ever since the Ming Dynasty had saved the country from the clutches of
Hideyoshi and his Japanese invaders in the Sixteenth Century. Yuan
Shih-kai had been personally recommended by this General Wu Chang-ching
as a young man of ability and energy to the famous Li Hung Chang, who as
Tientsin Viceroy and High Commissioner for the Northern Seas was
responsible for the conduct of Korean affairs. The future dictator of
China was then only twenty-five years old.

His very first contact with practical politics gave him a peculiar
manner of viewing political problems. The arrival of Chinese troops in
Seoul marked the beginning of that acute rivalry with Japan which
finally culminated in the short and disastrous war of 1894-95. China, in
order to preserve her influence in Korea against the growing influence
of Japan, intrigued night and day in the Seoul Palaces, allying herself
with the Conservative Court party which was led by the notorious Korean
Queen who was afterwards assassinated. The Chinese agents aided and
abetted the reactionary group, constantly inciting them to attack the
Japanese and drive them out of the country.

Continual outrages were the consequence. The Japanese legation was
attacked and destroyed by the Korean mob not once but on several
occasions during a decade which furnishes one of the most amazing
chapters in the history of Asia. Yuan Shih-kai, being then merely a
junior general officer under the orders of the Chinese Imperial
Resident, is of no particular importance; but it is significant of the
man that he should suddenly come well under the limelight on the first
possible occasion. On 6th December, 1884, leading 2,000 Chinese troops,
and acting in concert with 3,000 Korean soldiers, he attacked the Tong
Kwan Palace in which the Japanese Minister and his staff, protected by
two companies of Japanese infantry, had taken refuge owing to the