Asking Brigade Commander Shen's Intent, and the Orders Sent to Each Camp呈禀沈遊擊指意後分付各陣狀

The particulars of the Ming general's going to and from Busanwon (釜山院) yesterday your servant reported in haste at dawn that day. Afterward, about daybreak, your servant went forward to the Brigade Commander's lodging to pay his respects, and then submitted a short letter.

The substance of the letter was this. "That Your Honour has fixed a boundary and generously set a term of fifty days is, your servant takes it, all set up for show, a plan to proceed slowly on purpose. Yet to a heart pressed and urgent there is not a little to doubt. Fifty days from now is the twentieth day of the eleventh month; can the remaining troops who face the enemy's ramparts endure to live in the open, and will the people who have fled into hiding escape freezing to death? The cruel and crafty enemy bring out a hundred schemes, and besides cutting the grass they cut the rice and the grain as well — are we to sit with folded hands and only look on? If we argue by the precedent of burning them out, how would it be to lead troops and ride out to drive them off, even though it be within the boundary? If they plot to gather their scattered men and join their strength within the walls, then wherever their cruel blades are turned we cannot but set a plan and meet it. And if it comes to cutting them down, will you then rebuke us for breaking the agreement? Weigh these particulars fully and give us at once a word of decision." And your servant then had Jin Hyonam (秦孝男) also set the matter out in full and report it.

Your servant went out ahead to the field and waited. The people of this district again blocked the road and cried out their complaints, as when he entered the district yesterday, and the Brigade Commander, seeming to pity them, comforted them with words and passed on. Coming to where your servant was, he rode past and did not come in, but only sent Hyonam with his answer.

"Today I must reach Gasan (嘉山), and the road is pressing and far, so in this I fall short of your kind intent. From the particulars you sent I understand well enough your earnest and urgent feeling. In acting thus I have no other intent whatever. The term of fifty days is already fixed and hard to move, so if in the meantime there be no great affair, then though they cut the rice and the grain there is no need to seize and cut them down. Yet to know oneself and to know the other is the first plan of the soldier's art; if there be an opening worth seizing and strength enough, then what harm though you win a great victory? My plan is already to sweep them away." So he said, and your servant warrants there is nothing to doubt. Only, we must weigh the situation and not for a moment forget the fight; and he said, "I shall return between the twenty-first and the twenty-second."

His intent from the first was truly such, yet those who looked on from beside did not know it in detail and suspected that he might have been bought over to making peace, so that each side doubted the other. Now, hearing these words, there is the more ground for it, enough to break the doubts and fears of places far and near. Even should he not come at once to our rescue, there is nothing to hinder our own advancing and withdrawing.

Your servant at once sent this intent by dispatch to the field and to where the Left and Right Defense Commanders are, bidding them consult together again, weigh the boundary and move their camps forward, sound out the enemy's condition, and await a convenient time. To Hwanghae, Gyeonggi and the other provinces a separate secret dispatch had already been sent when Yi Deoksun (李德淳) returned, charging them firmly to instruct all the generals throughout that they be not shaken by talk of making peace, but sharpen the more their resolve to serve the king, each rousing himself swiftly and advancing forward in turn.