THE ENTRANCE OF THE FRENCH MISSIONARIES—1835–1845.
The French Revolution, and the wars of Napoleon following, which
distracted all Europe for a period of over twenty years, completely
disorganized the missionary operations of the Holy See and French Roman
Catholic Church. On the restoration of the Bourbons, and the
strengthening of the papal throne by foreign bayonets, the stream of
religious activity flowed anew into its old channels, and with an added
volume. Missionary zeal in the church was kindled afresh, and the
prayers of the Christians in the far East were heard at the court of
St. Peter. It was resolved to found a mission in Corea, directly
attached to the Holy See, but to be under the care of the Society of
Foreign Missions of Paris.
Barthelemy Brugiere, then a missionary at Bangkok, Siam, offered as a
volunteer, and in 1832 was nominated apostolic Vicar of Corea. He
reached Shing-king, but was seized with sudden illness, and died
October 20, 1835. Pierre Philibert Maubant, his host, stepped into the
place of his fallen comrade, and with five Corean Christians left
Fung-Wang Chang, crossed the neutral strip, and the Yalu River on the
ice. Dodging the sentinels at Ai-chiu, he entered Corea as a thread
enters the needle’s eye. They crawled through a water-drain in the
wall, and despite the barking of a dog, got into the city. Resting
several hours, they slid out again through another drain, reaching the
country and friends beyond. Two days’ journey on horses brought them to
Seoul, from which Maubant, the first Frenchman who had penetrated the
hermit kingdom, or who, in Corean phrase, had committed pem-kiong
(violation of the frontier), wrote to his friends in Paris.
Maubant’s first duty was to order back a Chinese priest who refused to
learn Corean, or to obey any but the Bishop of Peking. With the
couriers who escorted the refractory Chinaman to the frontier, went
three young men to study at the college in Macao. At the Border Gate
they met Jacques Honore Chastan a young French priest, who, on the dark
night of January 17, 1837, passed the custom-house of Ai-chiu disguised
as a Corean widower in mourning, and joined Maubant in Seoul. Nearly
one year later, December 19, 1838, Laurent Marie-Joseph Imbert, a
bishop, ran the gauntlet of wilderness, ice, and guards, and took up
his residence under the shadow of the king’s palace.
Visits, masses, and preaching now went on vigorously. The Christians at
the end of 1837 numbered 6,000, and in 1838, 9,000. Up to January 16,
1839, the old regent being averse from persecution, the work went on
unharmed, but on that day, the court party in favor of extirpating
Christianity, having gained the upper hand, hounded on the police in
the king’s name. The visitation of every group of five houses in all
the eight provinces was ordered. Hundreds of suspects were at once
seized and brought to trial. In June, before the death of the old
regent, the uncle of the young king (Hen-chong, 1834–1849) and the
implacable enemy of the Christians obtained control of power, and at an
extraordinary council of the ministers, held July 7, 1839, a new decree
was issued in the regent’s name. The persecution now broke out with
redoubled violence. In a few days, three native lay leaders were
beheaded, and a score of women and children suffered death. To stay the
further shedding of blood, Bishop Imbert, who had escaped to an island,
came out of his hiding-place, and on August 10th delivered himself up
and ordered Maubant and Chastan to do the same. The three willing
martyrs met in chains before the same tribunal. During three days they
were put to trial and torture, thence transferred to the Kum-pu, or
prison for state criminals of rank. They were again tried, beaten with
sixty-six strokes of the paddle, and condemned to die under the sword,
September 21, 1839.
On that day, the inspector and one hundred soldiers took their place on
the execution ground, not near the city gate, but close to the river. A
pole fixed in the earth bore a flag inscribed with the death-sentence.
Pinioned and stripped of their upper clothing, a stick was passed
between the elbows and backs of the prisoners, and an arrow, feather
end up, run through the flesh of each ear. Their faces were first wet
with water and then powdered with chalk. Three executioners then
marched round, brandishing their staves, while the crowd raised a yell
of insult and mockery. A dozen soldiers, sword in hand, now began
prancing around the kneeling victims, engaging in mock combat, but
delivering their blows at the victims. Only when weary of their sport,
the human butchers relieved the agony of their victims by the
decapitating blow. The heads were presented to the inspector on a
board, and the corpses, after public exposure during three days, were
buried in the sand by the river banks.
On the day after the burial, three Christians attempted to remove the
bodies, but the government spies lying in wait caught them. As of old
in Rome, when the primitive Christians crawled stealthily at night
through the arches of the Coliseum, into the arena, and groping about
in the sand for the bones of Ignatius left after the lion’s feast, bore
them to honored sepulture, so these Corean Christians with equal faith
and valor again approached the bloody sand by the Han River. Twenty
days after the first attempt, a party of seven or eight men succeeded
in bearing away the bodies of the martyrs to Noku, about eight miles
north of Seoul.
Thus died the first European missionaries who entered “the forbidden
land.” As in the old fable of the lion’s den, the footprints all
pointed one way.
With the foreign leaders there perished no less than one hundred and
thirty of their converts, seventy by decapitation, and the others by
strangulation, torture, or the result of their wounds. [27] In
November, 1839, a new edict in the vernacular was posted up all over
the country. Six bitter years passed before the Christians again had a
foreign pastor.
Great events now began to ripen in China. The opium war of 1840–42
broke out. The “Western Barbarians” held the chief cities of the China
coast from Hong-Kong to Shanghae, and the military weakness of the
colossal empire was demonstrated. The French, though having nothing to
do with this first quarrel of China with Europe, were on the alert for
any advantage to be gained in the far East. In 1841, Louis Philippe
sent out the war vessels Erigone and Favorite, to occupy if possible
some island to the south of Japan, which would be valuable for
strategic and commercial purposes, and to make treaties of trade and
friendship with Japan, and especially with Corea.
The Erigone cast anchor at Macao, September 7, 1841, and Captain Cecile
awaited events. Moving north in February, 1842, with Andrew Kim the
Corean student, as interpreter, on the Erigone, and Thomas Tsoi, his
companion, on the Favorite, the French captains, hearing of the sudden
conclusion of the war, gave up the idea of opening Corea.
The two Coreans, with two French priests, engaged a Chinese junk, and
landed on the coast of Shing-king, October 25, 1842. On December 23d,
Kim set out for the Border Gate, and within two leagues of it met the
outward-bound embassy. Each of the three hundred persons had his
passport at his girdle. Stopping to see them file past, he saluted one
who was a Christian, and had in his belt letters from Maubant and
Chastan, written before their execution, and from the natives. Unable
to go back with Andrew to Ai-chiu, as every name on the embassy’s list
was registered, the man went on to Peking. Andrew Kim, by mingling
among the drovers and huge cattle returning from the fair, ran the
blockade at Ai-chiu; but on the next day, having walked all night, he
applied for lodgings at an inn for shelter, and was recognized as a
stranger. Fearful of being arrested as a border-ruffian from the
neutral strip, he took to his heels, recrossed the Yalu, and after
resting at Fung-Wang Chang, rejoined his friends at Mukden.
On December 31, 1843, Jean Joseph Ferreol was consecrated Bishop of
Corea, and resolved to cross the frontier, not at Ai-chiu, but at
Hun-chun, on the Tumen. Andrew Kim exploring the way, after a month’s
journey through ice and snow, mountains and forests, reached Hun-chun,
February 25, 1845. The native Christians, having been duly instructed,
had arrived at Kion-wen a month before. For recognition, Andrew was to
hold a blue kerchief in his hand and have a little red bag of tea at
his girdle. At the fair which opened at Kion-wen on the 28th, the
Christians met. The result of their conference was that Ai-chiu was
declared safer even than Kion-wen.
Since 1839, the government had tripled its vigilance, and doubled the
guards on the frontier. No one could pass the gate at Ai-chiu who had
not a passport stamped with the chief inspector’s seal, bestowed only
after the closest scrutiny and persistent cross-questioning. On it was
written the name and place of birth and residence of the holder, and
after return from China or the fair it must be given up. The result of
these stringent regulations was to drive the missionaries to find a
path seaward. In December, 1844, of seven converts from Seoul,
attempting to get to the Border Gate, to meet Ferreol, only three were
able to pass Ai-chiu. The other four, who had the wig, hair pins, and
mourning costume of a widower for Ferreol, were unable to satisfy their
questioners, and so returned. At the Border Gate, Ferreol, after seeing
the caravan pass, ordered Andrew Kim to enter alone, while he returned
and sailed soon after to Macao. Andrew, with the aid of his three
friends, who met him at a lonely spot at some distance from Ai-chiu,
reached Seoul, January 8, 1845.
As soon as resources and opportunity would permit, Andrew collected a
crew of eleven fellow-believers, only four of whom had ever seen the
sea, and none of whom knew their destination, and equipped with but a
single compass, put to sea in a rude fishing-boat, April 24, 1845.
Despite the storms and baffling winds, this uncouth mass of firewood,
which the Chinese sailors jeeringly dubbed “the Shoe,” reached Shanghae
in June. Andrew Kim, never before at sea except as a passenger, had
brought this uncalked, deckless and unseaworthy scow across the entire
breadth of the Yellow Sea.
After the ordeal of the mandarin’s questions, [28] and visits and
kindly hospitality from the British naval officers and consul, he
reached his French friends at the Roman Catholic mission.
The beacon fires were now blazing on Quelpart, and from headland to
headland on the mainland, telegraphing the news of “foreign ships” to
Seoul. From June 25th until the end of July, Captain Edward Belcher,
[29] of the British ship Samarang, was engaged in surveying off
Quelpart and the south coast. Even after the ship left for Nagasaki,
the magistrates of the coast were ordered to maintain strict watch for
all seafarers from strange countries. This made the return of Andrew
Kim doubly dangerous.
Bishop Ferreol came up from Macao to Shanghae, and on Sunday, August
17th, Andrew Kim was ordained to the priesthood. On September 1st, with
Ferreol and Marie Antoine Nicholas Daveluy, another French priest, he
set sail in “the Shoe,” now christened the “Raphael,” and turned toward
the land of martyrdom. It was like Greatheart approaching Giant
Despair’s Castle.
The voyage was safely, though tediously, made past Quelpart, and
through the labyrinth of islands off Chulla. On October 12th, the
Frenchmen, donning the garb of native noblemen in mourning, and
baffling the sentinels, landed at night in an obscure place on the
coast. Soon after this Daveluy was learning the language among some
Christian villagers, who cultivated tobacco in a wild part of the
country. The bishop went to Seoul as the safest place to hide and work
in, while the farmer-sailors, after seven months’ absence, returned to
their hoes and their native fields.