In the flush of success, Li-yu-sung, the Ming commander, sent an envoy with a haughty summons of surrender to Kato and Nabéshima. To this Kato answered in a tone of defiance, guarded his noble prisoners more vigilantly, and with his own hand, in sight of the envoy, put the beautiful Corean girl to death, by transfixing her, with a spear, from waist to shoulder, while bound to a tree. He immediately sent reinforcements to the castle of Kié-chiu, then threatened by the enemy.
The Corean patriots, who organized small detachments of troops, began to attack or repel the invaders in several places, and even to lay siege to castles occupied by Japanese wherever they suspected the garrison was weak. The possession of a few firearms and even rude artillery made them very daring. They compelled the evacuation of one fortress held by Kato’s men by the following means. A Corean, named Richosun, says a Japanese author, invented bombs, or shin-ten-rai (literally, heaven-shaking thunder), containing poison. Going secretly to the foot of the castle, he discharged the bombs out of a cannon into the castle. As soon as they fell or touched anything they burst and emitted poisonous gas, and every one within reach fell dead. The first of these balls fell into the garden of the castle, and the Japanese soldiers did not know what it was. They gathered around to examine it, and while doing so, the powder in the ball exploded. The report shook heaven and earth. The ball was rent into a thousand pieces, which scattered like stars. Every man that was hit instantly fell, and thus more than thirty men were killed. Even those who were not struck fell down stunned, and the soldiers lost their courage. Many balls were afterward thrown in, which finally compelled the evacuation of the castle.
From the above account it seems that the Coreans actually invented bombs similar to the modern iron shells. They may have been fired from a heavy wooden cannon, a sort of howitzer, made [[114]]by boring out a section of tree trunk and hooping it along its whole length with stout bamboo. Such cannon are often used in Japan. They will shoot a ten or twenty pound rocket or case of fireworks many hundred feet in the air. The Corean most probably selected a spot so distant from the castle that a sortie for its capture could not be successfully made. Corean gunpowder is proverbially slow in burning, which accounts for the fact that the Japanese had time to gather round it. The bomb was most probably a thin shell of iron, loaded only with gunpowder, which, like the Chinese mixture, contains an excess of sulphur. The military customs of the Japanese required every man disabled by a wound to commit hara-kiri, so that the number of actual deaths must have been swelled by the suicides that followed wounds inflicted by the iron fragments. The Japanese were so completely demoralized that they evacuated the castle.
Two other castles at Kinzan and Kishiu, being beleagured by the patriots, Kato started to succor the slender garrisons. The Coreans, hearing this, redoubled their efforts to capture them before Kato should arrive. They had so far succeeded that the Japanese officer in the citadel, having lost nearly all his men, went into the keep, or fireproof storehouse, in the centre of the castle, and opened his bowels, preferring to die by his own hands rather than allow a Corean the satisfaction of killing him. Just at that moment the black rings of Kato’s banners appeared in sight. The Coreans, setting the castle on fire, and giving loud yells of defiance and victory, disappeared.
Kato and Nabéshima had received an urgent message from Seoul to come with their troops, and thus unite all the Japanese forces in a stand against the Chinese. Kato disliked exceedingly to obey this order because he knew it came from Konishi, but he finally set out to march across the country. Thorough discipline was maintained on the march, and the rivers were safely crossed. Cutting down trees, the soldiers, in companies of five or ten, holding on abreast of logs, forded or floated over the most impetuous torrents, while the cavalry kept the Coreans at bay. Though annoyed by attacks of guerilla parties on their flanks, the Japanese succeeded in reaching Seoul without serious loss.
By the retreat of the Japanese armies, and their concentration in Seoul, the four northern provinces, comprising half the kingdom, were virtually lost to them. At the fall of Ping-an the war found its pivot, for the Japanese never again retrieved their fortunes in Chō-sen. [[115]]
CHAPTER XV.
THE RETREAT FROM SEOUL.
The allies, after looking well to their commissariat, began their march on Seoul, about the middle of February, with forces which the Japanese believed to number two hundred thousand men. The light cavalry formed the advance guard. The main body, after floundering through the muddy roads, arrived, on February 26th, about forty miles northwest of Seoul.