We have seen that the British Government had already confessed its belief that the Tycoon's Government was incompetent to maintain order where foreigners were concerned. Yet until that Government itself should plead incompetence, foreign States could only hold it wholly accountable for all that was done affecting their interests. But the Tycoon's Government fought tooth and nail against such admission, resorting to every subterfuge to maintain their status, while yet evading the responsibilities of the position. The success of this ambiguous policy required that the foreign representatives should be kept in ignorance of the relations which subsisted between the different parties in the Japanese State. Hence secrecy and misdirection governed their diplomatic intercourse. The treaties themselves having been tainted from their origin with deception, every stage of their execution was marked by dissimulation, which came gradually to light as the pressure from within and from without caused now one corner, now another, of the curtain to be raised. The Tycoon was between the upper and the nether millstone,--foreigners pressing him for fulfilment of his obligations, while a power greater than his own was demanding the complete repudiation, or at least the substantial curtailment, of all these obligations. The straits he was put to to keep up his two faces were pitiable and desperate, for he had to make the Mikado and the Daimios believe he was as much opposed to the foreigners as they were, while to foreigners he was professing loyalty and throwing the blame of the reaction on the hostile Daimios. Instigated by them, the Mikado had fully asserted his authority, and the Tycoon was no longer able to pose as the sovereign ruler of Japan. The allocation of a site for the foreign Legations on Gotenyama, a popular pleasure-ground in Yedo, was attacked, and the Tycoon ordered to rescind the grant, which he endeavoured to do by proposing the substitution of another site. This being refused by the British _chargé d'affaires_, the Japanese sentry on the buildings under construction was assassinated, and soon after the whole building was blown up and burned.[9] So ambiguous had become the attitude of the Tycoon, that Colonel Neale was in doubt whether this conflagration pleased or displeased the Yedo Government. (Six months later the buildings occupied by the United States Legation were likewise destroyed by fire.) The hostile Daimios, in the name of the Mikado, were, in fact, putting strong pressure on the Tycoon, while those Daimios who had favoured the treaties had been punished by confiscation of their revenues. The Tycoon's position was fast becoming untenable, and in the last extremity his advisers decided to take the foreign representatives for the first time into their confidence.