Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/164

 140 OAOGOWLI. expense of personal suffering and loss of life such as no other campaign in Chinese annals can furnish. If floods had destroyed the hopes of northern Chinese farmers for that year, a drought blighted their crops the next^ and an epidemic, — ^probably what is known as the Famine Fever, — carried away multitudes of people, especially in Shantung. The consequent disaffection of the people may therefore be readily understood; for spite of their wretched state, and the abyss of their poverty, the Emperor Yang, whose name is still a hissing and a bye-word, urged on preparations for another campaign against Liaotung. And no man dared speak reason, for it would have been at the risk of his life. In the beginniug of 613, little more than a year after his return, he sent men to rebuild the ancient Hiangping of Han, some distance west of Liaotung city, in order there to lay in stores, so that the next siege would not be broken up from exhausted provisions. And though large bands of robbers traversed the country, and Shantung was in the extremity of distress, the Emperor crossed the Liao in May, Yliwun and Yang Yi were again sent to Pingyang, to undo the evil effects of their former campaign. Yingoong got to Sinchung, west of Nansoo, having apparently gone by sea» drove back some myriads of Gaoli, by a sharp attack of 1,000 horse ; but he invested the city in vain. In this second attack on Liaotung city, the Emperor got ready "Flying Towers" and "Cloud-ladders,^* which can mean no more than high towers and scaling ladders. These were placed all round the city, and the garrison was kept on the qui vive, both day and night But so obstinate was the defence, that after twenty days constant fighting, the city was just as it was on the first day ; great numbers, however, fell on both sides, or of "host " and " guest,'* as the original puts it (hospea et hostis). At the top of one ^'Cloud-ladder,'' 150 feet long, most obstinate fights took place; one man killing as many as a dozen Coreans before he was cut down. Notwithstanding secret disaffection and internal discord in the