The Japanese Acting Resident-General and military commander, General Baron Hasegawa, strong and masterful-looking, stepped to the front with a message of welcome from his Emperor. He was followed by the doyen of the Consular Corps, M. Vincart, with the Consular greetings. This Consular message had been very carefully sub-edited, and all expressions implying that the Governments of the different representatives approved of the proceedings had been eliminated. Then the coronation was over.
Two figures were conspicuous by their absence. The ex-Emperor was not present According to the official explanation, he was unable to attend because "his uniform had not been finished in time," Really, as all men knew, he was sitting resentful and protesting within a few score yards of the spot where his son was crowned.
The second absent figure was the Russian Consul-General, M. de Plançon. It was announced that M. de Plançon was late, and so could not attend. Seeing that M. de Plançon lived not ten minutes' walk from the palace, and that the guests had to wait nearly an hour after the time announced before the ceremony began, he must have overslept very much indeed on that particular morning. Oddly enough, M. de Plançon is usually an early riser.
VIII
A JOURNEY TO THE "RIGHTEOUS ARMY"
It was in the autumn of 1906. The Korean Emperor had been deposed and his army disbanded. The people of Seoul, sullen, resentful, yet powerless, victims of the apathy and folly of their sires, and of their own indolence, saw their national existence filched from them, and scarce dared utter a protest. The triumphant Japanese soldiers stood at the city gates and within the palace. Princes must obey their slightest wish, even to the cutting of their hair and the fashioning of their clothes. General Hasegawa's guns commanded every street, and all men dressed in white need walk softly.
But it soon became clear that there were men who had not taken the filching of their national independence lightly. Refugees from distant villages, creeping after nightfall over the city wall, brought with them marvellous tales of the happenings in the provinces. District after district, they said, had risen against the Japanese. A "Righteous Army" had been formed, and was accomplishing amazing things. Detachments of Japanese had been annihilated and others driven back. Sometimes the Japanese, it is true, were victorious, and then they took bitter vengeance, destroying a whole countryside and slaughtering the people in wholesale fashion. So the refugees said.
How far were these stories true? I am bound to say that I, for one, regarded them with much scepticism. Familiar as I was with the offences of individual Japanese in the country, it seemed impossible that outrages could be carried on systematically by the Japanese Army under the direction of its officers. I was with a Japanese army during the war against Russia, and had marked and admired the restraint and discipline of the men of all ranks there. They neither stole nor outraged. Still more recently I had noted the action of the Japanese soldiers when repressing the uprising in Seoul itself. Yet, whether the stories of the refugees were true or false, undeniably some interesting fighting was going on.
By the first week in September it was clear that the area of trouble covered the eastern provinces from near Fusan to the north of Seoul. The rebels were evidently mainly composed of discharged soldiers and of hunters from the hills. We heard in Seoul that trained officers of the old Korean Army were drilling and organizing them into volunteer companies. The Japanese were pouring fresh troops into these centres of trouble, but the rebels, by an elaborate system of mountain-top signalling, were avoiding the troops and making their attacks on undefended spots. Reports showed that they were badly armed and lacked ammunition, and there seemed to be no effective organization for sending them weapons from the outside.
The first rallying-place of the malcontent Koreans was in a mountain district from eighty to ninety miles east of Seoul. Here lived many famous Korean tiger-hunters. These banded themselves together under the title of Eui-pyung (the "Righteous Army"). They had conflicts with small parties of Japanese troops and secured some minor successes. When considerable Japanese reinforcements arrived they retired to some mountain passes further back.