Qing Intervention (3)

Five days had passed since the palace lost its master and the Regent, Heungseon-gun Yi Ha-eung, had collapsed. And in that brief span of time, a great many things had befallen Joseon.

A few of the more consequential among them deserve to be marked at the outset. Foremost was King Yi Hyeong's political counterstroke — aimed at the Daewongun's faction, the officers of the Three Armies Command who had cooperated with them, the collaborators, the old-style soldiers who had been the backbone of the revolt, and the paupers said to have gone along with it — together with a loyalty test directed at his own officials within the court.

The sentence he flung down was only one.

Some, reading it, would take the thing for an ordinary royal command, nothing worth a second thought.

In Joseon the Informal Hall was Sajeongjeon of Gyeongbokgung Palace, sitting square in the heart ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of Hanseong, and summoning every minister and official to begin their duties was a monarch's most natural right. On its face, the order was beyond reproach.

But if you recalled that today both Gyeongbokgung and Hanseong itself had lost their master, and that the government's proxy, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Regent Yi Ha-eung, lay at death's door — then you would feel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just how cunning, and how repulsive, that command truly was.

"Hong Gye-hun, at your service. And this is a royal command."

"A royal command?"

The day after word arrived that Qing troops had landed at Jemulpo, a young military officer who introduced himself as an adjutant of the Martial Arts Office appeared before the court ministers — men who had been praying, without incident, for His Highness the Daewongun's recovery — and casually produced a single letter, calling it a royal command.

And over the words written in that letter, the great and lesser officials of the court milled and argued, each talking over the next.

"...His Majesty is not even in Hanseong, and he tells us to attend morning court? What is that supposed to mean? What policy are we meant to debate in an empty palace with no one in it?"

"...Perhaps it means this Qing expedition has nothing to do with the will of His Highness the Daewongun — or His Majesty's?"

"Tsk. Don't say things you don't believe just because they're comfortable. This is His Majesty threatening the ministers of this court."

Someone clicked his tongue over the command and made no effort to hide his irritation. Another asked, carefully,

"A threat, you say?"

"His Majesty is asking us what the Informal Hall truly means — and testing which side we will take! Is the Informal Hall wherever His Majesty happens to be, or is it Sajeongjeon of this nation's Gyeongbokgung? And what follows from that, I shouldn't have to spell out."

"Hup! Then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that would mean..."

"Aigoo."

When the irritated man had finished, more than a few of them grasped the meaning buried in the command, and gasped, and sighed. The true intent hidden in that royal order was this: their monarch, with the Qing army at his back, was telling them to abandon the Daewongun even now, and prove their loyalty to him.

"This is a goddamned circus!"

One official, having taken the measure of the situation, shouted in fury.

"Does this even make sense? The humiliation of the Byeongja year — when we knelt to the Qing — was not like this!"

"Watch your language. Are you saying this doesn't make sense?"

"Good God."

Put plainly, King Yi Hyeong was saying: I am in Incheon to receive the Qing envoy and the admiral. If you mean to attend morning court, you will come here, will you not? Not to Hanseong, which is stuffed with rebels who follow only the Daewongun, and their rabble. And this is a royal command. If you do not come — well. You all know.

Not long after, the result King Yi Hyeong had wanted arrived. The great and lesser officials of the court split, broadly, into three.

"There's nothing to think about. The court is the court. We stay at our posts."

"D-don't say such dangerous things! I, for one, am going to Incheon."

"You gutless creature! That is betrayal of His Highness!"

"Betrayal? Watch your mouth — I am no traitor!"

There were those who meant to wait for the fallen Daewongun and keep the government functioning by force of will, if nothing else (most of them men appointed or paid during Heungseon Daewongun's years in power — Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok among them); those who intended to set out even now for Incheon, where Joseon's monarch waited (these ranks were filled largely by Min clan in-laws who had survived only by my mercy and the Daewongun's); and those who chose neither side, weighing the wind, and did not even report to their posts (this last group ran from the moderate and radical Enlightenment factions all the way down through the great mass of junior clerks).

And so the new cabinet the Daewongun had poured his heart's blood into assembling collapsed before it had so much as lifted a shovel. His deputy Yi Jae-myeon stepped forward and tried, with cooperative royal in-laws like Min Yeong-hwan and Min Young-ik at his side, to talk the government officials around. It was no use. The king's warning was not something a man could ignore, and fear had already taken them.

Next came the military counterstroke.

On the day a single royal command paralyzed what little function the half-ruined government still possessed, Hong Gye-hun appeared before Seodaemun Gate with five hundred Qing vanguard at his back, and shouted.

Heo Jeong, who had bolted Seodaemun Gate fast and was holding it under siege conditions, heard him and roared back.

"Bullshit! Who in their right mind would disband an army just because some bastard waves a royal command around to throw the court into chaos and terrorize the people of Hanseong? Without an order from His Highness the Daewongun, this gate does not open!"

"A traitor! Fire!"

"Khhrk!"

In the same breath as the command was proclaimed, the Qing troops who had arrived with Hong Gye-hun shot Heo Jeong — the Daewongun's loyal servant, Military Commander and newly appointed Gyeonggi Army Commander — in front of everyone who had come to watch. He died where he stood.

Having executed the ringleader the king had named and passed through Seodaemun Gate, the Qing army issued an order to the old-style soldiers gathered at Wangsimni and Itaewon.

"There has been a command from the monarch of Joseon that you surrender all arms. Cooperate at once!"

"Go fuck yourselves!"

"Prepare to fire!"

The brief fight that ran from early morning to noon was fierce enough to produce six hundred casualties, but it was not enough to stop the Qing advance. Outgunned, they fell back to the Military Training Institute and Dongbyeolyeong.

Qing troops, now joined by follow-on forces, pursued them and surrounded the Training Institute.

"This is a royal command. Cooperate."

"I cannot. I am the Army Commander of Pyeongan Province, duly appointed by the court, and these are my soldiers."

"So be it. Arrest them."

They went further. Hearing the news, Yang Heon-su, Shin Heon, and the other officers of the Daewongun's faction had been opening the armory at the Training Institute to issue weapons to soldiers of the Three Armies Command. The Qing fell on them and seized every one. The prisoners were split between the Uigeumbu and the Capital Police Bureau and locked away.

And so the last remaining bastion was the Daewongun himself.

"Heh."

He brushed himself off and rose from his bed, and when he beheld the state of Hanseong — the stink of blood drifting in from every quarter — the Daewongun was calmer than I had expected. No: he was detached, like a man who had already seen it all coming.

"You have all worked hard while this old man was away from his seat."

He summoned those of us who had remained with him at Unhyeongung, and the officials who had still been reporting to court, and spoke to us in one place.

"I shall have to go and see His Majesty myself."

"Your Highness! You must not go like this — it is a trap! The moment you set out for Incheon, they will—"

I tried everything I could to stop him. If the Daewongun walked into a Qing-occupied camp with no preparation at all, he would be abducted. That much was certain.

But he spoke to us all in a voice as even as a monk's after a long and completed discipline.

"I know."

"Then wait, even a little — just a little. If we join the reinforcements coming down from Gwangju-bu and Pyongyang, I can put a good three thousand men at Your Highness's back. And there are still plenty in the Special Skills Force and the Drill Corps who share our cause. Against a Qing force that can dispatch five thousand at most, we still have a chance."

Of course it would only have been buying time against a Qing army of overwhelming firepower. But so long as the Daewongun remained standing, and so long as we could use that time to work out a plan, I would have taken anything.

The Daewongun shook his head at an angle and showed me his misgivings about an armed clash.

"That cannot be. If we fight and lose, and the Qing army garrisons Hanyang, will that not be a far greater disaster? Leave aside our resistance itself — a Qing that has taken wounds in the course of the fighting will demand a far steeper price from His Majesty. And that suffering, that oppression, will fall entirely upon a people who have done nothing wrong. We rose to set the world right. We cannot be the ones who make the people suffer. Therefore I myself must step forward and negotiate with the Qing without bloodshed. That is what is proper."

"Your Highness..."

And the price was the Daewongun himself. Heungseon Daewongun turned from us without another word.

"Aigoo, aigoo!"

"Do not grieve so. That this old man could stand with all of you — that was honor enough."

"..."

He comforted the wailing household of Unhyeongung, and Shin Jae-hyo, and me — who had lost the chance through a moment's unguardedness and now hung my head in shame. Then Yi Ha-eung was gone.

Just as history had written it, the Daewongun was placed under arrest the instant he reached the camp, and sent under guard to Tianjin. A mere two weeks after the new government had been established.

"A great many things have come to pass."

And so Hanseong was cruelly put down under the guns and blades of a Qing army that had marched out at a king's request.

At last, having received word that the Qing had abducted the Daewongun and were conveying him to China, King Yi Hyeong issued the following instruction the next day to the subjects of Hanyang.

It was Gojong's famous Address of Apology to the People.

From the first word to the last, nothing but self-excuse and alibi.

Of all the horseshit I had ever heard, this was in a class of its own.

Woo Beom-seon, his face drained pale, stole a look at the familiar faces hanging in the marketplace and whispered to me.

"...I'm glad I listened to you. Truly glad."

"Did you think I'd waste my breath?"

"Of course not."

If he had ignored me, coveted a hat of office, and snapped up the post the Daewongun offered, he would not have been standing beside me. He would have been hanging up there with the rest.

"Tsk."

I clicked my tongue and turned my head. Qing soldiers were watching the people of Hanyang with wary eyes; the people themselves were slipping past Qing troops who held them in open contempt. Most of those faces were holding together, just barely, a mix of anxiety, terror, rage, and humiliation.

"Aah! Let go of me!"

"Haha, we just want to have a little chat."

"What are you looking at? Get lost, you Goryeo monkeys!"

Farther off, a few Qing soldiers were harassing a woman. Woo Beom-seon frowned, let out a breath, and said quietly,

"Hah... poor bastards."

The necks hanging in front of us belonged to men inside the Special Skills Force who had refused King Yi Hyeong's order to suppress the rising, or had failed to deploy, or had even gone over to the other side. Beside them hung members of the Unhyeongung household who, on the Daewongun's secret orders, had been traveling between Pyongyang, Gwangju-bu, and Jeonju to raise troops.

"You were right. The dynasty's luck has turned."

The master of Gyeongbokgung had returned. He had not returned alone.

With the Qing army at his back, he meant to erase the Daewongun's traces themselves. Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok and every existing official who had cooperated even a little with the new cabinet were dismissed or purged. Confucian students at Sungkyunkwan and elsewhere who had shown the Daewongun any goodwill were stripped of their right to sit the civil examinations.

"Let's go."

We passed the swaggering Qing troops and turned our steps toward Gwanghwamun as we talked.

"Until then, I really thought His Highness the Daewongun's age had come."

"I was badly mistaken myself."

"So even a sharp kid like you can get it wrong."

"It isn't that. I simply never imagined the man who calls himself father of the nation — a king — would go down on his knees to the barbarians a second time."

"Yikes! Watch your mouth."

"The sages in the earth below must be wailing at the state of things."

"..."

The movements of the Qing army that had arrived with the Beiyang Fleet were swift and precise, as if the whole thing had been arranged in advance.

On the day the vanguard entered the capital, they crushed the city's forces in a rapid firepower assault, then arrested and detained the junior officers and commanders who might have served as a nucleus for the army, starting with them.

Woo Beom-seon, walking with his eyes on the ground, asked,

"How did the Qing army know our commanders' particulars in such detail? If you hadn't warned me, I'd have been sitting at home with my head empty and walked straight into a cell."

"Who else? His Majesty, and no one but."

"...What an unspeakable hour this is."

At first Woo Beom-seon had pushed back with How could a monarch betray his own servants? By today he only flushed and shook his head at an angle.

"Not only the officers' particulars. The locations of the government offices, the ministers' residences, the garrison watches and troop strengths — there is every chance His Majesty passed all of it along."

They had gone further still: securing Hanseong's principal public buildings and government halls in short order, taking the persons of the court officials and the safety of their families into their hands, and surrounding the Japanese legation so that it could make no contact with the outside.

Gojong must have made a point of it.

With the traffic already sorted between himself and the Qing, the last thing Gojong would have wanted was some new outside force tipping the board. He would have been extremely wary of that. And given that he had obtained information of the Daewongun's contact with the Japanese consulate at the time of the re-seizure of power, he had every reason to fear their intervention, if it came to that.

"Fine. This round, we lost."

I decided to concede it cleanly — not his squalid character, but the obsession, the hunger for power that lived in King Yi Hyeong. He was the incarnation of ambition on a scale that could stand beside Heungseon Daewongun himself.

Which meant I, too, would have to stake my life.