When I heard this news I met with the Colao and the mandarins of the court to take counsel as to what should be done.  And truly it seems that Heaven is assisting the Tartars, for how else could they kill so many thousands of men and take three cities in one day? [65] We all say that this is a punishment from Heaven, like so many other calamities that are being suffered.  For example, it did not rain during the whole of last year in the province of Paquin, and so the people went about almost dead.  In the province of Xanto the hunger was so great that they ate human flesh, for which there was a public market.  A great multitude of rats crossed the river.  The fires of heaven burned all the royal palaces.  A gale blew down the five towers.  There were, also, in the heavens two suns, one swallowing the other—­an occurrence, certainly, of dire portent.  Another very extraordinary thing beside these occurred.  We saw that man called Chanchain enter the palace to kill the prince, in which event the mandarin [illegible in MS.] wishing to speak to you, my king, in a rather loud voice, in order to show his fidelity.  But you did not choose to listen to him, and, instead, you ordered him to be put in the jail, and in fetters, and sentenced to death, on the charge of having disturbed the soul of your mother, who had recently died.  We, the mandarins, wishing [to aid?] him, beg you that you may be pleased to pardon him; because it would certainly be a great pity to treat as a rebel a faithful mandarin, who merely showed his love for you.

Moreover, the viceroys and the Chaiery of each province several times sent you memorials advising you of the calamities of the people, and begging that you be pleased to diminish the customs and impositions, a matter worthy of careful consideration.  In the same way, all the mandarins of the court have often implored you, by means of memorials, that you should go out incognito to hear complaints for the good of the government of the kingdom, and to bring it into harmony with the will of Heaven.  If you had done this, we would now find ourselves in a very peaceful condition, and our empire would last a thousand centuries; but oh king, as you neither listened to nor examined into what was proposed to you, it appears, rather, that you are sleeping at your ease in your palace.  You act as if you did not notice what you clearly see with your eyes.  Hence for a long time the mandarins have been very much troubled.  We have seen rivers running with blood.  Are not all these matters of evil portent?  There are indeed, other disasters than the falling of the walls on the Tartar frontier.  We often sent memorials asking you to order that they be rebuilt; and at last you sent two mandarins with two hundred thousand men to repair them.  They went out last year in the ninth moon.  While on the way, for some unknown reason, a quarrel arose among the men at midnight; and in less than two hours more than eighty boats and over