light as far as
Wi-ju, a few miles south of the Yalu River, whence messengers were
sent to China to solicit succour.

THE COMMAND OF THE SEA

Thus far, everything had marched in perfect accord with the Japanese
programme. A force of nearly two hundred thousand men had been
carried over the sea and had overrun practically the whole of Korea.
"At this point, however, the invasion suffered a check owing to a
cause which in modern times has received much attention, though in
Hideyoshi's days it had been little considered; the Japanese lost the
command of the sea. The Japanese idea of sea fighting in those times
was to use open boats propelled chiefly by oars. They closed as
quickly as possible with the enemy and then fell on with the
trenchant swords which they used so skilfully. Now, during the
fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth, the Chinese had been so
harassed by Japanese piratical raids that their inventive genius,
quickened by suffering, suggested a device for coping with these
formidable adversaries. Once allow the Japanese swordsman to come to
close quarters and he carried all before him. To keep him at a
distance, then, was the great desideratum, and the Chinese compassed
this in maritime warfare by completely covering their boats with
roofs of solid timber, so that those within were protected against
missiles or other weapons, while loop-holes and ports enabled them to
pour bullets and arrows on a foe.

"The Koreans learned this device from the Chinese and were the first
to employ it in actual warfare. Their own history alleges that they
improved upon the Chinese model by nailing sheet iron over the roofs
and sides of the 'turtle-shell' craft and studding the whole surface
with chevaux de frise, but Japanese annals indicate that in the great
majority of cases timber alone was used. It seems strange that the
Japanese should have been without any clear perception of the immense
fighting superiority possessed by such protected war-vessels over
small open boats. But certainly they were either ignorant or
indifferent. The fleet which they provided to hold the command of
Korean waters did not include one vessel of any magnitude; it
consisted simply of some hundreds of row-boats manned by seven
thousand men. Hideyoshi himself was perhaps not without misgivings.
Six years previously, he had endeavoured to obtain two war-galleons
from the Portuguese, and had he succeeded, the history of the Far
East might have