Chapter VIII.
A Queen huntress.... general tax.... a jealous Queen.... tribute.... a thrifty Queen.... lack of filial piety.... a termagant.... Mongol influence at its zenith.... second invasion planned.... corrupt court.... preparations for the invasion.... expedition sets sail.... difficulties .... terrible catastrophe.... survivors.... retreat.... new preparations.... the plan given up.... corruption.... famine in China.... northern cannibals.... at last driven back.... a son’s rebuke.... Timur Khan makes changes.... king abdicates.... family difficulties.... an abject king.... new slave law.... king goes to Peking.... Ch‘ung-sŭn ascends the throne.... a disgusted courtier.... a kingless country.... eunuchs elevated.... reconstruction.... king of Mukden.... pander to the Mongol court.... king’s father banished.... silver coin.
The sporting proclivities of the Mongol queen of Koryŭ were an object of wonder and disgust to the people, for she was accustomed to accompany the king in his expeditions and was as good a horseman as any in the rout. It may well be imagined that the finances of the country were in bad shape, and it was found necessary to reconstruct the revenue laws to meet the constantly recurring deficit. For the first time in the history a general tax was levied on all the people, high and low alike. Hitherto taxes had been levied only on the better class of people. This tax was called the hop‘o which means “house linen,” for the tax was levied in linen cloth. This shows that although coin circulated, barter was as yet the main method of interchange of commodities.
The custom of dressing in white must be a fairly ancient one for we learn that at this time the government ordered the use of blue instead of white, as blue is the color that corresponds to east. The birth of a son to the king’s Mongol consort was the signal for great rejoicings and festivities. Everyone offered congratulations, even the discarded queen.
It is said that the king paid some attention to this former queen and that it aroused the fierce jealousy of the Mongol queen. She declared that she would write and complain to the emperor that she was being ill treated. She was dissuaded from this by the earnest entreaties of the officials. At the same time a further concession was made to the Mongolizing tendency by changing the names of official grades to those in use among the Mongols.
The emperor had not given up his plan of subduing Japan, and for this purpose he began the preparation of boats in the south of Korea, calling upon the Koreans to supply all the requisites. But this was not the only use to which he put his Koryŭ vassal, for he also demanded women and pearls; the former were taken from the men and the latter from the women; and both were sent to the Mongol court.
The Mongol queen of Koryŭ was a thrifty woman and let no small scruples stand in the way of the procuring of pin-money. She took a golden pagoda from one of the monasteries and melted it down. The bullion found a ready market. She also went into the ginseng raising business on her own account, taking people’s fields by force and marketed the crop of ginseng in Nanking, where it brought a good price. She thus turned an “honest” penny. But it all went against the aristocratic tendencies of the king. That the queen was not without a touch of superstition is shown by the fact that she desisted from accompanying the king to the grave of Wang-gön when told that the spirit of the founder of the dynasty was a strong one and that if she went she might be attacked by some dangerous disease.
When some one hinted to the queen that the former queen was plotting against her life she promptly had her seized and put to the torture, and it would have cost her her life had not the officials interfered and won the inquisitors over to clemency. But her oppression of the people went on unchecked and she sequestered so much of their property that hundreds of people were driven into actual mendicancy. Even when news of her mother’s death reached her she stopped feasting but a short time, to shed a few conventional tears, and then resumed her revels. This was perhaps her greatest offence in the eyes of the people of Koryŭ. But her affection for her husband was very real for we learn that when he was taken sick and she was told that it was on account of her lavish use of money, she stopped building, sent away her falcons and restored a gold pagoda to the monastery from which she had taken it. She had ideas of her own as to the proper treatment of women by the sterner sex, for when the king preceded her in one of the processions she turned back and refused to go. The king went back to pacify her but she struck him with a rod and gave him a round scolding. She was meanwhile doing a stroke of business in sea-otter skins. She kept a large number of men hunting these valuable animals, but when she found they were “squeezing” half the catch she imprisoned the offenders.
It was not till 1279 that all the officials, high and low, military and civil, had adopted the Mongol coiffure and dress. It was now that the Mongol influence was at its zenith in the peninsula. In this year the whole royal family made a journey to Peking and it was the signal for a grand festival at that capital. It put an end once for all to the suspicions entertained by the emperor relative to the loyalty of the king of Koryŭ. The busybodies therefore found their occupation gone. On their return the queen resumed building operations, seized over 300 of the people’s houses and had a thousand men at work erecting a palace.
Meanwhile what of the Mongol envoy who had been sent to Japan with his daring demand that the Japanese sovereign go to Peking and do obeisance? He had been promptly killed, as might have been anticipated. When the king sent word to Peking that the emperor’s envoy had been killed, another invasion was immediately decided upon; and the king was charged with the duty of preparing 900 vessels to transport a great army of invasion across the straits. The king was hardly prepared for such an undertaking. He was spending his time in revelry and debauchery. He called to Song-do all the courtezans, sorceresses and female slaves and had them join in singing obscene songs for the delectation of his guests. His manner of life was in no sense worthy of his position. It is not surprising therefore that famine found its way to Koryŭ the following year, and the emperor had to give aid to the extent of 20,000 bags of rice.
The king wanted to lead the army of invasion, and so the emperor called him to Peking to discuss the matter. But Hong Ta-gu talked the emperor over and secured the post of general-in-chief himself. He raised 40,000 regular troops and another general raised 100,000 more among the vassal tribes. The king advised that only the men from the dependent tribes be sent, but that their number be increased. To this the emperor did not consent, and soon the king came back to his capital where he went to work preparing the 900 boats, 15,000 sailors and 10,000 bags of rice, together with many other things that would be needed. The emperor sent Hong to superintend these preparations and the king, being thrown completely into the shade, could do nothing but obey orders. Hong was so obnoxious to the king that he requested the emperor to remove him and let Gen. Kim Pang-gyŭng superintend the work of preparation. To this consent was given.
CARRYING GOLD ORE TO THE MILL.
It was in the next year, 1282, that all the troops rendezvoused at Hap-p‘o, now Ch‘ang-wŭn, and prepared to embark. The king went down from the capital to review the whole array. There were 1000 boats in all. Of Koryŭ soldiers there were 20,070, of Mongols there were 50,000. The soldiers from the dependent tribes, of which there were 100,000, had not yet arrived. It is hard to say just who these 100,000 men were. The records say they were from Kang-nam but they are also designated by another character in the records which would imply a different origin.
Then the whole flotilla sailed away to the conquest of Japan. They made for Tă-myŭng Harbor where the first engagement with the Japanese took place. At first the invaders were victorious and 300 Japanese fell, but when the latter were reinforced the Mongols drew back with great loss. The allied forces then went into camp where it is said that 3000 of the Mongols died of fever. Gen. Hong was very anxious to retreat, but Gen. Kim said, “We started out with three month’s rations and we have as yet been out but one month. We cannot go back now. When the 100,000 contingent arrives we will attack the Japanese again.” Soon the reinforcements came.
The invading army now pulled itself together and sailed for the mainland of Japan. As they approached it a storm arose from the west and all the boats made for the entrance of the harbor together. As it happened the tide was running in very strong and the boats were carried along irresistibly in its grip. As they converged to a focus at the mouth of the harbor a terrible catastrophe occurred. The boats were jammed in the offing and the bodies of men and the broken timbers of the vessels were heaped together in a solid mass, so that, the records tell us, a person could walk across from one point of land to the other on the solid mass of wreckage. The wrecked vessels contained the 100,000 men from the dependent tribes, and all of them perished thus horribly, excepting a few who managed to get ashore. These afterwards told their story as follows: “We fled to the mountains and lay hidden there two months, but the Japanese came out and attacked us. Being in a starving condition, we surrendered, and those of us who were in fair condition were made slaves and the rest were butchered.”
In that great catastrophe 8,000 Koryŭ soldiers perished, but the remaining Koryŭ and Mongol forces, beholding the miserable end of the main body of the invading army, turned their prows homeward and furled their sails only when they entered a Koryŭ[Koryŭ] harbor.
At first the emperor was determined to continue the attempt to subdue the Japanese, and immediately sent and ordered the king to prepare more boats and to furnish 3,000 pounds of a substance called in the records tak soé. The character tak means a kind of wood from whose pulp paper is made, and the character for soé means metal, especially such as is used in making money. Some have conjectured that this refers to paper money, others that it simply meant some metal.
A Koryŭ citizen, Yu Ju, advised the emperor to use only Koryŭ troops and the men from Kang-nam in his next invasion of Japan and to provide in advance 200,000 bags of rice in the peninsula. The emperor thereupon ordered the king to lay aside 40,000 bags with this end in view. The king answered that if all his officials could get but ten thousand bags, this greater number was surely out of the question. So he was told to set aside as many as he could.
The following year, 1283, changed the emperor’s purpose. He had time to hear the whole story of the sufferings of his army in the last invasion; the impossibility of squeezing anything more out of Koryŭ and the delicate condition of home affairs united in causing him to give up the project of conquering Japan, and he countermanded the order for the building of boats and the storing of grain.
The record of the next few years is hardly worth writing. The royal family went to Peking with 1,200 men as escort and remained there six months. Returning, they spent their time in trampling down good rice-fields in the pleasures of the chase and in seeking ways and means of making government monopolies of various important commodities, especially salt. On a single hunting expedition 1,500 soldiers accompanied the royal party afield. The queen developed a strange propensity for catching young women and sending them to her people in Peking. A law was promulgated that before a young man married he must notify the government. This was done for the purpose of finding out where marriageable girls lived so that they could be the more easily seized and sent to China. One official cut off his daughter’s hair when he found that she was to be sent to China. The king banished him for this and beat the girl severely. It is said that these girls upon arriving in China became wives, not concubines.
In 1289 a famine in China resulted in a demand for 100,000 bags of rice from Koryŭ. The king was at his wits end but by great exertion and self-sacrifice on the part of the officials 60,000 bags were collected. They were sent by boat, but 6000 were destroyed in a storm and 300 men were lost.
But now in 1290 a new element of danger appeared in the shape of the wild tribe of T‘ap-dan across the northern border who began to ravage the outlying Koryŭ towns. When they had penetrated the country as far as Kil-ju the king sent an army against them, but more than 20,000 came swarming down from the north and seized two districts in Ham-gyŭng Province. They ate the flesh of men and dried the flesh of women for future consumption. The Koryŭ troops held them in check at first. The emperor sent 13,000 troops to reinforce the Koryŭ army. In spite of this, however, the king felt obliged to take refuge in Kang-wha for fear of surprise. The following year the T‘ap-dan savages came as far south as Kyŭng-geui Province and all the officials and many of the people fled before them. It was a literary man of Wŭn-ju who was destined to be the first to bring them to a halt. Wŭn Ch‘ung-gap gathered about him all the strong men of the neighborhood and drove back the van of the invading force. Then the great body of the savage horde came and surrounded the town. Wŭn killed the messengers they sent demanding surrender, and sent back the heads as answer. A desperate attack was made but the little garrison held firm till by a lucky chance a rumor of some kind caused a panic among the attacking forces and in the stampede that followed every man’s sword was at his neighbor’s throat. While this was going on Wŭn and his fellows made a sudden sally and captured the savage chief To Cha-do, and sixty of his attendants were cut down. The rabble then took to their heels and from that day never dared to attack any considerable town. The spell of terror which had held the people of Koryŭ was now broken and they found no more difficulty in keeping these savages at arm’s length. Ten thousand Mongol troops arrived and began a campaign against these freebooters and in Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province had a splendid victory over them, leaving, it is said, a line of thirty li of dead as they pursued the flying enemy. When the Mongol troops went back home, their general told the emperor that the war had destroyed the crops of Koryŭ and that 100,000 bags of rice must be sent. The emperor consented, but when the rice arrived the officials and men of influence divided the rice among themselves, while the people went without.
All this time the crown prince was suffering a lively feeling of disgust at the sporting propensities of his father, and now that he was about to return from Peking he wrote his father a very sarcastic letter saying, “As all the public money has been used up in hunting tournaments you must not lay an extra expense upon the treasury by coming out to meet me.” The king was ashamed and angry but went as far as P‘yŭng-ju to meet his son and took advantage of the occasion to hunt along the way.
That Kublai Khan harbored no ill-will against the Japanese on account of his failure to conquer them is shown by his sending back to their country several Japanese whom the Koreans had caught and carried to Peking. Two Koryŭ men carried them back to Japan; but the Japanese did not return the courtesy, for the two Koryŭ messengers were never seen again.
The king and queen were both in China when the emperor Kublai died and they took part in the funeral rites, although the Mongol law forbade any outsider to participate in them. Timur Khan succeeded Kublai. He apparently had no intention of invading Japan, for of 100,000 bags of rice which had been stored in Koryŭ for that purpose, he sent 50,000 to the north to relieve a famine-stricken district. He also gave back to Koryŭ the island of Quelpart which had been in Mongol hands since the time when the Mongol and Koryŭ soldiers had put down the rebellion. From this time dates the use of the name Ché-ju, which means “District across the water,” and by which the island has ever since been known.
The king had now completed his cycle of sixty-one years and the soothsayers were appealed to to read the future. They said evils were in store and he was advised to give amnesty to all but capital criminals, repair the tombs of celebrated men, give rice to the poor and remit three years’ revenue. But gray hairs had not brought wisdom to the king. His time was spent in frivolity and sensuality. The crown prince looked with unfriendly eye on these unseemly revels and when, in the following year, 1297, his mother, the Mongol princess, died, he claimed that her death was due to one of the favorite concubines, and as a consequence the suspected woman was killed. The prince had married a Mongol princess in China and now at her summons he went back to China. The old man, bereft of both wife and concubine, wrote the emperor that he wished to surrender the reins of power into the hands of his son. The emperor consented and in the following year the prince was invested with the royal insignia, while his father was honored with the title “High King.” The new queen was a Mongol and as she came to the Koryŭ capital a new palace was constructed for her. But her royal husband saw fit to follow the example of his forebears[forebears] and take to himself a concubine. The queen, by her frequent exhibitions of jealousy, lost what little love her lord had ever felt for her. She was not long in letting the state of affairs be known at Peking and soon an imperial mandate arrived consigning the concubine and her father to prison. Then another came remanding both to China. Then a high monk came to mediate between the king and queen. This proved ineffectual and the emperor commanded both king and queen to appear before him in Peking. It was done and the royal seals were put back into the hands of the aged king. The prince and his unhappy queen were kept in China ten years.
The close of the century beheld an old dotard on the throne of Koryŭ, so incapable of performing the duties of his high office that the emperor was obliged to send a man to act as viceroy while the old man spent his time trifling with mountebanks and courtesans. The records state that he had lost all semblance to a king.
The viceroy whom the emperor had sent was named Whal-yi Gil-sa, and one of his first proposals was to do away with slavery; but objection was raised that then a slave might become an official and use his influence to wreak vengeance upon his former master. So a law was made that only the eighth generation of a manumitted slave could hold office.
In 1301 an envoy was sent to Peking to make the audacious proposal that the crown prince’s wife should be made the wife of a Korean official named Chong. This was because the Koryŭ officials believed she had been criminally intimate with him and they were anxious to get the prince back on the throne. An official originated the scheme of having this Chong take the prince’s wife and ascend the throne himself, but the emperor ordered him thrown into prison. When this had been done the aged king sent an envoy pleading that the prince be sent back to him. As this was not granted the king himself went to Peking where he lodged at first at his son’s house, but after a quarrel with him moved to the house of the discarded princess, his daughter-in-law[daughter-in-law]. The emperor tried to mediate between father and son but without effect. Then he tried to send the old man back to Koryŭ; but rather than go back the aged king took medicine to make himself ill and so incapable of travel. He was fearful that he would be assassinated on the way by his son’s orders.
The emperor died in 1308 and was succeeded by Guluk Khan. This young man was the friend of the prince, and as a consequence the old king was thrown into prison, his nearest friends killed or banished and the young man was raised to a high position under the Chinese government and his friends, to the number of a hundred and eighty, were made officials. But it was the old man that the emperor finally sent back to Koryŭ to rule at the same time he making the prince king of Mukden. Though so far away from the capital of Koryŭ the prince was the one who really ruled Koryŭ, so the records say. The father soon died and the prince immediately proceeded to Song-do and assumed the throne in this same year 1308. His posthumous title was Ch‘ung-sŭn.
He had been kept out of his own so long that he now proceeded to make up for lost time, and vied with his father’s record in revelry and debauchery. It is said that a courtier took an axe and went to the palace, where he asked the king to decapitate him as the sight of these excesses made him hate life. The king was ashamed, though we are not told that he mended his ways.
In his second year he revived the government salt monopoly and put the money into his private purse. Heretofore it had been divided between certain monasteries and officials. The Mongol empress made him furnish large quantities of timber from Păk-tu Mountain, floating it down the Yalu. It was used in the building of monasteries. The whole expense was borne by the king. The latter was now spending most of his time in Peking. The Koryŭ officials earnestly desired him to come back to Song-do, but he refused. There was a constant flow of eunuchs and courtesans from Koryŭ to Peking and it would be difficult to imagine a more desperate condition of affairs in the king-deserted country. How it was being governed we do not know. It was probably governing itself. The rural districts, which had been laid waste by the Mongol armies and which had been deserted by their occupants, were probably being gradually occupied again and the less they heard of Song-do the better they liked it.
In the third year of his reign the king killed his son because some busybodies told him that the young man was conspiring to drive him from the throne. This shows the depths to which the court had sunk, when kings were not sure but that their own sons were their worst enemies. Orders kept coming from Peking to make certain eunuchs Princes. These orders could not be disregarded. These eunuchs had doubtless been in Peking and were known to be devoted to Mongol interests. All this time the king was in Peking where his presence began to be something of a bore. The mother of the Emperor urged him to go back to Koryŭ. He promised to go in the following autumn, but when the time came he changed his mind and abdicated in favor of his second son.
The new king, named To, posthumous title Ch‘ung-suk, came to the throne in 1314. One of his first acts was to take a thorough census of the people. Unfortunately the result is not recorded. The revenue laws were also changed and a new measurement of the fields was ordered with a view to a more effective collection of the revenue. The king likewise had ambitions along religious lines, for he sent 150 pounds of silver to Nanking to purchase books; and 10,800 were secured. The emperor also gave 4,070 volumes. These were doubtless Buddhist books and it is more than likely that many of the books in the Sanscrit or Thibetan character, still found in the monasteries in Korea, are copies of the works introduced into Koryŭ during these times.
The king who had abdicated was sent back with his son, though he had abdicated solely for the purpose of being able to live permanently in Peking. He spent his time in attending Buddhist festivals, but when he saw into what ruins the palaces in Song-do had fallen he said, “If my father had feasted less I should have had better palaces.” He soon returned to[to] China where he devoted himself to letters. The emperor offered to make him his Prime Minister but he declined the honor. He mourned over the lack of letters in Koryŭ and came to realise that it was Buddhism that[that] had proved the curse of the dynasty. He accepted the post of King of Mukden and later became Prime Minister to the emperor.
The young king went to Peking in 1317 to marry a Mongol Princess, and like his father was very loath to come back. We infer that the position of king in Song-do was so hedged about by priestcraft that it was[it was] much pleasanter for the king to reside at the Chinese court. Koryŭ must have been exceedingly poor after the desperate struggles she had been through and life in Peking with his hand in the imperial exchequer must have had its attractions.
At the end of a year however the king and his bride came back to Song-do. The records say that in order to induce him to come they had to bribe the soothsayers to tell him that if he did not come he would be involved in war. As soon as he arrived he began to search for unmarried women to send to Peking. He had turned pander to the Mongol court. The men of the upper classes hid their daughters and denied their existence for fear they would be seized and sent to Peking. He himself put in practice the principles he had imbibed at the Mongol court, and spent his days in hunting and his nights in high revelry.
The king’s father who had been made king of Mukden, made a trip into southern China, or at least as far south as Chŭl-gang and Po-ta San where he engaged in Buddhist worship. Two years later he asked permission to repeat the visit and the emperor consented. But he was suddenly called back to Peking and ordered to go straight to Koryŭ. He refused and the emperor compelled him to cut his hair and to become a monk. He was banished to T‘o-bŭn or San-sa-gyŭl in the extreme north. This was because one of the Peking eunuchs, who had formerly been a Koryŭ man and hated the king, told the emperor that the ex-king had on foot a scheme to raise a revolt in China.
At this time there was silver money in Koryŭ in the form of little bottle-shaped pieces of silver, but it was much adulterated by an alloy of copper. The king gave thirty of these bottles and the officials contributed a number more; and with them a silver image of Confucius was made, indicating a slight reaction against Buddhism.
1322 the emperor, being deceived by the lying representations of the king’s cousin who wished to secure the throne of Koryŭ, ordered the king to Peking. The latter was glad to go, but was obliged to get away secretly by night for fear of being prevented by his officials. When he got to Peking the emperor took away his royal seal and ordered him to remain there, which he doubtless was nothing loath to do. The officials of Koryŭ joined in a letter begging the emperor to send him back, but without success, till in 1324 the emperor died and his successor proclaimed a general amnesty, of which the aged ex-king took advantage to return to Peking from his place of banishment in the north. The king and Queen returned to Koryŭ in the following year. No sooner were they settled in their palace again than they went on a pleasure trip to the Han River; but the trip ended disastrously for while away on the journey the Queen was confined and died in giving birth to a son. This shows to what extremes the passion for the chase led the court.