After the peace which was arranged in 1885, a few years of comparative tranquillity ensued; the Emperor was married (1889), and relieved his aunt of her duties as Regent.
Japan, in earlier centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court.

The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived in hope that the deluge would not come in his own time.

So far back as 1885, in consequence of serious troubles involving much bloodshed, the two countries had agreed that neither should send troops to Korea without due notification to the other.

Now, in 1894, China violated this contract by dispatching troops, at the request of the king of Korea, whose throne was threatened by a serious rebellion, without sufficient warning to Japan, and further, by keeping a body of these troops at the Korean capital even when the rebellion was at an end.

A disastrous war ensued.