bay, but found the Korean army gathered in large force to dispute his progress. A portion of his command fell into an ambush, suffered heavy loss, and were forced to retreat. Minister Burlingame, in his report of the expedition, wrote: "Admiral Roze, probably finding that nothing could be done with his limited force, left Corea to recruit it, with which he cannot return until next spring or summer." But when the news of the failure reached Napoleon, he had other and more pressing need for his army and navy, and after the war with Germany the new French government was content to drop the Korean affair.[1]
It was least to be expected that the United States would be the next nation to engage in a conflict with this far-off country, but an event occurred in the same year the French priests were executed which was to bring about such a result. On the 8th of August, 1866, an American schooner, the General Sherman, chartered by a British firm in Tientsin and laden by it with a cargo of merchandise, left Chefoo, China, for Korea on a trading venture. It had on board three Americans, the captain, mate, and overseer, two British subjects, the supercargo and interpreter, and a crew of fifteen or twenty Chinese. The vessel entered the Ta Tong River and ascended it to the vicinity of Ping An, where a few days afterwards the entire crew were killed and the vessel burned.
The accounts differ as to the circumstances attending
- ↑ Histoire de l'Eglise de Corée, par Ch. Dallet, Paris, 1874; Griffis's Corea, The Hermit Kingdom, pp. 373, 577; Gundry's China, 228; U. S. Dip. Cor. 1866, p. 536; 1867, pp. 416, 419–426.
