[10] While off the island of Wen-san, according to Dallet, some of the native Christians, attracted by the legend in Chinese characters on the flag “The Religion of Jesus Christ,” came on board. “A Protestant minister saluted them with the words which are sacramental among the pagans, ‘May the spirits of the earth bless you!’ At these words the neophytes, seeing that they had been deceived, and that a snare had been laid for their good faith, retired in all haste without ever returning the salute, and made no further visits to the ships.” [↑]
CHAPTER XLI.
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 [[362]]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 [[363]]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.