THE PHYÖNG-YANG BATTLEFIELD
Glorious weather favored my departure from the ancient Korean capital.
The day’s journey lay through pretty country, small valleys, and
picturesquely shaped hills, on which the vegetation, whatever it
was, had turned to a purple as rich as the English heather blossom,
while the blue gloom of the pines emphasized the flaming reds of the
dying leafage. The villages were few and small, and cultivation was
altogether confined to the valleys. Pheasants were so abundant that the
_mapu_ pelted them out of the cover by the roadside, and wild ducks
abounded on every stream. The one really fine view of the day is from
the crest of a hill just beyond O-hung-suk Ju, where there is a second
defensive gate, with a ruinous wall carried along a ridge for some
distance on either side. The masonry and the gate-house are fine, and
the view down the wild valley beyond with its rich autumn coloring was
almost grand. It was evident that officials were expected, for the road
was being repaired everywhere--that is, spadefuls of soft soil were
being taken from the banks and roadsides, and were being thrown into
the ruts and holes to deepen the quagmire which the next rain would
produce. From four to seven men were working at each spade! A great
part of the male population had turned out; for when an official of
rank is to travel, every family in the district must provide one male
member or a substitute to put the road in order. The repairs of the
roads and bridges devolve entirely on the country people.
The following day brought a change of weather. My room had no hot
floor and the mercury at daybreak was only 20°! When we started, a
strong northwester was blowing, which increased to a gale by noon, the
same fierce gale in which at Chemulpo H.M.S. _Edgar_ lost her boat with
forty-seven men. My pony and I would have been blown over a wretched
bridge had not four men linked themselves together to support us;
and later, on the top of a precipice above a river, a gust came with
such force that the animals refused to face it, and one of them was
as nearly lost as possible. By noon it was impossible to sit on our
horses, and we fought the storm on foot. When Im lifted me from my pony
I fell down, and it took several men shouting with laughter to set me
on my feet again. When Mr. Yi and I spoke to each other, our voices had
a bobbery clatter, and sentences broke off halfway in an insane giggle.
I felt as if there were hardly another “shot in the locker,” but if a
traveller “says die,” the men lose all heart, so I summoned up all my
pluck, took a photograph after the noon halt, and walked on at a good
pace.
But the wind, with the mercury at 26°, was awful, gripping the heart
and benumbing the brain. I have not felt anything like it since I
encountered the “devil wind” on the Zagros heights in Persia. At some
distance from our destination Mr. Yi, Im, and the _mapu_ begged me to
halt, as they could no longer face it, though the accommodation for
man and beast at Tol Maru, where we put up, was the worst imaginable,
and the large village the filthiest, most squalid, and most absolutely
poverty-stricken place I saw in that land of squalor. The horses were
crowded together, and their baffled attempts at fighting were only less
hideous than the shouts and yells of the _mapu_, who were constantly
being roused out of a sound sleep to separate them.
My room was 8 feet by 6, and much occupied by the chattels of the
people, besides being alive with cockroaches and other forms of horrid
life. The dirt and discomfort in which the peasant Koreans live are
incredible.
An uninteresting tract of country succeeded, and some time was occupied
in threading long treeless valleys, cut up by stony beds of streams,
margined by sandy flats, inundated in summer, and then covered chiefly
with withered reeds, asters, and artemisia, a belated aster every now
and then displaying its untimely mauve blossom. All these and the dry
grasses and weeds of the hillsides were being cut and stacked for fuel,
even brushwood having disappeared. This work is done by small boys, who
carry their loads on wooden saddles suited to their size. That region
is very thinly peopled, only a few hamlets of squalid hovels being
scattered over it, and cultivation was rare and untidy, except in one
fine agricultural valley where wheat and barley were springing. No
animals, except a breed of pigs not larger than English terriers, were
to be seen.
One of the most dismal and squalid “towns” on this route is Shur-hung,
a long rambling village of nearly 5,000 souls, and a magistracy, built
along the refuse-covered bank of a bright, shallow stream. As if the
Crown official were the upas tree, the town with a _yamen_ is always
more forlorn than any other. In Shur-hung the large and once handsome
_yamen_ buildings are all but in ruins, and so is the Confucian temple,
visited periodically, as all such temples are, by the magistrate, who
bows before the tablet of the “most holy teacher” and offers an animal
in sacrifice.
The Korean official is the vampire which sucks the lifeblood of the
people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces
of Kyöng-hwi and Hwang-hai, and were then in the latter. Most officials
of any standing live in Seoul for pleasure and society, leaving
subordinates in charge, and as their tenure of office is very brief,
they regard the people within their jurisdiction rather with reference
to their squeezeableness than to their capacity for improvement.
Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down
buildings of the _yamen_. As I walked down the street one of them
touched me on the shoulder, asking my nationality, whence I came, and
whither I was going, not quite politely, I thought. When I reached my
room a dozen of them came and gradually closed round my door, which I
could not shut, standing almost within it. A trim sergeant raised his
cap to me, and passing on to Mr. Yi’s room, asked him where I came from
and whither I was going, and on hearing, replied, “All right,” raised
his cap to me, and departed, withdrawing his men with him. This was
one of several domiciliary visits, and though they were usually very
politely made, they suggested the query as to the right to make them,
and to whom the mastership in the land belonged. There, as elsewhere,
though the people hated the Japanese with an intense hatred, they were
obliged to admit that they were very quiet and paid for everything they
got. If the soldiers had not been in European clothes, it would not
have occurred to me to think them rude for crowding round my door.
A day’s ride through monotonous country brought us to Pong-san, where
we halted in the dirtiest hole I had till then been in. As soon as
my den was comfortably warm, myriads of house flies, blackening
the rafters, renewed a semi-torpid existence, dying in heaps in
the soup and curry, filling the well of the candlestick with their
singed bodies, and crawling in hundreds over my face. Next came the
cockroaches in legions, large and small, torpid and active, followed
by a great army of fleas and bugs, making life insupportable. To judge
from the significant sounds from the public room, no one slept all
night, and when I asked Mr. Yi after his welfare the next morning, he
uttered the one word “miserable.” Discomforts of this nature, less or
more, are inseparable from the Korean inn.
The following day, at a large village, we came upon the weekly market.
It is usual to inquire regarding the trade of a district, and as the
result of my inquiries, I assert that “trade” in the ordinary sense
has no existence in a great part of Central and Northern Korea, _i.e._
there is no exchange of commodities between one place and another, no
exports, no imports by resident merchants, and no industries supplying
more than a local demand. Such are to be found to some extent in
Southern Korea, and specially in the province of Chul-la. Apart from
Phyöng-yang, “trade” does not exist in the region through which I
travelled.
Reasons for such a state of things may be found in the debased coinage,
so bulky that a pony can only carry £10 worth of it, the entire lack
of such banking facilities as even in Western China render business
transactions easy; the general mutual distrust; prejudices against
preparing hides and working leather; caste prejudices; the general
insecurity of earnings, ignorance absolutely inconceivable, and the
existence of numerous guilds which possess practical monopolies.
Under Japanese influence, however, the superb silver _yen_ has made its
way slowly into the interior, and instead of having to carry a load of
_cash_, as on my former journey, or to be placed in great difficulties
by the want of it, this large silver coin was readily taken at all
the inns, although I did not see a single specimen of the new Korean
coinage.
“Trade,” as I became acquainted with it, is represented by Japanese
buyers, who visit the small towns and villages, buying up rice, grain,
and beans, which they forward to the ports for shipment to Japan, and
by an organized corporation of _pusang_ or pedlars, one of the most
important of the many guilds which have been among the curious features
of Korea.
There are no shops in villages, and few, where there are any, even
in small towns. It is, in fact, impossible to buy anything except on
the market-day, as no one keeps any stock of anything. At the weekly
market the usual melancholy dulness of a Korean village is exchanged
for bustle, color, and crowds of men. From an early hour in the morning
the paths leading to the officially appointed centre are thronged with
peasants bringing in their wares for sale or barter, chiefly fowls
in coops, pigs, straw shoes, straw hats, and wooden spoons, while
the main road has its complement of merchants, _i.e._ pedlars, mostly
fine, strong, well-dressed men, either carrying their heavy packs
themselves or employing porters or bulls for the purpose. These men
travel on regular circuits to the village centres, and are industrious
and respectable. A few put-up stalls, specially those who sell silks,
gauzes, cords for girdles, dress shoes, amber, buttons, silks in
skeins, small mirrors, tobacco-pouches, dress combs of tortoise-shell
for men’s topknots, tape girdles for trousers, boxes with mirror tops,
and the like. But most of the articles, from which one learns a good
deal about the necessaries and luxuries required by the Korean, are
exposed for sale on low tables or on mats on the ground, the merchant
giving the occupant of the house before which he camps a few _cash_ for
the accommodation.
On such tables are sticks of pulled candy as thick as an arm, some of
it stuffed with sesamum seeds, a sweetmeat sold in enormous quantities,
and piece goods, shirtings of Japanese and English make, Victoria
lawns, hempen cloth, Turkey-red cottons, Korean flimsy silks, dyes,
chiefly aniline, which are sold in great quantities, together with
saffron, indigo, and Chinese Prussian blue. On these also are exposed
long pipes, contraband in the capital, and Japanese cigarettes, coming
into great favor with young men and boys, with leather courier bags
and lucifer matches from the same country, wooden combs, hairpins with
tinsel heads, and, such is the march of ideas, purses for silver!
Paper, the best of the Korean manufactures, in its finer qualities
produced in Chul-la Do, is honored by stalls. Every kind is purchasable
in these markets, from the beautiful, translucent, buff, oiled paper,
nearly equal to vellum in appearance and tenacity, used for the floors
of middle- and upper-class houses, and the stout paper for covering
walls, to the thin, strong film for writing on, and a beautiful fabric,
a sort of frothy gauze, for wrapping up delicate fabrics, as well as
the coarse fibrous material, used for covering heavy packages, and
intermediate grades, applied to every imaginable purpose, such as the
making of string, almost all manufactured from the paper mulberry.
On mats on the ground are exposed straw mats, straw and string shoes,
flints for use with steel, black buckram dress hats, coarse, narrow
cotton cloth of Korean manufacture, rope muzzles for horses (much
needed), sweeping whisks, wooden _sabots_, and straw, reed, and
bamboo hats in endless variety. On these also are rough iron goods,
family cooking-pots, horseshoes, spade-shoes, door-rings, nails, and
carpenter’s tools, when of native manufacture, as rough as they can be;
and Korean roots and fruits, tasteless and untempting, great hard pears
much like raw parsnips, chestnuts, peanuts, persimmons which had been
soaked in water to take the acridity out of them, and ginger. There
were coops of fowls and piles of pheasants, brought down by falcons,
gorgeous birds, selling at six for a _yen_ (about 4d. each), and torn
and hacked pieces of bull beef.
One prominent feature of that special market was the native pottery,
both coarse and brittle ware, clay, with a pale green glaze rudely
applied, small jars and bowls chiefly, and a coarser ware, nearly black
and slightly iridescent, closely resembling iron. This pottery is of
universal use among the poor for cooking-pots, water-jars, refuse-jars,
receptacles for grain and pulse, and pickle-jars 5 feet high, roomy
enough to hold a man, two of which are a bull’s load. At that season
these jars were in great request, for the peasant world was occupied,
the men in digging up a great hard white radish weighing from 2 to 4
lbs., and the women in washing its great head of partially blanched
leaves, which, after being laid aside in these jars in brine, form one
great article of a Korean peasant’s winter diet.
Umbrella hats, oiled paper, hat-covers, pounded capsicums, rice, peas,
and beans, bean curd, and other necessaries of Korean existence,
were there, but business was very dull, and the crowds of people
were nearly as quiet as the gentle bulls which stood hour after hour
among them. Late in the afternoon, the pedlars packed up their wares
and departed _en route_ for the next centre, and a good deal of hard
drinking closed the day. I have been thus minute in my description
because the peripatetic merchant really represents the fashion of
Korean trade, and the wares which are brought to market are both the
necessaries and luxuries of Korean existence.
The reader will agree with me that, except for a certain amount of
insight into Korean customs which can only be gained by mixing freely
with Koreans, the journey from Seoul to Phyöng-yang tends to monotony,
though at the time Mr. Yi’s brightness, intelligence, sense of fun, and
unvarying good-nature made it very pleasant. Among the few features
of interest on the road are the “Hill Towns,” of which three are
striking objects, specially one on the hill opposite to the magistracy
of Pyeng-san, the hilltop being surrounded by a battlemented wall two
miles in circuit, enclosing a tangled thicket containing a few hovels
and the remains of some granaries. Unwalled towns are supposed to
possess such strongholds, with stores of rice and _soy_, as refuges in
times of invasion or rebellion, but as they have not been required for
three centuries, they are now ruinous. The one on a high hill above
Sai-nam, where the last Chinese gate occurs, is imposing from its fine
gateway and the extent of ground it encloses.
Two days before reaching Phyöng-yang we crossed the highest pass on
the road, and by a glen wooded with such deciduous trees, shrubs, and
trailers as ash, elæagnus, euonymus, hornbeam, oak, lime, _Acanthopanax
ricinifolia_, actinidia with scarlet berries, clematis, _Ampelopsis
Veitchii_, etc., descended to the valley of the Nam-chhon, a broad but
shallow stream which joins the Tai-döng. On the right bank, where the
stream, crossed by a dilapidated bridge, is 128 yards wide, the town
of Whang Ju is picturesquely situated, 36 _li_ from the sea, at the
base of two low fir-crowned hills, which terminate in cliffs above the
Nam-chhon.
A battlemented wall 9 _li_ in circumference, with several fine towers
and gateways, encloses the town, and being carried along the verge of
the cliff and over the downs and ups of the hills, has a very striking
appearance. It was a singularly attractive view. The Korean sky was
at its bluest, and the winding Nam-chhon was seen in glimpses here
and there through the broad fertile plain in reaches as blue, and the
broken sparkle of its shallow waters flashed in sapphire gleams against
the gray rock and the gray walls of the city. On the wall, and grouped
in the handsome Water Gate, were a number of Japanese soldiers watching
a crowd of Koreans spearing white fish with three-pronged forks from
rafts made of two bundles of reeds with a cask lashed between them, and
from the bridge the ruinous state of the walls and towers could not be
seen.
Whang Ju is memorable to me as being the first place I saw which had
suffered from the ravages of recent war. There the Japanese came upon
the Chinese, but there was no fighting at that point. Yet whatever
happened has been enough to reduce a flourishing town with an estimated
population of 30,000 souls to one of between 5,000 and 6,000, and to
destroy whatever prosperity it had.
I passed through the Water Gate into a deplorable scene of desolation.
There were heaps of ruins, some blackened by fire, others where the
houses had apparently collapsed “all of a heap,” with posts and rafters
sticking out of it. There are large areas of nothing but this and
streets of deserted houses, sadder yet, with doors and windows gone for
the bivouac fires of the Japanese, and streets where roofless mud walls
alone were standing. In some parts there were houses with windows gone
and torn paper waving from their walls, and then perhaps an inhabited
house stood solitary among the deserted or destroyed, emphasizing the
desolation. Some of the destruction was wrought by the Chinese, some by
the Japanese, and much resulted from the terrified flight of more than
20,000 of the inhabitants.
North of Whang Ju are rich plains of productive, stoneless, red
alluvium, extending towards the Tai-döng for nearly 40 miles. On these
there were villages partly burned and partly depopulated and ruinous,
and tracts of the superb soil had passed out of cultivation owing to
the flight of the cultivators, and there was a total absence of beasts,
the splendid bulls of the region having perished under their loads _en
route_ for Manchuria.
It was a dreary journey that day through partially destroyed villages,
relapsing plains, and slopes denuded of every stick which could be
burned. There were no wayfarers on the roads, no movement of any kind,
and as it grew dusk the _mapu_ were afraid of tigers and robbers,
and we halted for the night at the wretched hamlet of Ko-moun Tari,
where I obtained a room with delay and difficulty, partly owing to the
unwillingness of the people to receive a foreigner. They had suffered
enough from foreigners, truly!
The concluding day’s march was through a pleasant country, though
denuded of trees, and the approach to a great city was denoted by
the number of villages, dæmon shrines, and refreshment booths on the
road, the increased traffic, and eventually, by a long avenue of stone
tablets, some of them under highly decorated roofs, recording the
virtues of Phyöng-yang officials for 250 years!
The first view of Phyöng-yang delighted me. The city has a magnificent
situation, taken advantage of with much skill, and at a distance merits
the epithet “imposing.” It was a glorious afternoon. All the low ranges
which girdle the rich plain through which the Tai-döng winds were blue
and violet, melting into a blue haze, the crystal waters of the river
were bluer still, brown-sailed boats drifted lazily with the stream,
and above it the gray mass of the city rose into a dome of unclouded
blue.
It is built on lofty ground rising abruptly from the river, above which
a fine wall climbs picturesquely over irregular, but always ascending
altitudes, till it is lost among the pines of a hill which overhangs
the Tai-döng. The great double-roofed Tai-döng _Mön_ (river gate),
decorated pavilions on the walls, the massive curled roofs of the
Governor’s _yamen_, a large Buddhist monastery and temple on a height,
and a fine temple to the God of War, prominent objects from a distance,
prepare one for something quite apart from the ordinary meanness of a
Korean city.
Crossing the clear flashing waters of the Tai-döng with our ponies in
a crowded ferryboat, we found ourselves in the slush of the dark Water
Gate, at all hours of the day crowded with water-carriers. There are no
wells in the city, the reason assigned for the deficiency being that
the walls enclose a boat-shaped area, and that the digging of wells
would cause the boat to sink! The water is carried almost entirely in
American kerosene tins. I lodged at the house of a broker, and had nice
clean rooms for myself and Im, quite quiet, and with a separate access
from the street. It was truly a luxury to have roof, walls, and floor
papered with thick oiled paper much resembling varnished oak, but there
was no hot floor, and I had to rely for warmth solely on the “fire
bowl.”
Taking a most diverting boy as my guide, I went outside the city
wall, through some farming country to a Korean house in a very
tumble-to-pieces compound, which he insisted was the dwelling of the
American missionaries; but I only found a Korean family, and there were
no traces of foreign occupation in glass panes let into the paper of
the windows and doors. Nothing daunted, the boy pulled me through a
smaller compound, opened a door, and pushed me into what was manifestly
posing as a foreign room, gave me a chair, took one himself, and
offered me a cigarette!
I had reached the right place. It was a very rough Korean room, about
the length and width of a N.W. Railway saloon carriage. It had three
camp-beds, three chairs, a trunk for a table, and a few books and
writing materials, as well as a few articles of male apparel hanging on
the mud walls. I waited more than an hour, every attempt at departure
being forcibly as well as volubly resisted by the urchin, imagining
the devotion which could sustain educated men year after year in such
surroundings, and then they came in hilariously, and we had a most
pleasant evening. I shall say more of them later. It was a weird walk
through ruins which looked ghostly in the starlight to my curious
quarters in the densest part of the city by the Water Gate, where at
intervals through the night I heard the beat of the sorcerer’s drum and
the shrieking chant of the _mu-tang_.
It may be taken for granted that every Korean winter day is splendid,
but the following day in Phyöng-yang was heavenly. Three Koreans called
on me in the morning, very courteous persons, but as Mr. Yi and I had
parted company for a time on reaching the city, the interpretation was
feeble, and we bowed and smiled, and smiled and bowed with tedious
iteration without coming to much mutual understanding, and I was glad
when the time came for seeing the city and battlefield under Mr.
Moffett’s guidance.
On such an incomparable day everything looked at its very best, but
also at its very worst, for the brilliant sunshine lit up desolations
sickening to contemplate,--a prosperous city of 80,000 inhabitants
reduced to decay and 15,000--four-fifths of its houses destroyed,
streets and alleys choked with ruins, hill slopes and vales once
thick with Korean crowded homesteads, covered with gaunt hideous
remains--fragments of broken walls, _kang_ floors, _kang_ chimneys,
indefinite heaps in which roofs and walls lay in unpicturesque
confusion--and still worse, roofs and walls standing, but doors and
windows all gone, suggesting the horror of human faces with their eyes
put out. Everywhere there were the same scenes, miles of them, and very
much of the desolation was charred and blackened, shapeless, hideous,
hopeless, under the mocking sunlight.
Phyöng-yang was not taken by assault; there was no actual fighting in
the city, both the Chinese who fled and the Japanese who occupied posed
as the friends of Korea, and all this wreck and ruin was brought about
not by enemies, but by those who professed to be fighting to give her
independence and reform. It had gradually come to be known that the
“_wojen_ (dwarfs) did not kill Koreans,” hence many had returned. Some
of these unfortunate fugitives were picking their way among the heaps,
trying to find indications which might lead them to the spots where
all they knew of home once existed; and here and there, where a family
found their walls and roof standing, they put a door and window into
one room and lived in it among the ruins of five or six.
When the Japanese entered and found that the larger part of the
population had fled, the soldiers tore out the posts and woodwork, and
often used the roofs also for fuel, or lighted fires on house floors,
leaving them burning, when the houses took fire and perished. They
looted the property left by the fugitives during three weeks after the
battle, taking even from Mr. Moffett’s house $700 worth, although his
servant made a written protest, the looting being sanctioned by the
presence of officers. Under these circumstances the prosperity of the
most prosperous city in Korea was destroyed. If such are the results of
war in the “green tree,” what must they be in the “dry”?
During the subsequent occupation the Japanese troops behaved well, and
all stores obtained in the town and neighborhood were scrupulously paid
for. Intensely as the people hated them, they admitted that quiet and
good order had been preserved, and they were very apprehensive that
on their withdrawal they would suffer much from the _Kun-ren-tai_,
a regiment of Koreans drilled and armed by the Japanese, and these
had already begun to rob and beat the people, and to defy the civil
authorities. The main street on my second visit had assumed a bustling
appearance. There was much building up and pulling down, for Japanese
traders had obtained all the eligible business sites, and were
transforming the small, dark, low, Korean shops into large, light,
airy, dainty Japanese erections, well stocked with Japanese goods, and
specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries
and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed.
Phyöng-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank
of the clear, bright Tai-döng, 400 yards wide at the ferry. It occupies
an undulating plateau, and its wall, parallel for two miles and a half,
rises from the river level at the stately Water Gate, and following its
windings, mounts escarped hills to a height of over 400 feet, turning
westwards at the crest of the cliff at a sharp angle marked by a
pavilion, one of several, and follows the western ridge of the plateau,
where it falls steeply down to a fertile rolling plain where the one
real battle of the late war was fought.
This wall, which is in excellent repair, is a loopholed and
battlemented structure, 20 feet high, pierced by several gates with
gate towers. The city, large as it was, was once much larger, for the
old wall on the west side encloses a far larger area than the modern
one. The walk over the grassy undulations within the wall and up to
the northern pine-clothed summit is entrancing, and the views, even in
winter, are exquisite--eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains
through which the Tai-döng cuts its way, or northwest to one of its
affluents and the great battlefield over which in 1593 the joint forces
of Chinese and Koreans poured to recover Phyöng-yang from the Japanese,
or seawards where the clear bright waters wind through fertile and
populous country, or the hilly area within the walls where pine-clothed
knolls conceal the devastations, and the Governor’s _yamen_, temples,
and monasteries make a goodly show.
Between the city and the Chinese frontier is the largest and richest
plain in Korea; to the east where the violet shadows lay are the
valleys of the two branches of the Tai-döng, rich in silk, iron, and
cotton, while within 10 miles there are at least five coal-mines,[37]
and for all produce there is easy communication with the sea, 36
miles distant, for vessels of light draught, by means of the river
which flows below the city wall. Timber is rafted down the Tai-döng
in summer. The Peking road, which I had followed thus far, and which
for centuries has linked Phyöng-yang with the outer world and the
capital, is another element in the former prosperity of the city. It
was to photograph for the widow and family of General Tso of Mukden,
the commander of the best-disciplined and best-equipped cavalry brigade
in the Chinese army, the scenes connected with his last days and death
that I visited the hill within the wall.
The river wall of Phyöng-yang, after 2 miles of an undulating ascent,
turns sharply at a pavilion, outside of which the ground falls
precipitously, to rise again in a knife-like ridge, the three highest
points of which are crowned with Chinese forts. From this pavilion the
wall, following the lie of the hill, slopes rapidly down to a very
picturesque and narrow gate, the _Chil-sung Mön_ or Seven Star Gate,
after which it trends in a northwesterly direction to the _Potong Mön_.
In the pine wood, at the highest part of the angle formed by the
wall, General Tso had built three mud forts or camps with walls 10
feet high. The ground under the trees is dotted with the stone-lined
cooking holes of his men, blackened with the smoke of their last
fires. On the afternoon of the 15th of September, 1894, General Tso
and his force, which mustered 5,000 men when it left Mukden, but must
have been greatly diminished by desertion and death, made his fatal
sally, passing through the _Chil-sung Mön_ and down the steep zigzag
descent below it to the plain, meeting his death probably within 300
yards of the gate. The Koreans say that some of his men took up the
body, but were shot by the Japanese while removing it, and that it was
lost in the slaughter which ensued. A neat obelisk, railed round, was
erected by the Japanese at the supposed spot, bearing on one face the
inscription:--
Tso Pao-kuei, commander-in-chief of the Fengtien division. Place of
death.
And on the other----
Killed while fighting with the Japanese troops at Phyöng-yang.
A graceful tribute to their ablest foe.
General Tso’s troops, demoralized by his death, sought refuge
everywhere from the deadly fire of the Japanese, a part flying back
to their forts within the wall, while many, probably blinded and
desperate, rode along the pine woods which densely cover the broken
ground outside, by a path along a wide dry moat, which, three weeks
later, when Mr. Moffett returned, was piled with the dead bodies of
their horses.
In the bright moonlight night which followed that day, the Japanese
stormed and took by assault the three Chinese forts on the three
summits of the ridge, which were the key of the position, enabling them
to throw their shell into the Chinese forts and camps within the wall.
The beautiful pavilion at the angle of the wall is much shattered, and
big fragments of shell are embedded in its pillars and richly carved
woodwork. So desperately hurried was the flight of the vanquished
from the last fort which held out, that they were mown down in numbers
as they ran down the steep hill, falling face foremost with their
outstretched hands clutching the earth.
All was then lost, and why that doomed army, numbering then perhaps
12,000 men, did not surrender unconditionally, I cannot imagine.
During the night, abandoning guns and all war material, the remains of
Tso’s brigade and all the infantry and unwounded men passed through
the deserted and silent city, surged out of the _Potong Mön_, crossed
a shallow stream, and emerged upon a plain girdled by low hills, and
intersected by the Peking road, the eastern extremity being occupied by
some Chinese forts and breastworks. Tso’s cavalry attempted to cross
the plain and gain the shelter of some low hills, while great numbers
of the infantry took to the Peking road.
The horrors of that night will never be accurately known. The battle of
Phyöng-yang was lost and won when the forts were taken. What remained
was less of a battle than a massacre. Before the morning, this force,
the flower of the Chinese army as to drill and equipment, had perished,
those who escaped never reappearing as an organized body. It is
estimated that from 2,000 to 4,000 men were slain, with thousands of
horses and bulls, the cavalry being literally mown down in hundreds,
and lying, men and horses, heaped “in mounds.” For the Japanese had
girdled the plain with a ring of fire. Mr. Moffett, who was there three
weeks later, described the scene even then as one of “indescribable
horror.” Still, there were “mounds” of men and horses stiffened in the
death-agony, many having tried vainly to extricate themselves from the
pile above them. There were blackened corpses in hundreds lying along
the Peking road, ditches filled up with bodies of men and animals,
fields sprinkled with them, and rifles, muskets, paper umbrellas, fans,
coats, hats, swords belts, scabbards, cartridge boxes, sleeves, and
everything that could be cast away in a desperate flight strewing the
ground. Numbers of the wounded crept into the deserted houses and
died there, some of the bodies showing indications of suicide from
agony, and throughout this mass of human relics which lay blackening
and festering in the hot sun, dogs, left behind by their owners, were
holding high carnival. Even in my walks over the battlefield, though
the grain of another year had ripened upon it, I saw human skulls,
spines with ribs, spines with the pelvis attached, arms and hands,
hats, belts, and scabbards.
On a lofty knoll within the wall, the Japanese have erected a fine
monolith to the memory of the 168 men they lost. They turned the
temple of the God of War into a hospital, and there, _cela va sans
dire_, their wounded were admirably treated, and in another building
the Chinese wounded were carefully attended to, though naturally not
till many of them had died of their wounds on the battlefield. A
ghastly retribution followed the neglect to bury the Chinese dead, for
typhus fever broke out, and its ravages among the Japanese troops may
be partially estimated by the long lines of graves in the military
cemetery at Chemulpo.
Outside the wall, in beautifully broken ground, roughly wooded with
the _Pinus sinensis_, there are still bullets in the branches, many of
which were splintered by the iron hail, and the temple at the tomb of
Kit-ze, the founder of Korean civilization, must have been the centre
of a deadly fight, for its woodwork is riddled with bullets and damaged
by shell, and on its floor are great dark stains, where, when the fight
was over, the Japanese wounded lay in pools of blood.
At some points, specially at the mud forts by the ferry, the Chinese
made a very determined stand for ten hours, so that the Japanese troops
wavered, and were only recovered by a gallant dash made by General
Oshima. Probably the battle of Phyöng-yang decided the fate of the
campaign.
[Illustration: ALTAR AT TOMB OF KIT-ZE.]
Mr. Yi found an old book in eighteen vols. for sale, which gives a
history of this city. Most Korean matters are lost in obscurity
after one or two centuries, but the story of Phyöng-yang takes a
bold backward leap and deals fearlessly with the events of centuries
B.C. Kit-ze, whose fine reputed tomb and temples in the wood are
still regarded with so much reverence that a stone tablet on the road
below warns equestrians to dismount in passing so sacred a place, and
who is said to have emigrated from China in 1122 B.C., and to have
founded a dynasty which lasted for seven centuries, made Phyöng-yang
his capital. The temple at his reputed grave, though full of bullets,
is in admirable repair, and its rich decorations have lately been
renovated, a phenomenon in Korea. Near the city is the standard of land
measurement which he introduced, illustrated by ditches and paths cut,
it is said, by himself.
The temple to the God of War at the foot of the hill is perhaps the
finest in Korea. Frescoes, as in the temple to the same god outside the
South Gate of Seoul, but on a far grander scale, cover the walls of the
corridors of one of the courtyards, and the gigantic figures round the
altar, with the sacrificial utensils, hangings, and dresses, are costly
and magnificent. Not far from this is a large and wealthy Buddhist
monastery.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] There are five coal-mines at distances varying from 10 to 30
_li_ from Phyöng-yang, those of Yang-tang, 15 _li_ away, producing
the best quality. With rich iron ore close to the river bank at Kai
Chhön, about 36 _li_ off, the elements of prosperity are ready to hand.
The “coal-owners” have no proper appliances for working the coal,
relying chiefly on Korean axes, and the “output” is very small. Much
money has been spent in trying to get the coal, and in two mines they
cannot proceed any farther with their present tools. The difficulties
of transport are great, and there is no demand for any quantity in
Phyöng-yang itself, but the mineral is there in abundance and of good
quality, and only awaits capital and enterprise. A tax of 5 per cent.
is levied on all coal sent away from the mines. The total export for
1895 was only 652 tons, valued at 4 dols. 20 cts. per ton (9s.).