Urgently Requesting That the Ming Grain Be Carried Up請急速輸運唐糧狀

As for the grain and fodder of Gyeonggi, your servant has been troubled about it all along, and knowing that it would surely come to such a ruin as this he has already reported it in several dispatches. Gyeonggi is barren and poor by nature, and after the ravages of war what fills the eye is ash heaps. Only such districts as Ganghwa and Gyodong seem somewhat whole, and last year's grain ripened well there; refugees and righteous troops and the rest fill the place, and the boats of the state and of private men gathered and moored there are beyond all counting.

Had measures been taken before the need arose — had fodder been gathered in Tongjin, Ganghwa, and those parts, fifty or sixty thousand sacks of it chopped fine and loaded into boats share by share, and had even a few of the island people been led out to carry it in by shares — the supply could have been kept up. As for the army grain: had the whole quantity now remaining been reckoned first, and, upon learning that the horse and men would want food within a few days, had it been carried up beforehand, and had grain from the storehouses of Naepo in Chungcheong Province and the seaboard of Jeolla Province, where grain is plentiful, been stacked up in the nearer districts and sent on to supply them when the time came, then matters would not have come to this want and dryness either.

Your servant hears that the boats that lay moored at Ganghwa the other day were given out privately one to another, so that not many are left, and that the laborers were not mustered and the carrying was not done in time either. Only once the business is upon our eyes do we begin to provide for it, and as the official papers go back and forth some days readily pass, so that for all the urging on every side it is hard to provide anything at once.

Of army grain there is now a little left, enough to hold out some days, but the beans for the horses have long since run dry and the dying horses lie one after another along the road. For the shape of things today your servant knows not what to do.

Yesterday the Ming general meant to withdraw and halt at Gaeseong, so your servant and Yi Deokhyeong (李德馨) and the rest pleaded with him in every way and got him to stay on for now. In the evening he called the interpreter and said quietly that he meant to press the troops coming behind to hurry and then advance and strike. Yet the enemy troops hold the capital in force, and whether our troops will win or lose seems hard to appoint beforehand. Should the days be drawn out and the thing last long, grain and fodder will both run dry and we shall be able neither to advance nor to withdraw; and the servant charged with this business could die ten thousand deaths and not repay the guilt of having ruined the state.

The ten thousand odd sacks of Ming grain now coming in could nearly keep up the supply if they arrived behind us in time, but there is as yet no word of their drawing near. Your servant does not know how far what is carried along the one road has now come. The river ice is already loosed, so let the carrying by boat also be seen to with haste, that the opening of the business be not lost. Let the court handle it with particular care. Bound by the urgency of the matter, your servant reports in haste yet again.