Miscellaneous Notes After the Record錄後雜記

In the autumn of the muin year a long star stretched across the sky, shaped like white silk, and it went from west to east and vanished after some months. About the muja year the water of the Han River was red for three days. In the sinmyo year a stone rose up of itself behind Taepyeongwon in Juksan, and a willow that had fallen over in Tongjin County stood up again. Among the people a rumour went about that the capital was to be moved.

Again, fish that had been got in the East Sea came to be got in the West Sea, and little by little reached as far as the Han River. Haeju had always been a place where herring were got, but in the past ten years and more they were not got there at all and moved to the Liaodong sea, and the people of Liaodong called them 「the new fish」.

Again, one day the people of the Eight Stations of Liaodong took fright at one another for no cause, saying 「Robbers are coming from Joseon. Ten palanquins of the Joseon king's sons have reached the Amnok River」; and as they passed the word one to another the old and the young went up into the mountains, and only after some days did it settle.

Again, an envoy of ours, coming back from Beijing, lodged at the house of a man surnamed Ha at Geumseoksan, and the host said: 「A Joseon interpreter said to me, 〈If you have ale three years old and ale five years old, do not spare it but enjoy it. Before long soldiers will come, and though you have ale, who will there be to drink it?〉」 For this reason, it is said, the people of Liaodong suspected that Joseon had some other intent, and were much frightened and in doubt.

The envoy came back and reported the matter. The court, holding that among the interpreters there must be some who made up words and stirred up trouble and slandered their own country, seized several men and questioned them in the courtyard of Injeongjeon, using the knee-press and burning; but none of them confessed, and they died. This was about the sinmyo year, and the next year came the Japanese troubles at last.

By this one may know. When a great disorder is about to rise, though men do not perceive it, what appears in the signs has more than one thread. As for a white rainbow piercing the sun and the Great White star crossing the sky, there was no year without them, and men looked on them as ordinary things. There was also always a black vapour within the capital, neither smoke nor mist, that curled upon the ground and reached to the sky; and so it was for ten years and more. The other strange things are hard to set down in full. It may well be said that Heaven's warning to men is deep and earnest; only men do not look to it.

The line in Du Fu's (杜甫) poem, 「The white-headed crows on the wall-top of Chang'an fly by night and cry above the Yeonchu Gate」, sets down in the main a strange happening.

On the seventeenth day of the fourth month of the imjin year, word of the enemy came, and court and people alike were in confusion. All at once a strange bird cried in the rear garden and flew through the air, now near, now far; though it was but one bird its voice filled the city, and there was no one who did not hear it. All day and through the night its crying did not cease for a moment, and so it was for ten days and more. The royal carriage went out of the city to take refuge and the enemy came into the city, and the palaces and the ancestral shrine and the altars and the houses of state and of private men were emptied all at once. Ah, that too was strange indeed.

Again, in the fifth month I followed the royal carriage to Pyeongyang and stayed at the house of Kim Naejin (金乃進). Naejin said to me: 「Some years ago jackals came into the city several times, and the water of the Daedong River was red, the eastern bank very turbid and the western bank clear. Now indeed we have this calamity.」 At that time the enemy had not yet reached Pyeongyang. I heard these words and kept silent and did not answer, but my heart was not glad; and before long Pyeongyang too fell.

In general the jackal is a beast of the wilds, and it is not fitting for it to come into the markets of a city. As with the things set down in the Spring and Autumn Annals — the guyok birds that came and nested, the six ik birds that flew backward, the many river deer, the presence of the yeok (蜮) — it was rare that there was no answering event. Heaven's showing to men is plain and the sage's leaving of a warning is deep; can one not fear, can one not take care?

Again, between the spring and the summer of the imjin year the Year Star stayed in the Mi and Gi constellations. Mi and Gi are the allotted field of the land of Yan (燕), and it has been said from of old that our country shares an allotted field with Yan. At that time the enemy's troops drew nearer day by day, and men's hearts were troubled and afraid and did not know what to do. One day a royal edict came down saying 「The star of fortune is now over our country, and the enemy is not to be feared.」 In the main it was because His Majesty's intent was to borrow this and so calm men's hearts. Yet after this, though the capital was lost, in the end the old order was won back and the royal carriage turned to the old capital; and Hideyoshi (秀吉), the enemy's chief, in the end could not work his wicked treason but died of himself. How should this be by chance? In the main there is nothing that is not of Heaven.

The Japanese are the most crafty, and in their use of troops there is hardly a single thing that does not come out of deceit. Yet looking at the business of the imjin year, it may well be said that at the capital they were skilful and at Pyeongyang they were clumsy.

Our country had been at peace a hundred years and the people did not know war; and hearing of a sudden that soldiers were coming they fell over in panic, and far and near were swept away as by a broom, and all lost their wits. The Japanese, riding the force of splitting bamboo, came straight to the capital within ten days, so that the wise had no leisure to plan and the brave no leisure to resolve, and men's hearts broke down and could not be gathered up. This was a good device of the soldier's art and a skilful plan of the enemy; and so I said they were skilful.

Thereupon they trusted of themselves to the awe of their unbroken victories and did not look behind them, but scattered out into the several provinces and let them rage as they pleased. When troops are divided their strength cannot but weaken; and they strung their camps along a thousand li and wasted their days and drew it out long, which is what is meant in saying that the end of a strong bow cannot pierce even the thin silk of Lu. It comes near to what Zhang Shuye (張叔夜) said: 「The Jurchen do not know war; how should there be any who come deep in with a lone army and yet do their returning well?」

For this reason the Heavenly troops with forty thousand men struck and broke Pyeongyang; and once Pyeongyang was broken, those in the several provinces too were all robbed of their spirit. Though they still held Seoul as before, their great strength had already shrunk; and our people, who were in every quarter, blocked the roads and struck at them place by place, so that the enemy's head and tail could not come to each other's aid and in the end they could not but flee. And so I said they were clumsy at Pyeongyang.

Ah, that the enemy mistook their plans was our good fortune. Had our country truly had one commander who, with some tens of thousands of troops, watched his time and used a strange device to cut the long snake and split it at the waist — had he done this at the time of the defeat at Pyeongyang, their great commanders might have been taken sitting; and had he raised it south of Seoul, not one wheel of a cart would have gone back. Only after such a thing would the enemy's heart have been startled and their gall broken, so that for some hundreds of years they would not have dared look straight at us, and there would have been no more care to come.

At that time we were just then heaped with weakness and our strength could not do this, and the many commanders of the Heavenly Court also did not know to do so; and so the enemy were let come and go at their ease, with not the least chastisement or fear, and made their demands in ten thousand ways. Thereupon we went forward with a low device and sought to bind them with investiture and tribute. Can one bear the sighing, can one bear the regret? Even now the thought of it makes a man clench his arm.

In old days Chao Cuo (鼂錯) submitted a memorial on military affairs saying: 「In using troops and coming to battle, when blade meets blade there are three urgent things: the first is to gain the lie of the ground, the second is that the soldiers be practised, the third is that the gear be sharp.」 These three are the great essentials of war and that whereby victory and defeat are settled, and he who is made a commander cannot but know them.

The Japanese are practised in striking and fighting and their weapons are fine and sharp. In former times they had no muskets, but now they have them, and in the reach of their range and the skill of their hitting they are several times beyond bow and arrow. If we were to meet them in a broad field, with two lines facing and fighting by the book, it would be exceedingly hard to stand against them. For the skill of bow and arrow goes no further than a hundred paces, while the musket can reach some hundreds of paces and comes on like wind and hail; it is certain that it cannot be withstood.

Yet if we first choose the lie of the ground and get a place shut in by mountains and steep and thick with trees, and scatter archers there in ambush so that the enemy cannot see their shape, and shoot together from left and right, then though the enemy have muskets and spears and swords there is nowhere to use them, and we may win a great victory.

Here I take up one matter for proof. In the imjin year the enemy came into Seoul and day by day went out in parties to plunder outside the walls, so that not even the royal tombs were kept whole. A man of Goyang, the licentiate Yi No (李櫓), knew a little of handling a bow and had some boldness. One day he went with two companions, each with bow and arrows, into Changneung and Gyeongneung, when unlooked-for a great party of the enemy came out and filled the valley. No and the others had no plan what to do and ran into a thicket thick with vines. The enemy came and searched and went to and fro and peered about, and No and the others shot of a sudden from within, and all fell at the sound of the bowstring. They also shifted their place and went to and fro in a moment, so that the enemy could make still less of it. From then on, wherever they came, if they saw a thick thicket they fled from it afar and did not dare come near, and the two tombs were kept whole.

Seen by this, success and ruin follow upon the gaining or the losing of the lie of the ground. When the enemy were just then at Sangju, had Sin Rip (申砬) and Yi Il (李鎰) and the rest known to do thus, and first laid some thousands of archers in ambush over the thirty or forty li between Tocheon and Joryeong, so that the enemy could not reckon their many or few, they might have kept the enemy down. Yet with soldiers gathered like a flock of crows and troops not drilled they gave up that steep pass and strove with them on level ground, and it was right that they were beaten. I have spoken of this fully where I spoke of the turn of military affairs, but now I set it down particularly as well, to be a warning for the days to come.

A wall is a place to keep off violence and keep the people whole, and firmness ought to be made its chief thing. When the men of old spoke of the method of making walls they all said chi (雉), and what is called a thousand chi or a hundred chi is this.

In ordinary times I read coarsely and did not know what thing a chi was, and always took it for a salbaji. I once wondered: if the salbaji are but a thousand or a hundred, that wall would be exceedingly small and could not hold a multitude; what then is to be done? Only after the disorder did I get and read the Jixiao xinshu (紀效新書) of Qi Jiguang (戚繼光), and then I knew that a chi is not a salbaji but what is now called a gokseong (曲城) or an ongseong (甕城).

In general, if a wall has no gokseong and ongseong, then though each man hold one salbaji and shields be set up between them to screen off the arrows and stones from outside, one cannot see and stop the enemy pressing close beneath the wall. The Jixiao xinshu sets one chi at every fifty salbaji, standing out two or three gil beyond, with fifty salbaji between two chi so that one chi has charge of twenty-five salbaji each. With that, the force of the arrows is just then at its height and it is handy to look to left and right and shoot, so that the enemy has no way of clinging to the foot of the wall.

In the autumn of the imjin year, while I stayed long at Anju, I thought that the enemy were just then at Pyeongyang, and that if one morning they came down westward there was not one place before the king's temporary seat where they might be blocked and screened; and so, not reckoning my strength, I wished to mend Anju's wall and hold it. On the day of Jungyang I happened to go out to the bank of the Cheongcheon River, and looking back at the district's wall I sat silent and thought deeply a long while, and all at once I thought out one plan.

Outside the wall there ought to be raised, following the lie of the ground, separate walls jutting out, made after the system of the chi, hollow within so that men may go in, with gun-holes bored in the front face and to left and right so that guns may be fired from within, and watch-towers set above, the distance from tower to tower being a thousand paces and more. Into the great gun are put a few mal of iron shot the size of birds' eggs. When the enemy are gathered in numbers outside the wall and the shot goes out crosswise from two places, then not men and horses only, but even iron and stone, there is nothing that is not broken. Done thus, even if there are no troops holding the other battlements, if only some tens of men are set to hold the gun-towers the enemy will not dare come near. This is truly a subtle method of holding a wall; and though its system is modelled on the chi, its effect is ten thousand times better than the chi. For if the enemy already dare not come near within a thousand paces, then what are called the cloud ladder and the battering cart can none of them be used.

This was a thing I happened to think out, and at the time I reported it at once to the king's temporary seat, and afterwards spoke of it several times at the royal lectures as well. Wishing too to let men see that it was surely fit for use, in the spring of the byeongsin year I chose ground outside the Sugumun gate east of Seoul and gathered stones and set to making one; but it was not brought to pass, and other talk rose up in confusion, and it was given up and not worked at. If hereafter there be any who think far ahead, let them not throw away the words for the man's sake, but take up and work at this system, and the profit to the way of blocking and holding will be no small thing.

While I was at Anju my friend Kim Sasun (金士純) became right surveillance commissioner of Gyeongsang and sent me a letter saying 「I would mend the governing of Jinju and make it my plan to hold it to the death.」 Before this the enemy had once fallen upon Jinju and withdrawn without winning.

I answered Sasun: 「The enemy will surely come sooner or later to take revenge, and when they come they will surely use a great force, so that the holding will be a little harder than before. Only by setting up gun-towers and waiting will there be no care」; and then in the letter I spoke of their system in detail.

In the sixth month of the gyesa year, hearing that the enemy were striking at Jinju again, I said to my aide Sin Gyeongjin (辛慶晉): 「The business of Jinju is in great danger. If by good fortune there are gun-towers it may yet hold out, but if not it will be hard to hold.」 Soon after, going down to Hapcheon, I heard that Jinju had already fallen.

Jo Jongdo (趙宗道), magistrate of Danseong, was also a friend of Sasun's, and he said to me: 「Last year I was at Jinju with Sasun, and Sasun, seeing your letter, leapt up and called it wonderful, and at once went round the wall with two or three scholar friends of his staff and said that by the lie of the ground they ought to be set up in eight places, and pressed on the felling of timber and the floating of it down the river. The people of the district grudged the labour and said 〈Before, with no gun-towers, we still held it and drove off the enemy; why weary men now?〉 But Sasun would not listen, and the timber was already got and the work had been begun some days, when Sasun happened to fall ill and could not rise, and the business thereupon stopped.」 We grieved together once and parted.

Ah, Sasun's misfortune was the misfortune of ten million people of one walled town. This is truly fate, and not a thing that the strength of men can do anything about.

In the fourth month of the imjin year the enemy fell upon the inner districts one after another, and our troops broke and scattered at the mere sight of the enemy's force, and there was none who dared cross blades. The several ministers of the Border Defense Council gathered day by day below the palace and discussed plans for blocking and holding, but there was no plan.

Someone put forward the opinion: 「The enemy are good with spear and sword, and we have no firm armour to block them, and so cannot stand against them. We ought to make whole-body armour of thick iron, long enough that the body is not exposed, and if we put it on and go into the enemy's lines the enemy will have no opening to thrust at and we may win.」 Many held this right, and so artisans were gathered in numbers and beat and made it night and day. I alone held it not right, and said: 「Fighting with the enemy is a gathering like clouds and a scattering like birds, and quickness is prized; but once a man has thick armour over his whole body he will not master its weight and will not be able to move his body, so how should he hope to kill the enemy?」 After a few days they knew it was hard to use, and thereupon gave it up.

Again, the censors asked leave to see the chief ministers and speak of plans, and among them one man raised his spirit and reproached the chief ministers for having no devices. Those present asked 「What plan have you?」, and he answered 「Why not set up many high scaffolds along the Han River, so that the enemy cannot come up, and shoot down upon them?」 Someone said 「Can the enemy's bullets not come up either?」, and the man withdrew without a word, and those who heard it passed it about for a laughing-stock.

Ah, in war there is no fixed lie and in battle no fixed law. To meet the turn of things and make changes, to advance and withdraw, to gather and scatter, and to bring out strange devices without end — this lies in the commander alone. Then a thousand words and ten thousand plans are all of no use, and the whole lies in getting one man of a commander's stuff. The three courses Chao Cuo set out are the more earnest and the more needful, and not one of them may be left out; what good are all the other confused things?

Now a state chooses its commanders on the days when there is nothing afoot and charges its commanders when something is afoot; in the choosing, exactness is prized, and in the charging, singleness is prized. At that time the naval commanders of Gyeongsang Province were Bak Hong (朴泓) and Won Gyun (元均), and the land commanders were Yi Gak (李珏) and Jo Daegon (曺大坤), and these had not been picked for their ability. When the trouble broke out, the border commissioner, the defense commanders, the assistant commanders and the rest all came with their commissions received from the court, and each held the power of deciding alone and carried out his own orders and advanced and withdrew as he pleased, and they did not lead or belong one to another; this was to break the very warning about carrying corpses in carts, and by what should the business be brought to pass?

Again, what was reared was not what was used and what was used was not what was reared, and commander and soldier did not know one another; these are all things greatly shunned in the soldier's art. Why is it that, the cart in front having already overturned, those behind do not know to mend their ways, and to this day still follow in this same wheel track? To do thus and hope for nothing to go amiss is only to trust to luck. To speak of it, the words are very long and cannot be told in one or two. Ah, how perilous it is.

In the first month of the gyesa year, when the Heavenly troops left Pyeongyang, I went ahead before the army. At that time the ice of the Imjin River had thawed and could not be crossed, and so the commander-in-chief sent men one after another to press on the making of a floating bridge.

Coming to Geumgyo Station I saw that the magistrates of Hwanghae Province, with their clerks and people, were waiting with food for the great army and filled the fields. I called Yi Huiwon (李希愿), magistrate of Ubong, and asked how many men of his district he had with him, and he said 「Close on a few hundred.」 I gave the order: 「Lead your district's men up the mountains at once and dig arrowroot, and meet me tomorrow at the mouth of the Imjin River. Do not miss the term.」 And Huiwon went.

The next day I slept at Gaeseong Prefecture, and at dawn the day after I hurried to Deokjindang and saw that the river ice was not yet wholly thawed, and that floes half a body deep were drifting over the ice and no boat could come up from below. Gwon Jing (權徵), inspector of Gyeonggi, Yi Bin (李蘋), the naval commander, Han Deogwon (韓德遠), magistrate of Jangdan, and a thousand and more men of the Changui and Chuui forces were gathered on the river bank, but all had their hands bound and no plan.

I gave the order and called up the men of Ubong to offer up their arrowroot, and twisted it into great cables as thick as two or three arm-spans and long enough to cross the river. On the banks north and south of the river I set two posts each, facing one another, and laid one crossbar within them. Fifteen strands of the great cable were drawn out and spread across the river and their two ends tied to the crossbars. The river's breadth being already wide and far, the cables sank half in the water and would not rise, and many said 「It only wastes men's strength.」

I had the thousand and more men each take a short stick of two or three feet, thread it through the arrowroot cable and turn it round a few times with all their strength, and they held one against another and rose and stood ranged like the teeth of a comb. Thereupon the many cables were bound taut and rose high and curved like the back of a bow, and plainly took the shape of a bridge. Slender willows were cut and spread over it, and grass laid thickly over that, and earth added. The Tang army saw it and rejoiced greatly, and all took up their whips and galloped their horses across, and the gun-carts and the arms all crossed by it. Before long those crossing grew more and more and the twisted cables slackened a good deal and came close to the water, so that the great army crossed by a shallow ford; but there was no blame.

I thought that at the time it was all of a sudden and not much arrowroot was got; had we got twice as much again, thirty strands, it would have been tauter and would not have slackened. Afterwards I looked at the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and found that, when the troops of Qi struck Kui (巋), the ruler of Liang, and Kui blocked them together with Lu Teng (陸騰), the commandant of Zhou, the men of Zhou raised Anchok Fortress on the southern bank at Hyeopgu and drew a great cable across the river and wove reeds to make a bridge and carried their grain across; and this was the very method. I had said I happened to think it out of myself, and did not know that the men of old had already done it, and over this I laughed once. Accordingly I set down the matter, to be a help in meeting sudden need hereafter.

In the summer of the gyesa year I lay ill at Muksa-dong in Hanseong, when one day the Heavenly commander Luo Shangzhi (駱尙志) came to me where I lay and asked after my illness most kindly, and then said: 「Joseon is just now weak and the enemy are still upon your borders, so that drilling troops and blocking the enemy is the most urgent business. You ought to take this time, while the Heavenly troops have not gone back, to learn the method of drilling troops; and if one teaches ten and ten teach a hundred, then within a few years you will have made them all picked soldiers and may guard the state.」

I was moved by his words and at once hurried to report it at the king's temporary seat, and then had Han Sarip (韓士立), of the royal guard under my command, call men together within the capital, and getting seventy and more men I asked that they go to Lord Luo's station and be taught. Luo picked ten men of his staff who were versed in tactics, Zhang Liusan (張六三) and the rest, and made them instructors, and had them drill night and day in the skills of spear and sword and nangseon and the like. Before long I went down to the south, and the business then lapsed.

His Majesty saw the report and sent it down to the Border Defense Council and had a separate directorate set up for the training, and had the chief minister Yun Dusu (尹斗壽) take charge of the business. In the ninth month of that year I was summoned from the south and went to the king's temporary seat, met the royal carriage at Haeju and escorted it back to the capital; and coming to Yeonan he commanded me again to take charge of the directorate's business in his stead.

At that time the hunger in the capital was severe. I asked that a thousand seok of Tang millet from the Yongsan granary be given out, and giving two doe a day to each man, those who answered the call gathered from every quarter. Jo Gyeong (趙儆), the director of the directorate, saying that the grain was little and could not be given to all, wished to set a rule and limit them; so he laid down one great stone and had those who would answer the call first lift the stone to test their strength, and also leap over an earthen wall about one gil high, taking in those who could and turning away those who could not. Men being hungry and worn and without strength, only one or two in ten came up to the mark, and some, seeking to be tested outside the directorate's gate and not getting it, fell down and died. Before long some hundreds and thousands of men were got, and battalion commanders (把摠) and company officers (哨官) were set up to divide them into sections and lead them.

They wished also to teach the musket, but there was no powder. There was a workman of the Armoury named Dae Pungson (大豐孫), who for having gone into the enemy's lines and boiled much powder and given it to the enemy had been shut up at Ganghwa and was to be put to death; and I particularly forgave him his death and had him redeem his crime by boiling saltpetre. The man was grateful and afraid and put out all his strength, so that what he boiled in a day was near ten geun. Day by day it was shared out to the several sections and they were drilled in firing night and day, and they were ranked by whether they were able or not and rewarded and punished. In a month and more they could hit a flying bird, and after a few months, matched against the surrendered Japanese and the best musketeers of the south, there was none they fell short of, and some they went beyond.

I submitted a memorial asking that the army's grain be provided for, and that more troops be gathered to fill out ten thousand and five camps be set, each camp with two thousand attached; and that every year half should stay within the walls and be taught and drilled while half went outside the walls and chose empty and fertile ground and worked garrison fields and stored up grain, taking turn and turn about; and that after a few years the springs of soldiers and of food would be deep and the root firm. His Majesty sent the proposal down, but the Board of War did not carry it out at once, and in the end it came to nothing.

Shen Weijing (沈惟敬) went in and out among the enemy from Pyeongyang onward, and his toil was not little; but because he made peace his name, he did not become one in whom our country took pleasure. At the very last, when the enemy stayed at Busan and long did not cross the sea, the investiture envoy fled back, and the Central Court picked Weijing to fill the place of vice envoy, and he went with envoy Yang into the land of Japan and came back without getting to the heart of it; and Yukinaga (行長) and Kiyomasa (淸正) and the rest came back and camped upon the sea.

Over this business the talk in China and in our country was loud, and all laid the fault upon Shen Weijing, and the worst said 「Weijing has plotted together with the enemy and bears the look of treason.」 Our monk Songun (松雲) went into Seosaengpo and saw Kiyomasa, and came back and said 「The enemy would fall upon great Ming, and their words are most outrageous」, and this was at once reported in full to the Heavenly Court, and those who heard were the angrier. Weijing, knowing that calamity was coming, was anxious and afraid and did not know what to do, and so sent a letter to Kim Myeongwon (金命元) setting out the first and last of it and clearing himself. In that letter he said:

「Sun and moon run swiftly, and what is past is as yesterday. I recall that in former days, when the Japanese plundered your country's bounds and came straight to Pyeongyang, they had already no eight provinces within their eyes. This old body, bearing its commission, looked into the Japanese state of things and watched the turn of it and soothed and dealt with them, and in the midst of the confusion got to meet with Your Honour and the field marshal Yi. With my own eyes I saw how the people of the whole western side of Pyeongyang were scattered and sorrowing and sore pressed, as though seated on a blanket of needles, unable in the morning to plan for the evening, and my heart was much pained. Your Honour went through that business in person, and so will not wait upon this old body's chatter.

This old body called Yukinaga by proclamation and met him at Geonboksan and made a charge with him that he should not come westward; and he heard the order and did not dare cross it for some months, and so it was drawn out until the great army came and until Pyeongyang was won. Had this old body not come at that time, it is not to be known but that the Japanese, riding on Lord Zu's (祖公) defeat, would have run to Uiju. That the people of the whole province of Pyeongyang did not take that poisonous harm — your country has no good fortune greater than this.

Before long the Japanese commander Yukinaga drew back and held the royal capital, and the commander-in-chief Hideie (秀家) and the lieutenants Mitsunari (三成) and Nagamori (長盛) and some thirty commanders more joined their troops and strung their camps and took the steep places and blocked the vital ones, so firm that they could not be broken; and after the battle of Byeokje they were harder still to go forward and take. At that time the minister Yi Deokhyeong (李德馨) saw this old body at Gaeseong, and saying that the enemy's strength was now spread out and the great army was moreover withdrawing, so that there was surely nothing to hope for the royal capital, he wept and said 〈The royal capital is the ground of our root, and if it is got the several provinces may be called in; but now the state of things has come to this, what shall be done?〉 This old body said 〈If the royal capital alone is won back and the several provinces south of the Han River are not, the state of things will also be hard to spread out.〉 Deokhyeong said 〈Truly, to get the royal capital is beyond hope. As for south of the Han River, the ruler and ministers of our small country can hold a foot and an inch of it themselves without difficulty.〉 This old body said 〈I shall try to plan with your country, that the royal capital be got and the several provinces south of the Han River be won back together, and that the princes and the attendant officials be sent back; only then will it be a whole country.〉 Deokhyeong wept and knocked his head on the ground in gratitude and said 〈If indeed it be so, it is Your Excellency's making our small country anew, and your merit and virtue will be neither shallow nor small.〉

Before long, while this old body stayed by boat on the Han River, Prince Imhae (臨海君) and the others sent a man hurrying from Kiyomasa's camp to say 〈If only we may return to our country, give them any land south of the Han River, whatever it be, as you please.〉 This old body did not follow it, and swore with the Japanese commanders, saying 〈Send them back if you will send them back; if you will not send them back, kill them as you please. Of the rest there is nothing to say.〉 The prince is one who is to be your country's heir; should this old body not dare to know his weight? Facing that time, I would sooner say kill them than consent to any other thing. When it came to Busan, I spent of my goods and did him every courtesy and bent myself to the prince in many ways; that I was haughty before and respectful after was because there is lateness and urgency in times and lightness and weight in affairs, and it could not be helped.

Under a few words the Japanese withdrew from the royal capital, and the camps along the road and the grain they left behind were beyond all reckoning, and all the several provinces south of the Han River were got, and the princes and the attendant officials came back to their country. In the end, with one letter of investiture, the several chiefs were bound, so that on a cramped shore at Busan they drew in their hands and waited three years upon orders and did not dare move rashly.

Then, when the discussion of the investiture was brought to pass, this old body bore its commission and was settling and quieting matters at the royal capital, and meeting Your Honour and Yi Deokhyeong's party again I said 〈Now I go to invest him, and the Japanese may perhaps withdraw; what is your plan for doing well by your country's business hereafter?〉 Deokhyeong answered at the word, 〈Doing well by what comes after is the charge of the ruler and ministers of our small country, and Your Excellency need not hang it in your mind.〉 This old body, first hearing those words, never failed to wonder at him as a man of great capacity and great discernment, a pillar-stone standing out alone. Now, searching into the facts of it, I seem to find that his writing and his achievement do not match; and this old body cannot but hold it a pity for Minister Yi.

Again, I have not heard that the several camps at Busan and Jukdo were struck at once, and this is this old body's charge. Yet the Japanese troops at Gijang and Seosaeng and the other places all crossed over, and their camps and stockades were all burnt, and the local officers who took them over all gave bonds. How then is it that, when Kiyomasa came once, not even one fight was heard of, and without the breaking of a single arrow the local officers slipped away and handed it over? Having said already that south of the Han River you could hold a foot and an inch of it yourselves, how has it come to this, that what was already got is lost again? And having said that doing well by what comes after was your small country's charge, how is it that no great plan is heard of, but only the one plan of wailing below the palace?

The art of war says 〈Strong and weak cannot stand against each other, and many and few cannot match each other〉; and this old body is not reproaching the several gentlemen charged with your country's business harshly, but only saying that when things are slack one orders the root, and when they are urgent one orders the branch. As for drilling troops and mending the defenses and watching the turn and soothing and dealing with them, the several worthies charged with your country's business too can only leave it aside and not ask after it.

Since crossing the sea this old body has seen your country's king four times, and the words asked and answered on either side came out of the breast and met the fitness of the time, with not a hair's breadth of borrowed dressing and not a hair's breadth of empty falsehood. The king's mind and this old body's mind shine clear upon both sides. This old body truly thought that, the eastern business having come to this, there would be no other care; when unlooked-for your country's scheming ministers and planning scholars brought out their wits in a hundred ways, and the work of setting us at odds came out by turns. Within, they angered the Heavenly Court with perilous words; without, they stirred up a breach with Japan with their weak soldiers; and as for Songun's one talk, it went moreover outside the bounds of propriety.

His words said 〈They will go in the van and strike great Ming〉, and 〈They will cut off and give away the eight provinces〉, and 〈The king will himself cross the sea and come back in submission〉; in a moment his words were two or three things. He knew only that these words would move the king's thought and stir the Heavenly Court to send out troops, and what he alone did not consider was that your country has only the eight provinces, so that if all were granted, and the king moreover granted to cross the sea himself in submission, then your country's ancestral shrine and altars and ministers and people would all become Japan's. And after that, what more would they take from the two princes? This old body thinks that not even a child of three feet would go so far astray in speech, and that Kiyomasa, violent as he is, would not go so far in insolence either.

Again, what he did not consider is that our own august Heavenly Court, in holding the fences without, has of itself a great body of rule, and in being once gracious and once stern has also of itself its time; that it would surely not set outside its reckoning a dependent state handed down for some hundreds of years, nor again let loose a rebel who does not keep his charge to take our fence captive. Such are reason and the state of things. This old body is most unable to look into affairs, yet the distinction of inner and outer, near and distant, and the feeling of crossing and following, facing and turning away, are also what every man knows easily. How much more, when I reverently bear the imperial order and settle and quiet this business, and the bearing of success and ruin, of joy and sorrow, is not light — should I dare slight your country's business and give no thought to it, or dare hide Japan's violence and not report it?

Your Honour is deep in the great body of rule and close in the state's business, and so I send this letter hurrying to you. I beg that Your Honour look into my original mind and report it up at once to the king, and let the several officers charged with the business know its reason in the main. Having said already that you look up to our Heavenly Court and make it your design for complete safety, you ought rather to hear its orders and follow its disposal and hope for blessing without end, and not merely toil day by day and grow clumsy day by day with devices that go too far. I entreat you most earnestly, and do not say all.」

Looking at this letter, what is before the royal capital is clear and may be proved, while what is after Busan does not escape divided words and hidden words. Yet merit and fault cannot of themselves screen one another, and so those who hereafter would judge Weijing ought to make of this the case on which they decide; and therefore I set it down.

Shen Weijing was a scholar of coaxing and persuading. After the battle of Pyeongyang he went again into the enemy's lines, and this is a thing men find hard. In the end he used mouth and tongue in place of armour and weapons, drove out the host of the enemy, and won back these several thousand li. At the last one thing went awry and he did not escape a great calamity; it is a sad thing.

In the main Hira Yukinaga (平行長) trusted Weijing most. While they were in Seoul, Weijing said quietly to Yukinaga: 「If you stay here long and do not withdraw, the Heavenly Court will send out a great army again, and it will come round by the West Sea and go forward into Chungcheong Province and cut off your road back; and then you will wish to go and not be able. Because I have been close with you from Pyeongyang onward I cannot bear not to tell you.」 At this Yukinaga was afraid and thereupon went out of the city. This matter Shen Weijing told himself to the right minister Kim Myeongwon, and what Minister Kim told me was as this.