The last battle of the Imjin War took place at the Straits of Noryang with the Japanese.

 The last battle of the Imjin War took place at the Straits of Noryang with the Japanese.

422 years ago today in 1598, while in Europe the English were still reeling from their defeat at the Yellow Ford in Ireland, in the East. 

The last battle of the Imjin War took place at the Straits of Noryang with the Japanese fleet being cut to pieces by the combined fleets of Ming China and Joseon Korea under the leadership of Korea’s heroic admiral, Yi Sun-sin. 

Though Admiral Yi was himself killed in the battle, after six years of war the samurai were now at last driven from the Asian mainland for good (illustration of Admiral Yi’s death by artist Peter Dennis pictured). 

After decades of chaos and strife, in 1585 the great samurai warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi had made himself the de facto ruler of all Japan. With all his enemies either dead or subdued, Hideyoshi, had turned his eyes towards mainland Asia in search of new glories. 

He envisioned his samurai armies marching from victory to victory through the lands of his neighbours and dreamed of extending his control as far south as the Philippines.

 In 1592 he resolved to put this scheme into action and invaded Joseon Korea. 

After initially spearheading a successful breakneck campaign which brought the samurai host almost up to the Manchurian frontier in just four months, the tide turned irreversibly against them.

 The Ming Emperor of China, Wanli, sent an army to aid the Koreans against the invaders and as the Korean armies regrouped they began pushing the samurai back. More importantly though, the Koreans outmatched the Japanese where they were weakest – on the water. 

While the mighty samurai proved themselves worthy of their reputation when it came to land battles, in naval warfare the Koreans made mincemeat out of them. As battle after battle was lost to the great Admiral Yi, it became harder and harder to reinforce and resupply the Japanese army.

By 1598, the Japanese army had been pushed back to the southern fringes of the Korean peninsula. The war had brought all three countries to the brink of exhaustion. 

In September that year, a dazed and delirious Hideyoshi died, and along with him there died too the Japanese aspirations for campaigns on the Asian mainland. 

A Council of Five Elders was convened and a withdrawal of all Japanese armies from Korea was ordered. 

The main Japanese army however was locked up in Sunch’on fort under the Christian daimyo, Konishi Yukinaga, their escape route blocked by the Sino-Korean naval blockade under Admiral Yi and the Chinese general, Chen Lin. 

Konishi, knowing that the war was over and intent on getting home, opened negotiations with his opposite numbers and tried to bribe General Chen. 

The Chinese commander took well to the samurai’s bribery and was willing to let him and his men go only for the adamant refusal of Admiral Yi.

 When Chen tried to compromise by focusing their attack on a different fort, Yi once again rejected the strategy for fear that the Chinese might not be able to tell between the samurai and their Korean prisoners if the fort was stormed.

While the allies squabbled with each other, the Japanese drew up their plans for escape. A relief force of some 500 warships with 20,000 men under Shimazu Yoshihiro sailed into the Noryang Strait to breach the blockade and allow Konishi and his men to break out. 

Admiral Yi was informed of this by local fishermen and launched a surprise attack on the Japanese at 2 o’clock in the morning while they were still at anchor. 

As soon as the first shots were fired, Shimazu rallied his warriors and started a desperate attempt to smash the enemy lines.

 Though he had the advantage of numbers, Shimazu’s fleet lacked the weaponry and strength of the huge Korean and Chinese vessels that faced him. 

Multi-decked floating juggernauts, propelled by both sails and oars, along with the near legendary turtle ships wreaked havoc upon the Japanese ships.

Trapped in the confines of the narrow Noryang straits, there was no room for the Japanese ships to try and outflank the Koreans. 

In perfect form, Admiral Yi let his cannons and mortars smash and burn the enemy ships into smouldering splinters.

 As the Japanese tried to gang up on the Chinese ships under General Chen, Admiral Yi committed himself to the thick of the fight and was right there in the merciless storm of battle wielding his bow and arrow, killing every samurai that advanced upon him. 

With the Japanese fleet shattered and defeated, Shimazu, himself barely escaping death that day, ordered a retreat. With victory now a certainty, Admiral Yi ordered a pursuit. 

No sooner had he given the word than a Japanese sharpshooter fired his musket and put a bullet through the Korean commander. 

Within three minutes the great admiral was dead, his last wish being that his death be kept a secret so that his men would not lose heart.

No more than 50 of Shimazu’s ships survived the bloody engagement. Any Japanese survivors of the battle stranded in the strait, were forced to trek overland to the eastern coastline where they were picked up by the remnants of their once mighty fleet. Any samurai still found alive on Korean soil was promptly beheaded. 

While the Chinese and Koreans were engaged however, Konishi and his men had left their fortress and managed to escape undetected. 

Within two weeks of the battle, the Korean peninsula was completely free of the Japanese. 

With Hideyoshi now dead, they returned to an uncertain Japan that was soon about to plunge into chaos once again.  

Back on the mainland, both Korea and China were utterly spent by the war and both countries were left vulnerable to the steppe horsemen of Manchuria. 

All three countries would turn inwards over the centuries which followed, locking themselves off from the rest of the world until the arrival of the Western barbarians in the 19th century. 

When the age of isolation came to an end, the Japanese once again invaded Korea in 1894 and once again fought the Chinese, their armies marching along the same roads which their forefathers had 300 years earlier. 

Unlike their samurai ancestors however, the Japanese army of the 19th century emerged victorious over the Chinese and successfully brought Korea to heel.