Urgent Report of a Victory馳。啓捷報狀

The state of the taking of the enemy east and west of the capital of late will surely be set out in full in the Field Marshal's report. On the ninth of this month Go Eonbaek's (高彥伯) ambush officers Yi Geugil (李克一), Noh Song (盧松) and Baek Unse (白雲世) and the rest led two hundred and more soldiers, together with seven of Bak Myeonghyeon's (朴名賢) scouting troops, and met the enemy at Sahanri (沙閑里) outside the Dongso Gate. The enemy soldiers were nearly two thousand and more, but our troops went out suddenly and closed with them, and the enemy fled and broke. Of Go Eonbaek's troops seventeen heads were taken and of Bak Myeonghyeon's troops one head; and of the enemy who were struck by arrows and fell over, the number cannot be reckoned.

It might have been a great victory, but the soldiers' starving and weariness being already severe, they could not ride in pursuit and came back. Presently the enemy's company arrived in great numbers behind them; and had they been surrounded as before, our troops, their starving being severe, could hardly have got themselves clear. But the enemy looked on and did not dare come forward, and so they could return to camp unharmed, and besides not one man was killed or hurt, which is a great joy and good fortune.

Only, the military grain being not ample, each man is given one doe and seven hop a day out of the Ming troops' provisions, in part dry-field rice and in part rice rotted by water. After a soldier has received his provisions he shares it besides with his starving wife and children, so that he eats barely half a doe of rice in a whole day, and even so it cannot be given amply. The look of starving fills their faces and they have no strength at all; so that though they have the mind to show their valor and strike the enemy, they have no way to it, which is sorely painful and pressing, and your servant does not know what to do.