In spite of foreign invaders and war’s alarms, one peaceful event during this same year, and shortly after the French fleet had gone away, sent a ripple of pleasure over the surface of Corean society. The young king, now but fourteen years old, who had been duly betrothed to Min,[3] a daughter of one of the noble families, was duly married. Popular report credits the young queen with abilities not inferior to those of her royal husband.
According to custom, the Chinese emperor sent an ambassador, one Koei-ling, a mandarin of high rank, to bear the imperial congratulations and investiture of the queen. This merry Chinaman, cultivated, lively, poetic in mood, and susceptible to nature’s beauties, wrote an account of his journey between the two capitals. His charming impressions of travel give us glimpses of peaceful life in the land of Morning Calm, and afford a delightful contrast to the grim visage of war, with which events in Corea during the last decade have unhappily made us too familiar. [[388]]
[1] July 13, 1866.
M. de Bellonet to Prince Kung.
Sir: I grieve to bring officially to the knowledge of your Imperial Highness a horrible outrage committed in the small kingdom of Corea, which formerly assumed the bonds of vassalage to the Chinese empire, but which this act of savage barbarity has forever separated from it.
In the course of the month of March last, the two French bishops who were evangelizing Corea, and with them nine missionaries and seven Corean priests, and a great multitude of Christians of both sexes and of every age, were massacred by order of the sovereign of that country.
The government of His Majesty cannot permit so bloody an outrage to be unpunished. The same day on which the king of Corea laid his hands upon my unhappy countrymen was the last of his reign; he himself proclaimed its end, which I, in turn, solemnly declare to-day. In a few days our military forces are to march to the conquest of Corea, and the Emperor, my august Sovereign, alone has now the right and the power to dispose, according to his good pleasure, of the country and the vacant throne.
The Chinese government has declared to me many times that it has no authority over Corea, and it refused on this pretext to apply the treaties of [[378]]Tien-tsin to that country, and give to our missionaries the passports which we have asked from it. We have taken note of these declarations, and we declare now that we do not recognize any authority whatever of the Chinese government over the kingdom of Corea.
I have, etc.,
H. de Bellonet.