Thus after twenty years of nearly uninterrupted labors, the church was again stripped of her pastors, and at the end of the eighty-two years of Corean Christianity, the curtain fell in blood. Of four bishops and nineteen priests, all except four were from France, and of these only three remained alive. Fourteen were martyrs, and four fell victims to the toils and dangers of their noble calling.
In the foregoing story of papal Christianity in Chō-sen, which we have drawn from Dallet—a Roman Catholic writer—we have the spectacle of a brave band of men, mostly secular priests educated in French seminaries of learning, doing what they believed it was right to do. Setting the laws of this pagan country at defiance, they, by means of dissimulation and falsehood, entered the country in disguise as nobles in mourning. Fully believing in the dogma of salvation by works, they were sublimely diligent in carrying on their labors of conversion, ever in readiness for that crown of martyrdom which each one coveted, and which so many obtained; but the nobleness of their calling was disfigured by the foul and abominable teaching that evil should be done in order that good might come—a tenet that insults at once the New Testament and the best casuistry of the Roman Catholic Church. According to the code of any nation, their converts were traitors in inviting invasion; but if worthy to be set down as Arnolds and Iscariots, then their teachers have the greater blame in leading them astray. It is to be hoped that the future Christian missionaries in Corea, whether of the Greek, Roman, or Reformed branch, will teach Christianity with more of the moral purity inculcated by its Founder. [[377]]
[1] These were the first official relations of France with Corea; or, as a native would say, between Tai-pep-kuk and Chō-sen; the expression for France being Tai-pep, and for a Frenchman—curiously enough—Pepin. [↑]
[2] Inside the country, the frequent appearance of the foreign ships was the subject of everyday talk, and the news in this nation of gossips spread like a prairie fire, or a rolling avalanche. By the time the stories reached the northern provinces whole fleets of French ships lay off the coast. Their moral effect was something like that among the blacks in the Southern States during the civil war, when the “Lincoln gunboats” hove in sight. The people jestingly called the foreign vessels “The authorities down the River.” [↑]
[3] For changing their name and garments, sleeping by day, going abroad at night, associating with rebels, criminals and villains, and entering the kingdom [[369]]clandestinely, the missionaries were put to death; and no comparison could be drawn to mitigate their sentence between them and innocent shipwrecked men. [↑]
[4] Other nations besides France now began to learn something of the twin hermits of the East, Chō-sen and Nippon. During 1852, the Russian frigate Pallas sailed along the east coast up to the Tumen River, making no landing, but keeping at a distance of from two to five miles from the shore in order to avoid shoals and rocks. The object of the Pallas was to trace and map the shore line. In 1855, the French war-vessel Virginie continued the work begun by the Pallas, and at the end of her voyage the whole coast from Fusan to the Tumen was known with some accuracy, and mapped out with European [[370]]names, at once numerous and prophetic. The coast line of Tartary or Manchuria—at that time a Chinese province—was also surveyed, mapped, and made ready for the Czar’s use and that of his ambassador in 1860.
Pallas and Virginie! The names are suggestive of the maiden diplomatic victory of General Ignatieff, of whom more anon. [↑]
[5] A noble of high rank presented to the council of ministers a memorial, setting forth the dangers that then menaced Chō-sen, and urging that extraordinary means be put forth to meet the emergencies. He proposed that the national policy of armed neutrality should be preserved, that the conquered emperor of China should not enter Chō-sen, that the frontier should be strengthened against a possible invasion of the border-ruffians inhabiting the neutral strip. Taking advantage of the situation, these men, banding together with Chinese adventurers and Corean refugees, might make a descent in force into the kingdom. Finally, the supreme danger that filled all minds was the threatened invasion of the French. He recommended that the castle of Tong-nai, near Fusan, and the western strongholds of Nam-an, Pu-pion, and In-chiŭn (the port opened in 1882), should be strongly garrisoned and strengthened; and that a new citadel be built on the island of Kang-wa, to command the river and the entrance to the capital. (See map, page 190.) [↑]