Urgent Report That the Ming Generals Barred Our Troops from Pursuing馳。啓。天將禁戢我軍不得追賊狀

Of the matter of the Ming troops entering the capital on the twentieth day of this month, report has already been made. Early that evening the Commander-in-Chief said to your servants, "I shall now send out troops to follow upon their heels; let your country's horse and foot advance together as well, and make haste to provide boats for crossing the river." Your servants, as had been charged before, had the two naval commanders of Gyeonggi and Chungcheong press the boats up from Yongsan, and fearing it might still be slow had the left inspector Seong Yeong (成泳) go in person and press them again. They also had the frontier commander Yi Bin (李薲), the inspector of Jeolla Gwon Yul (權慄), the Gyeonggi defence commander Go Eonbaek (高彥伯), the Pyeongan defence commander Jeong Huihyeon (鄭希玄), and Yi Sieon (李時言), defence commander for the three provinces, pick out their finest troops at Noryang and cross the river as had been charged the day before; and the monk-commander Yujeong's (惟政) troops too were to cross the river near Jeojado and join with the royal troops and righteous troops of the province ahead, to unite their strength and block and cut off the road.

Early on the morning of the twenty-first your servants saw the Commander-in-Chief and gave thanks for the recovery of the capital, and then went on to speak of making the troops advance; whereupon the Commander-in-Chief at once charged the senior commanders Zhang Shijue (張世爵) and Li Rubai (李如栢) to send out fifteen thousand troops and pursue. Your servant, fearing the boats for crossing would not be ready in time, went out to the Han River and oversaw them. The seagoing ships of the naval commander Jeong Geol (丁傑) and of Yi Bin (李蘋), naval commander of Gyeonggi, could not come up because the shallows were low, and the troops were ferried back and forth in more than fifty boats newly built by the Wa and four boats of our own. Of the horse and foot, five or six thousand had already reached the southern bank, and the rest crossed one after another until all were over.

But as your servants were going out they met Regional Commander Zu (祖總兵) on the road, coming back into the walls from the Han River, and it was said that he came back at the Commander-in-Chief's order. Your servants indeed already had their doubts. On reaching the riverside they paid their respects to Li Rubai; but Li Rubai said that his foot ached and pained him, and lay in the shade of a tree on the river bank, and the senior commander Zhang had already gone back. When the day drew in the commander Li too said his illness was heavy, and rode in a litter into the walls, and the Ming troops who had already crossed all crossed back again. Your servants could not master their wonder and pain and oppression, and toward dusk went again outside the Commander-in-Chief's gate and looked into the matter.

Presently the Commander-in-Chief sent out a clerk to say, "A dispatch has come from Military Commissioner Song (宋經略) forbidding the pursuit, and I too cannot act as I please. I hear besides that the enemy are going with the Ming envoys and the two princes behind them. If your country's horse and foot can indeed sweep them away, then it would still be well enough though the envoys came to harm; but if they cannot, it will only bring hurt upon the envoys and the princes, and there is in truth no profit in it for your country. And if the military commissioner hears of it, he will surely blame me as well for having lost what is fitting in the leading of the army." His words were very many and cannot all be set down; but in general all of them meant that he did not wish the troops to advance.

Your servants answered, "The Wa fellows are crafty and fierce, and go without sending back the princes and the people they have taken captive. We ought to follow upon their heels with a heavy force, and only after a fearful mind has arisen in them is there hope that the princes and the people will come back to the country. If now the troops are gathered in and there is no pursuit, what will the enemy shrink from? And they will surely take hold of Yeongnam, so that their vicious designs will be hard to reckon. When it comes to that, though the Ming troops should wish to pursue and crush them again, will it not be too late and hard to overtake them?" Thus they went back and forth several times, and withdrew when the night was deep.

At the third watch two Ming scouting soldiers seized Gwon Yul, governor of Jeolla, and brought him to the Commander-in-Chief, and questioned him upon his having crossed the river of his own will. Further, by the urgent word sent by the frontier commander Yi Bin and the defence commander Go Eonbaek and the rest, the Ming troops stood in a line along the riverside and would not let our troops advance; and Byeon Yangjun (邊良俊), Yi Bin's vanguard commander, was dragged along the ground with an iron chain about his neck and was grievously hurt and vomited blood; and Yi Bin too was held at the riverside and could not set out. Go Eonbaek reports besides that on the twenty-first day he drove his troops as far as the middle of the road, when the commander Zha (査將) led some twenty men and stood in a line on the road ahead and would not let them advance, and called Go Eonbaek and rebuked him in anger; and Go Eonbaek, having no choice, made the excuse that he was putting in order the business of entertaining them, but the commander Zha would not hear it at all, and held him and did not let him go.

The Commander-in-Chief's sending out pursuing troops to cross the river was done because he found it awkward that your servants pressed him so hard, and he merely made a show of pursuit, while in truth he had no intent of making the troops advance. And that is why Zhang Shijue made an excuse and came back and Li Rubai pleaded illness and did not go forward, and commanders and soldiers alike had no mind to fight. Only at the end did he copy out the military commissioner's paiwen (牌文) and show it, and declare the reason he could not act as he pleased. Thus the words by which he blurs and blocks the matter shift this way and that from moment to moment.

This is indeed because your servants' sincerity is shallow and cannot move others; yet it is also because the military commissioner and the Commander-in-Chief and the several commanders settled their design long ago, so that it is nearly beyond disputing by word of mouth. Even our own country's troops are blocked everywhere and cannot advance, and the pain and oppression reach to heaven. That your servants could not strive of themselves to strike the enemy and repay the enmity of the royal shrine and the altars of state, and that matters have come to this pass, leaves them only weeping and shedding tears. We ask that your servants' guilt be punished first and that they be put out of their heavy charge, and that the mind of the soldiers and the people, who all share this anger, be solaced.