Gen. Konishi had taken refuge with a large body of troops in a building called the Yŭn-gwang-jŭng, very near the Ta-dong Gate which opens directly upon the water front. Night had fallen and the fight had lulled for a time. What took place at this time may be open to some doubt. The Korean account says that the Chinese commander sent a message to Konishi demanding the surrender of his whole force and that Konishi replied, “Our remaining force is small and we wish to evacuate the city and retreat if we may be allowed to leave quietly.” It is affirmed that Gen. Yi consented to this and left the Ta-dong Gate unguarded, and in the dead of night the Japanese troops passed swiftly out and crossed the river. On the face of it this statement is hardly credible, but judging from future events the Koreans believe that Gen. Yi received a large bribe from the Japanese as the price of this act of leniency. It is true that future events justified the Koreans in suspecting some such thing, but as the Japanese were immediately beside the Ta-dong Gate and, under cover of night, might easily have forced their way out, especially as the Chinese were exhausted by their long forced march and the fight about the city, we may well believe that the Japanese did not need to appeal either to the pity or the avarice of the Chinese in order to effect their escape. It may be, too, that Gen. Yi did not wish to be hampered with so many prisoners of war and was rather glad than otherwise to let them get away. Of course the Koreans who had suffered so terribly at the hands of the Japanese would have been glad to see every one of them massacred, and their anger at seeing them escape may have led them to impute wrong motives to Gen. Yi. Subsequent events, however, gave some color to these suspicious, as we shall see. This retreat from P’yŭng-yang in the dead of winter was like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, on a small scale. The Japanese were without provisions or proper clothing. Many of them threw aside their arms and luggage and, turning from the main road, begged their way from house to house. When at last they reached the city of Seoul and found food and safety they were in a savage humor. Most of the Koreans who had fled from the capital had now returned, and on them these half-famished and wholly disappointed Japanese wreaked their vengeance. They seized hundreds of the unoffending people and put them to the sword. Scores of them were taken outside the South Gate and slaughtered like oxen. Gen. Kato, who had led an expedition eastwards into Ham-gyŭng Province, hearing of the evacuation of P’yŭng-yang, immediately put his troops in motion and hastened down to Seoul, burning and ravaging as he came. And in a short time all the remnants of the Japanese army were congregated in the capital.