The Ganghwa Treaty (1)
Despite the Ganghwa magistrate’s refusal to cooperate and the army’s equally poor showing, Chief Commander Lee Yusu finally landed Chongwiyeong on Ganghwado.
The Joseon soldiers, decked out in multicolored uniforms like a cavalry corps in sulfur-yellow, firelight, and violet cuirasses, were enough to deserve the name apocalypse—at least if you were a Joseon civilian.
Taesu had no intention of handing Choe Yang-eop over to the government troops, so he slipped away first with Yi Won-beom.
But there was no way to avoid being seen by everyone.
Their leader, the chief officer Oikseon, stepped forward and asked Kim Sun-won, “Aren’t you lot just smugglers? Sneaking back and forth across the battlefield all night—what, are you spies?”
His aim was obvious enough. He wanted the spoils and the merit those bobusang were carrying one by one: French uniforms, weapons, silver coins, and now and then even heads.
Luckily, there was someone present far closer to power than some minor military officer.
It was Jang Sun-gyu, the man who stood at the summit of the world’s Pyongyang.
A Byeolgam who could make a second-rank patrol commander look like a fool would never bother paying attention to a ninth-rank chief officer. Jang Sun-gyu barked, “I, too, as a man of the king, threw myself into this righteous cause when I saw the people of Ganghwa rise up against the barbarian invasion. How dare you go around making excuses and try to plunder the righteous people?”
Since Oikseon was a Seoul thug—no, an officer—he knew exactly who Jang Sun-gyu was.
Having been exposed so precisely, Oikseon got irritably defensive for no reason at all.
“If you keep acting this way even after stepping beyond the city gates, you’ll only bring shame to your superiors. Now get out of here with these men!”
Jang Sun-gyu snorted and flicked his sleeve.
The bobusang began whispering among themselves.
“He looked ordinary enough in those clothes, but apparently that’s a Seoul Byeolgam?”
“A Byeolgam means he’s one of the palace people, right?”
“And I heard he serves some prince—or rather, some prince-king!”
Jang Sun-gyu’s shoulders went straighter.
That was, until he heard the one remark he had absolutely not wanted to hear.
“Just how amazing is Park Axe, to have even such a man under him?”
There was no way he could throw a fit and shout that he wasn’t “under” anyone, idiot that he was.
Jang Sun-gyu merely spat out a groan like he was coughing up phlegm and hurried his steps.
In a mood that was anything but pleasant, he admitted it to himself.
As Prince Heungseon said, the bastard really is extraordinary.
Meanwhile, Chief Officer Oikseon of Chongwiyeong wanted to recover his lost dignity.
If he wanted to stop some bobusang band from claiming credit, then Chongwiyeong would have to retake Chojijin here and now.
“At a glance, they look like they took a beating from those smugglers, which means I can get a sense of Western discipline. No need to even dismount—charge and retake Chojijin at once!”
There were only two problems.
First, Chief Officer Oikseon was, quite simply, a master of the art of not shooting anything down.
Just as a first-rate swordsman could pour his will into his blade and cut grass without slicing it, Oikseon, when he drew a bow at a test and loosed a willow-leaf arrow, could be counted on to have it bounce off a single sheet of leather.
Considering that arrows, unlike swords, are no longer in your hand at the moment of impact and are therefore harder to control, one could guess just how formidable Oikseon’s inner energy must have been.
The officers were so impressed by his martial prowess that they wanted to fire him on the spot. But King Heonjong, not wanting to lose face for Chongwiyeong, smoothed things over.
That legendary feat of military achievement had not improved much with time.
On top of that, the rest of Oikseon’s command ability was on par with his archery. That was the first problem.
And second, there were now about a dozen French soldiers at Chojijin, reinforcements sent by Captain Cécile after the second bombardment.
The French troops, sworn to avenge their shattered comrades—not that this meant they intended to kill Captain Cécile—were enraged when they saw the charging Joseon soldiers.
“Those natives are coming back again!”
“Kill them all!”
The fierce volley of Charleville muskets that had failed to fully reveal itself earlier now erupted at last.
Oikseon faithfully practiced his specialty of non-killing. He clutched his head and ran.
A moment later, Chongwiyeong’s first foreign battle ended in a miserable rout.
The French suffered severe damage and could no longer press forward, but the Joseon army also failed to retake Chojijin.
Only the bobusang band under Taesu had really earned its keep.
* * *
Once I saw the bobusang band had gotten out safely, I hoisted Choe Yang-eop onto my back and headed straight for Won-beom’s house.
When Cha Un-hong sent over the relief money she had gathered, she included a letter.
If you have decided to fight, then so be it, if that is what justice demands. But please do not let the cart come before the horse.
The Mountain Spirit interpreted it for me.
[She means that even if you fight, you should leave yourself an opening so that that trade, that commerce, and all the other things I told you about do not come to a complete stop. What a shameless woman! Listen carefully, for this is the sort of talk that will ruin a nation.]
Hearing the Mountain Spirit slander her made me want to take his advice seriously all at once. If a man gets paid, he ought to do the job properly.
So I took this fellow, Choe Yang-eop—presumably Kim Dae-geon’s Number One subordinate—out of the picture in the middle.
Once I removed the gag, Choe Yang-eop, still gasping for breath, glared at me.
“You weren’t a Christian?”
I hit him once more before answering. “I’m the one asking questions. You know Kim Dae-geon, don’t you?”
“...I cannot betray the Lord or the Church. Kill me.”
Not easy.
If I wanted to, I could torture him.
This was the house of an exiled convict in a place people hardly ever visited, and its owner, Yi Uk, wasn’t even here. I’d heard the bastard had been going out lately to drink away his resentment.
It was understandable; after all, war had broken out right before his wedding. Even if Yi Uk were here, if I told him I was going to dismantle the lackey who had started this war, he’d probably just close his eyes and look the other way.
But what I was about to make him do couldn’t be achieved through torture. Torture cannot force active cooperation.
That was when the voice of the one fellow useful only for moments like this finally spoke up.
[You don’t handle heretics that way. Leave it to me.]
You said it hurt too much to do anything.
[That last divine breakthrough seems to have made things easier. I think I’m all right now.]
What?
[The more people you’ve killed with that axe, the heavier the grudges binding me have become, but at the same time the connection between you and me has grown stronger. Besides, this Ganghwa is the very place where I used to dwell, so there shouldn’t be any serious trouble here.]
What was that? Some kind of disgusting power-up?
Still, I asked the more important question first.
Why the change of heart?
There was no way that sly Mountain Spirit didn’t understand. What Cha Un-hong and I intended to do with Choe Yang-eop was not the sort of thing the Mountain Spirit wanted in his righteous anti-foreign crusade.
After it was over, the Westerners would come in one form or another. Didn’t he say Christians shouldn’t be allowed to set foot here?
[Hmm. I thought about it, too.]
I was more shocked than I had been when I faced the French bombardment. You thought about it? You?
[Shut up for a moment. Anyway, if what you and that woman say is true—that the arrival of the Westerners is an unavoidable fate—then... I’ve decided to stand against it in my own way.]
Stand against it?
[If all you do is keep the barbarians out, that’s no different from running away. Even if they come in, we must face them openly and make sure they cannot delude the people. Only then can we truly say we have not lost.]
It was the most solemn thing I had ever heard the Mountain Spirit say.
[Watching you live here these past few months has made me think there’s no reason the whole people of this country can’t become like you. I’ll help you.]
Of course, that didn’t exactly inspire confidence. It reminded me of that monkey’s-paw kind of deal.
Still, there’s always something good about a declaration that one refuses to submit.
I’ll do my best.
I smiled, then tightened my grip on the axe.
* * *
By the time Taesu pulled a paper scroll from Choe Yang-eop’s belongings, Yi Won-beom never dreamed he would actually unroll it and read it.
It was far more likely he’d use it as a beating stick. With Taesu’s strength, that would probably hurt plenty, too.
But Yi Won-beom was betrayed.
“A list of heretics, I see. Hmm. This gongso, or oratorium, is your nest, then? Your roots are spreading across all of the Three Southern Provinces like poisonous weeds.”
Choe Yang-eop bit his lip. He had been knocked out so quickly that he hadn’t had time to destroy it.
How does he know, if it was written in Latin? Father Andreas said he probably wasn’t deeply learned...
That part was true. Kim Dae-geon’s judgment had been accurate.
The talk of gongso and the Three Southern Provinces was nothing but bluff, pieced together from maps, letter arrangements, and rumors he had recently picked up about Catholic persecution—with a little help from the Mountain Spirit.
But this was the sort of bluff that was hard to see through when delivered by someone who had spent his life in clean faith, then run through a battlefield after a rough voyage, and finally been dragged here after a hard blow to the solar plexus.
In the end, Choe Yang-eop made the mistake of falling for the leading question.
“Yes, that’s how you’ll play it. But we will all meet again in heaven through death, and your wicked deeds will eventually...”
“Ah, ah. That’s not what I mean.”
Taesu waved a hand, looking almost pleased. Yi Won-beom thought he looked like a gambler who had found an easy mark.
“Your believers in the Three Southern Provinces really are unfortunate. Imagine hearing that the teacher they trust like the sky sold them out for a few coins. You’ll never be able to die until those thousands are brought in one by one and beheaded because of you.”
He wasn’t a priest, but Choe Yang-eop’s eyes widened anyway.
“If even priests do that sort of thing, what loyalty can you expect from the rest of them? Parents sell their children, and younger brothers inform on older brothers. How tragic. This is how your heretical creed corrupts ethics and order.”
This was the tactic used during the Gihae Persecution.
Repression bred fear, and fear bred internal division. Informers hungry for rewards and confessions wrung out by beatings shattered the community quickly. It was the inevitable fate of every underground organization.
If the one captured had been Kim Dae-geon, this trick would not have worked.
Kim Dae-geon already had years of pastoral work in Joseon and Manchuria. The trust Joseon Catholics placed in him would not crumble so easily.
But Choe Yang-eop was not there yet. Above all, he wasn’t even a priest.
Catholicism is a religion held together by strict organizational discipline, and the difference between a priest and a deacon has a significant effect on the scope of pastoral work and the believers’ trust.
This was a danger that could turn the entire Joseon mission, built by corpses laid like stones, to nothing in an instant.
Choe Yang-eop looked at Taesu with a face full of fear.
For different reasons, Yi Won-beom felt the same.
The sinister haze that had seemed to hover in Taesu’s eyes suddenly vanished.
Taesu shot Yi Won-beom a sidelong glance.
Then he said in English, “But there’s a way. I’m not saying we should slaughter all Westerners. We want to negotiate with France.”
Choe Yang-eop looked startled. Then, in English slightly weaker than Kim Dae-geon’s, he replied, “...You mean negotiations with France over religion and trade? If that’s what this is about, you needn’t threaten me like this. That is what we want as well.”
In truth, Kim Dae-geon, so long as he did not commit apostasy, would also have helped Joseon negotiate with France.
When Captain Cécile departed without even asking after Kim Dae-geon’s wellbeing, Joseon had no further reason to keep him alive and simply killed him.
But the current Captain Cécile was in a position where he should be grateful if anyone negotiated at all.
Choe Yang-eop’s heart began to pound.
Maybe I can bring about freedom for the Church with my own hands!
But there was one more fact Choe Yang-eop had overlooked.
Taesu had never said the subject of the “negotiations with France” would be the “Joseon government.”
* * *
The Joseon government, for its part, had not the slightest intention of negotiating with France either.
And that was due to a reason even more important than its lofty devotion to anti-foreign principles.
It was a matter of deference to the Qing. To put it bluntly, they were afraid of what the Qing might think.
When Joseon killed three French priests in the Gihae year, it never reported the matter to the Qing.
That made sense at the time, since it had been judged an internal affair. But now the internal affair had become an external one.
That was where things grew complicated.
When Lord Amherst had come before, Joseon had reported to Qing immediately. Foreign affairs belonged to the suzerain, China, and therefore the burden of dealing with troublesome Westerners was China’s to bear.
But this time, with Erigon’s invasion, the case was different. If Joseon reported now, it would first have to explain why it had said nothing back during the Gihae Persecution.
Once it got to that point, nothing Joseon said would matter anymore. The Qing would look at Joseon the way a company looks at an employee who took company money and dumped it into crypto.
They had to make the coin skyrocket somehow, patch the books, and bury the whole thing. Bringing it into the open was absurd.
Moreover, the report of the “militia’s victory,” passed along from Jang Sun-gyu to Yi Ha-eung and from Yi Ha-eung to the Pungyang Jo faction, presented a military perspective updated from the Opium War.
If those traveling-town militia were able to beat them, then aren’t the supposedly mighty Western forces nothing special after all?
In fact, France, having lost most of its land troops at Chojijin, still could not break through Chongwiyeong’s deployment on Ganghwado.
Of course, Chongwiyeong also couldn’t break through the French, but that wasn’t the important part.
What mattered was the possibility that Joseon might become the first to defeat the Western warships that had even bested the Qing.
In other words, this would be a victory over the Jurchen, however indirectly. If they endured this, they would not be the descendants of King Injo’s blood, that famed king of bravery.
The resolve of the incapable monarch appeared in the full mobilization of the Gyeonggi naval fleet.
King I-hwan tried to use this chance to establish the prestige of Chongwiyeong.
The king stripped military command from the Jinmusa—the Ganghwa magistrate—who seemed to be deliberately slacking off.
“If the land-and-sea and the front-and-rear commands come from different places, then the hands and feet of those above and below will never match. Temporarily place all the warships of Gyeonggi under the Chief Commander’s command.”
Nam I-hyeong, the Jinmusa, handed over command with relief, while Lee Yusu, the Chief Commander, did so with a sour taste in his mouth.
And he had good reason.
At this point, the naval power of Gyeonggi and Hwanghae was focused entirely on one thing: speed.
Since the Imjin War and Zheng Chenggong’s downfall, East Asia was no longer a place where huge fleet battles took place.
Beyond their “proper” duties—fishing or extorting fishermen—the Joseon navy had exactly two military purposes.
The king’s escape.
And keeping Chinese fishing boats in line.
Both depended on speed above all else. After two centuries of directional evolution, the Joseon navy had become something like an ancestor of the sea.
The navy’s main warships were not the famous turtle ships or even the panokseon.
Those numbered only five in all of Gyeonggi Naval Command, and most of them had been tragically smashed to pieces during the first invasion.
There were about ten of the final class of vessel one might still stubbornly insist counted as a warship—the shields ships—but most of those had also been destroyed over the past few days by the French cannon fire that Erigon had been hurling from Chojijin without being able to advance.
Honestly, the right move now would have been to withdraw every ship and simply wait for the French to wear themselves out and go home.
But the king had issued his order. What was anyone supposed to do?
Chief Commander Lee Yusu first sent a desperate request for support to the Hwanghae Naval Command.
Then he ordered the departure of the navy’s “main force.”
Reconnaissance vessels—whose performance might as well have belonged to some game scout.
Warning ships for relaying alarms.
Water supply ships.
Seaweed-gathering boats.
Just hearing the list, the gold fleet of Joseon set out with great dignity and terror.
The current flowing from Sondolmok toward Yeongjongdo—in other words, toward the French ships—was merciless, shoving the gold fleet forward. So at first glance they looked very brave indeed.
What’s more, the ships here were not limited to naval warships.
In battle, Joseon always requisitioned the people’s boats as auxiliaries. In the original history, Kim Dae-geon had also not been captured because he was suspected; he was caught during this requisition process.
The dozens of rowboats and fishing boats hastily gathered from across Ganghwa joined the gold fleet as well.
This was the majesty of Joseon, a state where civil and military affairs were one and the same. There was simply no way to distinguish civilian from soldier.
Just like at Chojijin.
Captain Cécile realized that this war was far more difficult than he had expected.
Author’s Note
1. Around this time, Oikseon was a real historical figure who served as a chief officer, and later as a middle commander and even a troop commander; he was not, in fact, a particularly bad person. The story about him nearly being removed for failing to pierce leather with an arrow is true, but that does not mean it was as easy as cutting grass with a sword.
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