himself by family alliances with the Asai, the Takeda, the Tokugawa, and other powerful families, accepted this double invitation, marched straight into the province of Omi, overthrew the Miyoshi and their allies, the Sasaki, or Rokkaku, set Yoshiaki on his Shogunal throne, and rejoiced the heart of the Emperor by the pacification of the provinces of Settsu, Kawachi, and Omi.

Nobunaga's successes entailed an immense amount of ill-will from rivals and competitors, and especially from those enemies whom he had had the good fortune to vanquish. The mutual jealousies of the great Daimyos of the North, Uesugi, Takeda, and Hojo of Odawara; together with the faithful watch kept by his trusty henchman, Iyeyasu, kept him secure from armed attack from that quarter; but it needed constant vigilance to control the provinces he had already subdued, and the Shogun Yoshiaki, who had passed from a monastery to a palace, was of no practical value as an ally. The Miyoshi and others despised him, and he himself bitterly resented the limits which Nobunaga placed upon his extravagance. At last, in 1570, while Nobunaga was absent in Ise, finishing his projects in that province, his enemies revolted. Nobunaga returned, blotted out the families of Asakura, Asai, Miyoshi, and Sasaki, which now disappear from history, deposed Yoshiaki, abolished the Ashikaga dynasty of Shoguns, and received from the Emperor the high-sounding title of Gon-Dainagon. The suppression of this rebellion brought him into dealings with the Buddhist monks. About the same time, he came into personal contact with the Jesuits.

It was in 1568 that Nobunaga had the eventful interview with the Jesuit Froez, which led to an informal alliance between the Dictator and the Missionaries. Some years before that time, the criticisms of Father Vilela

had led the Nichirenshu priests to depose an abbot for immoral conduct, and the tension between Christian and Buddhist in Kyoto was considerable. The Nichiren sect had given considerable aid to the Miyoshi and Matsunaga at the time of the assassination of Yoshiteru, and Nobunaga, who already saw that the great worldly monasteries would be amongst his bitterest enemies in the pacification of the country, had ordered the demolition of several of the chief houses, using the materials thereof for the construction of the new palace which he was constructing for Yoshiaki. After his interview with Froez, Nobunaga deliberately determined to use the Catholic missionaries as one of his instruments for crushing the Buddhist monasteries. His heart remained absolutely untouched by the Christian verities; his head saw the advantages which were to be gained from an alliance with the Christian organization.