Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/70

 movements of reform, the partisans of the victors, regarding Japan as the fountain of progressive tendencies, attacked and destroyed her legation in Söul and compelled its inmates to fly from the city. Japan behaved with forbearance at these crises, but in the consequent negotiations she acquired conventional titles that touched the core of China's alleged suzerainty. For in 1882 her right to maintain troops in Söul for the protection of her legation was admitted, and in 1885 she concluded with China a convention by which each Power pledged itself not to send troops to Korea without notifying the other, the two empires being thus placed on an equal military footing with regard to the peninsular kingdom.

In the spring of 1894 a serious insurrection broke out in Korea, and the insurgents proving themselves superior to the ill-disciplined, ill-equipped troops of the Government, the Bin family had recourse to its familiar expedient, appeal to China's aid. The appeal elicited a prompt response. On the 6th of July, 2,500 Chinese troops embarked at Tientsin, and were transported to the peninsula, where they went into camp at Ya-shan, on the southwest coast, notice of the measure being given by the Chinese Government to the Japanese Representative in Peking, according to treaty.

During the interval immediately preceding these events, Japan had been rendered acutely