Inamura-ga-saki the high ground, which is impassable for troops, juts out so far into the water that Nitta was unable to lead them past the promontory. Alone he clambered up the mountain path and looked out upon the sea that lay in his way. He was bitterly disappointed that he could not bring his force in time to share in the attack upon the hateful Hōjō capital. He prayed to the Sea-god to withdraw the sea and allow him to pass with his troops. Then he flung his sword into the waves in token of his earnestness and of the dire necessity in which he found himself. Thereupon the tide retreated and left a space of a mile and a half, along which Nitta(129) marched upon Kamakura. The attack was spirited and was made from three directions simultaneously. It was resisted with determined valor on the part of the Hōjō. The city was finally set on fire by Nitta, and in a few hours was reduced to ashes. Thus the power and the arrogant tyranny of the Hōjō family were sealed. It had lasted from the death of Yoritomo, A.D. 1199, to the destruction of Kamakura, A.D. 1333, in all one hundred and thirty-four years. It was a rough and tempestuous time and the Hōjō have left a name in their country of unexampled cruelty and rapacity. The most unpardonable crime of which they were guilty was that of raising their sacrilegious hands against the emperor and making war against the imperial standard. For this they must rest under the charge of treason, and no merits however great or commanding can ever excuse them in the eyes of their patriotic countrymen. The restoration of Go-Daigo to the imperial throne, under so popular an uprising, seemed to betoken a return to the old and simple system of Japanese government. The intervention of a shōgun between the emperor and his people, which had lasted from the time of Yoritomo, was contrary to the precedents which had prevailed from the Emperor Jimmu down to that time. It was the hope and wish of the best friends of the government at this time to go back to the original precedents and govern the country directly from Kyōto with the power and authority derived from the emperor. But the emperor was not equal to so radical a change from the methods which had prevailed for more than a century. He gave great offence by the manner in which he distributed the forfeited fiefs among those who had aided his restoration. To Ashikaga Taka-uji he awarded by far the greatest prize, while to Kusunoki and Nitta, who had in the popular estimation done much more for him, he allotted comparatively small rewards. Among the soldiers, who in the long civil wars had lost the ability to devote themselves to peaceful industries, this disappointment was most conspicuous. They had expected to be rewarded with lands and subordinate places, which would enable them to live in that feudal comfort to which they deemed their exertions had entitled them.