Urgent Report on How Jinju Fortress Fell馳。啓晋州城陷曲折狀

In an urgent dispatch from Defense Commander Kim Eungseo (金應瑞), the statement of Manchun (萬春), a private slave who had been taken captive and escaped back, ran as follows.

While the attack on Jinju went on I was at their camp on a high peak, and I watched the whole course of the fighting point by point. The enemy pitched camp in twenty-eight places in all: east, west, and north of Jinju Fortress, five li out, and across the Nam River. On the day of the fighting the Japanese fired their guns first, and the men in the fortress fired their cannon (銃筒) as well. When the enemy pressed up under the wall, the men in the fortress loosed their arrows together like falling rain, and the enemy, many killed and wounded, fell back to their camps. At the third watch that night the enemy fired off many matchlocks and beat drums and raised a great clamor and shouting, but the men in the fortress were not shaken.

On the third day the enemy cut young pines and brush and made empty sacks, filled them with earth, and raised four mounds about thirty paces outside the wall; they also built a four-story tower some nine gil (길, about the height of a man) high, from which to look down into the fortress and to use as a platform for their guns. While they were raising the mounds and building the tower the men in the fortress shot at them without number and very many were killed; but the enemy took no account of living or dying, dragging the dead away while the living pressed forward, and in a few days it was done. Many climbed up on it and fired their guns without number, yet the men in the fortress were not startled or afraid in the least, and showed instead a high and exultant spirit.

At dusk on the sixth day, after the enemy had fallen back to their camps, the enemy from all the camps gathered in one place, and the men in the fortress fired a jincheonnoe (震天雷, a heaven-shaking thunder shell), which fell three times among them. Just as the crowd of the enemy were looking at the thing to see what it was, it burst, and those struck and killed were beyond all counting; the enemy did not dare to fight and fell back again. On the seventh day the men in the fortress fired their cannon once more, and again many of the enemy died.

Having failed to win in battle again and again, they were on the point of drawing their troops off when the enemy hit upon another scheme. One day they felled trees and made planks. On the east side there was a great scholar tree (회화나무), and one Japanese climbed it and saw where the fortress was strong and where weak; afterward they laid the planks down outside the wall and dug in beneath them, working their way little by little to the foot of the wall. At midday on the eighth day more than thirty bal (발, an armspan) of the wall suddenly came down. The Japanese who had climbed the scholar tree blew a conch horn once, and the Japanese from all the camps, some mounted and some on foot, charged in all together. The men in the fortress brought out bow and gun and spear and sword and fought back with all their strength, but the enemy host defied death and leapt in over the corpses. Those holding the fortress, their position gone and their strength spent, drew back and huddled in one corner, and the enemy, already inside, met us point to point, and both sides shed blood in the fighting, and the dead were beyond all counting. The corpses were heaped like a mountain inside the fortress, half of them theirs and half ours, and the number of our countrymen who drowned and floated up cannot be known either.

On the day the fortress fell they cut down and killed every soul without distinction of man, woman, or child; the next day they killed the men and took the women captive, put them on ships, and sent them ahead to Busanpo. The Japanese stayed on in Jinju and day after day burned and plundered the neighboring districts of Goseong, Hadong, Gonyang, and such places. The day after that, ten Japanese, some mounted and some on foot, came with a document stamped with a round seal, and the crowd of Japanese put their heads together and vied to read it, saying, "It is our king's command that we turn the army back at once and come home," and they rejoiced. The next day again the whole Japanese host went off toward Changwon and Gimhae, and I followed along, but longing for my home village I escaped and have come to report this.

Again, according to the statement of Ju Uisu (朱義壽), who had been taken captive and escaped back, it ran as follows.

At the place where the ground was level by the wall newly raised when the Japanese withdrew from Jinju last year, they made eight siege platforms (山臺) in all, and from them looked down into the fortress and fired much shot. These platforms were screened with bundled bamboo, and since the bundles did not join one another, even when the Hyeon-class cannon (玄字銃筒) was fired and struck home it merely pierced them and could not bring them down. The commander Yi Jongin (李宗仁) fought hard day after day. The enemy bundled bamboo and, under cover of night, set the bundles in a row along the moat, so that arrows and stones could not get through; then from within the bundles they threw tiles and gravel in confusion into the moat and against the foot of the wall, and in a short while it was filled up level. When a dozen or more of the enemy in iron armor rushed to the foot of the wall and set about tearing it down, Yi Jongin said, "The matter is urgent," and at once shot great arrows from the shooting platform (射臺) and pierced seven of them, so that the enemy drew back a little. At that moment the Chungcheong Army Commander, who had been hidden behind the parapet, heard that Yi Jongin had shot seven of the enemy dead and in his joy stood up and raised his head to look; and just then a shot struck his head and went through his brow, and he fell forward on the ground and was carried off at once. From the time they were first surrounded Hwang Jin (黃進) had held out with all his strength, carrying earth and stones on his own back until his shoulders and back bled.

Before long the enemy also joined great planks into a chest shaped like a coffin, wrapped the outside in several layers of raw oxhide, and loaded it on a cart. The enemy got inside it and pushed it straight up to the foot of the wall, and with iron tools began to tear the wall down. From inside the fortress they threw straw and brushwood in confusion, poured on oil, and set fire to it, and now and then burned one away; but the enemy had already pulled out three or four of the stones that bore up the foot of the wall, so that a hole opened and the wall was ready to fall. Just as no plan could be found inside the fortress, one of the enemy took an iron awl and, shouting loudly, went straight forward and pulled out the great stone above the hole, and the wall came down at last. From within they stopped the gap up again with timber and thorn brush, and though the enemy defied death to come in, the men in the fortress too fought to the death, and the enemy could hardly get through.

It happened that the troops of Kim Cheonil (金千鎰), Commissioner for Raising Righteous Troops (倡義使), were holding the north wall, and on hearing that the wall had been breached they were the first to take fright and waver, and they abandoned the wall and fled. The enemy saw it and climbed the wall on the north side with bamboo ladders. When three of the enemy took hold of the parapet and shouted, the whole host came in on every side and the fortress could not be held. Yi Jongin alone stayed at the place he was holding and did not leave off shooting his arrows, but before long he was struck by a shot, and with the blood pouring from him he fell forward and could not recognize anyone. Uisu could not hold him up and raise him, and in the end fled himself.

The urgent dispatches from the several places and the statements taken differ in being fuller or briefer, but in the main they all agree. The loyalty of Yi Jongin, Hwang Jin, and the rest, who fought hard and gave their lives for the country, deserves to be honored and praised the more. The generals Kim Cheonil, Choe Gyeonghoe (崔慶會), and the others, on hearing that the fortress had fallen, held one another and wailed aloud on Chokseongnu Pavilion, and then threw themselves from the cliff below and died.

Inside the fortress the corpses are heaped like a mountain, and for thirty li around the stench makes it impossible to come near; the public buildings and the people's houses stand empty with nothing in them, and the parapets too have all been leveled flat. The enemy have withdrawn, but there is no prospect of the place being made whole and gathered again. Yet this is the throat of the two southern provinces and the land that serves as their rampart. Those who were inside the fortress are all dead, but the people left in the districts round about have fled and hidden in the mountain valleys, and now that the enemy has withdrawn they must be gathered back in good time. Further, this year's grain within those bounds has turned out rather well, and if local bandits go about in bands as they please and there is no one to take charge of the district, the people who are left will not be able to come back and find their old homes even if they wish to. I meant to send an acting Magistrate (假牧使), but with no suitable man at hand I had no choice but to have Bak Jongnam (朴宗男), the Detached Commander, lead some tens of soldiers and hurry there to look into it, then admonish the people and put a stop to raiding and plundering, and to give him the charge of holding the place for the time being while awaiting the court's disposition.