In the Face of Desire and Principle

The strike force that had sortied from Jemulpo, peeling away from the French main fleet, struck with a reach that was vast, a speed that was startling, and a persistence that would not let go.

And the conditions that made it possible were, remarkably, the decisive influence of their Korean ally. A tiny Far Eastern nation that five years ago had not even registered as a strategic afterthought for the French government had joined the war on the Indochina Peninsula as their partner. From there it had exploited the geography of a peninsula jutting between continent and ocean, and created an almost providential operating environment for the French Far East Squadron in the Yellow Sea.

The Korean government had granted the French naval squadron exclusive rights to put into every port in the country. For a French expeditionary force that — unlike the ordinary climate of Southeast Asian waters, squalls aside — had to endure, every year around this season, vicious typhoons and the most godforsaken storms slamming into the fleet, that privilege was an enormous help.

At the same time, the strike force had disguised dozens of wooden vessels and requisitioned civilian steamers, provided by the Korean government, under neutral flags and thrown them into Yellow Sea operations. Posing as merchant convoys, they closed to the waters off the Shandong Peninsula and reported the Beiyang Fleet's position and movements in real time, twenty-four hours a day. The moment the disguised flotilla signaled that Deng Shichang's mine squadron had sortied from the Bohai Gulf, the strike force swung in a wide arc to the southeast of the Beiyang Fleet as it burst out of Weihaiwei, and sealed off its line of retreat completely.

"We've got them!"

And just as the lookout's cheer announced, Deng Shichang's mine squadron, falling back toward the Beiyang Fleet and Weihaiwei, was caught in a pincer from west and south by the French Far East Squadron and began to be swept away without even a chance to recover.

"Break their last will to fight! Let's end this wretched jungle war ourselves!"

"We'll cut the old dragon's throat!"

With the French admirals and captains roaring their fury, a grand decisive battle opened upon the sea.

Sandwiched from both sides, Deng Shichang's mine squadron could not even scream. It drifted in mid-ocean, taking the full weight of the bombardment from both flanks on its hull. The Beiyang Fleet, which had sortied to relieve them, kept flinching and opening the range, unnerved by the French main fleet's devastating gunnery and by the sight of an enemy deploying across a vast front for a decisive engagement.

Unfortunately, the Beiyang Fleet's commander, Ding Ruchang, was not a naval officer. He was a man who had caught the eye of Beiyang Minister Li Hongzhang by successfully launching the Beiyang Army's training program and the arsenal works — an officer better suited to quartermaster than to command of troops.

Facing a fleet that actually knew how to fight as its first real opponent, Ding Ruchang's Beiyang Fleet was at a loss in a proper gunnery duel, repeatedly driven back by the enemy's savage momentum. For all that its displacement was nothing to be ashamed of, it never formed a proper battle line and was simply pushed and pushed.

Boom. Boom-boom.

"Another one down! She's sinking!"

"Vive la France! Long live the Alliance!"

And even in those fleeting seconds when every minute, every heartbeat, was precious, shells burst over the heads of Deng Shichang's mine squadron. A larger auxiliary, bigger than the last, took a hit. Her deck erupted and hurled unlucky sailors hard into the cold Yellow Sea. Qing sailors clinging desperately to the rail of a listing deck finally could not defy gravity. They tumbled, one after another, into the water.

"Hah."

I had barely swallowed a sigh at that astonishing, soul-draining, uncanny spectacle when another Qing warship began to sink, screaming a terrible scream. She too went up fast and brilliantly from belowdecks, and from that heavy hull a hideous noise and a bizarre series of detonations tore at the sky as she slowly surrendered herself to the bottomless sea.

Screeeeeech—!

With a roar of thin metal plating tearing from the hull, an ear-splitting explosion burst from the funnel and at last scattered brilliant sparks in every direction. It looked for all the world like a human head made of fireworks going pop. That was how it looked.

Then someone came panting up behind me, and a voice thick with joy struck the back of my head.

"Your Excellency! Tongryeong — a report from the current commander of the French Far East Squadron."

Seo Jae-pil, who had been exchanging dispatches from the bridge, came running to my side with a glad heart, waving the telegram, as I stood watching the festival of explosions, fireballs climbing to heaven, and sinkings bursting on every side.

I glanced at it with one eye and simply passed it back.

We had swept away the enemies of the revolution, the people, and the republican government like a storm, and we had done it with glad hearts — but we had never wished for the enemy's grief and suffering as well.

Someone might sneer that this was cheap sentiment, the empty talk of a man whose belly was full. But the way this naval battle was transforming before my eyes clearly collided, if only a little, with my intention to package only the clean image of our Republic — and of the Tripartite Alliance beyond it — and re-export that image to the continent.

Up until the moment they had chased the mine squadron and at last joined the long-awaited fleet action against the Beiyang Fleet, both sides had faced each other fairly, like European duelists, with the sea as their stage. But now that the outcome was unmistakable, the circumstances had changed.

The French ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Navy, under the pretext of a chaotic theater, had begun a massacre. It was as plain as day to my eyes. They were still firing on Qing vessels that had raised white flags, or that had abandoned any will to resist.

"This is why the British keep calling them barbarians."

Like Seo Jae-pil's arm waving the telegram as he came toward me, the arms and heads of men thrashing in the cold Yellow Sea — countless of them breaking the black surface in a last struggle toward the will to live — were a sight endlessly terrible and painful to watch.

Pitiful cries of surrender and pleas for life in Chinese rode the waves and the gunfire to my ears. Unfortunately, I — who in a previous life had served even as Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea — spoke Chinese as well as I spoke French. Fluently enough to handle the Cantonese dialect. And a great many of the Qing sailors conscripted into the navy of this era were from Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

"..."

Yes. The outcome had already tilted. The Beiyang Fleet, which the Qing had boasted of, which they had never taken out of their hand even as they were steadily pushed in every power game, their last trump — it had been smashed so thoroughly that even the word annihilation felt too kind.

But the fury of the French expeditionary force, which had suffered in the jungles of Indochina and on Taiwan, was beyond imagining. They did not hesitate to expand the fight into a calm, mechanical slaughter against a Qing fleet that had been formally judged combat-ineffective, and they fired without a moment's thought even on immobilized Qing ships that had already raised the white flag.

Or perhaps it was simply an expansion of the tally — or a calculated psychological campaign to break the enemy's will ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to resist.

One Beiyang warship, her masts and bridge already destroyed, barely able to stay afloat let alone fight, had run up a white flag on a listing mast. The French warship that had been targeting her silenced her with a full broadside.

Boom.

A shell detonated in the magazine. The ship's last breath was cut, and she blew ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to pieces, scattering fragments even as far as where we stood, relatively distant. Among the flying splinters of wood that hissed past me, I glimpsed what looked like a scrap of human viscera.

Those scattered scraps of viscera and traces of deck were being captured through their lenses by Japanese correspondents from the Osaka Asahi Shimbun, who had set up cameras behind me — or behind Captain Howard — and by the famous war correspondent Russell, all of them photographing furiously.

God damn it. The war correspondents I had brought aboard for our Republic's propaganda were recording this atrocity, the raw flesh of war, exactly as it was.

Fuck.

Watching Qing sailors writhe in the agony of drowning, burns, shock, and hemorrhage as they slowly sank into the Yellow Sea, I asked Seo Jae-pil, slowly, to send a reply.

"...Congratulate them on a victory that will be recorded in history, and convey the gratitude of the republican government for their struggle."

"Understood."

Seo Jae-pil's movement as he answered and headed back to the bridge was quick and efficient. He seemed to have been impressed that I, even as I took in the blasphemous spectacle of war with my own two eyes, never left my post and held the rail to the end.

As Seo Jae-pil bowed to me with formal courtesy and made for the bridge, Captain Howard, who had been standing the rail beside me, lost in old memories, murmured softly.

"It may not have been the British Empire, but it was a fight worthy of a mature and seasoned French fleet. And the Qing fleet's struggle, leading unready sailors into battle under impossible conditions, was very much their own as well."

"...The last death rattle of an old order's obsession with ruling a continent. The order the empires dominated will now recede into history. The Qing Empire is only the beginning. Our Republic, newly born through revolution, will become the new master of the Far East. Not forever — but for a considerably long time."

Captain Howard's eyes went round with a flicker of surprise at my answer, then he let his gaze slide past the Qing fleet's wreckage, jutting from the surface like thorns on a bramble path, and out to the horizon. He had meant to comfort me by drawing on his own experience, assuming I had been shaken by the horrific spectacle of the battlefield. When I answered in an entirely different direction, he was, for a moment, thrown.

And the reaction of the war correspondents behind us, silently packing the memory of war into their lenses and reporting the screams of Qing sailors, was much the same. Some wore expressions of admiration, or let out gasps of wonder that seemed to reach beyond the ordinary human relationship to the permanence of years. But for skeptics like Russell, it seemed to have stirred no small disappointment — and, at the same time, curiosity.

For the man who had kept his place in silence, turning his lens, finally came up to me and asked a question.

"Excuse me..."

"Speak freely."

"I am William Howard Russell, war correspondent for The Times of London. If I did not mishear Your Excellency's words just now — your impressions of the horrors of this battlefield — might I beg the honor of hearing them again, and the honor of an interview?"

"Very well. But first, a moment."

I accepted readily, and before the startled correspondents could surge forward, I stretched out a hand and gave an order to Captain Howard, who was still standing there blankly. The gesture was spare. The command that followed it was unyielding.

"Begin rescue operations at once, Captain. By the full authority vested in me by the will and support of ten million Korean people, you are hereby appointed, from this moment, to conduct rescue operations across the entire Yellow Sea theater on behalf of the government of the Republic of Korea."

"I— I beg your pardon?"

"Whoa!"

Surprise and admiration burst from the correspondents at my decision. Russell's eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. Captain Howard, however, only stood there at first with a bewildered look, as if he had misheard the order.

"Captain Howard. Pull yourself together."

But I pressed him again, my expression firm and resolute. I was ordering him to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠save, here and now, the enemies who had once threatened the Republic — to be the first to reach out a hand.

"There is no time. As of this hour, the Korean Navy authorizes the boarding of Qing naval personnel in a state of surrender. Your ship will commence rescue operations immediately."

"Ah—! Yes! I shall carry out the order!"

Once he understood the command again, Captain Howard shoved aside the shock of a hammer-blow to the skull and hurried to the bridge with a glad face. It was only natural. The man had once watched his own comrades being pounded in Wilmington Bay, bottled up by the Union fleet — and the massacre unfolding now in the Bohai Gulf was a terrible mirror of that memory.

And I treated the correspondents' worried looks — that I would later have to accept censure or condemnation from the French fleet currently leading this brutal slaughter — as a matter of no concern at all. I saw it as a chance to stamp the consciousness and the outward face of us Koreans firmly into their minds.

With the gunnery duel as an uncomfortable backdrop and the rail as my screen, I opened my mouth to the reporters.

"It is said that revolution blooms its brilliant flower accompanied by the blood of many. But the atrocity unfolding before our eyes is neither the will of the people of our Republic nor my own, and the Korean government clearly defines this massacre as a war crime."

The scratch of pencils and the click of camera shutters tickled my ears. The sharp, held-breath gazes of the reporters bored through me.

"I believe the horror of this place today is the product of five years of rage and suffering that Qing and France have accumulated toward each other. That is why the navy of our Republic hereby declares before you that we will treat, in accordance with international law and with humanity, the Qing naval prisoners who, though they were the enemy, fought bravely against the Alliance — and we pledge to succor them as circumstances allow."

Just as a politician begging the public for votes must do, so too must our revolutionary government, newly arrived on the international stage and forced to start from its first steps. We needed a great many votes. Not only from the European powers that led the age, but from South America, Africa, India, Asia, and beyond.

Unlike France and the United States, with whom we were allied, most of the Japanese reporters present, the famous British correspondent Russell, and the majority of the European press knew little about our Republic of Korea. And the outcome of this war, and the process by which it was reached, was a golden opportunity to stamp the world's view of Koreans — and its stereotypes — deep into the root, for the next hundred years, or longer.

I was no legendary commander steeped in the art of war. But I was a twenty-first-century politician who knew how to manage an image. I decided to do what I was good at.

"I give you my word, here and now. As of this hour, I earnestly request that the Qing government cease armed conflict across every theater in preparation for peace negotiations. This will be conveyed to the viceroys and military commissioners of every province and region still at war, and at the same time a diplomatic mission will be dispatched to the Forbidden City."

The show mattered. The choice of material that would seize attention mattered even more. And so I earnestly wished to present to the world stage the image of a newborn Republic of Korea — a moral civic nation, just, full of fellow-feeling, and capable of a measure of compassion even toward its enemies.

I spoke to Russell, who was still standing there with his mouth open, working it soundlessly, my expression grave.