The culmination was reached when news arrived in Japan that a large reinforcement of the Chinese army in Korea was on the eve of being sent from Tientsin, and that foreign vessels had been chartered to convey the troops across the Yellow Sea to points on the Korean littoral. The bargain had been that neither Japan nor China was to increase its strength in the peninsula without giving due notice to the other interested power, for Korea, under the existing agreement, was independent, though China still insisted on claiming a rather shadowy suzerainty. Japan ordered her fleet to intercept the Chinese vessels, and hostilities began when the _Naniwa Kan_, a cruiser at that time commanded by the now famous Admiral Togo, fired upon and sank a British-owned steamer which had been chartered for the express purpose of carrying Chinese soldiers to the vicinity of the Korean port of Chemulpo. Admiral Togo’s orders were to prevent a landing, and when he had taken on board the _Naniwa Kan_ all the foreign officers of the transport, the Chinese on board refused to surrender, in spite of fair warning, so he considered that he had no alternative but to put an effectual stop to the vessel’s career. Already large numbers of Chinese had been thrown into Korea, and a first collision between the rival forces took place at Asan, a port to the south of Chemulpo, in the Nam-yang or Empress Gulf. The decisive battle of the 15th September 1894, at Ping-Yang, north of Seoul, at which spot Hideyoshi had fought the Chinese at the end of the sixteenth century, settled the question of the supremacy on Korean soil, and the Chinese withdrew in haste beyond the river Yalu frontier. Marshal Yamagata at this stage arrived from Japan to take command in person of the Japanese army in Manchuria, in the campaign on which it was now about to enter, and a second army, under the command of Marshal Oyama, was called out for the invasion of the peninsula known as the “Regent’s Sword,” at the extremity of which lay Port Arthur, for until this fortress should be captured the Chinese fleet could not be said to have been rendered absolutely useless, whilst its possession would give Japan the control of the Gulf of Pechili and enable her to interrupt communications with the Chinese ports in those waters. At the end of 1893 the strength of the Japanese army was as follows:— Peace Establishment 70,892 First Reserve 92,252 Second Reserve 106,020 Yeso colonists 4,104 ------- 273,268