Five Days in Hanseong (2)
…Thus the successive, all-out assaults launched by the Korean royal guard from late evening onward were at last brought to a halt by the courageous and desperate sword-drawing charges of the Korean revolutionary government.
Among those involved, there are two persons of particular note whom Your Excellency the Foreign Minister would do well to remember. The first is a boy orator named Syngman Rhee, who has raised a storm throughout Korean society. The second is a young Korean by the name of Seo Jae-pil.
Of the two, the young man Seo Jae-pil is an excellent officer who, earlier this year, completed a year's study at Keio Gijuku and, in the same period, graduated with distinguished marks from the Toyama Army Non-Commissioned Officer Academy in jujutsu, close-order drill, and bayonet fighting.
As defense commander of the new government, Seo Jae-pil—awkward, perhaps, yet tenacious—proved himself the most exemplary and capable general of a Gaehwadang administration that was, in truth, a patchwork house of cards, and yet one that left an indelible impression upon the people of Hanseong.
Moreover, the new Korean army that served under him, together with the people of Hanseong who volunteered for conscription and the leading figures of the Gaehwadang, fought to the last against the King of Joseon in defense of the new government. They held out against the conservative royal army and the pro-Qing battalions despite being hopelessly outnumbered, all for the sake of their ideals.
··· abridged ···
The officers and elite infantry of the new Gaehwadang government, having effectively checked the first charge through their superior offensive spirit and martial valor, did not rest there. They immediately drove the King's royal guard back with renewed ferocity, and the enemy soon lost portions of the commercial districts of Jongno and Unjongga which they had recaptured during the day.
Furthermore, in the brief interval when the King's royal guard, defeated in the Battle of Jongno, fell back to regroup and resupply their ammunition, the Gaehwadang government launched a large-scale night assault centered on the Main Palace.
(This was, of course, a decisive blunder on the part of the Gaehwadang leadership. Only a small fraction of the King's forces had been committed to the offensive since the afternoon, and the King of Joseon, having anticipated an attack upon the Main Palace well in advance, had already removed the royal person to Changdeok Palace. Thus the Gaehwadang government's dawn raid ended in thorough failure.)
Consequently, the King of Joseon and his pro-Qing cabinet, having squandered in vain the first and second days—the most critical period for suppression…
Inasmuch as the confusion in Hanseong is brought under control, I shall make contact with personages of the new government who are well disposed toward our own, and shall compile a detailed report of the street fighting and engagements that have continued in Hanseong for five days from that first day.
(A map is appended below.)
Respectfully submitted to His Excellency
Inoue Kaoru, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
by Hanabusa Yoshimoto, Minister to Korea,
who holds him in the highest esteem.
Rounds punched home. Flesh gave way.
"Now! On your feet and fire!"
"Fire! Open fire!"
Park Yung-hyo swept the saber in his hand like a conductor's baton and thrust it high above his head. Behind the walls of Gyeong-u Palace, the soldiers of the Capital Guards' Front Battalion rose as one and poured their fire into the enemy.
As if in answer, the knot of men charging the palace clutched at the red that had burst from their chests and throats, fingers groping at the wetness, and pitched forward onto the road.
"Gah—!"
"Kh—!"
Acrid powder-smoke uncoiled along both sides of the street, and red flowers blossomed everywhere. The muzzle flashes, and the hateful glare in the dying men's eyes that burned no less brightly, all of it fitted itself neatly into the gaze of Park Yung-hyo as he whirled the saber over his head.
Perched precariously atop the palace wall, watching the Gyeongsayeong troops gather themselves for another rush at the main gate, he roared.
"Fire!"
"Shoot them!"
Again, at his command, a small fog bloomed. The smoke peculiar to black powder was terribly thick, and the stench of it was worse. Park Yung-hyo squinted against the ruined visibility, flicked his hand irritably through the haze, and muttered to himself.
"This might actually be a blessing."
Yes. It might even be fortunate. At least it kept the reek of blood they had been breathing for three solid days from grinding what little was left of their minds down to nothing.
The capital was already soaked in the blood of both sides, and of the unlucky common people caught between them. Across that reeking earth, the faces of fallen enemy soldiers stared up at him, each one wearing an expression of bitter, unfinished grievance. His lips moved again.
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
The drillmasters, picking their targets in time with his orders, blew apart the skulls of the men in the charge, and the soldiers' rounds punched through the thighs of those still coming on in the rear ranks.
"Nngh—"
In that sliver of an instant a shot hissed past Park Yung-hyo's ear as he stood exposed atop the wall. The round that missed him either buried itself in a beam or a pillar-end of Gyeong-u Palace, or stopped with the sound of something shattering.
"Get down, sir! It's too dangerous!"
Park Yung-hyo was frowning at the sight of several enemy soldiers who had been approaching the main gate, their brains now sliding in a thick slow trickle toward the ditch on this side, when someone's concern reached him. He answered out of habit that he understood, and dropped down at once.
At the same moment, the command banners of the Jangwiyeong and the Royal Guard, which had been pressing the attack from the far side, dipped and began to fall back. The volleys from both sides had reduced the field to a blindness in which a man could not see a pace ahead, and they seemed to have decided on a brief reorganization.
"A stroke of luck in all this misery."
Down from the wall, Park Yung-hyo flung aside the saber whose hilt had already come off and sank against the stones where he stood. Kill them and kill them and the fighting still would not end. If he watched any more of it he was genuinely going to lose his mind.
"I'm going to lose my mind…"
He had already lost count of the charges. Since the savage fighting at Jongno the day before, and immediately after the Gaehwadang's great night raid on the Main Palace—their last throw, meant to seize the sovereign's person and end the battle—had collapsed in failure, their army had been on the defensive without a single break.
"Ah. Perhaps there was never a moment we weren't on the back foot."
The sheer absurdity of it dragged a hollow little laugh out of him. He lifted his face and watched the murky sky for a while.
Damn it all. The more ridiculous thing was that he was not even an officer, and here he was leading men on the line. The night raid had killed off, in a single stroke, nearly every officer and cadet in the Gaehwadang who had received anything resembling a military education.
Yun-gyeong needs to come to his senses, and soon.
The surprise attack on the Main Palace had been a catastrophe in the most literal sense. If the Gaehwadang had overlooked anything, it was this: the tyrant Park Yung-hyo had once served was a greedy man, but when it came to saving his own skin he was utterly, meticulously thorough. They had gone in to seize his person and had been stunned to find the Main Palace already stripped clean. They had put the palace servants to the question, and then the royalist counterattack had come in hard enough to drive them back out again.
Yes. I bear some of the blame myself. We were intoxicated by the romantic streak in Baeg-on, that is true—but his comrades failed to check that heedless course of his before it ran away with all of us…
It was that romanticism, that so-called bold and heroic swagger, that drew people to Kim Ok-gyun. This, however, had not been the hour for it. In the end, after that failure, Park Yung-hyo himself—who had argued all along for opening negotiations and holding out through a long war—had gone so far as to openly defy Baeg-on.
"If we all die here, I truly won't have a scrap of face left to show anyone."
And Seo Jae-pil, who had led the delaying action at Jongno so well, now had two holes punched through his shoulder by the reckless surprise attack the Yeongsu had forced upon them, and was hovering at the edge of death.
"Damn it."
His eyes stung at the thought that his friend might die. He dragged a sleeve across the wetness gathering there and, with a face worn down to the grain, looked along the soldiers slumped against the wall. Almost none of them had an uninjured patch of body left. Torn wounds had been bound up any way that would hold, and scabs clung to them everywhere.
"..."
The cadets and the Chung-ui-gye swordsmen who had already given their lives were a grief of their own. But what hollowed him out, what he could not stop apologizing for even in silence, were the soldiers of the Front Battalion who had followed them without a word of warning and laid down their lives for the cause, and the people of Hanseong who had taken this side because the revolutionary pledges had caught them. Already, behind Gyeong-u Palace, the common people who had thrown themselves into the service of the Gaehwadang government for nothing—who had stood up and fought the tyrant—were sleeping in the ground.
A soldier who had been moving about the courtyard came up to him and spoke.
"Please eat this, sir."
"…Thank you."
To Park Yung-hyo, wilted and resting against the wall, the soldier held out a rice ball he had pulled from inside his military hat, packed together any which way, and then went on to the next man.
"Fuck!"
Hong Gye-hun, Commander of the Royal Guard, had already ordered the retreat seven times from a Gyeong-u Palace that had looked ready to fold after two or three decent assaults, and he was sincerely on the verge of losing his mind. What in God's name did that stupid wall think it was doing—that wall that could not even reach a man's shoulder—impersonating some impregnable fortress out of the ancient histories?
"Hah—hah—"
He swallowed the rage as best he could, his riding crop coiled in his fist so tightly it seemed about to snap, and snapped instead at the adjutant fidgeting beside him.
"The Gatling gun!"
"If you'll wait just a little longer, sir, the installation is nearly finished…"
"These bastards! I requested the mobilization yesterday—and you're telling me they've been 'preparing' all damn day!?"
"Th-that is…"
The military clerk bent at the waist again and again before his commander's genuine fury, pleading the circumstances, blaming an innocent quartermaster, insisting none of it was their fault.
"The ammunition that ought to have been at the Hadogam was, for reasons no one can explain, in a warehouse behind the Right Palace, and we lost time searching—"
"Tsk! The instant it's ready, tell them to shred everything in sight—the gate, the wall, I don't care!"
"Yes, sir!"
The clerk bolted. A short while later, with a grinding rasp of metal, a terrifying stream of fire began to pour toward Gyeong-u Palace.
Magnificent. Truly magnificent. Hong Gye-hun, transfixed by the beautiful spectacle of the Gatling gun spitting bullets as if it were vomiting molten iron, swallowed slowly, his eyes gone vacant.
The American officers brought it as a sample, they said.
He had heard it was a vicious weapon that had slaughtered men and horses without number in the American civil war. The rumor, it turned out, had not been idle talk. Look at them—those Gaehwadang rebels, not daring even to lift their heads, stumbling over one another in confusion!
He swallowed again. A moment more and he would have been thoroughly bewitched by the Gatling's intoxicating figure; catching the glances of the men who had glimpsed that lapse, he felt a flush of embarrassment and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Hrm."
No distinctive click of a single-shot rifle—only the Gatling's rough, relentless gouging, carving countless raw scars into the palace wall. Then the officer in charge of the gun came running up, out of breath, and reported.
"Commander."
"What is it?"
Hong Gye-hun turned his head. The officer hesitated a moment before he spoke.
"The Gatling gun is devastating, sir, but we have very little ammunition."
"What do you mean, little?"
"Each drum holds about two hundred and fifty rounds. Of those drums, we have five left. That is all."
"What?"
No ammunition? Why in the world not? Hong Gye-hun stared at the man as if the words themselves were an insult, and the staff officers at his elbow hurried to explain.
"Don't be too hard on him, Commander. There are only three men in the entire force who can even operate the thing."
"The truth is, that piece was reserved matériel—packed away, not to be uncrated until the American instructor cadre arrived in-country. The spare ammunition is still held up in Incheon, so…"
"For heaven's sake."
A string of questions and answers so stupid it emptied him out. Hong Gye-hun pressed a hand to his forehead. Here, there, everywhere—this country's army was riddled with holes.
"Nngh."
Of course, it was still better than the situation of only a few days ago, when they had very nearly been charging with obsolete matchlocks and spears, their firepower far inferior to the rebel Front Battalion.
When I have distinguished myself in this affair, I will report to His Majesty that the military system must be reformed. I will make certain of it.
Leave the national defense in this condition and the country would be turned inside out ten times over, sooner or later. But if there was no ammunition, what was he supposed to do about it? Irritation was one thing and reality was another. Hong Gye-hun accepted the shabbiness of his own army, held on to his composure by force, and opened his mouth.
"Understood. You may go."
"Yes, sir!"
He sent the officer away and watched the Gatling's incomparable power through narrowed eyes. Then, in a grave voice, he gave the order to the Gyeongsayeong units that had dressed their ranks. The ammunition would run dry soon enough. Better to launch the attack now, while the troops were still flushed with the spectacle of that gun.
"Charge."
The curved riding crop waved up and down. The drillmasters and junior officers who had been watching for it passed the command along.
"Begin the charge!"
"Charge! Charge!"
With a great shout, the Gyeongsayeong in the lead, the royal troops and the assorted irregulars behind them, surged as one toward a wall already beaten to wreckage.
They came on as if to pour out, all at once, the humiliation and the rage of the days just past, charging bravely with the Gatling's supporting fire screaming over their heads.
"Reload! Reload!"
"Ah—it's hot!"
A two-hundred-and-fifty-round drum, heated until it smoked, was flung down onto the ground, and a clumsy assistant gunner hurriedly locked a fresh one in place.
"Ready!"
"Fire again!"
The crank turned once more, and the Gatling's howl rolled across the field. Rounds punched and hammered.
"That should finish it today."
The ammunition was nearly gone, but it had been enough, and it had been magnificent. The Gaehwadang rebels who, only a little while ago, had been perched so precariously atop the wall pouring fire this way, were now so crushed beneath that appalling stream of metal that they did not dare even look in this direction.
Hong Gye-hun had folded his arms, watching the walls and the main gate of Gyeong-u Palace darken here and there with soot like a pockmarked face, wearing the expression of a man who believed it was all over—when a shrill cry cut across the air behind him.
It was a messenger. He looked as if he had only just left Changdeok Palace.
"Cease the assault!"
"What…?"
Hong Gye-hun was so stunned by the cry that he dropped the riding crop in his hand, then lunged at the messenger who came panting toward him. There was a limit even to throwing ashes on a finished meal. What kind of horseshit was this?
"What—what did you just say, you little shit!"
"Hah—hah—Commander! His Majesty commands that the attack be suspended for the present!"
The messenger, who knew nothing of the situation here, only stared back with round, bewildered eyes, as if to ask what the matter was. Hong Gye-hun exploded.
"I said what the hell kind of bullshit is that!"
"H-how should a man like me—"
"Who was it! Which bastard fed His Majesty this—"
But there was only the messenger, who understood none of it, half-seized in the Royal Guard Commander's grip and very nearly dying for it as the man raved.
It was yet another mistake by a fickle king.