Chapter 262

With a crack, a musketeer of the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion pulled his trigger. The heavy Lumi musket in his hands spat out a fierce flash of fire, and a ball nearly identical to an arquebus ball shot forth.

Though the Lumi musketeer ducked his head the moment he fired, dodging several sharp arrows rushing at his face, from the corner of his eye he still saw a long spurt of blood burst from the chest of a Tartar archer opposite, who was sent flying outward.

The armor-piercing power of the Lumi musket was truly no joke. Though that Tartar archer wore iron-studded cotton armor, the ball punched clean through his body, leaving two holes, the exit wound larger than the entry wound — he absolutely could not hope to live. The Lumi musketeer gave a silent cheer, then crouched behind the earthen wall and nervously reloaded.

Whether a fine arquebusier or a Lumi musketeer in the Ming army, their musket loading steps were really no different from those of the Shunxiang Army. This Lumi musketeer wore iron-studded cotton armor and carried on his back a powder flask filled with propellant charge, as well as another powder flask filled with priming powder for the flash pan.

Finally, he also carried a lead-ball pouch full of shot. Both the priming powder and the propellant charge were measured in copper tubes, each tube holding exactly the charge for one shot, evenly portioned — the only thing lacking was combining them into a single paper cartridge.

He deftly took a tube of propellant powder from his powder flask and poured the powder into the barrel. It was, strikingly, also granular powder. When pouring, the Lumi musketeer did it from long habit, using his thumb and forefinger to encircle the muzzle to prevent powder from spilling, which would make the shot weak and short.

Then the Lumi musketeer swiftly drew his ramrod, rammed several times down the barrel, and packed the powder tight. He then took a lead ball from his shot pouch, wrapped it in cotton paper, inserted it, and used the ramrod to seat it firmly against the breech. Finally, the Lumi musketeer took a tube of priming powder — an even finer granular powder — from his priming flask, poured it into the flash pan, and closed the pan cover.

The Lumi musketeer moved with lightning speed; the whole dazzling series of actions took him very little time. Once everything was done, he tapped the touchhole lightly, blew on the match cord, and then gingerly rested the Lumi musket on the earthen wall.

He stilled his mind and held his breath, gently closed his left eye, and used his right eye to peer through the rear sight, aligning it with the front sight post, and aimed at another Tartar archer. As firearms troops of the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion, they refused to accept the achievements of the Shunxiang Army; they meant to prove that the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion were the finest warriors in the Xuan–Da Army.

The Tartar archer he was aiming at now was squat and immensely burly, with a full beard of curly whiskers, and wore blue cotton armor with red trim — clearly a soldier of the Tartars’ Bordered Blue Banner. White plumes of breath poured from his mouth; after loosing several arrows, the arrows he shot now seemed weak and spent.

In this bitter winter weather, physical exertion was enormous, and drawing a bow and loosing arrows especially drained the whole body’s strength at a furious pace. This was one area where firearms surpassed bows: they required very little physical strength — only enough force to pull a trigger.

After aiming carefully for a moment, the Lumi musketeer decisively pulled the trigger. With a crack, the ball pierced through the Tartar archer’s right chest and sent him tumbling sideways.

That Bordered Blue Banner archer was also fated for misfortune. Normally, after his wave of archers had shot several arrows, they could withdraw and be replaced by the other batches of archers waiting behind them. But this archer, after loosing six or seven arrows in a row, still wanted more and decided to shoot one last arrow — and in the end threw away his own life.

The hurtling ball punched through his body and exited from his back. The Bordered Blue Banner archer staggered backward several steps, finally crashed against the low wall behind him, and slowly slid down, leaving a ghastly smear of blood. His eyes were wide open, filled with disbelief. He seemed to want to say something, but in the end his mouth merely opened and closed; he said nothing, and so died in silence.

The Lumi musketeer had once again knocked down a Qing archer, drawing a frenzied retaliatory rain of arrows. The Ming arquebusiers opposite, especially the several dozen among them, were a truly fearsome presence. Many of their own brave warriors had already died under their muskets, each with two holes punched through, their entire bodies shot clean through — what kind of firearm was that, to be so deadly?

After firing that shot, the Lumi musketeer again shrank behind the earthen wall and did not show his head for a long while, though his hands once more flew into rapid motion. Beside him, a self-igniting musket user gave him a thumbs-up; the two grinned at each other, but both wore iron masks, so neither could make out the other’s expression.

The Lumi musketeer was quite satisfied with his own results. Their squad had been sent to support Xuanfu Regional Commander Yang Guozhu’s Lumi musketeers. Not counting others, from yesterday afternoon alone he had killed or wounded at least four Tartar soldiers, and the other brothers had also scored quite a few kills.

Their performance proved the fine quality of the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion’s firearms troops. Superior firearms always required superior soldiers to wield them in coordination before their maximum power could be unleashed. Every soldier in the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion was highly skilled in firearms operation, and with their excellent equipment, they naturally formed a formidable fighting force.

In the fighting over these two days, the self-igniting muskets of the Viceroy’s Personal Battalion had also shone brilliantly. Needing no match cord, they could fight in freezing wind — a great simplification of combat steps compared to firearms like the arquebus or the Lumi musket. Using this kind of firearm was unencumbering and gave one a feeling of ease.

But they had their flaws too. When pulling the trigger, the force required from the index finger was too high, greatly affecting aiming and shooting. Moreover, after the flint struck, it often failed to ignite the priming powder, requiring several pulls of the trigger — which was truly maddening. Many self-igniting musket users cursed endlessly, all reckoning that after today’s battle they would go back to camp and exchange their muskets for arquebuses or Lumi muskets.

…

The Lumi musketeer knocked down a Qing archer, drawing a huge, frenzied retaliatory rain of arrows. In truth, this rain of arrows, seen across the entire left-flank defense line of the Xuan–Da camp, was only a tiny, insignificant part of the sky-filling arrows. Even the balls fired by Lu Xiangsheng’s two hundred musketeers sent to support Yang Guozhu were likewise only a very small fraction of the balls fired by the Ming army on the left flank.

By now, Yang Guozhu’s left-flank defense line had already become a brutal contest of attrition between Ming three-eyed gun bullets, rockets, and the like, against the Qing army’s arrows.

By this hour, the Qing arrow-storm was frenzied, and the Ming troops had likewise fought until their eyes turned red. In the afternoon, the Qing troops attacking both flanks had already pushed their successive layers of wooden shields to within thirty or twenty paces of the earthen walls.

At this distance, the Qing heavy arrows could already pierce the armor of the soldiers in Yang Guozhu’s and Hu Dawei’s main battalions. One after another, arquebusiers, three-eyed gunners, or archers were shot down by their keen arrows. The Qing heavy arrows broke through their cotton armor, iron armor, or iron masks, and drove deep into their bodies.

The Qing army’s wave assaults were extremely fierce, and the archers they massed on both flanks were very numerous. If the Qing archers attacking the Shunxiang Army’s frontal defense line numbered in the thousands, then those attacking the two flanks of the Xuan–Da camp each reached over ten thousand. They were divided into multiple batches, and their onslaught seemed never-ending.

By this stage, Yang Guozhu and Hu Dawei had already thrown all the cold-weapon troops inside their camp into the fight. The cold-weapon troops in their camp included bow-and-blade men, hook-spear men, and trident men in each unit. Every soldier carried a bow and arrows. Once these men were committed, the firearms troops from the noon hour could finally catch their breath and rest and eat a little.

The deafening roar of three-eyed guns and the hiss of rockets never ceased. The entire stretch of earthen wall on Yang Guozhu’s left flank was shrouded in dense, roiling clouds of smoke rising in columns everywhere.

The camp’s soldiers rested their densely packed rows of three-eyed guns on the earthen wall, each muzzle constantly spitting flame, with a continuous thunderous “boom-boom-boom-boom.” The three-eyed gun was famously loud, far louder than firecrackers, and the powder smoke belching from its muzzle was also famously thick.

Moreover, the three-eyed gun’s rate of fire was also very fast, in no way inferior to the Qing soldiers’ bows. A few touches of the burning match to the touchholes behind the barrels, and boom, boom — several balls shot out in succession. Or, for three-eyed guns that shared a priming pan, a single touch of the match would fire the charges in all three barrels simultaneously.

At twenty or thirty paces, the Ming three-eyed guns posed a huge threat to the unarmored Qing soldiers and laborers filling the trenches, or perhaps to the Qing archers in iron-studded cotton armor loosing arrows. Moreover, the balls were dense and plentiful, possessing a firepower advantage that arquebuses could not match, battering the Qing troops opposite to the ground one after another until blood flowed like a river.

Even if the Qing troops opposite were not killed by three-eyed gun balls, regardless of archers, the Ming army also used dense volleys of rockets.

The thunderclap roar of rockets launching never stopped. In front of the earthen wall on Yang Guozhu’s left flank, the shriek of rockets seemed unbroken. Large rockets — flying spears, flying knives, flying swords, “Hornet’s Nest,” “Hundred Tigers Charging Together” — continuously hurled toward the Qing wooden shields several dozen paces ahead like a sudden storm of driving rain and fierce wind.

They shot the wooden shields full until they bristled like hedgehogs. Every wave of rockets that erupted sent any Qing archer who dared show his head, or any auxiliary soldier or laborer throwing mud, flying and tumbling away.