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The King understood what it meant, drew up with his own hands a hasty note, stamped it with the seal of State, and sent it to Takezoyé asking for immediate aid. When Takezoyé arrived the whole Royal Family was assembled in Keiyu Palace, and the King came out to meet him in person. The Japanese and the Corean soldiers were stationed at the principal posts, and commanded by the Japanese officer, Captain Murakami. Within a few hours the assassins did their work, and killed six or seven principal Ministers of the Chinese party. The Chinese soldiers were stationed in a village at some distance from the capital, and care was taken that nobody should communicate to them what was taking place in the city till all was over.

Early the next morning the King issued orders abolishing all the old Government offices and creating new ones. Li-tai-gen the King’s nephew, was made Presiding Minister; Boku-ei-ko, Commander of the Guards; Jo ko-han, Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs; Kin-giok-kin, Vice-Minister of Finance, and so on. But as the Japanese party was from the beginning not numerous, it strengthened itself by giving offices to the near relatives of the King, Queen, or Tai-in-kun, who had something to complain of in the late Bin Government.

At ten o’clock in the morning the United States Minister, Foote, and the British Consul-General, Aston, were received by the King, who was unusually amiable, and freely conversed with them on the necessity of a coup d’état for all nations undertaking a thoroughgoing reform. Pointing to Takezoyé, who was always at his side, he told them that the Japanese Minister, for instance, had personally experienced many such events in his life, and asked if England and America had not fared the same. The United States Minister was of the same opinion as the King. In the afternoon the German Consul-General also came, and, though they all took leave after three o’clock, Takezoyé was still entreated by the King to remain with him.

Several measures of fundamental reform were now passed, such as the declaration of real as well as nominal independence from China, equality of political rights between the nobles and the common people, abolition of Court officers—whose intrigues always stood in the way of good national government—fiscal reform, and the concentration of all financial affairs in the hands of the Financial Minister, etc.

Boku-ei-ko now proposed to remove with the whole Royal Family to Kokwa Harbour, and there wait for Japanese reinforcements, since the 3,000 Chinese soldiers would not be long inactive, and the 2,000 Corean soldiers were not to be trusted. Already Kin-in-shoku, to whom the post of the Minister of