Kang-wa was the military headquarters for western Corea and the chief place of gunpowder manufacture. Large magazines of food supplies had been collected in it. Eighteen boxes of silver, containing ingots to the value of nearly thirty eight thousand dollars, and a great many books and manuscripts were found, besides spoil of many kinds from the shops and houses. Immense stores of bows and arrows, iron sabres without scabbards, helmets, and breastplates, beautifully wrought, but very heavy and clumsy, were found.
Breech-loading Cannon of Corean Manufacture.
The cannon had no carriages, but were fastened to logs or fixed platforms. They were breech-loaders, in that the powder, fixed in an iron cartridge, was introduced at the breech, while the ball seemed to be put in simultaneously at the muzzle. These double-ended cannon reminded one of a tortoise. A curious or rather comical thing about these cannon was that many of them had several touch-holes in a row, the cannonier firing them by applying his match rapidly along the line of vents—an “accelerating gun,” of a rude kind. The Corean gunpowder is said to burn so slowly that a charge has to be lighted at both ends—a type of the national policy.
As the Coreans were fortifying Tong-chin with unusual care, the admiral sent out, October 26th, a reconnoitering party of one hundred and twenty men, who were landed on the mainland, opposite Kang-wa Island, whence the high road runs direct to the [[383]]capital. Here was a village, with fortifications clustered around a great gate, having a pointed stone arch surmounted by the figure of a tortoise and a pagoda. To force this gate was to win the way to the capital.
As the marines were disembarking, the Coreans poured in a heavy fire, which killed two and wounded twenty-five Frenchmen. Nevertheless the place was stormed and seized, but as the Corean forces were gathering in the vicinity, the marines returned to the ships to await reinforcements.
Toward evening a party of Coreans defiled at the foot of the plain in gallant array, evidently elated with supposed victory. Suddenly, as they came within range, the French ships opened on them with shell, which exploded among them.
Terrified at such unknown war missiles, they broke and fled to the hill-tops, where, to their surprise, they were again enveloped in a shower of iron. Finally they had to take shelter in the distant ravines and the far plains, which at night were illumined by their bivouac fires.
Weak men and nations, in fighting against stronger enemies, must, like the weaker ones in the brute creation, resort to cunning. They try to weary out what they cannot overcome. The Coreans, even before rifled cannon and steamers, began to play the same old tricks practised in the war with the Japanese in the sixteenth century. They made hundreds of literal “men of straw,” and stuck them within range of the enemy’s artillery, that the Frenchmen might vainly expend their powder and iron. The keen-eyed Frenchmen, aided by their glasses, detected the cheat, and wasted no shot on the mannikins.
Meanwhile the invaded nation was roused to a white heat of wrath. The furnace of persecution and the forges of the armorers were alike heated to their utmost. Earnest hands plied with rivalling diligence the torture and the sledge. In the capital it was written on the gate-posts of the palace that whoever should propose peace with the French should be treated as a traitor and immediately executed.