policy pursued by the Court, and that of the Shōgunate. That a definite rupture of foreign relations did not take place at this juncture was due to the promptness of the Shōgunate to repudiate its own acts and to the patience and good-humour of foreign governments; possibly also to the division of opinion in the country itself, where the centre of authority was beginning to shift, though the process was still incomplete. In its place there occurred the first threatenings, the beginnings, in fact, of the civil war which an attentive observer had prophesied. Conscious of the Government’s weakness, while piqued by the Court’s inconsistency, the Chōshiū clan brought matters to an issue in the summer of 1864 by making a sudden raid on Kiōto with the object of abducting the Mikado and raising the Imperial standard. The attempt was defeated; nor did the clan fare better in its efforts to repel the invasion of its territory by the Government forces. The resistance offered was soon overcome. Early in the following year (1865) the rebellion was suppressed, the severity of the terms imposed on the clan exciting widespread dissatisfaction. When, shortly afterwards, the same clan again rebelled, owing, it is said, to the excessive character of the punishment imposed, it was perceived that the success of the Tokugawa troops on the previous occasion was due, not to the Shōgunate’s military strength, but to the co-operation of other clans—notably that of Satsuma—in the punitive measures directed against the rebels. On this latter occasion the support of the other clans was withheld, with the result that the second campaign, though conducted under the eye of the Shōgun, who made Kiōto his headquarters for the purpose, was a complete failure. By the end of the year 1866 a compromise, designed to save the faces of both parties, had been effected. Hostilities then ceased. In the course of the negotiations by which this conclusion was reached the weakness of the Shōgunate was still further exposed. The prominent part taken by _rōnin_, both in the raid on the Capital and in the subsequent proceedings of the clan, as well as the incapacity of the feudal prince and his son, came also to light, together with the fact that the affairs of the fief were controlled by clan retainers, who were divided into two mutually hostile factions, each of which in turn gained the ascendancy.