Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/133

 It was in 1592 that Hideyoshi launched his armies at Korea. He was unable to come himself, but he put his forces under the command of Hideyi as chief, while the actual leaders were Kato and Konishi. The Korean and Japanese accounts agree substantially in saying that the Japanese army consisted of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand men. They had five thousand battle-axes, one hundred thousand long swords, one hundred thousand spears, one hundred thousand short swords, five hundred thousand daggers, three hundred thousand firearms, large and small, but no cannon. There were fifty thousand horses. Many of the Japanese wore hideous masks with which to frighten the enemy, but it was the musketry that did the work. The Koreans had no firearms at all, and this enormous discrepancy is the second of the main causes of Japanese success. The Koreans could not be expected to stand against trained men armed with muskets.

Korea had long expected the invasion, and had kept China well informed of the plans of Hideyoshi and his demands, but when the blow was struck it found Korea unprepared. She had enjoyed the blessings of peace so long that her army had dwindled to a mere posse of police, and her generals were used simply to grace their empty pageants. There may also have been the notion that Japan was simply a medley of half-savage tribes, whose armies could not be truly formidable. If so, the Koreans were greatly mistaken. At the first blow it became apparent that Korea could do nothing against the invaders. Fusan, Tong-na, Kim-ha, and the other towns along the route to Seoul fell in quick succession. It was found that the Japanese army was too large to advance by a single route, especially as they had to live off the country, in large part. So the army divided into three sections: one, led by General Konishi, came north by the middle road; another, to the east of this, was led by General Kato; and a western one was led by General Kuroda.

It was on the seventeenth of the fourth moon that the