Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/62

 setting of the time-honoured past was provoking as desperate a struggle as it had in Japan during the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate; the Korean royal family, torn by intrigues, was divided into a so-called conservative pro-Chinese party, led by the ill-fated Queen, and a so-called liberal pro-Japanese party. The destruction of the Japanese Legation and the general mob-violence, induced by the signing of the first foreign treaties in 1882, culminated in the landing of Yuan Shih-kai and other generals with 3,000 Chinese troops to back up the Queen's party. And these were promptly followed by the landing of the same number of Japanese troops.

This meeting of China and Japan face to face after centuries of isolation filled the air with electricity. Instinctively the two nations hated one another. All the jealousy and bad blood of generations seemed to be concentrated in Seoul: and incident followed incident with bewildering rapidity. In 1884 several thousand Korean and Chinese troops under Yuan Shih-kai attacked one of the palaces which was defended by two companies of Japanese infantry. More Chinese and Japanese troops arrive and rumours of war grow. But the pear was not yet ripe; and accordingly in 1885 the late Prince