The communication to the foreign representatives of the decision to close the country duly took place on the 24th June, as arranged. But nothing came of it. The foreign governments refused to take the matter seriously, merely intimating that steps would be taken to protect foreign interests, and five months later the Shōgunate asked for the return of the Note. Sir Rutherford Alcock in the course of a lengthy review of the situation, in which he seems to have foreseen clearly that the reopening of the country would eventually lead to civil war, came, though unwillingly, to the conclusion that foreign governments, if they wished to ensure the observance of the treaties, must be prepared to use force, and make reprisals; in fact, that opposition to foreign intercourse would not cease until the nation should, by drastic measures, have been persuaded of the ability of foreign Powers to make their Treaty rights respected. The effect of the reprisals made by the British Government in the Richardson case, in the course of which the town of Kagoshima was bombarded, and partly destroyed, besides the exaction of an indemnity, went some way to prove the correctness of this view. Its truth was further demonstrated when a second and graver incident occurred. This was the firing upon foreign vessels in the Straits of Shimonoséki by Chōshiū forts on June 24th, 1863. The date on which the outrage occurred was that fixed at the Council of feudal nobles, attended by the Shōgun and the Regent, his guardian, in Kiōto for the opening of negotiations with the foreign representatives for the closing of the country. It was also that on which, in accordance with the decision then taken, a communication had been made to them by the Council of State. The coincidence of dates gave a more serious aspect to the affair, though the complicity of the Shōgunate was never whole-hearted. In this case, also, it became necessary to take the drastic measures which to the British Minister in question had seemed to be inevitable sooner or later. Neither the first reprisals, however, instituted at once by the French and American naval authorities, nor the lengthy negotiations with the Japanese Government which followed, were of any effect in obtaining redress. For more than a year the straits remained closed to navigation. Eventually joint operations against the hostile forts conducted in August, 1864, by a combined squadron of the four Powers immediately concerned, accomplished the desired result. The forts were attacked and destroyed, an undertaking that they should be left in a dismantled condition was extorted, and an indemnity of $3,000,000 exacted. The lessons thus administered lost none of their force from the fact that the clans punished were the two most powerful, and those in which hostility to foreigners was perhaps most openly displayed. Both this and the Kagoshima indemnity were paid by the Yedo Government, and not by the offending clans.