The Battle of Shenyang (1)
What followed is a story you can probably guess well enough without my wearing out my tongue on every last detail.
"Russia."
Still, if I must summarize: my plan to found a Northeast Asian Economic Cooperation Organization—one that would draw in not only France and the United States but the great British Empire itself—stood a far better chance of coming true than I had expected.
If I had to put my finger on the single decisive lure that turned Britain's heart, it was surely this promise: that Korea, riding on the back of their support, would throw itself with everything it had across the path of Russia's coming southward advance.
And in truth, that alone left Cecil no choice but to close this secret conference on a thoroughly favorable note.
From the standpoint of Cecil and Gladstone's cabinet, this unforeseen journey to the Far East had been nothing less than Santa Claus's gift sack dropping out of a clear blue sky onto their heads.
The chronic ailments of the British economy were food supply and the growth of rival nations using that same leverage to finish their own industrial drives. And now, right before their eyes, an investment destination had appeared that stood an excellent chance of preventing both. Moreover, they had been led to reinterpret the geopolitical position of the Korean Peninsula—which I had so generously billed as the Gibraltar of the Far East—and the distinctive, thoroughly attractive "anti-Russian government" planted upon it could look like nothing but an irresistible option to an Anglo-Saxon mind.
Besides, Japan is an island nation. If Japan is to come off its islands and stand against a Russian Empire bent on seizing an ice-free port, it would first need at least a minimum of naval power capable of answering that threat before it could even leap from its shores. And this is an age when even Britain, possessor of the world's strongest navy, still hesitates to commit an army to the European continent except as a last resort—Japan? Well, contrary to all common sense, those bastards did come charging off their islands three times.
But let us think about this reasonably. From Britain's point of view, there was no rose-tinted future in which Japan—a fellow island nation whose own maritime defenses were not yet adequately secured—would project force onto the continent. That left them no choice but to put us forward instead as the anti-Russian vanguard, belonging as we did, unmistakably, to the continental powers. Like it or not, we were fated to share a border with the Russian Empire soon enough. All the more reason.
Russophobia in this life may well break out in Korea before it ever does in Japan.
That was not an idle guess. Given that we had, at least on the surface, declared ourselves a democratic nation under a republican government, we had no particular reason to stay friendly with an autocratic monarchy like Russia.
The moment those people started playing their little games in the Maritime Province, reaching for northern Manchuria and then for Gando, there would already be hundreds of thousands of Koreans having a fit well before I ever did.
For that reason, the expectation that Russia's eastward push through Siberia would continue unless the voice of God Himself suddenly came down and stopped it was shared across British politics and the British public alike. It was equally easy to foresee that Russia would find it far more convenient to secure an ice-free port in Asia—a region crowded with countries weaker than itself—than in a Europe that never stopped checking its every move. The result, then, was only natural.
Naval power aside, a Far Eastern meat-shield capable, in wartime, of putting at least several hundred thousand men in the field—and, French support or no, currently running up a string of victories against the Qing, Asia's traditional great power—was nothing short of magnificent.
For Britain, locked in a live-fire round of the Great Game against the Russian Empire and needing every cat's paw and every last straw it could grasp, one more civilized nation whose reliability had been proven was a thing sorely missed.
"…Which is why we have to secure Liaodong and Manchuria, no matter what. All the more so if you picture Russia and Britain, a China already counting the days until it can strike back at us, and a Japan watching from its islands for its chance."
"I feel as though I've just glimpsed some tremendous secret of the world."
"It isn't a secret. Our cabinet people simply never had the leisure to take an interest in a world situation this tangled, because our own circumstances were more urgent."
When I finished giving him the condensed version of everything that had gone before, Seo Jae-pil lowered the field glasses from his eyes with a faintly sour look and raked the sweat-and-rain-filthy hair back from his forehead.
My gaze followed the motion and found something missing. Like the rest of the young Gaehwadang officers, he had shaved off his topknot long ago. Nor was he alone. The young cadets and officers who had led the capital troops at Gyeong-u Palace had discarded their topknots and fully adopted Western dress ages since.
"But I understand."
Muttering that, Seo Jae-pil—field glasses still in one hand, still watching the Qing army writhe along the Hun River in the distance—knocked the mud from boots already filthy from the predawn rain that had turned the ground to a quagmire. It made no difference. The boots he had just shaken clean were immediately splashed again with filth and clay kicked up from a puddle.
"I think I understand perfectly what was in Your Excellency's heart when you struck that bargain with them, and that this was a decision you reached only after the most careful thought for the people of this country and for the nation."
"I'm grateful you see it that way."
In the end, Seo Jae-pil had grasped my intention completely—that instead of a peace settlement I could have closed out without overreaching, I needed one more unnecessary battle won, one more shock delivered to the Western world, and a military achievement the Western powers would have no choice but to recognize. He nodded. Never mind that ten-article armistice nonsense from last time.
"In the end, those of us who set out late will have to endure a still stricter measure. But the fruit hanging at the end of that road will be all the more bitter, and all the sweeter, than anything taken by men who picked their fruit early and grew idle."
"Your Excellency is entirely right."
Those idle men were the colonial empires of a former age—Belgium and the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal—and they were the first priorities to be driven out of the Far East. By our own hands.
"If we pacify the Far East and come to stand over the Qing and Japan, our revolution of the Three Principles of the People will naturally eat its way into their societies and their thought. In other words, they will fall in line of their own accord."
"The victory of the Republic, you mean?"
"That's right. In a world the white man is carving up among himself, if we are the one civilized great power of the Far East to have won a war against the West, then we are the spirit of the age. There is no need to brawl forever with the Qing and Japan. What we must seize with our own hands is the true, physical proof that will make them bow their heads—the proof of what we are."
And the Western powers would look at us differently too. Not as some regional power that had ascended on a beam of civilization fired by their own generosity, but as a genuine great power of Asia, one that would lead world politics.
Perhaps he understood that ambition of mine, if only dimly. The look Seo Jae-pil turned on me grew somewhat uncomfortable.
"Truly, Your Excellency is a man among men."
"Hm. Thank you."
I tipped my head in answer to that burdensome gaze, then let my eyes travel slowly, from the heights downward, across the southern bank of the Hun River, where our encampments stood packed tight.
Before I knew it I had arrived in Shenyang, and I was standing on the field so that I might share with the People's Army the last battle of this war.
I had come this far by carriage, and the memory of the generals who had come rushing out to meet me that day drew an awkward smile from me.
They were all scared half to death.
In my previous life I had crawled straight into a nuclear blast over Seoul and taken it in the face, but unfortunately everyone around me now had no idea what a nuclear weapon even was, and so not a soul among them knew the first thing about my courage—or my recklessness.
Which is why they started with the excuse of my being a mere twelve years old, then declared that the appearance of a nation's ruler on a battlefield this dangerous was itself a taboo, and tried to half-imprison me and pack me off toward Uiju. And not a simple packing-off, either. I had nearly been seized by an officer dispatched from the French command and by Lieutenant Colonel Ninsted and thrown out the way Lenin was sealed into a train by the German government.
The fortunate thing was that Seo Jae-pil and Choe Ik-hyeon had stepped forward, and thanks to them I had just barely been able to come this far.
That Seo Jae-pil had done so was one thing—he was Vice Minister of Military Affairs, and a somewhat hot-blooded man besides. That Choe Ik-hyeon, ordinarily so stubborn and conservative, had backed my little deviation was the genuine surprise.
At first they had put Choe Ik-hyeon forward to talk some sense into me, since I was determined to remain in Shenyang no matter what. It was because he had said it might not be such a bad idea after all that I escaped being repackaged and shipped back.
Unexpected. He was more active about it than I would have thought.
Unexpected or not, that was what Choe Ik-hyeon had done.
The People's Army knew why they were fighting—because of a Qing army that had forgotten every principle under heaven, and because of that barbarian emperor. But among the growing corpses and the ruined cities and the wailing refugees, the war had begun to drag, and weariness had started to spread through the ranks.
Choe Ik-hyeon, however, had argued that my arrival in Shenyang would set their spirits blazing. A man's will to fight, he said, was not a thing easily kindled, and it was the way of the world that even the mere presence of the highest among them, standing in the same place, would give them strength. And so he had supported my decision. That prediction had not been far wrong.
Men overcome with emotion at my simply standing with them on the field came forward in droves. And when, with twenty thousand of the Vanguard in perfect uniform at my back, I spent the entire day delivering commendations and street speeches to the Northern Expedition soldiers still struggling in Liaodong, how could their morale have failed to recharge?
At any rate, having arrived in Shenyang for those reasons, I was able to infer that the front encircling the city now ran along two great lines.
The first was the Hun River itself, lying directly before us.
"We're waiting until they can work their way upriver?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. The French command clearly pledged to prepare river gunboats at Yingkou for the assault on Shenyang."
"And?"
"The problem is that working upriver is a serious obstacle. If the boats can make it this far and put fire on the northern bank, it would be the finest thing imaginable—but that only works if the boats actually get here."
The enemy had not vacated southern Shenyang and handed it to us out of any gentlemanly virtue, and Shenyang—where the Battle of Sarhu had once been fought—was a thoroughly vicious piece of ground.
First, the enemy had emptied the southern half of the city for no complicated reason. The Hun River, which cut Shenyang north from south, was not the Han, but it was unmistakably a great river with a swift current, and a man could not easily cross it on his own two feet.
Second, autumn was already behind us and winter had to be prepared for. The weather along the river grew damper and colder with every passing day, and the rain, with a talent for arriving at precisely the wrong moment, had repeatedly sabotaged both the advance and every attempt at a crossing.
In the end, the officer corps dispatched from the French expeditionary command and our Northern Expedition Army had accepted the fact that they would have to pitch camp on the southern bank and fight a vast set-piece battle for Shenyang itself.
"A sort of challenge, then."
"Just so. If Shenyang falls into our hands, the enemy will have no further purchase on Liaodong or Manchuria. They mean to scrape together every last reserve they have and pin us here."
And headquarters had taken the Qing army's request for a duel in all seriousness, and set about preparing the river crossing. That was the northward run of the French gunboats I had just been told about. The next step was crude, but certain: the securing of a bridgehead.
"A temporary trestle, built from every wooden house they tore down in the Shenyang streets."
"Good God."
"It looks like a rag heap, but the civil engineers and engineer officers among the French advisory staff designed it and stand behind it. It will serve, Your Excellency."
The prefabricated bridge sections jutting up among the encampments were the proof. Between those assembled parts, cleverly screened by canvas, a French engineer officer was explaining to our soldiers how they were to hoist the thing onto their shoulders, carry it, and throw it across the river—and the People's Army fighters receiving that instruction had the look of men paying the closest possible attention.
I passed them by and pointed toward the far east, where fog hung all day and rain fell whenever it pleased, so that the visibility was poor and the whole quarter lay in gloom.
"I heard the eastern front has changed considerably as well."
"It has been four days as of yesterday since our forces completely occupied the fortress at Fushun."
"So the fortress fell after all. Heavy casualties?"
"We had the fire support of the French artillery, but… yes. Three thousand wounded alone, and the dead are still being gathered. Once the field is cleared—two days at the soonest—we should have an accurate count."
"Mm."
The sacrifice had clearly not been small, but the successful occupation of Fushun, east of Shenyang, was enormously encouraging to both the expeditionary command and the Northern Expedition Army.
It meant we had succeeded in drawing the eastern Manchurian frontier of Shenyang—now expanded into a second front—over to our advantage.
"Then we could strike from east of Shenyang at the same time as the river crossing."
"Yes. And that is the very heart and conclusion of this Battle of Shenyang. Sweeping them from the east and from the south."
"And if our detached force, landed before Ningyuan, cuts their line of retreat…"
The Shenyang army, its withdrawal severed between the Liaodong Peninsula and the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan, would have no choice but to fall back into Ningyuan.
What would happen if a hundred thousand unprepared troops were crammed into that cramped fortress, unable to stir so much as a finger?
"I only hope it unfolds according to our plan. I am rather curious, too, to see how the Beiyang Minister's face crumples."
"How could it be otherwise, Your Excellency."
With that, I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, the breaking dawn at my shoulders, and behind me soldiers by the tens of thousands began their silent advance.