Authors: Samuel Hawley
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In April of 1598 news of a rebellion in
Liaodong Province on China’s eastern frontier necessitated the postponement of the second Ming offensive, initially planned to begin in June. “Army Gate” Xing Jie hastened north from Seoul to take charge of the situation, and the troops then still on their way to Korea were diverted to the trouble spot until order was restored. Most of the Ming troops that had participated in the assault on Tosan were in the meantime sent south again following a month of recuperation in Seoul to establish camps in towns across central and northern Kyongsang Province. General Ma Gui himself returned south in April and made his headquarters at Sangju, halfway between the capital and the Japanese fortress chain. He and his men would spend the next several months waiting—waiting for reinforcements to arrive so that the second offensive could begin.
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Ming naval forces in the meantime were amassing along
Korea’s eastern coast. It had taken the Chinese government a long time to arrange for these squadrons to be sent across the Yellow Sea; throughout the first several months of the second invasion it was considered necessary to keep all naval forces on alert in home waters to protect China from a possible direct Japanese attack. Beijing, after all, was only two hundred kilometers from the coast, a distance the Japanese had shown they could traverse in ten days or less. The first fleet movements therefore did not take place until the fall of 1597, and even then were intended solely to protect China’s own eastern coastline rather than its embattled vassal across the Yellow Sea. One hundred and fifty ships from Zhejiang Province were initially sent north to the port of Lushun ( Port Arthur) on the tip of the Liaoning Peninsula. They were later reinforced by two thousand men from the Nanjing fleet and then by an additional two thousand men aboard eighty-two ships from the Wusung fleet. Few if any of these vessels were proper warships. China’s provincial authorities, as fearful as their counterparts in Beijing of a Japanese attack, were unwilling to compromise home defense by releasing the strongest vessels in their fleets. The squadrons assembled at Lushun were thus composed of lightly built galleys, useful for ferrying troops and supplies but not really suitable for naval warfare.
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Chinese fears of a Japanese attack against their own coastline began to abate with the news of Yi Sun-sin’s vic
tory in the Battle of Myongnyang in October 1597. When it became clear that the Japanese would not be entering the Yellow Sea, Beijing issued orders for its naval forces at Lushun to move south and take up positions along Korea’s east coast. Most of these ships would remain here for the rest of the war, a forward buffer to guard against any future Japanese advance by sea, but still well clear of the front.
Admiral Chen Lin was the man selected to command those Ming naval forces that would eventually join Yi Sun-sin at his
Kogum Island base. Chen was a grizzled old campaigner who had served in both the Ming army and navy going all the way back into the early 1560s. He had seen plenty of action in his time against rebellious frontier tribesmen and raiders, was reportedly an expert in the use of artillery,
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and had won special honors for his success in combating the pirates who had for so many years plagued
China’s long and vulnerable coast. Like most Ming commanders, however, his career was not unblemished. Zealous government censors had seen to that. In 1583 a mutiny by some of Chen’s troops, precipitated by his attempt to restore discipline which had grow lax during several years of peace, led to his being severely criticized and charged with treating his men too harshly. The charges were later dropped, but with his reputation tarnished Chen found it necessary to resign. He was not reappointed until after the start of the war in Korea in 1592. His return to command lasted for just one year. In 1593 he was dismissed on charges of trying to buy favor by giving an expensive gift to the Minister of War. This second period in the wilderness lasted until 1596. In that year Chen’s supporters in Beijing managed to get him restored to command to put down a tribal rebellion in Guangxi Province on the border with Vietnam. Chen took the post but declined the regular troops that came with it. Instead he summoned trusted soldiers from his former command and outfitted and supplied them with his own money. Chen’s subsequent success in quelling the rebellion, coupled with his willingness to nearly bankrupt himself to do so, proved an effective antidote to the charges that he was unprincipled and greedy, and led to a loftier appointment as naval command of the Guangdong fleet, guarding the coast near what would one day be Hong Kong.
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Chen Lin arrived at Tongjak at the mouth of the
Han River in May of 1598. King Sonjo, accompanied by a retinue of officials and soldiers, made the journey out from Seoul to receive him, and expressed satisfaction as he reviewed 3,400 fighting men standing in formation under the admiral’s command. Compared to them, the king observed with proper self-deprecation, the Korean army looked like “children playing.” Then, feeling obliged to reciprocate with a show of his kingdom’s homegrown martial talent, Sonjo ordered some of the Korean soldiers in attendance to give a demonstration of swordsmanship. Chen Lin was clearly unimpressed. As he watched the display, he deeply embarrassed the Koreans by laughing and being openly scornful of what he regarded as a sorry lack of skill. With that the affair came to an end and King Sonjo and his ministers returned to Seoul, shaking their heads at the quality of man that Beijing had sent to their aid. Word soon spread to watch out for Chen Lin—that the Ming admiral was arrogant, rude, and likely avaricious.
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Chen Lin left Tongjak and headed south in July to join forces with the Korean navy under Yi Sun-sin.
Korean sources say that he set off with five hundred ships. If this number is correct then many of them were probably small galleys and transports. Chen’s contribution to the coming campaign in fact would be more in terms of manpower than ships. Five thousand men from the Guangdong squadron would accompany him south aboard six warships and an indeterminate number of lighter craft.
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In the battles to come Chen would place most of his men aboard Yi Sun-sin’s heavy warships to fight alongside Korean crews, an indication that most of the ships he had brought from
China were probably unsuitable for combat and thus held in the rear.
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In April rumors began to circulate in
Korea that Toyotomi Hideyoshi had died at Fushimi Castle in Japan. The news had been picked up by a spy from one of the Japanese fortresses and was duly relayed to Seoul. The Korean government discounted the report as an unsubstantiated rumor. So did supreme Ming commander Yang Hao.
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They were right. Hideyoshi was still alive—although far from in good health. He was in fact slipping fast. In a short note to an acquaint
ance dated July 20, 1598, the taiko expressed anguish at his rapidly deteriorating health. “As I am ill and feel lonely,” he wrote, “I have taken up the brush. I have not eaten for fifteen days and I am in distress. Since I went out for amusement yesterday to a place where some construction work is going on, my illness has become worse and worse, and I feel I am gradually weakening....[T]his one single letter is worth ten thousand letters written in normal circumstances.”
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It was one of the last letters the taiko would have the strength to write.
In July and again in August Hideyoshi’s wife O-Ne arranged for the imperial court to hold a sacred
kagura
dance to pray for her husband’s recovery. Emperor Go-Yozei sent orders to temples and shrines in and around Kyoto for prayers to be offered to restore the taiko to health. But nothing seemed to help. Hideyoshi was dying.
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As his final days wound down, Hideyoshi’s thoughts focused increasingly on his son. Hideyori was still not quite five, and thus at the mercy of those men entrusted to protect him and his interests once Hideyoshi himself was gone. As he had done in 1595 and in 1596, the taiko now called upon his senior daimyo to again renew their oaths to serve his heir Hideyori just as they had served him. The first of these was signed on August 17, 1598:
Item: I will serve Hideyori. [My] service [to him], just like [my service to] the taiko, shall be without negligence. Addendum: I will know no duplicity or other thoughts at all.
Item: As for the laws and [Hideyoshi’s] orders as they have been declared up to the present time, I will not violate them in the slightest.
Item: Inasmuch as I understand it to be for the sake of public affairs, I will discard personal enmities toward my peers and will not act on my own interests.
Item: I will not establish factions among [my] associates. Even if there are lawsuits, quarrels, or disputes and [they involve] parents and children, brothers, or complainants whom I know, I resolve, knowing no partiality, [to act] in conformity with the law.
Item: I will not return willfully to my fief without asking leave.
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Would these men really serve young Hideyori once the taiko was dead? Hideyoshi’s repeated demand for loyalty oaths indicates he feared they would not. Japan in 1598 was a loose federation of powerful men, each possessing large armies, enormous holdings of land, and loyal only to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Allowing them this degree of personal wealth and power had been one of the key factors behind Hideyoshi’s success in unifying Japan, for it had made serving him an acceptable proposition—better than fighting bitter and costly wars at the risk of losing all. There was one glaring weakness in this system, however: it all depended on Hideyoshi’s existence at the center. It was his commanding presence that kept rival daimyo in check and the unity of Japan intact. Remove Hideyoshi from the picture, and what was left? On the one hand a crowd of ambitious and independent-minded daimyo. And on the other a boy scarcely five years old.
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In the month of July a report reached
Seoul that a huge swarm of insects had descended from the north to blanket all the fields in Yonchon near the Imjin River north of Seoul. The same thing had happened back in 1592, the year imjin, just prior to the start of the first Japanese invasion and six years of war. Many considered the reappearance of these insects a sign that another calamity was about to occur.
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Chinese Board of War official Ding Yingtai was now back in
Beijing to deliver his report on his investigation into the Battle of Tosan. This document, which Ding presented to the Celestial Throne on July 6, was an all-out attack not just against Yang Hao, but against the entire prowar faction in Beijing, all the way up to Grand Secretaries Zhang Wei and Shen Yiguan, the highest-ranking officials in the land. Yang, Ding charged, had tried to cover up the magnitude of the casualties he had suffered at Tosan; Zhang and Shen had participated in the cover-up, so they were guilty too. Yang had fled the battle, and was thus a coward; Zhang and Shen had hidden the truth of his flight from the emperor, submitting only those reports that made the commander look good. Yang had written false reports; Zhang and Shen had willingly accepted them. Yang had secured his appointment in the first place through bribes; Zhang’s were the palms he had greased. The list went on and on, a total of twenty-eight charges in all for which Ding felt Yang should be tried, plus ten other errors for which the commander should feel “ashamed.”
Ding’s attack was so inflammatory and so wide reaching that there was no way for the Ming government now to lay the matter aside. Yang Hao first of all had to be dismissed. A messenger was dispatched to
Seoul to relieve him of command and order him back to China to await the verdict in his case. Ding Yingtai, the new poster boy for the antiwar and in turn anti-Zhang and -Shen faction, was then sent back to Korea to conduct a more thorough investigation, not just into the Battle of Tosan but into the prosecution of the war as a whole. This time Grand Secretaries Zhang and Shen made sure that the dangerous Ding did not go alone. Xu Guanlan, a Board of War official like Ding but from the opposing prowar faction which supported Zhang and Shen, was sent along to conduct a parallel investigation of his own.
Ten days later, on July 16, a copy of Ding’s report reached
Seoul. On the twentieth a member of Yang Hao’s staff met with Korean officials to fill them in on the political struggle that was taking place in Beijing. On one side, he explained, was the prowar faction led by Grand Secretary Zhang Wei. It considered the threat posed by Japan to be real and China’s loyal vassal Korea well worth saving, and was thus intent on seeing the war through to the end. On the other side was the antiwar faction led by Board of War Minister Shi Xing and Grand Secretary Zhao Zhigao. They contended that Hideyoshi had never planned to move against China. This was just a Korean exaggeration designed to draw Beijing into a regional struggle that was really none of its concern. The Ming government therefore should stop sending military aid to Korea and end its involvement in the war.
All this was devastating news for the government in
Seoul. Ding Yingtai, it seemed, was their mortal enemy, a “malicious specter” as King Sonjo called him, out to ruin the war effort when the struggle was on the verge of being won. It was also considered a grievous insult that Ding and the antiwar faction he spoke for should besmirch the integrity and loyalty of Korea with baseless charges that it had lied about the threat posed by Japan. This stung like a slap in the face. After long discussion, it was decided that the situation was so critical that some sort of counter-memorial had to be drawn up and sent to Beijing protesting Ding’s attack. After this was done, a public demonstration was organized in the streets of Seoul to show support for Yang Hao, and a petition was presented to the Army Gate headquarters of Xing Jie protesting Yang’s dismissal, all in the knowledge that everything would be promptly reported to Beijing. All this was done, of course, to counter Ding’s attack more than to protect Yang Hao. Yang was now little more than a pawn in a bigger game of political intrigue.
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