they were declared traitors and executed. This was the beginning, and the worst elements in Korean character were let loose. Seventy people were decapitated, and sixty more died of strangulation or of stripes. This was but a fraction of the whole number that perished as a result of the persecution. The next ten years were filled with troubles that grew out of this, for the government did not lower its hand, but persevered in the attempt to thoroughly extirpate the hated religion. Of course this was impossible. In 1844 two more French priests entered the country by way of Quelpart, after desperate adventures by wind and flood. Two years later the French government sent a message to Korea complaining of the death of the three Frenchmen and threatening punishment, but this only excited the Koreans the more, for. it proved what they had already suspected, that the Roman Catholics had a political power behind them. This caused a new outbreak, and the two new missionaries were with great difficulty concealed.
In the summer of 1847 two French war-vessels, the frigate La Gloirc and the corvette La Victoricuse, came to the Korean coast to learn what had been the effect of the former letter. They both struck upon a mud-bank, and when the tide went down they broke in two. The crews escaped to a neighbouring island. The Korean government gave them every aid in its power, supplied them with food and other necessities, and even offered to furnish boats to take the men back to China. An English ship happened to pass, and it took the survivors back to Shanghai. The following year the Koreans answered the letter of the French, saying that the French priests had entered the country in disguise and had dressed in Korean clothes and consorted with men who were declared traitors. When apprehended, they had not given their French names, but Korean names, and when offered the opportunity of leaving the country they had stubbornly refused. Under these circumstances, the government asked what it could have done other than it did do. From the merely political and legal point of view, the
