instructed by his government to warn the Japanese Foreign Office that certain Powers had been contemplating assent to China’s appeal to interfere, and that the demand for a cession of territory on the continent would be particularly calculated to provoke such an intervention.[124] It was under these circumstances that negotiations were opened between the Chinese and Japanese Plenipotentiaries on March 20. It is unnecessary here to recount the story of an abortive attempt made on Li’s life by a fanatic, and of the consequent armistice for twenty days. At Li’s recovery, the Japanese terms for peace were proposed on April 1, which with amendments became the basis of the final Treaty[125] signed at Shimonoseki on April 17. It provided, among other things, for the absolute independence of Korea, the cession to Japan of the Liao-tung Peninsula, Formosa, and the Pescadores, and an indemnity of two hundred million _taels_. Of the ceded territories, the Liao-tung being situated, as it were, in a position to hold a key at once to Peking, Manchuria, and Korea, its cession to Japan was probably calculated, from the latter’s point of view, first, to render any renewed attempt of China to dominate Korea impossible, and, secondly, to establish an effective barrier against the southern expansion of Russia.[126] Naturally, the progress of the peace negotiations had been watched with keen interest by the European Powers. Particularly alert was Russia, whose press deprecated so early as March 31 the alleged intention of Japan to secure territory on the mainland, and which, as soon as Li Hung-chang communicated to her early in April the terms proposed by Japan and appealed to her to interfere, discerned in those terms a great turning-point of her own career in the East. She must at once have realized the grave danger to the entire future of her Eastern policy from Japan’s occupation of the Liao-tung Peninsula, as well as the immense advantages which her own possession of the same territory would confer upon herself. Nor did the Korean independence, which the new treaty secured, fail to be interpreted by the Russian press as an exclusive protectorate to be exercised by Japan over the Kingdom. “Russia,” wrote the _Novoe Vremya_ about April 20, “cannot permit the protectorate over Korea which Japan has secured for herself by the conditions of the treaty. If the single port of Port Arthur remain in possession of Japan, Russia will severely suffer in the material interest and in the prestige of a Great Power.”[127] It was just the time to intervene. China had shown herself impotent, and had appealed for intervention, and Japan was an exhausted victor. By one clever stroke Russia might coerce the latter and ingratiate herself with the former. She would, however, perhaps have thought twice before she acted, had it not been for the active assistance rendered to her by France and Germany. At a council, it is said, Russian naval and military