Dispatch Asking That the Ming Troops Come Out Quickly and Strike the Enemy急請。天兵討賊狀

The amounts of grain remaining in various places for the entertainment of the Ming troops your servant has already set forth in a dispatch. Whether troops have been asked for or not, whether the coming out of the troops and horses will be early or late, and all other movements besides, your servant has had no word of at all, and is deeply vexed. Anju lies hard by the enemy's den, so one cannot but fear the unlooked-for.

The grain shipped in from various places still lies loaded in the ships and has not been brought into the government granaries. Among them, those who shipped in the land-tax rice of the Asanchang granary were at sea for several months on the tribute transport from a distant place, and having come here they are detained a long while again and plead their case daily. Your servant has admonished them in various ways and had them always wait a little, and has sometimes given them provisions to spare them hunger. But the autumn air grows ever higher and it is hard to keep thinly clad men here by force, so disposing of it is truly difficult.

Looking just now at the report sent on by Governor Yi Wonik (李元翼), the state of things among the enemy is extremely hard to fathom. In the main, these enemy are fighting a thousand li from home, yet we have not once greatly broken their edge, and since entering Pyeongyang they hesitate and do not advance, so that there must be some crafty design in it. Together with this, the Ming troops and our troops have fallen back in defeat one after another, the killed and wounded among the riverside local soldiers grow more numerous by the day, and the troops of the three districts have collapsed and scattered as well. What the great commander at Sunan leads does not exceed a few thousand, of whom the better half are unusable, and at the place where the Marshal is halted there are only a hundred or two hundred militia, with no other troops to add strength and keep the line supplied. Should the enemy soldiers gather in numbers and spill out along separate roads, the shape of it would be far too much for us to hold off on left and right. Your servant worries night and day and cannot overcome his sense of how pitiable it is.

The present written statement of the Japanese enemy, to your servant's mind, cannot but be made known to the Ming court quickly. Further, we should earnestly set forth how vicious and cruel the enemy's design is, and only after a plan has been laid to join strength and sweep them away before the enemy can gather will there be no trouble behind. If this is done the Ming commanders too will surely heed it, and we shall very nearly be free of the regret of being too late to meet the matter.