same year the temple buildings in Yedo which the United States had leased for a legation were burned. Twice the shōgun’s castle in Yedo had been destroyed by fire. A murderous attack was made upon British subjects in Nagasaki; Lieutenant de Cannes of the French troops was assassinated in 1864; and in the same year Major Baldwin and Lieutenant Bird, two British officers, were murdered at Kamakura. These repeated outrages seriously disturbed the Yedo government, and led to several attempts to curtail the privileges which by the treaties were secured to foreigners. The last proposition of the kind which was made was one conveyed to the French government by an embassy sent out in 1864. They presented a request to have the port of Kanagawa closed up and trade to be confined to Hakodate and Nagasaki. They received no encouragement, however, and returned with their eyes “opened by the high state of material and moral prosperity which surrounded them,” and reported the complete failure of their attempts at persuasion. “The _bakufu_ reprimanded them for having disgraced their functions, and, reducing their incomes, forced them to retire into private life.”(297) It is necessary now to trace the course of events at Kyōto. According to the theory of the government of Japan the emperor was the supreme and unlimited ruler and the shōgun was his executive. The maintenance of the emperor and his court was a function of the shōgun, and hence it was almost always possible for him to compel the emperor to pursue any policy which he might desire.