The Japanese now took up the spade as their immediate weapon of defence against the infuriated Coreans and the avenging Chinese. A force of twenty-three thousand men was at once set to work, “without regard to wind or rain,” along the lines marked out by the Japanese engineers. To furnish the wood for towers, gates, huts, and engines, a party of two thousand axemen and laborers, guarded by twenty-eight mounted pickets and three hundred matchlock men, with seven flags, went daily into the forest.
The winter huts were hastily erected, walls thrown up, ditches dug, towers built, and sentinels and watch stations set. The work went on from earliest daybreak till latest twilight, the carpenters so suffering from the cold that “their finger nails dropped off.” By the first part of January the castle was almost completed. From the eleventh day the garrison took rest.
The fortress was three-sided, the south face lying on the sea. The total line of works was about three and a half miles, pierced by three gates. The inner defences were in three parts, or maru. The third maru, or enclosure, had stone walls, one tower and one gate; the second had two towers, two gates; and the first or chief citadel had stone walls, forty-eight feet high, with two towers and two gates.
The war operations, which had hitherto covered large spaces of the country, now found the pivot at this place situated in Kiung-sang, on the sea-coast, thirty-five miles north of Fusan. Another commander, Asano, marched to assist the garrison and entered the castle before the Ming army arrived. His advance guard, while reconnoitring, was defeated by the Coreans, yet he succeeded, by an impetuous charge, in entering the castle.
The Chinese, smarting under their losses at Chin-sen, and stung by the gibes of the Coreans, now hastened to Uru-san, to swallow up the Japanese. The Corean army, which had been collecting [[138]]around the Japanese camps, were soon joined by the advance guard of the Ming army. The arrival of the Chinese forces was made known in the following manner.
Plan of Uru-san Castle.—Explanation: Hon, First Enclosure; Ni, Second; San, Third; G, Gates;
Bodies of Troops.
A Japanese captain commanded one of the advance pickets, which had their quarters in the cloisters of Ankokuji (Temple of the Peaceful Country). One night a board, inscribed with Chinese characters, was set up before the gate of the camp. The soldiers, seeing it in the morning, but unable to read Chinese, carried [[139]]it to their captain, who handed it to his priest-secretary. The board contained a warning that the Chinese were near and would soon attack Uru-san. Betraying no emotion and saying nothing, the captain soon after declared himself on the sick-list, and secretly absconded to Fusan. The truth was, that an overwhelming Ming army was now in front of them and their purpose to invest the castle was thus published. The entire Japanese forces were now gathered close under the walls, or inside the castle, and the sentinels were doubled.