Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/182

158 SINLO. retreated, fled, and "were pursued some scores of li, — Cleaving over a thousand slain. Holi sounded the retreat at dusk. Shuji was posted at the south-west comer of Baijen*; the •emperor directing the main attack from the north-west General Li Sumo was wounded by a catapult^ and the emperor secured the applause of all the army by sucking the blood from the wound. Swun Daiyin, commandant of Baiyen, intimated 43ecretly, that it was his desire to surrender, but he was opposed in the city. The emperor, as reply, sent him a flag ; ordering him to unfurl it on the wall, if he were sincere. This was done ; and when the people saw it, they believed the city was already in possession of Tang soldiers, and all expressed their readiness to surrender. Shuji, leading a few dozen common soldiers, went to the emperor before he accepted the capitulation, and expostulated with him ; saying tha;t the soldiers pressed forward amid showers of arrows and stones, not thinking of death, only because they hoped to secure the booty of the city. Baiyen was now about to topple over into their hands ; and to receive its submission at that stage was to cheat the men out of their due. The emperor dismounted and said, that the general had right on his side ; but to let slip the soldiers to work their unbridled will was what he could never permit: if the soldiers under the banner of the general deserved well, they would certainly be rewarded; but the reward would come out of the imperial treasury, and thus this one city would be redeemed. Shuji was originally a robber chief, as were a great many more in that army. — ^The chief difference between the ordinary soldier and the robber in China is, that the former robs to support the law, the latter to support himself. Lately the condition of the military has been so far improved, that it is better paid than any handicraft. But far the greatest number of the nominal soldiery of even the present day, is a sort of irr^ular army with little discipline and less pay ; and the men must liva When the emperor had finished his little speech, Shuji departed, and his majesty, immediately after, received the submission of 10,000 men and women, in the tent which he had