To add to the difficulty of the situation, on that very night there was an overwhelming exodus of the people. High and low, rich and poor, young and old, thronged out of the city by every gate and made for some place of fancied safety in the country. The very warders of the gates fled and left them wide open. The great bell at Chong-no remained silent that night for lack of someone to ring it. Very many took refuge in the palace enclosure and men and women, horses and cattle and goods of all kinds were mixed together in indescribable confusion. Wailing and shouting and crying on all sides added to the confusion. The king could do nothing to quiet the disturbance, so he sat down in his private apartments attended by two eunuchs. Meanwhile the lawless element among the people was trying to make capital out of the confusion, and all night long the palace was being looted by these vicious characters, while palace women fled half naked and screaming with terror from room to room.
The king’s relatives all gathered at his doors and begged with tears and imprecations that he would not go and leave them. An order went forth from the palace that all the straw shoes and sandals that could be found should be brought in. When the officials saw these they said to the king “This great pile of straw shoes looks as if flight was being prepared for. We had better take them and burn them all and then shut the city gates so that the people cannot escape and leave the place undefended.” This advice was probably not followed, for by this time the king himself began to see that flight would be the only possible plan, and it was probably at his order that the shoes had been prepared.
Minister Yu Sŭng-nyŭng said, “Let us send the two Princes to the provinces where they will be safe and let the different governors be instructed to collect troops and send them on as fast as possible.” This seemed sound advice and the king’s oldest son, by a concubine, for the Queen had borne no sons, was sent to the province of Ham-gyŭng, and Prince Sun-wha went into Kang-wŭn Province.
When night came the king, who saw that it was useless to attempt to hold the city, sent to the keeper of the Ancestral Temple and ordered him to send the ancestral tablets on toward P‘yŭng-yang. All night long the preparations for departure were pushed and just at day break the king called for his horse and, mounting, rode out the New Gate attended by his personal following, a host of the officials and a crowd of terrified citizens who well knew that his going meant perfect anarchy. The Queen was aided in making her escape by Yi Hang-bok who under cover of the darkness led her by the light of a torch to the palace gate. She asked his name and being told she said, “I have to thank you, and I am sorry to have put you to this trouble.” It is said that he had all along felt sure the Japanese would enter Seoul and that he had sat for days in his house refusing food and drink. At the end of that time he roused himself and called for food. Having eaten he prepared for a long journey and then went to the palace. One of his favorite concubines followed him and asked what they were to do at home, but he did not answer. She plucked him by the sleeve but he drew his sword and cut the sleeve off leaving it in her hands. He felt that his first duty was at the palace. We have seen that he did good work there in looking after the welfare of the Queen. He secured her a chair at the palace gate and they joined the royal cavalcade on its way northward.
As the king and his escort passed through “Peking Pass” day was breaking in the east and a last look at the city showed it to be on fire in many places. The populace had thrown off all restraint and had looted the treasure houses and the store houses. In one of the latter were kept all the deeds of the government slaves. Each slave was deeded property, the same as real estate, and the deeds of the government slaves were deposited in the Chang-yé-wŭn. At that time there was nominally no lower middle class at all. Society was composed of the upper class and their retainers. Almost every man in the lower stratum of society was nominally the slave of some nobleman though in many places it was a nominal serfdom only. At the same time the master had the right to sell them at will and they were in duty bound to assume mourning at his death. It was this class of people, then, that arose and burned the store-house which contained the deeds and thereby secured liberty. Another building contained deeds of all private slaves. This too was made an objective point the moment the restraint of government was taken off. They also saw the royal granary in flames where the rice, cloth and money were stored. The king’s private treasure house inside the palace grounds was also burning. The Kyŭng-bok Palace, the Chang-dŭk Palace and the Chang-gyŭng Palace were all in flames. It must have been a depressing sight to the king and his court but there was no time to waste in mourning over the desolation in Seoul. No one knew at what moment the enemy might appear over the southern hills; and so the royal party pressed on toward the north. When they arrived at Sŭk-ta-ri in the district of Ko-yang it was raining furiously and by the time they arrived at Pyŭk-je-yŭk the entire party were dripping wet.
Up to this point the cavalcade had kept together very well but there were many among them who had not intended to keep on with the royal party and there were probably many more whose good intentions were so dampened by the elements that they gave it up. From this point on the royal escort was much reduced. The king here dismounted, entered a hostelry and sat down and began to beat upon the ground with his whip and to weep. As the Ministers gathered around him he said, “What shall we do in this terrible haste?” Yi Hang-bok answered, “When we get to Eui-ju, if we find it impossible to stop there we must push on into China and seek aid from the Emperor.” The king was pleased with this and said, “That is just what I want to do.” But Yu Sŭng-nyŭng said, “Not so, for if the king leaves Korean soil the dynasty will be at an end and Korea will be lost. The soldiers of Ham-gyŭng Province are still to be heard from and those from Kang-wŭn Province as well; so there is no call for such talk as this about leaving Korean soil.” He likewise administered a sharp reproof to Yi Hang-bok who confessed himself to have been too hasty.
After a short rest they took the road again, ever goaded on by the dread of pursuit, and as they passed He-eum-nyŭng the rain came down again in torrents. The palace women were riding horses that were small and weak and they could go but slowly. The riders went along with their hands over their faces, weeping and wailing loudly. By the time they reached the Im-jin River it was dark, and a more wretched company can hardly be imagined. The horses were up to their knees in mud and were well-nigh[knees in mud and were well-nigh] exhausted. All were nearly famished. It was pitchy dark and the party had become scattered. The case looked about as hopeless as it well could; but Yi Hang-bok was a man of tremendous energy, and he realised the gravity of the situation. So halting the cavalcade he dismounted and managed after great exertions to collect the entire party once more. It was so dark that it was impossible to think of crossing the river by ferry, until someone thought of the happy plan of setting fire to some of the buildings on the bluff beside the stream. By this baleful light the sorry and bedraggled multitude somehow effected a crossing and from that point on the fear of pursuit was greatly lessened. By this time food and rest had become imperative both for man and beast. Those who had been accustomed to no greater hardship than lolling on divans in palaces found a ride of thirty miles in the mud and rain, without rest or nourishment, a severe test. When the cavalcade came at midnight to the hostlery of Tong-pa-yŭk in the prefecture of P’a-ju they found that the prefect Hŭ-jin and the prefect of Chang-dan, Ku Hyo-yŭn, had provided an excellent supper for the king and the Ministers, but before these worthies could get settled in the apartments provided for them, the grooms and coolies and others, rendered desperate by hunger, rushed into the kitchen to find what had been provided for them, and finding that they had been forgotten[forgotten] they began to help themselves to the food that had been prepared for the royal table. An attempt was made to stop them but they were in no mood to be stopped. The result was that the king and his Ministers went hungry. His Majesty asked for a cup of wine but none could be found. He asked for a cup of tea but that too had disappeared. One of the servants of the party happened to have a cake of Chinese sugar tucked under his head-band. This he drew out and it was dissolved in some warm water and formed the repast of the king that night.
In the morning when it became time to resume the journey it was found to the dismay of all that the coolies had decamped and left the royal party high and dry. But even while they were discussing this sorry plight the governor of Whang-hă province and the prefect of Sö-heung appeared on the scene with two hundred soldiers and fifty or sixty horses. They had come expressly to escort the king northward, and truly they came in the very nick of time. They had with them a few measures of barley and this was doled out to the hungry people. As soon as possible a start was made and at noon they arrived at Cho-hyŭn-ch’an forty li from Sŭng-do where they found plenty of food, as the governor had ordered it to be prepared. This was the second day of the fifth moon. That night they entered the welcome gates of Song-do, which, almost exactly two centuries before, had witnessed the overthrow of the Koryŭ dynasty. This was the first time the royal party could really breathe freely, for they could be easily warned of the approach of the enemy, now that soldiers were on the lookout. So it was decided that they should rest a day at this place.
The king came out and seated himself in the upper story of the South Gate and all the people gathered before him. He said to them “Now that this war is upon us, if there is anything that you would say, say on.” Without hesitation they replied, “This war has been caused by Yi San-han (one of the Ministers), and by Kim Kong-yang,” (the father of a favorite concubine). The people were very angry with them. They also said, “You should recall the Minister Chöng.” This man had been banished because of factional rivalry. To the latter proposition the king readily assented, glad probably to find some way to please the populace.
It was on this day, the third of the fifth moon, that the Japanese entered Seoul.