Report on Guarding the Riverside in Pyeongan陳平安道沿江防守節目便宜。啓

Your servant's illness is deep and grave and my spirit is dark and clogged, so that most of what I think out is overturned and awry. Yet the business of the western border weighs on my mind night and day. Looking with respect at the dispatch of Sim Hui-su (沈喜壽), the Reception Envoy, he says that the hearts of men in Uiju (義州) and thereabouts are likewise much disturbed. Whenever men's hearts take fright first, both wisdom and courage dry up, and though there be a plan to meet the case, many chances are lost and the work is not accomplished. This is the great thing to be concerned about.

The riverside stretches some hundreds of li from Ganggye (江界) to Uiju. Upstream there is the Provincial Deputy Commander (虞候) Park Myeong-hyeon (朴名賢); downstream there is the Assistant Defense General Yi Si-eon (李時言); the Army Commander keeps his camp at Changju (昌州), linking and supporting both ends; and the detached commanders Kim Eung-ham (金應緘) and Kim Jong-deuk (金宗得) and the others are now about to go down. What the court has given by way of direction goes no further than this. To reckon the whole number of that province's soldiers and add or subtract according to where the defense is pressing or slack, to set agreements beforehand and fix the plan of fighting and holding in advance and dispose of matters as occasion offers, this should be charged wholly to those entrusted with the business in that province, and cannot be worked from the capital at a distance.

As for Uiju, because it borders on the Superior State (上國) its defense was thought slack, and so its soldiers could not but be drawn out and divided to guard upstream; and so Hui-su, seeing the emptiness of the place with his own eyes, sent up this dispatch, and this too is to reckon what lies far ahead. In the time of Goryeo, for the defense of the west there was an Army and Horse Commissioner and also Generals of the Divided Circuits (分道將軍). In general, since the array along the whole Amnok River, above and below, is far-stretched and it cannot be known where the enemy will rise, commanders of divided circuits were set, each leading the soldiers under him, to stand like horns and make it their plan to hasten to one another's help. The detached commanders of today are of this sort, yet Uiju alone has none, and there ought to be some arrangement for it.

Among the idle military officials within the province, one somewhat fit for use, Yi Bok-nam (李福男), is said to be at Yeongbyeon (寧邊) now. Though this man is under dismissal for a fault, his talent may be somewhat trusted and charged. It would seem to do no harm if he were styled Assistant Defense General and made to hasten to Uiju, and, joining strength with the district magistrate and the musketeers of Yongcheon (龍川) and Cheolsan (鐵山) belonging to the garrison command, were to stay and hold Uiju until the ice breaks up.

Uiju's wall is broad and far-stretching, and a high bank blocks the middle of it so that one cannot look all round, which would make it hard to hold, just as Hui-su's dispatch says. Yet there are also many places where the lie of the land leans on rugged ground; it is only outside the north gate, and from the west gate round to the south and the east gates, that it lies rather on level ground. If here the array of the wall is looked over and gun towers (砲樓) are made and cannon and arms and gear provided in quantity, it can be held. In general, the system of the gun tower is the subtle method of holding a wall; and if matters are urgent there is no need to use stone, nor need a storied tower be raised. If only great timbers are made the posts and three sides closed with planks after the fashion of a shield, with a hole bored in the middle, it too can hold the enemy down and meet the urgency of the moment.

The northern barbarians attack a wall otherwise than the southern enemy. The northern barbarians always come on horseback, each man with a sack of earth, and advance all at once and pile it at the foot of the wall, and when in a moment it is level with the wall, men and horses tread over it. Their soldiers are all in iron armor and their horses armored too, so that bow and arrow cannot wound them, and without cannon they cannot be held down. The Heaven-class and Earth-class cannon that were at Uiju were largely carried off for the attack on Pyeongyang last year, and whether they have been carried back I do not know. Let these too be gathered up with urgency, reckoned against the battlements and set out in even division, and let men who know the business, the cannon-makers (火砲匠), be set beforehand to practice the firing, so that the sound and the awe of it are stout and those far and near know that there is readiness. This too is ample to settle the hearts of the people and to press the barbarians' minds into submission.

Yu Ryeom (柳濂), Garrison Commander of Manpo (滿浦僉使), was from the first truly held unsuitable by some, but because the feasting of the barbarians was close at hand he was left as he was for the present. Of late it is much heard that in feasting and admonishing the two commanders of Nurhaci (老乙可赤) he had a frightened look, and that Heo Uk (許頊), Prefect of Ganggye, is worried over it; whether this report is trustworthy I do not know. Reckoning by the man's capacity, it might well be so. One to bear the post of Garrison Commander is very hard to find, but to my reckoning Yi Gyeong-jun (李慶濬) would seem able to bear it. Since the getting of men matters most at this time when the occasion is pressing, though Yi Bok-nam and Yi Gyeong-jun are under interdict for their faults, I your servant cannot but venture to report my foolish view.

In general, in matters of the military occasion, whether of fighting or of holding, the ordering of the ranks must be made the chief thing. In our country those who become commanders are even more sorely slack in the one matter of holding a wall: they reckon nothing of the method of dividing the battlements among men and picking out the swift and the stout. Because the threads of it are tangled and it is all overturned when the time comes, like people crowding into a market, the soldiers are many yet the wall is not held; and the trouble of walls lost in place after place since the disorder is for just this reason.

Where there are walls along the river, let them be charged beforehand and again, as the Jixiao xinshu (紀效新書) says, to make five battlements one squad (伍) and fifty one company (隊), setting a commander over each company and assigning soldiers to each battlement beforehand. If they are drilled by the rule in ordinary times, then in urgency it will be like going along a familiar road and the many strengths will join as one. And only when all is quiet and unhurried and unshaken, with no sound of men within the wall, will there be no fear of collapse and defeat. Though such things lie in what the commanders are to do of themselves, they cannot but be charged again.

Having already received the charge of the west, I your servant ought to set out early and pour out my dull talents to the full. So I would have taken the road despite my illness, but the court's deliberation held it difficult. Unhappily my old illness has returned and my precarious breath is like a thread, and I lie groaning in a private house; worry for public and for private alike burns my heart, yet I do not know what course to take. In my confusion I called my aide and dictated this aloud, so that the words do not exhaust the sense; yet it too is bound to the one foolish view I have got for the moment. Would it not be well to send it down to the Border Defense Council to be deliberated and disposed of?