Chapter 265

Both sides thrust and stabbed at each other again. Then another swath of men collapsed on each side. Gazing at the Great Ming pikemen across from them, still seething with fighting spirit, the heavy-armored troops of the Plain White Banner felt their courage fail.

In the blink of an eye, eighty or ninety of them had been killed or gravely wounded. The Plain White Banner heavy-armored soldiers who had stormed through the earthen wall had nearly lost half their number, and many of those remaining bore wounds as well. Bold as they believed themselves in battle, facing those Ming pikemen — who fought with a brutality and cold composure like automatons — they could not suppress the terror rising within them.

They were, after all, brigands. Even the most ruthless savagery depends on the opponent. When they met an opponent more brutal and more ferocious, they broke!

They fled screaming back beyond the earthen wall. Wang Dou, who had watched the entire battle unfold, was not surprised by their rout.

Setting aside the Shunxiang Army's ordinarily relentless and merciless training, which made the soldiers' combat reactions near-instinctive, what mattered more was Shunxiang Fortress's strict system of rewards and punishments. Any man who dared shrink back in the face of battle or flee would be executed! And after death, he would suffer the utmost disgrace: his family's land and property would be confiscated, and his entire household expelled from Bao'an Prefecture. If they died in battle or were wounded, their families received a lifelong pension, their households provided for with food and clothing for a lifetime, and the fallen could enjoy annual offerings of incense and reverence.

How to choose — surely the soldiers had thought it through clearly before they marched. And no matter what, this expedition to the capital's aid also carried the great cause of defending home and country before them, which lent some positive boost to morale.

Watching those Plain White Banner Qing soldiers flee screaming, Wang Dou naturally would not let slip this fine opportunity to pursue.

At once, Wen Fangliang, on Wang Dou's order, personally led the several hundred pikemen and saber-and-shield men under his command charging out along that passage in pursuit. The Plain White Banner's heavy-armored troops had already collapsed. The archers and laborers of the various banners who had been shooting arrows and filling trenches along the low walls and ditches on both flanks also instantly crumbled, fleeing for their lives with the same howls.

Wen Fangliang led his troops in pursuit for several hundred paces, all the way to the very front of the Qing grand formation, where layer upon dense layer of Qing soldiers — no one knew how many tens of thousands — were arrayed. Only then did they turn and return.

……

Lu Xiangsheng stood atop the tall command wagon at the central army position. The three-sided defense line of the Xuan-Da encampment lay clear before him. Seeing the Qing army's rout on the front defense line, he could not help but sigh with emotion at the ferocious battle strength of Wang Dou's division.

After the cannon fire from every side, Qing heavy-armored troops had broken through on all three sides of the encampment. Defending from the walls had been manageable, but when it came to close-quarters combat, the mere several hundred Qing soldiers on the two wings had swept through like splitting bamboo, driving deep into the defense lines. Only when the Regional Commanders of the two garrisons personally entered the fray, leading their retainers in desperate, life-or-death combat, were those Qing soldiers who had burst through the earthen walls driven back out.

Driving them out was already quite an achievement. To pursue them for several hundred more paces, as Wang Dou's division had done, was truly impossible.

By now it was past noon. Because the frontal assault had collapsed, the Qing army, to prevent any unforeseen developments, swiftly ordered the gongs sounded to withdraw the troops. They receded like the tide back to their encampment, leaving behind a battlefield strewn with wreckage.

The Xuan-Da army emerged to clear the battlefield. From yesterday afternoon to this afternoon, Wang Dou estimated that the soldiers of the three battalions had killed and wounded quite a few Qing troops, yet the harvest of severed heads this time was very meager.

This was because the Qing army's own dead, wounded, and scattered weapons and banners had all been retrieved by their own side. Only from the final wave of the assault, when the Shunxiang Army had routed the Qing troops attacking the wall head-on and pursued them for several hundred paces, had they managed to hack off over two hundred heads.

Of these, over a hundred wore armor; the rest wore leather coats or padded cotton jackets and kept their queues. On their bodies was only a single crude weapon — clearly they were the Aha and other slave laborers accompanying the army.

On the two wings held by Yang Guozhu and Hu Dawei, Yang Guozhu had taken over thirty heads, and Hu Dawei had taken twenty-five Qing heads — all hacked from Qing corpses left inside the earthen wall. As for the Qing dead and wounded outside the earthen wall, those were out of the question.

Indeed, in field battles or defending a city, taking enemy soldiers' heads is truly difficult. Unless it is an irreversible, catastrophic rout, generally each side's fallen and wounded soldiers' bodies will be snatched back by their own comrades. Only those enemy corpses that cannot be retrieved will have their heads become the other side's spoils of war.

Ming armies mostly held behind city walls and dared not fight in the field or pursue. Apart from the Qing corpses on the walls and those within a few dozen paces of the city, the remaining dead and wounded would generally be retrieved by the Qing themselves — either cremated or transported back home. In Qing military law, retrieving a fallen comrade's body during battle was a great merit. If one transported the body back home, one could even receive half of the deceased's family property.

Although the Shunxiang Army had taken the most heads among the Xuan-Da forces, Wang Dou could not feel pleased. In just these few days of combat, his own troops' casualties had already reached over three hundred. In that single brutal melee just now, in a very short time, over sixty Shunxiang soldiers had died under the enemy's javelins and long spears, and several dozen more were wounded.

If such intense combat continued for several more days, how many more of his soldiers would be lost?

By his reckoning, from the battle on the eastern outskirts of the capital to the battle at Dingzhou, and now this, since Wang Dou had come to the capital's aid, his soldiers' cumulative casualties had already exceeded five hundred. His only advantage was that he had a steady stream of replacements to replenish his ranks.

The previous two-hundred-odd casualties had all been replenished. But now, surrounded as they were, no more men could come to fill the gaps. Every man dead was one man fewer.

What worried Wang Dou even more was whether the defending troops on the two wings could hold on. If they could not withstand and crumbled, these ten thousand men by the river…

……

After clearing the battlefield, Lu Xiangsheng again ordered fires lit and meals prepared to reward the troops.

Yet the commanders gathered in Lu Xiangsheng's central army tent all wore grim faces; the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive.

The weathered faces of Yang Guozhu and Hu Dawei were filled with deep pain. After counting their troops, both were shocked. From yesterday afternoon's fierce battle until now, in Yang Guozhu's army, casualties neared five hundred; in Hu Dawei's, over four hundred.

Although among the casualties in both their armies, only a minority — about a hundred and several dozen each — had been killed, with the rest mostly struck by arrows and temporarily unable to fight, in this freezing cold, even a trivial wound could cost these men their lives. In the end, perhaps half of the wounded would not survive.

Each had two thousand combat soldiers. With such a high casualty rate, strictly speaking, their main battalions had already been crippled. Had this been any other Ming army, or had this been a field battle in open country, the men would have long since collapsed and fled for their lives.

After counting their numbers, Yang Guozhu and Hu Dawei each drew some men from the auxiliary troops to replenish the combat ranks. But those auxiliaries were mostly hereditary garrison households; bringing them in only further lowered the army's combat effectiveness. Yet the two commanders had no other choice.

Everyone present was preoccupied with their own concerns. Zhang Yan, the Assistant Regional Commander of Xuanfu, had been stationed at Lu Xiangsheng's central army position and had not joined the battle. Of course, starting tomorrow, he could no longer stay out of it. Yang Guozhu proposed that Zhang Yan's two thousand troops be divided, with a portion assigned to reinforce each of the left and right wings. Hu Dawei voiced his agreement.

Wang Dou was holding the front line under immense pressure; he surely could spare no more troops. Moreover, his battle achievements were outstanding and his command was fierce and skilled in war — naturally, no one would seize his soldiers.

Zhang Yan, a mere Assistant Regional Commander who normally kept a low profile, naturally could not defy the proposal of two Regional Commanders.

Wang Dou watched him still sitting with an air of authority, silent, no one knew what he was thinking. Suddenly Zhang Yan said, "Our army has been fighting for five days now. The enemy is many and we are few, and no relief troops have arrived. Viceroy, my two lords, General Wang — what if we break out westward across the Haoshui Bridge? The enemy there is sparse. With the valor of our Xuan-Da army, we should be able to charge through the encirclement."

Before Lu Xiangsheng, Yang Guozhu, and the others could speak, Wang Dou had already said, "Viceroy, absolutely not! Our officers and men hold this fortified camp solely by a surge of keen spirit. If we retreat, the army's morale and will to fight will be utterly lost. With tens of thousands of enemy cavalry in relentless pursuit, the consequences would be unthinkable!"

This Zhang Yan had truly lost his head. This was nothing like holding a fortified city or stockade. A retreat to break out would inevitably become every man fleeing for his life — a replay of the Battle of Songshan. Lu Xiangsheng, Yang Guozhu, and Hu Dawei had many cavalry in their armies and might be able to flee swiftly. But Wang Dou's and Zhang Yan's battalions were mostly infantry. Of those who could escape with their lives, not one in ten would survive.

And once the entire army fled, in the ensuing panic, all provisions and heavy equipment would be lost. Even if Lu Xiangsheng, Yang Guozhu, Hu Dawei, and the others briefly escaped, in this bitter cold, hungry and freezing, the cavalry in their armies would likewise freeze to death, die of exhaustion, or starve in droves. Of the remaining soldiers, only a handful would live.

This was precisely the sinister design behind Dorgon and the others' tactic of surrounding on three sides and leaving one open. So although the Haoshui Bridge offered a route to retreat westward toward Julu, Wang Dou and the others had never dared entertain that thought. The only path was to fight to the death, to make Dorgon and his ilk realize the difficulty and withdraw.

Or perhaps relief troops would arrive and lift the siege.

To voluntarily withdraw — that thought could not even be entertained.

Lu Xiangsheng, of course, understood this logic. He said sternly, "Though the slave-thieves are powerful, as long as our army holds this fortified camp, we are not without hope of survival. Our army's losses are heavy, but the slave-thieves' losses are heavier still. As General Wang says, we must hold the camp and inflict maximum casualties on the enemy. Once Army Supervisor Gao's relief forces arrive, our army will strike from within and without, and the slave-thieves can surely be swept away in a single stroke. Our Great Ming will then have no more worries in the east."

He looked around at everyone. "This is the moment to sacrifice ourselves in service to the nation. All commanders must fight the enemy with valor. Should any dare speak of retreat or show cowardice, I, your Viceroy, shall request the Imperial Sword and carry out summary execution on the spot."

Zhang Yan was greatly alarmed. He knelt prostrate on the ground and stammered his assent.

After this stern rebuke, Lu Xiangsheng offered considerable encouragement to everyone. To be honest, with a powerful enemy before them, this sort of talk of executing a commander on the spot was something he could only speak of.

By this stage of the Great Ming, the situation of civil officials being exalted and military men debased had long since vanished. Especially toward the various powerful military commanders and warlords, the civil officials had long since shifted from giving orders at will to speaking humbly, even compromising and yielding. Even with Lu Xiangsheng's prestige in Xuan-Da, he could only do his utmost to spur the commanders to fight the enemy and dampen their thoughts of preserving their own strength.

Yang Guozhu and Hu Dawei were old campaigners and naturally understood the calamity of retreating to break out. Retreat meant total annihilation. Holding fast — even if half the men died in battle — at least preserved a portion of the army's seed. Which was more important and which less, one could tell at a glance.

Yet going on like this was no solution either. They could only pin their hopes on Gao Qiqian. Everyone began discussing when the Guan-Ning relief army might arrive.

Wang Dou listened quietly to their discussion, but inside he was seething with fury. Five full days — he did not believe that Gao Qiqian and the others had not received the pleas for help. Were they still standing by and watching? In their hearts, was factional strife and attacking rivals truly so important? Did partisan struggle outweigh all affairs of state?

When an isolated army is besieged, the most fearful thing is having no news from the outside world. Even if Gao Qiqian and the others merely made a gesture, it could greatly boost the army's morale. Were they unwilling to do even that?

……

To the east of the Xuan-Da encampment, the Qing army's densely packed tents stretched from the banks of the Zhangshui River all the way to several li in front of the encampment.

Amid a sea of tents and banners that seemed to stretch beyond the horizon, inside Dorgon's lavish, flame-gilt, golden-roofed great tent, a throng of Qing commanders were in council. One by one, the banner lords of the Eight Banner Manchus and the Eight Banner Mongols were reporting the casualty figures from their respective banners.

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