cient force. Konishi Yukinaga
fell into this trap. He agreed to an armistice of fifty days, during
which the Japanese pledged themselves not to advance more than three
miles northward of Pyong-yang while Chen proceeded to Peking to
arrange terms of peace. It is very evident that had the Japanese seen
any certain prospect of proceeding to the invasion of China, they
would not have agreed to such an arrangement as this--an arrangement
which guaranteed nothing except leisure for the mobilization of a
strong Chinese army. It had, indeed, become plain to the Japanese
commanders, after six months of operations in the peninsula, that the
wisest course for them was to arrange a satisfactory peace.

The second force put in the field by China is estimated by the
Jesuits and the Japanese at 200,000 men and at 51,000 by Korean
history. Probably the truth lies midway between the two extremes.
This powerful army moved across Manchuria in the dead of winter and
hurled itself against Pyong-yang during the first week of February,
1593. The Japanese garrison at that place cannot have greatly
exceeded twenty thousand men, for nearly one-half of its original
number had been detached to hold a line of forts guarding the
communications with Seoul. Neither Chinese nor Japanese history
comments on the instructive fact that the arrival of this army under
the walls of Pyong-yang was China's answer to her envoy's promise of
a satisfactory peace, nor does it appear that any discredit attached
to Chen Weiching for the deception he had practised; his competence
as a negotiator was subsequently admitted without cavil. The Chinese,
though their swords were much inferior to the Japanese weapon,
possessed great superiority in field artillery and cavalry, as well
as in the fact that their troopers wore iron mail which defied the
keenest blade. Thus, after a severe fight which cost the Japanese
twenty-three hundred men, they had to evacuate Pyong-yang and retreat
towards Seoul, the army under Kato Kiyomasa retiring at the same time
from the northeast and fighting its way back to the central route.
Orders were then issued by the commander-in-chief, Ukita, for the
whole of the Japanese forces in the north of the peninsula to
concentrate in Seoul, but Kohayakawa, one of Hideyoshi's most trusted
generals, whose name has occurred more than once in these annals,
conducted a splendid covering movement at a place a few miles
northward of Seoul, the result of whi