d anything about the Mongols, it
should have been the essentially non-maritime character of the
mid-Asian conquerors.

By Kublai himself that defect was well appreciated. He saw that to
carry a body of troops to Japan, the seagoing resources of the
Koreans must be requisitioned, and on the bootless return of his
first embassy, he immediately issued orders to the Koma King to build
one thousand ships and mobilize forty thousand troops. In vain the
recipient of these orders pleaded inability to execute them. The Khan
insisted, and supplemented his first command with instructions that
agricultural operations should be undertaken on a large scale in the
peninsula to supply food for the projected army of invasion.
Meanwhile he despatched embassy after embassy to Japan, evidently
being desirous of carrying his point by persuasion rather than by
force. The envoys invariably returned re infecta. On one occasion
(1269), a Korean vessel carried off two Japanese from Tsushima and
sent them to Peking. There, Kublai treated them kindly, showed them
his palace as well as a parade of his troops, and sent them home to
tell what they had seen. But the Japanese remained obdurate, and
finally the Khan sent an ultimatum, to which Tokimune, the Hojo
regent, replied by dismissing the envoys forthwith.

War was now inevitable. Kublai massed 25,000 Mongol braves in Korea,
supplemented them with 15,000 Korean troops, and embarking them in a
flotilla of 900 vessels manned by 8000 Koreans, launched this paltry
army against Japan in November, 1274. The armada began by attacking
Tsushima and Iki, islands lying in the strait that separates the
Korean peninsula from Japan. In Tsushima, the governor, So Sukekuni,*
could not muster more than two hundred bushi. But these two hundred
fought to the death, as did also the still smaller garrison of Iki.
Before the passage of the narrow strait was achieved, the invaders
must have lost something of their faith in the whole enterprise. On
November 20th, they landed at Hako-zaki Gulf in the province of
Chikuzen There they were immediately assailed by the troops of five
Kyushu chieftains. What force the latter represented there is no
record, but they were certainly less numerous than the enemy.
Moreover, the Yuan army possessed a greatly superior tactical system.
By a Japanese bushi the battle-field was regarded as an arena for the
display of individual prowess, not of combined force. The Mongols, on
the cont