ABSTRACT
In China Li Hung-chang had emerged triumphant. In April, 1895, Li Hung-chang, the only negotiator the Japanese would accept, signed the humiliating peace of Shimonoseki. Apart from payment of a huge indemnity, the suzerainty over Korea had to be given up, and worse still Formosa and the Pescadores were ceded to Japan. Respectable mandarins addressed memorials to the Throne in which they declared the satisfaction it would give them to dine upon Li Hung-chang’s flesh; a figure of speech, no doubt, but an uncomfortable thing to have to listen to. On the approach of the Japanese war, T’ang had taken steps to reinforce the garrison by arranging for the transfer of soldiers from the mainland, and it was only natural that Liu should have been among those who answered the call. At the end of the Pacific War, the ghosts of Liu Yung-fu and of the Marquis Tseng must have been consoled to see Chinese troops once more in Vietnam.
