Chapter 892: Sea of Cavalry

"Cavalry battalion, advance!"

Li Guangheng's horse lance thrust forward as he surged ahead, his mount constantly snorting and tossing its head, in a state of high excitement.

Beside and behind him stretched a sea of horse lances; the lances ahead bore small gold-red triangular pennants that guided the formation's direction, while those behind were bound with lance tassels, all slanting forward at an angle, merging with the vivid red manes into a crimson sea.

Three thousand five hundred horse-lance cavalry surged onward like an iron torrent sweeping across the earth.

Behind Li Guangheng's cavalry came the feathered riders of the Azure Dragon Army's first-class battalions, led by Yin Yijin.

Their long spears and firelocks were slung across their backs or rested on victory hooks; in their hands they uniformly gripped thick-backed sabers. As they surged behind the horse-lance cavalry, the sabers in their hands, the bowl helmets on their heads, and the arm-guards on both sides flashed with dazzling, icy metallic gleams.

Once they received the order, they immediately wheeled to assault the flank. They first struck the bandit army's right wing. The collapse of the bandit central army had already affected their right wing, and now nearly ten thousand cavalry charged at them with overwhelming momentum, like an unstoppable towering tidal wave. Screaming and wailing, they disintegrated and fled in utter rout.

The scene of that rout was too horrible to behold. Cries of "Defeated!" and "Flee!" rose and fell in waves, like a great river thawing — everything was breaking, retreating, colliding, and scattering. Apart from a few veteran camps, most of this army formation consisted of surrendered troops from outer camps, whose fighting will was even weaker. Once this rout began, the scenes that followed were beyond anything ever heard of.

Li Guangheng and his men did not pause. They crashed through like a whirlwind, trampling and smashing countless bandits along the way, leaving the remnants for the infantry to clean up. They pierced straight through the bandits' entire right wing and emerged beyond the slave-rebels' left flank.

Several li away lay the great formation of the Qing left wing, overseen by Dodo. Within it were half the bannermen of the Japanese Eight Banners and the Korean Eight Banners, as well as Han troops of the Plain Red Banner, Bordered Red Banner, Plain White Banner, and Bordered White Banner, led by Han Eight Banners gūsa ejens Tong Tulai, Bayan, Li Guohan, Wang Shixuan, and others.

After the Battle of Songshan, Dorgon had rebuilt the Han Eight Banners and newly appointed eight gūsa ejens: Geng Zhongming, Shang Kexi, Ma Guangyuan, Jin Li, Tong Tulai, Bayan, Li Guohan, and Wang Shixuan. Half of them were here now.

The remaining four — Geng Zhongming, Shang Kexi, Ma Guangyuan, and Jin Li — led the Han Eight Banners' Plain Yellow, Bordered Yellow, Plain Blue, and Bordered Blue banners, accompanying Jirgalang on the other route.

Including the Manchu Eight Banners supervising the battle, they numbered nearly forty thousand men, attacking the roughly ten thousand Jingbian Army troops opposite them. Yet they had nearly been shattered by the opposing artillery fire all along the way. Only through Dodo's desperate efforts to hold the line had they finally pressed forward to the vicinity of Huilong Temple.

But around the village perimeter, the Jingbian Army had long since constructed extensive defenses, including numerous low walls. The shield carts, bamboo bundles, and other equipment accompanying the Japanese Eight Banners and Han Eight Banners had also been largely destroyed by artillery fire. They were forced to rely on flesh and blood to withstand the volley fire from the opposing firearms, and every banner suffered horrific casualties.

They had long been on the verge of collapse, and the sudden rout of the bandit army affected them even more deeply. By this point, the two rebel forces had effectively formed an invisible alliance, jointly attacking the Jingbian Army. The collapse of their "ally" dealt them a devastating blow.

Especially when the Jingbian Army cavalry suddenly appeared on the flank — among the Japanese on the outermost edge, many began to scream and flee.

Because of the reputation of Japanese teppō, they had been subjected to concentrated attacks all along. After enduring volley after volley of gunfire before Huilong Temple, they had long been teetering on the brink of collapse. The appearance of the Jingbian Army was the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Li Guangheng and his men did not immediately launch an assault. Instead, they paused briefly to reorganize their ranks, and during this interval they fired a volley of rockets.

The Jingbian Army's rocket battalions were all equipped with horses and mules, giving them tremendous mobility and allowing them to follow closely behind the cavalry. After Li Guangheng and his men halted, the two light rocket battalions and one heavy rocket battalion originally deployed at the Azure Dragon Army's position immediately moved up to the front.

They swiftly set up their rockets, took aim, and without further ado unleashed a massive barrage of rockets upon the slave-rebels' left flank.

The impact of these rockets triggered a general collapse across their entire left wing. It was not that they had been unaware of the Jingbian Army firing rockets at the central army position earlier, but watching others get bombed and being bombed oneself were entirely different sensations — it was many times more terrifying than even the "national destroyers."

Finally, they too collapsed completely. After the two light rocket battalions and one heavy rocket battalion had each fired one or two salvos, a tidal wave of collapse began first among the Japanese Eight Banners, then spread to the Han Eight Banners, and then to the Korean Eight Banners. The swarming torrent of fleeing men surged toward Dodo and his commanders at the rear.

"Hold steady, hold steady..."

Dodo shouted himself hoarse, watching the scene of collapse ahead in despair. The battle on this front had worried him from the start. When the Jingbian Army cavalry suddenly appeared on the flank, he sensed even greater danger and immediately dispatched Gabsihiyan Janggin Baiyindai, who was also in the formation, to lead a thousand armored soldiers to suppress and steady the panicking Japanese.

He never expected that a salvo of Jingbian Army rockets would come howling over, and those Japanese would collapse completely. They ran in utter panic, screaming in terror. His own armored soldiers were utterly ineffective, simply swallowed up by the tide of routed men.

Then the entire left wing he was supervising collapsed. Countless men shouted in frenzy. Driven by the Jingbian Army cavalry and infantry, they surged backward like a tidal wave, mercilessly cutting down anyone who dared block their path.

They even unhitched supply carts and seized horses to flee for their lives. They shoved and trampled one another, stepping over the dead and the living alike. They screamed and wailed, their desperation and terror beyond the power of words to describe.

Dodo watched all this in horror. Beside him were still several thousand Manchu armored soldiers, most of them drawn from the niru under his direct command — ordinarily quite capable. Their deployment here on the left wing had also been intended as a vanguard, with the clever purpose of striking directly at the Jingbian Army's flank when the moment came.

But now...

"My lord Beile, we must leave quickly! Once the routed soldiers surge this way, there will be no escape."

Durd, the Bayara Janglinggin at his side, urged anxiously. Dodo's goshiha also frantically tugged at their master's horse. The several thousand Manchu armored soldiers fled in panic toward the great central army formation.

"I will not go..."

Dodo cried out unwillingly, his voice carrying far into the distance. Then the storm-like wave of rout swept over, engulfing this section of the battle line.

"Dodo, that useless wretch — I shall not spare him!"

Scouts had just reported that the bandit central army was defeated and that their right wing might also be affected. Dorgon was still devising countermeasures, for if the bandits' right wing collapsed, it would directly impact his own left wing.

Moreover, the bandits' defeat not only signaled the complete failure of his strategy of letting the snipe and clam fight while the fisherman profited, but also meant there was no one left to support and shield his flank or to tie down nearly half of Wang Dou's forces. The situation was deteriorating further, and his entire strategic plan would have to be adjusted again.

But before Dorgon could sort anything out, the bandits' right wing collapsed, and immediately afterward his own left wing collapsed as well. Watching the routed soldiers surging toward him, Dorgon, furious as he was, also grew coldly calm. He gave the order that anyone who dared charge the formation would be killed without mercy — Dodo and his men included.

He also saw the cavalry behind the Jingbian Army infantry formation maneuvering, seemingly massing together to launch a head-on assault from the left wing against him.

He said fiercely, "Come on, then! Let us see whose charge prevails!"

The surging routed soldiers were like a tidal wave, shouting themselves hoarse in chaos, trampling and shoving one another as they came. But under Dorgon's orders, arrows from the great Qing formation flew like swarming locusts, mowing down the pressing mob of routed soldiers in swathes. Then more surged forward from behind, and they were shot down in turn.

The ground was littered with countless corpses, each horrifying to behold — some bristling with arrows like hedgehogs, others trampled into mangled fragments. Among these corpses were ordinary Eight Banners soldiers, mid- and high-ranking officers, and even men of gūsa ejen rank. But now they were all just cold, ordinary corpses.

At last, the routed soldiers' fear of what lay ahead overcame their fear of what pursued from behind. Though they still shouted and screamed, they no longer dared to charge the central army's great formation. Instead, they detoured and fled to the rear of the formation.

Dorgon redeployed his forces, continuously shifting troops toward the left wing. Dodo's armored soldiers ran the fastest; knowing the rules of wartime, they made a wide circle and returned from behind the formation. Dorgon had no time to assign blame and positioned these several thousand men around his own person.

Finally, from the center to the left wing, Dorgon had arranged a great arc-shaped formation. By this time, the routed soldiers had completely dispersed, revealing two li away the Jingbian Army's orderly sea of cavalry.

Sun-and-moon banners fluttered and snapped in the wind. The cavalry formation was vast — nearly thirty thousand Jingbian Army cavalry massed together, forming a wedge-shaped assault formation. At its core and front were Li Guangheng's three thousand five hundred horse-lance cavalry, followed by the first-class feathered cavalry battalions of Han Chao and Wen Fangliang.

Of course, the commanders leading them at this moment were their battalion officers Lei Xianbin and Yin Yijin.

Then came the newly attached Mongol camps and surrendered Mongol cavalry from the Black Tortoise Army's battle line, with the Black Tortoise Army's elite cavalry and hunter cavalry flanking them to the rear on both sides.

Behind the cavalry came infantry formations: the ten thousand Azure Dragon Army infantry originally facing the bandits' right wing, the ten thousand Black Tortoise Army infantry facing the slave-rebels' left wing, plus twenty thousand reserve infantry who had hurried over — forty thousand men arrayed behind the cavalry.

They formed an extraordinarily magnificent combined cavalry-infantry grand formation. Fortunately, by this time, whether the bandits' right wing or the slave-rebels' left wing, their men had all fled. The Jingbian Army's cavalry-wall tactics kept their formations dense, and the ground they could occupy stretched as wide as ten li, allowing them room to deploy.

At this moment, Han Chao and Li Guangheng had gathered together, with Zhao Xuan standing nearby, hands clasped behind his back, exuding an air of thick, full-bodied expertise.

Han Chao glanced to the side. Ahead of the cavalry formation, dense ranks of light and heavy rockets were spreading in that direction. All the light and heavy rockets from both battle fronts had been concentrated here.

Han Chao gazed across at the enemy and said, "The slave-rebels are going to fight to the death. Two li is not a long distance. The rocket battalions must inflict maximum damage on them in the shortest possible time, especially destroying their Manchu core. Is Brother Zhao confident of this?"

Zhao Xuan looked at his rocket battalions with high spirits and boundless pride. To think that back in the day, he had only a handful of cannons under his command — and now he possessed such immense firepower.

He replied with full confidence, "No problem. Firing cannons is my specialty, and launching rockets is just the same!"

Surrounded by his Gabsihiyan warriors and his assembled officials, Dorgon gazed across at the opposing formation and rapidly issued his instructions: "The enemy has many rockets, so our Qing troops must charge across at the fastest possible speed. Do not spare the horses' strength. Charge in and engage their cavalry in close combat — then their rockets will be useless."

"Do not get entangled with their infantry. Strike exclusively at their cavalry. If their cavalry is defeated, our Great Qing will stand on invincible ground."

Dorgon harbored a hope in his heart — he was not without a chance to turn the tables. Moreover, he believed that as long as he defeated the Jingbian Army's cavalry opposite him, even if the battle proved untenable, he could still withdraw at leisure, since infantry could never catch up to cavalry.

As long as he could defeat or even annihilate the cavalry of the Border-Stabilizing Army, even if he had to withdraw beyond the passes, Dorgon believed he would still have plenty of opportunities. Because then the situation with the Ming army would likely return to what it had been before — even if they lost, it would only be a minor defeat, since cavalry could leave and infantry could not catch up.

But when the Ming army lost, it meant tens of thousands, even over a hundred thousand casualties — one major defeat was enough.

He galloped like wind and lightning through his own formation, roaring furiously: "If they do not die, you will die, your wives and children and families will all die — for our Great Qing, slaughter them all!"

The sea of banners beside him shuddered violently, and the roar surged like a colossal wave.

"Great Qing, Great Qing!"

"Great Qing, Great Qing!"

The shouts came surging like crashing waves, while the Border-Stabilizing Army's position on this side remained silent. In his heart, Han Chao said quietly: "Shout on — these are your final wails left in this world!"

"Dorgon is going all in," Wang Dou thought silently.

The people on the ridge were also watching nervously. For most of them, eliminating the roving bandits was already satisfying enough; of course, if they could simultaneously resolve the Great Ming's other major scourge, that would be best — they just did not know what the final outcome would be.

"Great Qing, Great Qing!"

"Great Qing, Great Qing!"

The sea of banners on the opposite side roared back like the heavens collapsing and the earth splitting, like mountains crying out and seas howling.

Just at the moment their momentum was at its peak, when thousands upon thousands of troops were about to charge out, Zhao Xuan shouted with all his might: "Loose!"

His voice alone seemed to drown out the voices of the thousands upon thousands of troops on the opposite side.

With a piercing shriek, five hundred rockets soared into the air, carrying brilliant flames and long trails of thick smoke. In no more than a few seconds, they fell upon the forward positions of the Qing army, followed by violent, earth-shaking explosions. Flames burst skyward, bloody rain flew, and men and horses screamed piercingly.

The five hundred rockets detonated one after another. Dense fragmentation swept through, small iron pellets scattering like a rainstorm inside, enveloping the surroundings, while chain-shot swept across. Some rockets, upon exploding, splattered sticky flames that instantly inflicted heavy casualties and chaos on the Qing cavalry there.

The original Plain Yellow Banner commander of the Manchus, Ashan, and the Bordered Yellow Banner commander, Baiyintu, screamed piercingly. Dorgon was going all in, and the front and center of the grand formation were packed with the Eight Banners' Manchu troops. The troops under Ashan and Baiyintu were even more concentrated at the front line — they were the first wave to suffer.

The area around their gold-threaded dragon banners was a key target zone. Nearly a hundred rockets fell there, many of them incendiary rounds. When the rockets exploded, the blast wave and impact first knocked them off their horses, and then fierce flames seemed to blanket the sky and earth as they swept over.

After that sticky flame swept over, both Ashan and Baiyintu, men and horses alike, were engulfed in raging fire. They became human torches — human torches whose flames could not be extinguished.

The two banner commanders screamed piercingly. The burning of that fierce fire made them wish for death. They stumbled and staggered, begging others to save them, but all around them now were human torches engulfed in flames — Bayara guards, armored horsemen, and at the lowest, foot soldiers.

On ordinary days, killing these elite warriors would have been far from easy, yet now they were dying as cheaply as their banner commanders.

They had to endure the agony of fierce fire searing their hearts, burned alive until the very end.

"Loose!"

Zhao Xuan once again roared with all his might.

Just as the first wave of rockets landed, another five hundred rockets soared into the air. The sky was scorched a fiery red. Amid the piercing shriek that tore through the air, the five hundred rockets once again fell upon the dense Qing cavalry formation.

Small iron pellets burst like torrential rain, dense mists of blood rose, men and horses tumbled and rolled unceasingly like wheat stalks blown by the wind, and the air was filled with the spiraling shrieks of black-line shadows.