Inouye Bunda was invested with the control of the Choshiu forces in the field, and many engagements took place in the region bordering the Inland Sea. After the death of the Shogun Iyemochi in 1866, however, the encounters between the Bakufu troops and those of Choshiu became less frequent, and there was practically a truce during the later months of the year 1867, the situation in October being such as to prompt the Shogun Keiki, whose tenure of the office had been but brief, to prefer a request to be relieved of duties which circumstances had made it all but impossible for him to fulfil. The lord Mori made his submission to the Court, at Kioto, but the hostility of the clan to the Bakufu remained latent, notwithstanding its temporary suppression, and when, at the close of December 1867, the supremacy of the southern clans was established at the capital, followed by the departure, on the 3rd of January, of the Shogun Keiki for Osaka, the Choshiu clan was prepared to play a very active part in the restoration of direct imperial rule in substitution for that delegated authority which the Tokugawa house had so long wielded. But Inouye Bunda had shown capacity of a different kind to that which had so far been demanded of him as a military leader, and he at once took his place as one of the most well-informed members of the new administration, particularly on matters of finance, which he had made his especial study. It became necessary for the Imperial Government to undertake works of public utility, more especially railways, and on this account money had to be obtained from abroad, the first loan being negotiated through the agency of the Oriental Banking Corporation, while Count Inouye, as he subsequently became, was at the Finance Department. The interest on this loan was 9 per cent., and on a subsequent one 7 per cent., both being extinguished very early in the Meiji era. In the fifth year (A.D. 1872) the wise step was taken by Inouye, then Vice-Minister of Finance, of laying by a Reserve Fund comprised of extraordinary incomes, obtained in the first place from the sale of certain Government articles which had ceased to be of any use. The idea of inaugurating such a reserve had been borne in upon the Government by the trying financial experiences of the preceding four years of the reign, consequent on the new administration having had to shoulder the responsibilities of the provincial Governments or _Hans_, by which in many instances a flood of paper money had been issued to circulate in merely their own territories, and not current beyond their boundaries. The extinction of the _Hans_ obliged the new Government to undertake the liabilities so incurred to the agricultural and other population. The Vice-minister had also in view the resumption of specie payments at the earliest possible moment, though it was long ere his wishes were realised. Altogether he found it practicable to create the “Treasury Reserve Fund” by appropriating