Providing the Army Grain, and Requesting a Levy before the Season Passes料理糧餉且請急時募粟狀

Since the main army entered the walls on the twentieth day of the fourth month, the army grain carried by boat from Honam and Hoseo — rice and beans together more than forty-six thousand seok — has already all been drawn and used. Of the enemy's grain left in the Yongsan granary the amount is no more than some two thousand seok, and it is upon this grain that the supply is now being kept up, so that in the state of things it will not last a day or two before it too is gone. Besides this, the grain left in the Wa quarters within the walls does not come to a thousand seok. The expenditure of our own country in the several places, and the cost that goes daily into the works at the royal tombs, are no small amount either. If the Ming troops stay long, the state of things will of necessity require that the supply be kept up from the rice taken in land tax; yet of the land tax already taken in and come to hand in time there is barely some ten thousand seok, and how many days shall we hold out with that?

Your servant hears, bowing low, that of the resources of Honam and Hoseo there is not an inch left over. And yet the Ming troops staying at Sangju, and of late Vice Commander Luo (駱參將) and Brigade Commander Song (宋遊擊) and the rest, each lead their troops and turn toward Honam again; and for the strength of the two provinces to supply this side and that is a thing the state of affairs cannot bear at all. If the army grain of the capital and of the country outside dries up all at once there will be no way to provide it again, and the oppression and urgency of it cannot be set out in words.

The Ming provisions that lie at Uiju ought to be shipped up in haste by boat. But Yun Gyeongnip (尹敬立), the royal inspector for the transport, had the Ming provisions wholly in his charge from the first and is now far off in Gyeongsang Province, so that even the Ming provisions that have come to hand have no one to take charge and oversee them, and there is no want of leakage and loss. Even in ordinary times the Board of Taxation has the whole housekeeping of the state in its charge and its office is of the utmost weight, and though the senior officials and the junior officials were full in number and watched over their office, they still did not escape the care of losses. Now the capital has been newly recovered and matters stand as though the state were being set up anew; and since Minister Yi Seongjung (李誠中) went down there is no other senior official in the Board of Taxation, and the junior officials are all men holding office for the time being, so that at every matter things fall apart and come to no order, which is a great oppression. While the Minister is coming up, let one be appointed in haste from among the second and third ministers and sent, and let him have two or three junior officials under him to take charge and oversee by divisions; then the expenses of the state may be nearly provided for.

In general there is no care today greater than the army grain running out. In such a place as Gyeongsang Province the enemy soldiers hold the seacoast and their power stretches further, while within the province public and private alike have nothing and the heaped corpses lie pillowed upon one another. Though one would pick out troops and block and hold, there is no plan to be had by any device. Your servant's thought is that grain should be bought up in those districts of Jeolla Province where the barley has ripened a little. If several thousand seok be got, the want of army grain may be made up and the starving people relieved besides. The blank warrants of appointment (空名告身) your servant brought the other day are not many in number, and there are no fitting posts below the fourth rank among them. We ask that the office concerned be made to prepare several hundred sheets in haste and send them, and so widen the road of gathering grain. If this season be missed, then a few months hence, though we should wish it, there will be little barley among the people and there will surely be none to answer the call.

Let the court deliberate upon the several items laid before you above with urgency, and dispose of them. Of late the business of the capital's army grain and the like is wholly in the charge and ordering of Yu Hong (俞泓), Right State Councillor, and he will surely have reported every twist of it already. Yet the matter is bound up with what is oppressive and urgent, and so your servant lays the outline of it before you as well.