Chapter 469: Twenty Thousand Must Die!

Yang Guozhu had fought in the Battle of Julu, and Wang Dou’s breastwork-and-trench tactics from that year had left a deep impression on him; hearing this now, he nodded repeatedly.

Of course, it was more than just these — in Wang Dou’s conception, there would be a full nine lines of low walls and trenches, divided into three waves.

Between the three low-wall-and-trench lines within each wave, each wall was only a few paces, or a dozen or so paces, apart, giving clear upper and lower fields of fire.

Every time the Qing troops attacked one low wall, they would face fierce fire from three firepoints above and below, and would constantly have to deal with ten-thousand-man grenades, ash-jar bombs, poison-smoke bombs, and other weapons hurled from the three low walls. They would surely be able to look after below but not above, look after above but not below, in endless disarray.

And between the three waves, each wave was about fifty paces or a hundred paces apart; the open ground in between could have tents and bamboo shelters set up as places to treat wounded soldiers, places for soldiers to rest, and places for cold-weapon troops to mass for sorties.

Between each low wall, many gaps were left, so that the soldiers inside could sortie as the situation demanded. Was the Jingbian Army some bean-curd-dregs force that just stayed put and rigidly defended? Of course they would defend and attack, striking out from time to time even while holding — and the men of the baggage battalion were no exception!

Of course, the gaps in these low walls were irregular: for example, entering through a gap in the first low wall, one would face a solid wall, and would need to go left or right a few paces, a dozen or so paces, before one could find the path through the gaps again.

Moreover, in the low-wall gaps at the front of each wave, cannon could be placed — such as falconets, hundred-shot guns, and the like — firing exclusively canister; one blast would send the Qing troops attacking the walls wailing like ghosts and howling like wolves, in unbearable misery.

And that was not all: protecting these low walls were numerous projecting points, just like the bastions and flanking towers of a city wall, which could fire from the flank upon the enemy attacking the low-wall trenches.

Given the power of the Jingbian Army’s firelocks, roughly one projecting wall could be placed every hundred and fifty paces. To guard against dead angles, the front end of each projecting wall was to be built in a sharp-angled shape.

For example, at the passage gap in the first low wall of the first wave, there would be two projecting walls guarding it left and right, making this opening seem as if it were recessed inward. When the enemy attacked the passage, they would fall under fire from both the left and right ends.

On the northeast side of the hill near the river, not far from the river, several low walls would also be built, extending all the way to the northwest side of the hill — first, to protect the water source; second, to prevent the enemy from advancing upstream to attack, since the river water was, after all, not deep, only reaching the knees.

Although the northwest side of Mount Changling was steep and crisscrossed with gullies, to be prudent, several lines of defense would also need to be set up, to guard against elite Eastern slave troops, such as the Bayara soldiers, launching desperate assaults.

Finally, cannon would be set up on the hilltop, using the beacon-fire tower as a lookout point, with the surrounding terrain all visible at a glance.

As Wang Dou laid it all out step by step, every Jingbian Army officer was rapidly calculating the Grand General’s deployment in his mind. Some staff officers of the command battalion were even picturing in their heads what the Changling Hill defense line would look like if placed on a sand table.

The Jingbian Army officers, with their high level of education and strong professional competence, quickly constructed a three-dimensional mental map of the Changling Hill defenses. The various Regional Commanders and officers before them understood some parts and failed to grasp others, but from what Wang Dou described, they all felt that the Changling Hill defense line seemed terribly formidable.

Having laid out his entire conception, Wang Dou gave a cold laugh: “So, the Eastern slaves think they can take my Changling Hill? Unless they’re prepared to lose twenty thousand men, it’s a fool’s dream!”

Everyone was greatly startled — according to Wang Dou’s arrangement, for the rebel slaves to seize Changling Hill, they would actually have to lose twenty thousand men?

Yet looking at the coldly laughing Wang Dou, and then at the expressions of deep conviction on the faces of the officers beside him, everyone felt a chill rise straight from their hearts, and they could not help but believe it. All of them inwardly mourned for the Qing slaves: if they assaulted this place by force, they would certainly shed rivers of blood.

Everyone rejoiced that Wang Dou was on their own side; otherwise, if they themselves had to attack this hill, they could not take it even if all the men under their command died in the attempt.

Yang Guozhu, Wang Pu, Fu Yingchong, Cao Bianjiao, Wang Tingchen, and the others were very pleased — Wang Dou belonged to their faction, and the stronger Wang Dou was, the more security they had.

Ji Town Regional Commander Bai Guangen, Shanhai Pass Regional Commander Ma Ke, Miyun Regional Commander Tang Tong, and a few others looked at Wang Dou with complicated expressions. Damn, this kid really has a way with training troops and fighting wars — you just have to admit it, whether you like it or not.

After deep reflection, Hong Chengchou also expressed great admiration and asked, “Is the Loyal and Brave Count’s method modeled on Military Superintendent Xu’s ‘gun-fort’ initiative of those years?”

Wang Dou said, “More or less.”

The gun-fort Hong Chengchou referred to was a triangular, three-story, hollow-style bastion that Xu Guangqi and the foreign minister Matteo Ricci had once proposed building. But Xu Guangqi’s gun-fort was extremely difficult to construct, requiring large stones to be stacked, and the walls had to be extremely solid and extremely thick; it was divided into three stories, with the largest cannon placed on the lower story, and progressively smaller ones on the middle and upper stories — a type of bastion fort.

Although he too used geometric methods of defense, his own approach was rather crude — just digging some low walls and trenches.

What he relied on were the daring and valiant soldiers under his command. Although his methods provided effective protection, if the soldiers did not dare to fight, it would all be in vain.

Moreover, although this geometric defensive system seemed simple — just digging trenches and piling up walls — it involved complex earthwork engineering that could not be done without veteran craftsmen of many years’ experience. Yet despite its complexity, the many mathematically trained personnel in his baggage battalion could easily draw up the plans, and then construction could proceed according to the diagrams.

After careful thought, Zhang Ruoqi and the other civil officials likewise strongly approved. Everyone believed that the Loyal and Brave Count’s approach cost little and yielded great effect; there was no need for large-scale construction — one only needed to have the baggage battalion soldiers, or even civilian laborers, do the work, digging some earth and building some walls. It was worth promoting.

Cao Bianjiao and Wang Tingchen were also extremely tempted. The troops under their command defending Wudao Ridge could handle things the same way. They decided that once the Changling Hill fortifications were completed, they would go back and follow the same pattern.

However, the Changling Hill defense line required a great many cannon. Wang Dou had heard that during the Battle of Xingshan, Liaodong Regional Commander Liu Zhaoji’s wagon battalion had used hundred-shot guns to great effect, killing many of the enemy. It seemed that the Great Ming’s technology still had much worth excavating — many weapons were not yet equipped in his own army.

So Wang Dou requested that Viceroy Hong support them with some hundred-shot guns to deploy on the Changling Hill defense line. Hong Chengchou readily agreed. At this time in the Great Ming army, red-barbarian cannon were not numerous, but smaller guns like the hundred-shot gun were still plentiful.

This was indeed the case: according to the ten questions raised by Supervising Secretary Zhang Jinyan after the siege of Songshan and Jinzhou in the historical Battle of Songshan, he mentioned the number of war wagons and cannon that the Ming army had used successively in the Songshan campaign. There had been two thousand wagons of various types, light and heavy, and two thousand cannon as well.

And historically, when Songshan city fell, the Qing army captured one hundred and fifty grand-general cannon from within the city, four thousand large cannonballs for the grand-general cannon, and over ten storehouses of gunpowder. When they took Xingshan and Tashan, they captured over four hundred grand-general cannon of various sizes, and tens of thousands of catties of gunpowder.

Clearly, the Ming army did not lack small cannon. Hong Chengchou promised on the spot to support them with fifty hundred-shot guns, with the number to be increased as the battle situation later demanded. After all, the Changling Hill defense line was now something that Hong Chengchou and the other officers took very seriously.

……

After this, the group proceeded to Wudao Ridge, as well as places like Daxing Fort and Dongqing Fort, to make inspection rounds and discuss defensive arrangements; they even traveled as far as Bijiashan to inspect.

This place, serving as the transshipment point for the army’s seaborne grain and fodder transport, was under extremely strict guard. On the sea, naval patrol vessels cruised from time to time, and fleets transporting military grain to Liaodong came and went in an endless stream.

The sea waves surged and roared, the billows crashing against the reefs from time to time and sending up bursts of silver spray. Many officers seeing the sea for the first time wore expressions of shock and awe on their faces — even the Jingbian Army officers were no exception. The sea filled one with heroic emotion, yet it also terrified those who did not understand it.

Since crossing over, Wang Dou had not seen the sea for a long time. Watching the fleet with its white sails billowing, his heart soared, and at the same time he thought to himself: Bijiashan became famous because of a single line in the historical records; now that he had arrived, how would the history books of later ages record this place?

At present, on the Liaodong front, Xingshan, Songshan, and the various forts had been relieved one after another. As for Jinzhou, before communications were cut off in the fifth month of this year, Zu Dashou had sent a soldier to report to the court, stating that the grain within the city was enough to last half a year, but that firewood was insufficient.

Only two months had passed since then. Zu Dashou was both brave and resourceful, and the garrison within the city numbered no less than twenty thousand. Although intelligence said that the main Eastern slave army was continuously attacking Jinzhou to force the Ming army to come to its relief, everyone believed that Jinzhou was quite strong and not something the main Eastern slave army could take in a short time. The urgent task was to establish defensive lines and secure the rear.

Therefore, after surveying the terrain at each location one by one, on the twenty-fifth day of the seventh month of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, at places like Changling Hill, defensive works urgently broke ground, building strongholds and setting up defenses.

……

The day before, after the various officers had inspected Changling Hill, Sun Sanjie, the senior commander of the Jingbian Army’s baggage troops, had led the battalion staff officers, along with the various officers under his command, and joined with the army’s intelligence personnel to carry out a detailed survey of Changling Hill.

They quickly produced a sand table, drew up the defense-line plans, and submitted them to the commanding general Wang Dou for approval. Wang Dou deemed them feasible and gave his approval that very day.

The arduous work of digging trenches and building walls was mainly carried out by the civilian laborers and able-bodied conscripts accompanying the army, along with some local military households from western Liaoning, while the soldiers of the baggage battalion provided on-site guidance.

Now, everywhere in western Liaoning was engulfed in war, so the local military households naturally could not farm their fields; their grain and fodder all had to be supplied from the rear. Moreover, to supply the grain, fodder, and materiel for the more than two hundred thousand troops on the front lines, the Great Ming had also conscripted countless civilian laborers and able-bodied youths who could not afford to pay the exemption fee, sending them to support the front.

Civilian laborers from every corner of the land, from all across the realm, gathered on the Liaodong front; from inside the passes to beyond the passes, an unbroken stream of them transported grain, fodder, and supplies for the great army.

These civilian laborers were all paid according to the Great Ming’s rates for labor on border-wall and fort construction: roughly one fen of silver per day for food, and five li of silver for salt and vegetables; the same applied to the military conscripts in Liaodong who were not fighting. At current Great Ming prices, they generally could not eat their fill, yet they toiled to the point of exhaustion every day — it was extremely harsh.

After coordinating with Qiu Minyang, the Liaodong Provincial Governor responsible for grain and fodder transport in Liaodong, the Jingbian Army issued a call at noon on the twenty-fourth: those who came to work would eat their fill every day and also be paid two fen of silver per day. Countless civilian laborers and military conscripts then swarmed over in droves; by evening, the baggage battalion officers and men had taken in a full ten thousand workers, and many more, hearing the news, were still rushing over with all their might.

These civilian laborers and military conscripts mostly gathered in groups of fellow villagers from the same county or village, with a jumble of accents, and ninety-nine out of a hundred were illiterate. Such was the state of the Great Ming at the time. Sun Sanjie, the senior commander of the baggage battalion, took it in stride; based on the size of their fellow-villager groups, he divided them into teams of fifty or a hundred men, forming over a hundred teams in total.

For each team, he appointed one team leader and two team deputies, choosing men of prestige within the team to fill these roles, and arranged everything properly.

Early on the second day, the Changling Hill defense line broke ground and began construction. Before work started, when the sky was just barely light, the baggage battalion’s cooking carts were already densely gathered at the foot of the hill.

The fire soldiers bustled about without pause; large, fragrant flatbreads were quickly made, one after another, and pot after pot of meat soup boiled and bubbled, mixed with dried meat and seasonings, the rich aroma wafting out from time to time, making the civilian laborers and military conscripts waiting nearby drool with greed and chatter incessantly.

“These Jingbian Army fellows, damn, they really eat well — look at those flatbreads, mostly made from white flour!”

“You’re only just realizing this now? Who in the Great Ming doesn’t know by now that the Jingbian Army fights the best and has the best rations and treatment.”

“I hear that the eastern circuit of Xuanfu Garrison is called the Peach Blossom Spring — everyone has food to eat, everyone has clothes to wear, and in years of great drought, not a single person starved to death!”

“Really? Is that true…”

“It’s definitely true — look at those Jingbian Army officers and men, even the baggage soldiers, every one of them ruddy and glowing, looking more like lords than the lords back in our village. I’d really love to join the Jingbian Army…”

"With your shifty, rat-faced look, you think you can join the Pacification Army? ...I'm more like it..."

"I heard it's really hard to join the Pacification Army."

"What are those carts? Much more convenient than digging a pit to cook."