Requesting a Levy and Drill, and Begging to Be Replaced請募兵鍊習因乞遞免狀

Your servant has just seen the draft report sent by Kim Myeongwon (金命元), and the business of Gyeongsang Province is perilous and urgent in the extreme, and the enemy's designs are vicious and hard to reckon, so that he cannot master the chill at his heart. Besides, in the left and right circuits of Gyeongsang the war's fire and the bad harvests, going on year after year, have scorched the land red, and the people are nearly all dead and white bones cover the fields. Unhappily, in the right circuit the army commanders have died one after another and the governor too has departed the world, so that the hearts of men have nothing to attach themselves to, and of such matters as the blocking and holding of the defence there is no hope of disposing; and so the cares of every kind have come to this pass. Your servant, ill though he is, is anxious and pressed night and day and does not know which way to go.

Yesterday the Ming commander Vice Commander Luo (駱參將) came to ask after your servant's illness and stayed a while, and he too was much concerned at this. He said that the military commissioner (經略) and those below him all have words that are less than content, and told your servant: "The Commander-in-Chief is now about to gather his troops and go back, and yet the Wa still stay and do not go. The Commander-in-Chief's intent is perhaps to leave the horsemen here and have them camp and hold. But if the horsemen stay, the burden of them is like that of the Wa and the region will hardly bear it. Among the southern commanders there is none fit to stay, and the soldiers too have been long from home and none of them wish to remain. Only Liu Ting's (劉綎) troops have newly come, and that man is my own kinsman. Whether he wishes to stay I do not know, but if he stays here there will be profit in it. You should send urgent word to the king at once, or send a dispatch to the military commissioner and the Commander-in-Chief, and so have it disposed of."

The staying of troops must surely become a great burden. Yet the enemy soldiers have not withdrawn, and it is to be feared that it can hardly be dispensed with either. Still more, the troops of the south are from the first good at blocking the Wa, and their drilling and teaching will surely be a long and far-reaching benefit to our country. But this is not a thing for your servant, foolish as he is, to weigh out beforehand as gain or loss; it rests only upon the court's reckoning it a hundredfold and dealing with it well and in haste.

The business of making ready against the enemy today grows more urgent from one hour to the next. To pick out quick-witted soldiers and attach them in shares to the Ming commanders, that they may be taught the ways of war and of weapons and implements, is the very first thing. And yet a month and more has passed since the enemy withdrew, and not one thing has been set out and disposed of. The other day Vice Commander Luo picked out a hundred soldiers of Pyeongan Province and led them, but those soldiers pleaded privately on their own behalf and went back before long. Of late your servant, taking counsel with the vice commander, has gathered and got within the walls a dozen or so artisans of fire-weapons and some thirty men young enough to be taught, and from today has sent them to the vice commander to learn and practise. Only, it is after they are helped with provisions that they will not scatter, and so he would take out the rice left fallen in the enemy's dens within the walls and give it as wages. Hereafter those who answer the call will surely not stop at these; and if the court early draws up the articles, and picks out two commanders apart to lead them divided into a left and a right company and drills them night and day, and goes on to pick out more picked and swift men from the outer provinces to be taught in turn, then, as your servant laid before you the other day, there will be some result of it. If it be left to no purpose again, nothing at all will be accomplished.

Of your servant's illness the great force of it has somewhat abated, but his vital strength is greatly broken down, and even within one room he rises only after leaning upon a staff. As for his spirit and his thinking, they are overturned and confused the more grievously, and he can by no means dispose of the weighty affairs of war and the state. Thinking with pain upon the affairs of the state he would load his sick body on a cart and go down south, but his strength can hardly bear it, and there is nowhere for him to escape his guilt. Your servant's thought is that only after the court disposes of it early and puts, it may be, another high minister in his place to take charge of the south-east and govern it and go forward to the urgent juncture, will there be little to repent of afterward.