THE CHINO-JAPANESE WAR, 1894—95. 538 Napoleon III. had sent a small squadron to avenge the murder of his subjects the missionaries,butthegunboats withdrewafterbombarding acoast town. An expedition from the United States failed to exact reparation for the looting ofa wreckedship, and theKorean contempt and hatredfor theforeigner were further increasedby the abortiveattempt of an American adventurer to get possession of the treasure supposed tobe deposited in tlae tombs of the Korean kings.

and the smaller Power would find itself exhaustedby the mere prolongation of the conflict withits giant antagonist. Weight of numbers, the capacity of providing unlimited "food for powder," would in the long run give success to China. Others took even a more sanguine view of China's prospects, and believed that at an earlystage of a war with Japan thepossession of ironclads would give the Chinese fleet a victory over the Japanese cruisers and enable the mandarins to menace Japan with war on its own coasts.

In 1875 some shipwrecked Japanese sailors were murdered on the coast of Korea. Encouraged by its success of the preceding year in Formosa, the Japanese Government took prompt action. A fleet of cruisers and gunboats was despatched to Chemulpo. A brigade of the army was mobilised,and transports were ready to convey it across the sea. A war of conquestinKorea wouldhave been very popular inJapan. The country was anxious to tryits newweapons,and history told of earlier victories won in the Korean peninsula, which had been twice overrun by the Japanese, the last time under tlae dictatorof Japan, Taikosama,late in the sixteenth century. But the Court of Seoul surrenderedwithoutventuring to put the matter to the ordeal of battle, and a treaty was signed by which Korea not only made reparation for the outrages on the Mikado's subjects, but also opened its ports and cities to Japanese traders.

A Japanese embassy was established at Seoul. China naturally assertedits suzerainty by placing a Resident in the same capital. The European nations and the United States entered by the door that Japan had opened for them. The barriersthat had stoodfor centuries werebroken down,and commercial treaties openedKorea to the world'strade.

Causes of conflict were not wanting, and at various times in the quarter of a century that followed the Japanese revolution the two countries found themselveson the brink of war. In 1874 the Japanese, after repeatedly remonstrating withthe Court of Pekin on the subject of the injury done to their trade by pirates from Formosa, resolved to protect themselves, and landed a brigade in the island. War seemed inevitable. Japanesetroops were encamped on Chinese soil. It was an open defiance. But diplomacy intervened to remove the cause of quarrel. The Chinese Government promised to take effectual steps to deal with the Formosan pirates and wreckers, and the Japanese brigade was withdrawn.

But more serious disputes arose out of the affairs of Korea. This country (known to its natives by the name of " Choson," that is, "the land of the Morning Calm") is a mountainous peninsula,which formsthe east sideof the Yellow Sea, dividingit from the allbut land-locked Sea of Japan. Its northern frontier, whereit joins the mainland, touches Chinese territory on its western andRussian groundon its eastern part. Placed thus at the meeting-point of three empires,and with its coasts abounding in creeks andbays opening on two seas,no wonderKorea has been for years tlae subject of rivalambitions.

All but independent, the Korean kingdom was nominally a tributary province of the Chinese Empire, but the link between Pekin and Seoul, the Korean capital, was of the weakest. Long after Japan had renounced its policy of excluding foreigners,Korea clung to its old system of forbidding any stranger to land upon its shores. In the 'sixties, Catholic missionaries from France and their native converts were openly massacred,or put to death on the scaffold.

Ships wrecked on the inhospitable coast were plundered,and if their crews escaped from the waves it was only to meet with a worse death at the hands of the Koreans. The Emperor Little settlements of Japanese traders were soon established at Seoul, and in the ports of Chemulpo,Wsonsan, andFusan. Their presence, and an active propaganda which theyinspired, led to the formationof a reformparty in Korea. This called into action an anti-reformand antiforeign party, the leading spirits of which were the friends of the queen and the ex-regentTai-Won-Kun, who had ruled the country in the 'sixtiesduring theboyhood of the king, andhad beenthe author of the cruel persecution of the missionaries and their converts. The reform party had the support of the Japanese, and naturally enough the anti-foreign party were backed up by the Chinese Government.

In 1882 matters came to a crisis,andit looked as if China and Japan were at last to measure