Meanwhile, at the request of the King, the representatives of the Treaty Powers were endeavoring to maintain peace, suggesting the simultaneous withdrawal of the troops of both countries. To this China agreed, but Japan demanded delay, and on 23rd July took the “decisive measure” she had threatened, assaulted and captured the Palace, and practically made the King a prisoner, his father, the Tai-Won-Kun, at his request, but undoubtedly at Japanese instigation, taking nominally the helm of affairs.
After this events marched with great rapidity. On 25th July the transport Kowshing, flying the British flag and carrying 1,200 Chinese troops, was sunk with great loss of life by the Japanese cruiser Naniwa, and four days later the Japanese won the battle of A-san and dispersed the Chinese army. Before 30th July Korea gave notice of the renunciation of the Conventions between herself and China, which was equivalent to renouncing Chinese sovereignty. On 1st August war was declared. Of the sequence of these events, and even of the events themselves, we knew little or nothing, and up to the middle of July Mukden kept “the even tenor of its way.”
Manchuria is far less hostile to foreigners than the rest of China, and the name “devil” may even be used as a polite address with the prefix of “honorable”! No European women had previously passed through the gate of the inner wall and through the city on foot, but I not only was able to do so without molestation, though several times only attended by my servant, but actually was able to photograph in the quieter streets, the curiosity of the crowd being quite friendly. The Scotch missionaries had then been established in Mukden for twenty-two years, were on very friendly terms with the people, there was much social intercourse, and altogether their relations with the Chinese were unique.
Before the end of July, however, the many wild rumors which were afloat, and the continual passage of troops on their way to Korea (war being a foregone conclusion before it was declared), produced a general ferment. I had to abandon peregrinations in the city, and also photography, a hostile crowd having mobbed me as I was “taking” the Gate of Victory, in the belief that I kept a black devil in the camera, with such a baleful Cyclopean eye that whatever living thing it looked on would die within a year, and any building or wall would crumble away!
After war was declared on 1st August, 1894, things grew worse rapidly. As Japan had full command of the sea, all Chinese troops sent to Korea were compelled to march through Manchuria, and undisciplined hordes of Manchu soldiers from Kirin, Tsitsihar, and other northern cities poured through Mukden at the rate of 1,000 a day, having distinguished themselves on the southern march by seizing on whatever they could get hold of, riotously occupying inns without payment, beating the innkeepers, and wrecking Christian chapels, not from anti-Christian but from anti-foreign feeling. Their hatred of foreigners culminated at Liau-yang, 40 miles from Mukden, when Manchu soldiers, after wrecking the Christian chapel, beat Mr. Wylie, a Scotch missionary, to death, and attacked the chief magistrate for his friendliness to the “foreign devils.”
Anti-foreign feeling rose rapidly in Mukden. The servants of foreigners, and even the hospital assistants, were insulted in the town, and the wildest rumors concerning foreigners were spread and believed. The friendly authorities, who took the safety of the three mission families into serious consideration, requested them to give up their usual journeys into the interior, and to avoid going into the city or outside the walls. Next the “street chapels” were closed, the native Christians, a large body, being very apprehensive for their own safety, being regarded as “one with the foreigners,” who, unfortunately, were generally supposed to be “the same as the Japanese.”
GATE OF VICTORY, MUKDEN.
The perils of the roads increased. Not a cart or animal was to be seen near them. The great inns were closed or had their shutters wrecked, and the villages and farms were deserted. All tracks converging on Mukden were thronged with troops, not marching, but straggling along anyhow, every tenth man carrying a great silk banner, but few were armed with modern weapons. I saw several regiments of fine physique without a rifle among them! In some, gingalls were carried by two men each, others were armed with antique muzzle-loading muskets, very rusty, or with long matchlocks, and some carried only spears, or bayonets fixed on red poles. All were equipped with such umbrellas and fans as I saw some time later in the ditches of the bloody field of Phyöng-yang. It was nothing but murder to send thousands of men so armed to meet the Japanese with their deadly Murata rifles, and the men knew it, for when they happened to see a foreigner they made such remarks as, “This is one of the devils for whom we are going to be shot,” and when a large party of them, in attempting to make a forcible entry into the Governor-General’s palace, were threatened by the guard with being shot, the reply was, “We are going to be shot in Korea, we may as well be shot here.”
The nominal pay of soldiers is higher than that of laborers, and it was only after the defeat and the great slaughter at A-san that there was any unwillingness to enter the ranks. The uniform is easy, but unfit for hard wear, and very stagey—a short, loose, sleeved red cloak, bordered with black velvet, loose blue, black, or apricot trousers, and long boots of black cotton cloth with thick soles of quilted rag. The discipline may be inferred from the fact that some regiments of fine physique straggled through Mukden for the seat of war carrying rusty muskets in one hand, and in the other poles with perches, on which singing birds were loosely tethered! The men fell out of the ranks as they pleased, to buy fruit or tobacco or to speak to friends. Yet they made a goodly scenic display in their brilliant coloring, with their countless long banners of crimson silk undulating in the breezy sunshine, and their officers with sable-tailed hats and yellow jackets riding beside them.