Government that she definitely refused once and for all to recognise China's so-called suzerainty, called for more troops from Tientsien. On the 25th July the ill-fated British steamer Kowshing, carrying Chinese reinforcements to Asan from Tientsien and convoyed by Chinese warships, was met a short distance out at sea by a Japanese squadron. Peremptorily ordered to surrender, the Chinese military commanders on board the Kowshing refused to obey, and thereupon the Japanese immediately opened fire and sunk the transport, thus drowning the majority of the soldiery crowding her decks. The war with China had at last

come.

On the 28th July the Japanese Generals called on the Chinese Commanders at Asan, which is but a few miles from Chemulpo, to evacuate the country. The Chinese again refused; the Japanese attacked them in greatly superior numbers and were completely victorious. On the 1st August Japan issued her declaration of war against China; on the 15th September the battle of Pingyang was fought; on the 17th of the same month the naval battle off Yalu took place; and finally on the 5th October the Japanese land forces occupied Anju and drove the last Chinese soldiers out of Korea. Henceforth the campaign was a Manchurian one, and Japan was free to act as she pleased in Korea. The results were not altogether pleasant. Leaders of the Korean Conservative party were mysteriously assassinated, at whose instigation has never been

quite clear, and exiled officials, who had fled the country on account of their progressive tendencies, returned in force to be reinstated in office as the chief members of the reformed Korean Cabinet. The Korean King, who had not yet promoted himself Emperor, took an oath in a public ceremony of great solemnity to support the newly-organised Government, and at the beginning of 1895 he was promulgating new laws based on the most approved principles. But by the middle of the same year the inevitable reaction occurred. Arrests began to reoccur. Pak Yong Hio, the chief of the reformed Cabinet, was declared a traitor and once more fled the country, whilst Ming Yung Chun, head of the Government during the Tonghak rebellion, returned from China, where he had sought refuge, and Japan found that in spite of her successful campaign on land and sea, and the various diplomatic instruments which had been signed on the conclusion of peace, she occupied by the autumn of 1895 much the same position in Korea as she had filled before the war.

It was no doubt this which inspired the appointment of the ill-famed Viscount Miura as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Seoul Court. A man of the most pronounced reactionary views and breathing the spirit of fierce old Japan, he set to work in a characteristic manner to stay, if possible, the rapid decline of Japanese prestige and power in Korea. The tragic result is well known.

Five weeks after his appointment to

many

Seoul, the Queen, some high Court officials, and of her attendants were foully murdered by a band of armed assassins, accompanied by Japanese soshi and disguised soldiers, who broke into the Palace at dead of night and perpetrated their dread deeds with a brutality which was heart-rending. Terrified by these events the King locked himself up in his Palace, and many high officials sought sanctuary in the United States Legation. Foreign warships collected once more at Chemulpo, Legation guards were marched up, and all Seoul was again in a greater turmoil than it had ever been before.

Under circumstances of such a disastrous nature, Japan acted as best she could. Viscount Miura, on whom such suspicion was fixed, was recalled in disgrace, never to receive another Government appointment, and Baron Komura, new Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Tokyo Cabinet, and then one of the most promising and honourable of the new generation of Japanese statesmen, appointed in his stead. But it was too late. The King had received a shock from which he could never recover, for like most weak men he had always been entirely under the influence of the women of his Palace; and the Conservatives, instead of being weakened by the loss of the Queen Consort, had their cause more strengthened by the tragedy than any other event could have done. Henceforth, like Italy under the Austrians, the placid Koreans dreamed of a liberated Korea which, freed from the ambitions of neighbour