A Complete Shambles (1)

Let us rewind the clock a little, to the end of March.

On the eve of war with France, Zhang Zhidong and Zhang Peilun of the Qingliu Party found themselves engulfed in a storm of blame, politically cornered by the offensive of Li Hongzhang, Minister of Beiyang. In response they mobilized their subordinate scholar-officials and threw themselves into a campaign of anti-Joseon agitation.

Their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slogan never changed.

Behind Zhang Zhidong and Zhang Peilun — who were using Qingliu Party retainers in the Forbidden City to inflame public opinion with increasingly distorted reports of Joseon's deteriorating situation — stood, of course, Empress Dowager Cixi.

About a month later, while Li Hongzhang had departed for the Zhili Viceroy's Headquarters to assume overall command of the war with France, sentiment in the Forbidden City had ripened sufficiently. Having taken the measure of her ministers' hearts, Cixi stepped forward herself.

For her, Joseon's rebellion was nothing short of a heaven-sent opportunity.

As the foremost elder of the imperial house, she could not simply stand by while Joseon, under the bizarre and unprecedented banner of something called the Three Principles of the People, threw the order of the world into chaos.

Joseon had, it was true, behaved insufferably of late, and had even fought two wars with the Qing at the dynasty's founding. But since the Qing had entered the Pass and Joseon had duly observed the rites of investiture as a tributary state, two full centuries had passed.

And yet — where in all of history was there a precedent for executing, overnight, a monarch whom the Qing themselves had invested, and dragging noble blood out through the palace gates?

Worse still, they had the gall to dress up their rebellion as a "revolution."

Was that not a phrase inflammatory enough to jolt even the most exalted from their sleep?

And the fact that the agents of this revolution were ordinary commoners filled the Qing princes and dukes with still greater shock and terror.

Remember the nightmare of mere decades past. Remember what happened in Jiangnan.

It was all too similar to the peasant uprising of the Taiping Rebellion, which had set the entire nation ablaze and come within a hair's breadth of toppling the dynasty — a nightmare reborn.

Those had been truly desperate days for the Qing court. Had it not been for General Gordon, commander of the Ever-Victorious Army, and Zuo Zongtang of the Huai Army — the force that would become today's Beiyang Army — the dynasty might not have survived. Li Hongzhang, who had merely tagged along for the ride, could be set aside for now.

Thus stimulated, the Qing princes, certain ministers of the Zongli Yamen, and the scholar-retainers of Zhang Zhidong's Qingliu Party rallied public opinion and absorbed the entire court bureaucracy. Empress Dowager Cixi, having forged this vast party-that-was-not-a-party, resolved not merely to check Li Hongzhang with this new power, but first to cement their influence with a concrete achievement.

The sacrificial lamb for that achievement was none other than Joseon.

Not long after, on the very day a French delegation arrived in Korea and the two sides exchanged expeditionary troops for the conquest of Taiwan and artillery units from the Far East Squadron, commanders of the Eight Banners and officers of the Green Standard Army, acting on Cixi's orders, set out on long journeys to Liaodong and Manchuria to muster troops — all under the noble pretext of a "punitive expedition."

That had been roughly three months ago.

And so, at the time the Wolf's Lair was issuing Operation Blue in anticipation of war with the Qing, China had deployed some thirty-five thousand troops and three hundred assorted artillery pieces along the Yalu River frontier for the purpose of national defense, digging trenches and raising palisades in what passed for preparation.

But the Qing, being an Eastern nation in circumstances not unlike Joseon's, was hardly free of the chronic corruption and graft that plagued such states. The proof: the vast majority of soldiers listed on the payroll had either refused to answer the muster — or been unable to.

"The records clearly state that forty-six thousand infantrymen are assigned to the Shengjing General's command, and seven thousand Eight Banners troops and cavalry are on the books! So why have a mere twenty thousand answered the call, and why have the Eight Banners and the cavalry not even bothered to show up?!"

Song Qing, who had been dragged into the role of Shengjing's defense commissioner more or less by accident, took one look at the chaotic situation in Liaodong and exploded. He hurled the documents already littering his office in every direction and roared at the Shengjing bureaucrats.

The Eight Banners ignoring the muster was one thing. But the shortfall of soldiers on the payroll was far from the only problem.

The grain listed in the ledgers had been pilfered so thoroughly, bit by bit, that the rice supposed to have come up from Jiangnan fell not merely short of half — it fell far, far below. And the quantities of muskets, cannon, and gunpowder that ought to have been stockpiled in preparation for war simply did not match.

Reports existed, clear as day, that Western-style rifles and ammunition manufactured at the arsenals and gun-works of Jiangnan and North China had been shipped to Liaodong and Zhili in anticipation of war. And yet the various firearms that should have numbered nine thousand were, in the warehouses, nothing but five thousand rotting rotting matchlocks. The cannon mounted on the fortress battlements were so rusted front and back that one had to worry they might burst from the breech the moment they were fired.

And that was not all.

The defensive posture of Jiuliancheng — which, however remote the possibility, would become the very front line if the Korean army ever attacked — was in a wretched state.

Damn it all. Never mind battlements — can you even call those walls? They're worse than a crumbling garden fence.

Of course, the local commanders and fortress officers there were seething with resentment toward Beijing, which for a full century had paid them no attention whatsoever and had even cut off what little support remained, citing various rebellions as the excuse.

And was it only Jiuliancheng, the gateway to Liaodong? Between it and Tangzhan, and on to the palisade gate of Chaekmun well known to both nations, there were no fortresses at all — nothing but wooden stockades and palisades.

There was, of course, the Qing's own complacency: they had never imagined Joseon would dare to dream such an audacious dream. But more practically, no emperor in successive generations had ever possessed the will to spend vast sums of treasure fortifying Liaodong with stone — a material, aside from fired brick, that was scarcely to be found in the vicinity.

Why? Because while the Han Chinese empires of old had always feared the depredations of nomadic peoples lurking beyond Shanhaiguan in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia — what, after all, was the origin of the Qing themselves?

And so, once the Qing had entered the Pass, the maintenance and support of Liaodong's defenses — work that Han Chinese regimes had carried out generation after generation — had slowly, inevitably, dried up.

"Hah..."

Song Qing, the man in charge, who had heard only secondhand that the situation was dire, found his guts twisting so violently he began to wonder if this posting was his own grave.

Then his irritable gaze fell upon the bureaucrats huddled in the corner of his office, swallowing nervously.

"...What are you standing around gawking for? Get out there and find some guns, round up the village men, do something — work, damn you! You turtle-brained bastards!!"

Seeing Song Qing's hand move from the document piles toward an ashtray and a flower vase, the Shengjing officials cried out and fled. He watched them go, then collapsed panting into his seat.

Staring at ledgers whose numbers simply refused to add up was enough to make his head explode.

"Hah... hah..."

He swept the trash covering ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his desk aside with both hands — whoosh — and only then, with the surface finally clear, buried his face in it and began to weep.

"Hngh-huuuh..."

If he didn't actually cry, he wasn't sure he could stay sane.

He should never have listened to that damned brat Zhang Peilun!

"I must have been out of my mind..."

The truth was, Song Qing was an admiral. He commanded a navy. And yet somehow everything had tangled itself into this impossible knot. Perhaps the problem was that he had distanced himself from Li Hongzhang after taking offense at the man's overreach.

Of course, the Minister of Beiyang kidnapping the Daewonwi — Joseon's royal father and a minister of a sovereign nation in his own right — had gone well beyond overreach ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into outright criminality. But Zhang Zhidong and Zhang Peilun of the Qingliu Party had sniffed out that peculiar distance between the two men and driven a wedge into the gap — and that had been fatal.

Swept up in the temptation that if he too won military glory, he might one day become a figure of Li Hongzhang's towering stature — that had been the root of the disaster, if a root there was. He had been promoted in a single stroke to a post far beyond his abilities. The result was only natural.

But had he truly understood the inner workings of Liaodong and Manchuria, he would never have drunk from that poisoned cup.

Utterly ignorant of these tortured inner workings of the Qing, the Republican army, with the Wolf's Lair's authorization, at last crossed the Yalu River.

This is not to speak of the Hobunwi, who had secretly forded the river at the launch of Operation Blue to sow confusion among the enemy's main force, nor of the 3rd Regiment's sporadic provocations along the entire length of the Yalu in support of that effort. This crossing was an event of far greater significance: Joseon, under the banner of the Northern Expedition, was at last publicly declaring war upon the Qing.

At last the time had come to avenge two hundred years of grievance and, under the protection of successive sage kings, flatten the noses of the Manchus who had presumed to a station far above their due and thrown the order of the world into chaos.

The Republican army's bearing as it slowly advanced north across the Yalu was magnificent. Splendid taegeuk flags and austere red banners streamed at the head of the column, emblems of their fighting spirit.

"Enemy fortress ahead!"

And so the Northern Expedition 1st Division — Han Seong-geun's 3rd Regiment, Yun Ung-ryeol's 6th Regiment, and Seo Gwang-beom's 5th Regiment, which had joined them from Pyongyang, coalesced into a host of some twenty thousand — at last came face to face with a fortress worthy of the name.

"Jiuliancheng."

The enemy's first fortress, and the first obstacle of the Northern Expedition: Jiuliancheng.

At the scout cavalry's cry, Han Seong-geun raised an American-made telescope and studied the battlements' defensive posture with care. His brow furrowed more and more.

From a distance, Jiuliancheng's battlements had looked almost intact. Up close, they resembled a mouth with half its teeth sold off. The walls, patched here and there with brick, looked precarious even at a glance.

And those yellow papers plastered thickly across the walls and gate towers — what on earth...

What in the world is that...?

Beside him, Seo Gwang-beom and Yun Ung-ryeol, who had raised their own telescopes to examine the same fortress, spoke in turn.

"Those... aren't those talismans?"

"Talismans..."

"Good God."

Yes. Those talismans. The kind that cunning shamans sold to beguile the common folk, claiming they would ward off spirits and ghosts.

"Don't tell me they knew we were coming and stuck talismans on the walls?"

"W-well, during the Western Disturbances, our own soldiers on Ganghwa Island stuck talismans to their foreheads or hung them from their armor, didn't they? Said they'd stop bullets—"

"That was individual soldiers going off on their own! Those Qing bastards plastered them all over the walls — some commanding officer clearly ordered it! How can a general of a nation put his faith in superstition when facing an enemy?!"

Han Seong-geun, so appalled he had snapped without meaning to, watched Yun Ung-ryeol shrug and Seo Gwang-beom's expression shift from tension toward the Qing to outright contempt. He rubbed his throat.

"This is going to drive me mad."

As they drew closer, the walls — except for the middle section — were smeared top and bottom with talismans and some bizarre liquid. The liquid resembled something red, as if livestock blood and ash had been mixed and poured over the stone.

"And the stench is horrific."

The Qing army's disgrace unfolding before his eyes was so grotesque that Han Seong-geun was left speechless. At last, with a sour expression, he asked the regiment commanders beside him:

"Am I dreaming right now?"

"No."

"I don't think this is a dream either."

All three were stunned beyond words. How much more so the allied cavalry who had ridden ahead to reconnoiter Jiuliancheng?

As the fortress loomed larger, the faces of the Republican soldiers — tense only moments before at the prospect of battle — filled instead with simultaneous bewilderment and contempt for the enemy. Walls defiled with talismans and the rotting blood of livestock. Battlements riddled with holes and poorly built. Bricks crumbling in sympathy, scattering dust on the wind.

Fortunately, the gate beneath the massive fortress-style gate tower at least looked like a proper gate. The hinges were caked with dust and rust, and whether they even worked was anyone's guess — but still.

Yet the long walls stretching to either side of Jiuliancheng, and that enormous gate, could not contain the single emotion blooming through the Republican army.

Contempt.

Fortunately, contempt for the enemy was also the emotion best suited to a modern army. The scorn one feels toward those inferior to oneself can become a formidable force, exerting a profound effect on morale. It was not so different from the thinking of the European great powers, who had established colonies in Africa and, with machine guns at the fore, slaughtered indigenous tribes with overwhelming force.

Contempt for the enemy was a natural emotion that arose when facing an opponent inferior — or profoundly ignorant.

The Republican army, which had until now steeled its courage under the banner of the Northern Expedition and hidden its tension well, was no longer afraid.

Han Seong-geun, sharp-eyed enough not to miss this, drew the sword at his waist in the van of the coming battle, thrust it toward the fortress, and roared with soaring spirit: