Eulji Mundeok乙支文德

Of Eulji Mundeok the line of descent is not known in detail. He was settled and hard by nature, he had wit and reckoning, and he knew how to compose in writing as well.

In the years of Kaihuang and Daye of the Sui, Emperor Yang sent down an edict to attack Goguryeo. Then Yuwen Shu, great general of the guard of the left wing, went out by the road of Buyeo, and Yu Zhongwen, great general of the guard of the right wing, by the road of Nangnang, and with the nine armies they came to the Amnok.

Mundeok took the king's command and went to their camp to make a false surrender; in truth he wished to see where they were empty and where they were full. Yuwen Shu and Yu Zhongwen had earlier received a secret order: if the king or Mundeok should come, they were to take him. Zhongwen and the rest were about to hold him, but Liu Shilong, right assistant of the department of state affairs, was the commissioner of consolation and firmly stopped them. So they let Mundeok go back, and then they repented deeply of it. They sent a man to deceive Mundeok. "There is more that I would say. You may come again." Mundeok did not look back, but crossed the Amnok and went away.

Yuwen Shu and Yu Zhongwen, having now lost Mundeok, were uneasy within. Shu wished to go back because the provisions were spent. Zhongwen argued that if they pursued Mundeok with their best troops there could be merit in it, but Yuwen Shu stopped him.

Zhongwen was angry and said, "The general leans on a host of a hundred thousand and cannot break a small bandit. With what face will he see the emperor?" Yuwen Shu and the rest could not help but follow him, and they crossed the Amnok and gave chase.

Mundeok saw that the Sui soldiers had a hungry look, and so, wishing to wear them out, he ran away beaten whenever they fought. Yuwen Shu and the rest won seven battles in a single day. Trusting now in his sudden victories, and pressed as well by the talk of the many, he went forward at last, crossed the Salsu to the east, came within thirty li of Pyeongyangseong, and made his camp with a mountain at his back.

Mundeok sent a poem to Zhongwen.

"The divine plan has fathomed the ways of heaven, the subtle reckoning has exhausted the ways of earth. The battle is won and the merit already high; know what is enough, and I pray you stop."

Zhongwen answered him with a writing and tried to persuade him.

Mundeok sent an envoy again to make a false surrender and asked of Shu, "If you will turn the army back, I shall bring the king to appear at the place where the emperor is staying."

Yuwen Shu saw that his soldiers were worn and broken and could fight no more, and he reckoned too that Pyeongyangseong was steep and firm and hard to take at a stroke, and so he took their deceit as his occasion and went back, marching in a square formation.

Mundeok sent out his troops and plundered and struck them on all four sides, so that Yuwen Shu and the rest fought as they went. In autumn, the seventh month, they came to the Salsu, and when half the army had crossed, Mundeok pressed his troops forward and struck their rear guard, and killed Xin Shixiong, general of the garrison guard of the right. At this the armies all broke up and could not be held. The generals and the soldiers of the nine armies fled back, and in one day and one night they reached the Amnok, having gone four hundred and fifty li.

At first, when they crossed the Liao River, the armies were three hundred and five thousand men in all; and when they came back to Yodongseong there were only two thousand seven hundred.

Kim Busik gives his judgment.

Emperor Yang's campaign at Liaodong sent out a host such as had never been seen in former ages. Goguryeo was one small country off in a corner, and yet it was able to hold him off, and not only to keep itself whole but to wipe out nearly the whole of his army; and this was the strength of Mundeok alone. An old writing says, "Without men of worth, can a country be governed?" True indeed.