Chapter 379: Bombarding the North Harbor, Striking the Royal City by Surprise

At dawn, Semarang woke in the morning sun, a small port town two hundred li north of Mataram's capital, Yogyakarta.

By the mouth of the Kalang River north of the town, more than twenty small Javanese junks and Malay barges were docked, loading and unloading cargo.

The docks were ringed with thatch-roofed godowns, salt stores, and rice granaries. Several hundred laborers who had risen early walked out onto the gangplanks, carrying sack after sack of rice and bolt after bolt of cotton cloth into the warehouses.

Inland along the riverbank, adjoining the harbor district, lay a bustling commercial quarter with Chinese stalls steaming coconut rice, the sweet fragrance of coconut drifting on the sea breeze.

Further south along the river were the residential quarter, government offices, and the mosque.

The whole town had no city wall—only teak palisades and low earthen embankments around the main district—and not a single cannon. Soldiers yawned at their posts; the harbor's entire coastal defense was practically naked.

Amid the bustle, a galloping horseman charged into town, riding straight to the kapala's office and barging right in, shouting all the way: "Kapala! I must see the kapala! The harbor... the Dutch are coming from the sea! Prepare at once!"

Amid the commotion, the local kapala walked out of his bedchamber bare-chested, face full of displeasure: "What in the world is it?"

The messenger cried out in terror: "The Dutch! The Dutch are coming! Their fleet can block the river, their cannon volleys erupt like lava...

Batang is already destroyed... before that it was Pekalongan—next, next will be Semarang... Flee, quickly order your people to leave the harbor..." The kapala picked at his ear: "What nonsense are you spouting? The Dutch fear the Sultan's power and only dare shiver in the rainforests of West Java. How would they dare..."

The messenger cut him off: "It's true! It's really true! My kapala, you just didn't heed Pekalongan's warn—"

Mataram had besieged Batavia twice, and the Dutch had never moved against the stretch from Pekalongan to Semarang—that was because the Dutch did not want to sour relations with Mataram too deeply, did not want to become mortal enemies. After all, when the fighting was done, business still had to be done.

And in Dutch eyes, these three harbors were places no better than fishing villages; bombarding all three would be a pure waste of gunpowder.

In the end, it was merchant thinking.

But the Great Xia navy was made of pure soldiers. Lin Qian had never told them the cost of ammunition, and the notion of conserving shells had never once crossed his commanders' minds. While the messenger and the kapala were still tangled up, out on the distant sea, the Southern Sea Fleet had already formed its line of battle and quietly revealed itself.

Bailangzai stood on the stern deck of the Zhenming, raising his telescope to search for coastal defenses.

At the same time, the two eagle ships accompanying the fleet sped close to the harbor to sound the waters.

A little less than an hour later, the two eagle ships hoisted flags signaling safe passage. The lookout on the mainmast lowered his telescope and called out: "No fortifications sighted!" At the same time, the lookouts on the foremast and mizzenmast also lowered their telescopes and called: "No fortifications sighted."

Bailangzai said: "Course due south. Open fire at two hundred paces from shore."

The helmsman shouted: "Rudder to starboard, course due south, port side to wind." The boatswain loudly repeated the order.

The main body of the Southern Sea Fleet consisted of captured Dutch ships, and every officer aboard was newly promoted—at the very peak of their drive. Add to that their unbroken string of victories from the Battle of Batavia to now, and their morale was astonishingly high. Every man was buzzing with excitement like he'd been shot full of stimulant. By the time the fleet reached two hundred paces, Semarang was only belatedly ringing its alarm bells.

To the ears of the Southern Sea Fleet's men, that sounded like a war drum urging attack—they felt their blood boiling through their veins.

The helmsman shouted: "Hard aport! Lower sails to half!"

"Hard aport!" the helmsman repeated loudly, the wheel spinning so fast it blurred.

The whole line of battle swung broadside on the sea, starboard facing the enemy, gunports open, the Dutchmen's motley assortment of cannons run out.

By now the Semarang docks had dissolved into chaos. Workers and peddlers clutched their belongings and fled into town; native warriors gathered their spears, shields, and bows and stood at the dockside in grim readiness; merchant ships tried to slip out of harbor in the confusion.

Alarm bells in several watchtowers rang in frantic succession, clanging loud enough to make one's head ache.

Bailangzai said: "Open fire!"

"Open fire!" the gunnery chief bellowed.

With the thunder of the flagship's guns, more than two hundred cannons across the fleet fired in sequence, muzzles flashing in a continuous sheet of light like an orange wall of flame. Across the wide sea and sky, the fleet's rumbling thunder echoed on and on.

The concussion of the bombardment traveled up through the deck, making Bailangzai's feet tingle slightly. He held his telescope, peering through gaps in the gunsmoke at the harbor. He saw the wooden pilings of the docks snap like matchsticks broken by a giant hand, section after section splitting apart, planks flying high and splashing water several feet into the air. Of the twenty-odd Javanese barges moored alongside the docks, some had their hulls smashed straight through and lurched over, sinking into the water; others had their sails ignited by flying sparks and soon drifted on the surface wrapped in fireballs.

The smaller barges lost nearly half their hulls to a single shot, splinters flying a dozen meters.

The merchant ship that had tried to flee in the chaos received special attention—hit by five shells in a row. Its sterncastle was sheared flat, its mainmast snapped, and three through-holes punched in its hull, snow-white rice pouring out of the breaches like a waterfall into the sea.

The people on the docks scattered like ants from a kicked nest—some dived into the godowns, some jumped into the river. Their cries drifted across two hundred-odd paces, faint as mosquito buzzes, soon drowned out by the unbroken thunder of the guns.

After five rounds of bombardment, the entire dock area was a ruin—not a single intact godown remained, and every ship and gangplank was splintered wood floating on the sea. Bailangzai ordered the fire extended, bombarding Semarang's commercial quarter as well, while marines went ashore in small boats and hurled fire pots at the houses not yet completely destroyed.

Outside the Semarang government office, Pateh watched the scene as if his soul had left his body. The harbor was burning, the earth was trembling, and the bustling port had turned into a hell almost in an instant.

"Pateh, retreat—let's retreat now!" someone tugged at his arm amid the rumbling thunder of the guns.

Soldiers fleeing in panic in the distance shouted: "The Dutch have landed! They've taken the docks!"

The dazed Pateh was dragged and pulled out of the city.

The bombardment did not stop until noon. Everything north of Semarang's residential district had been reduced to complete rubble.

Semarang's Pateh gazed at the smoke-shrouded city and said: "Quick! Send word to the Sultan and the royal court at Yogyakarta at once!"

At the Batavia front, after the messenger had an audience with the Sultan, Sultan Agung ordered him taken away and well entertained.

At the same time, a war raged within his mind.

Before today, he had already received successive dispatches from Pekalongan and Batang.

Combining the three reports: the Great Xia fleet only bombarded harbors, and even when it landed troops it never pushed inland—this showed its fleet was short on men, only making a feint from the sea that could not affect the inland royal heartland. There was therefore no need to send troops back to defend.

In the end, agriculture and land were the true foundation of Mataram's existence. A mere trading port, even if destroyed, was no great loss.

Having learned the lesson of the failed second siege of Batavia, Mataram's army kept its supply lines deep inland, beyond the reach of the Great Xia fleet. For Great Xia to think it could shake his army's morale with a feint and force him to withdraw was far too naive.

The more Great Xia did this, the more it revealed its weakness. Surely the sick ox soaking in water did not find the experience too pleasant.

At this thought, Sultan Agung revealed a smile of one who saw through everything, and summoned his personal guard captain.

"Your Majesty."

"That messenger from Semarang—dispose of him in secret."

"As you command, Your Majesty." The guard captain withdrew from the tent.

Since the failure of the second siege, Sultan Agung had been preparing for another siege all along. By now he had staked too much at Batavia—how could he let this little feint disturb his army's morale?

At the same time, south of the royal city of Yogyakarta, six shark ships lay anchored in the open sea, while over a hundred landing craft shuttled back and forth without pause.

After a thousand marines came ashore, they were astonished to find the beach clean, the coconut groves dense, and only a few villagers around—no sign of Mataram's army at all. The landing went so smoothly it was almost unbelievable.

Seeing this, Wang Ruzhong grew greedy and had the shark ships unload five three-pounder cannons, along with the horses to pull them.

With heavy firepower in hand, Wang Ruzhong felt much more secure. He ordered the scouts to find some guides and advance on the Yogyakarta royal palace.

Leaving the beach and heading north, they entered the tropical rainforest. The road narrowed into a tamped-earth path barely wide enough for two men abreast, the jungle on both sides impenetrable, the air humid and steaming hot—sweat soon soaked their clothes.

Every few li along the path stood a crude relay station manned by only one or two old couriers. Before they could react, Xiong Beizi's men had them under control—Mataram's communication system was completely cut off.

At noon, Xiong Beizi's scouts reached the first inland village.

The village consisted of several dozen stilted thatched huts, surrounded by vast stretches of rice paddies and palm groves, with a small mosque at the village entrance.

The villagers initially thought the Sultan's army had collapsed in rout—women and children hid inside their homes while the able-bodied men grabbed machetes and hoes to guard the village entrance. The marines did not enter the village or disturb the residents; they left only a small force to hold the entrance while the main body passed quickly along the road outside, without firing a single shot. To these ordinary villagers, who became Sultan made no difference at all, and dying for the Sultan was utterly out of the question—as long as the outsiders didn't seize their grain or destroy their fields, no one would provoke them.

That day, the marines advanced twenty li without the slightest hindrance, making camp that night in a forest clearing.

The next morning, the marines dismantled their makeshift camp and continued northward.

In the late morning, the vanguard scouts emerged from the rainforest and reached the edge of the Yogyakarta basin, where the terrain suddenly leveled out and the view opened up dramatically.

Before them lay vast rice paddies crisscrossed by irrigation canals, with tall coconut and mango trees lining the roads, and numerous hamlets dotting the patchwork of fields.

Many farmers were dredging canals and repairing field ridges, while water buffalo wandered about grazing—chewing a few mouthfuls, then stopping to look around. In such terrain, a force of over a thousand men could not possibly conceal itself, so Xiong Beizi abandoned all pretense of stealth and ordered the troops to advance at full speed toward Yogyakarta. Along the way, alarm bells rang incessantly from hamlets and mosques, and from time to time fast horsemen could be seen galloping south along the post road from the north, reining in a few hundred paces from the marines, observing for a moment, then wheeling around and riding back—clearly Mataram scouts.

Occasionally one or two scouts, emboldened by their horses, would approach closer, only to be driven off by gunfire from Xiong Beizi's men.

That afternoon, the vanguard scouts reached a mountain pass—the throat of the post road leading to Yogyakarta, flanked by low hills with the road running through the middle. More than five hundred soldiers wrapped in black turbans were piling up barricades and digging trenches there—evidently all the troops Patih had been able to scrape together in haste. Seeing Xiong Beizi's force arrive, the five hundred black-turbaned soldiers scrambled into formation, their fortifications unfinished—clearly they had not expected Xiong Beizi to arrive so quickly. "Squad leader, what do we do?" one of his men asked.

Xiong Beizi glanced at his men. His vanguard scout banner company numbered only a hundred and fifty-odd men against five hundred enemies—surely it would be safest to wait for the rear force to arrive before engaging together.

But he took another look at those five hundred black-turbaned soldiers: most wore only trousers and headcloths—no shoes, no shirts, no armor. Their weapons were mostly spears and shields, and their formation was thick and dense.

They looked... truly like they would crumble at a single blow.

Xiong Beizi gritted his teeth and decided: "We'll press in with a skirmish line! First squad leader, second squad leader—you two take your men to seize the eastern hill!" "Yes!" all the soldiers answered in unison.

Soon the neatly ordered vanguard scout banner company dispersed like mist—a hundred and fifty men spread out into a line wide enough to envelop all five hundred with room to spare.

Two squads of soldiers also charged up the eastern ridge with their guns raised.

On the five hundred black-turbaned soldiers' position, a commander-looking figure was riding along the front of his formation, speaking loudly and occasionally pointing his horsewhip toward the marines, while the soldiers around him burst into peals of laughter.

Clearly they held the skirmish formation in utter contempt.

In the age of cold steel, the denser the formation, the stronger—that was an iron rule. Even the Dutch volley-fire tactic required formation. The Mataram had never before seen a battle array that resembled a village brawl.

The commander rode several more circuits, then let out a great shout, and the five hundred black-turbaned soldiers roared their war cries in unison—an awe-inspiring display.

Xiong Beizi had already jogged to within fifty paces of the enemy line. Raising his gun, he barked: "Fire!"

He pulled the trigger, the flintlock musket cracked, and the grapeshot screamed from the barrel. The entire skirmish line opened fire in continuous succession, gunsmoke merging into a single bank like morning mist.

The black-turbaned soldiers' shields gave off dull thuds. Their shields were almond-shaped, large enough to cover most of the body, woven from rattan with wooden boards sandwiched inside—impervious to blades, extremely sturdy—yet before lead shot they were as thin and brittle as paper.

One volley sent wood splinters flying as the shields were punched straight through, and the front of their formation collapsed in a layer of fallen men, blood mist drifting back over the rear ranks. The black-turbaned soldiers in back had no time to react before they were drenched in blood, a good portion of their fighting spirit evaporating on the spot.

"Advance, all troops!" The mounted officer swept his sword forward, and the five hundred black-turbaned soldiers held formation, pressing slowly ahead as soldiers from the rear stepped up to fill the gaps left by the fallen.

At the same time, gunfire rang out from the eastern ridge—the vanguard scouts' two squads were engaging the Mataram left flank from the heights.

The Great Xia marines still numbered only a thousand, every one of them a veteran of a hundred battles, elite and fierce—and the vanguard scout banner company was the pick of the pick, the elite among elites.

Not only were their marksmanship and reloading speed exceptional, but they had also undergone extensive jungle close-combat training.

They might not match Aban and his men in the jungle, but dealing with a handful of Mataram soldiers was no problem at all.

The fight on the eastern ridge ended quickly. Two squads—twenty men—took position halfway up the slope, firing from behind banyan trees into the black-turbaned force's left-rear. After one round of gunfire, another dozen or so men in the formation toppled forward.

Meanwhile, gunfire rang out from the front again, and another layer of men fell at the formation's face. So many soldiers had fallen that the formation began to break apart, with some men tripping over the corpses of their fallen comrades.

The mounted commander brandished his kris, shouting loudly to rally his men's morale.

The vanguard scout banner company all used grapeshot—each cartridge held one large lead ball paired with several smaller ones, so that a single shot produced a cone of projectiles. Even without aiming precisely, one could hardly miss.

Thus the hit rate was extremely high—with every volley, whole rows of soldiers crumpled to the ground, and nearly all who still lived were stained red by their comrades' blood.

The shields blocked the fire from the front, so its lethality was somewhat limited—but the flanks and rear were completely exposed, and to the soldiers on the hillside, these five hundred men were nothing but live targets.

Every step the Mataram took cost several lives; along their line of advance, corpses lay strewn in every direction, along with men with shattered arms and legs, writhing and screaming in agony.

The black-turbaned soldiers closed to within twenty paces and began to break into a jog, their formation gradually loosening. Some seized the chance to hurl javelins and shoot arrows, but the skirmish line was so dispersed, with every man behind cover, that almost no one was hit amid the hail of missiles.

By now Xiong Beizi's gun barrel had grown slightly hot to the touch. After two more volleys, he raised his weapon and charged headlong at the enemy.

The rest of the marines followed with their guns raised, like a fishing net suddenly drawn tight.

The two forces had barely made contact—Xiong Beizi had just run one man through with his bayonet—when the black-turbaned soldiers all turned and fled in rout. The Mataram commander, relying on his horse, galloped off in a puff of dust and vanished from sight.

Xiong Beizi's main force, joined by the first and second squads arriving from the rear, converged on the fleeing enemy, running through every slow-moving black-turbaned soldier.

The scene was utterly brutal. The corpses of the black-turbaned soldiers soon carpeted the post road, and the blood that flowed stained the entire highway crimson, soaking into the earth to form a vast quagmire.

Many black-turbaned soldiers fled in panic into the surrounding rice paddies, trampling and destroying three or four mu of crops in the process.

An hour later, the pursuit ended. As far as the eye could see, not a single Mataram man remained standing.

Xiong Beizi wiped the sweat and blood from his face, ordered his men to drag the corpses to the roadside, and tallied the casualties.

A quick count by each squad showed that the Mataram had left behind over two hundred corpses, while the marines had suffered only fifteen lightly wounded.

Xiong Beizi ordered the wounds bandaged and the men fed; after a brief rest, they continued northward.

Past the mountain pass, the road ahead still ran through hamlets and rice paddies, but virtually no living people were to be seen—the civilians had all hidden indoors at the sound of gunfire. And the Mataram patih nobles were in no position to organize another round of defense.

Reaching the royal capital in two days might not sound fast, but compared to the wars of this era that routinely dragged on for years, it was absurdly quick. Consider: the Eight-Nation Alliance took ten days just to march from landing to entering Beijing, not counting combat!

And unlike the Bohai Sea, the southern coast of Java faced the vast Indian Ocean, governed year-round by the southeast trade winds—with towering swells, dense reefs, and powerful rip currents, and no sheltered harbors to be found.

The Malay oared sailing vessels had limited capacity to withstand heavy seas, so all major shipping routes hugged the northern coast. Even the Majapahit ocean-going fleet would never lightly sail around the southern shore, let alone organize a large-scale landing there.

Moreover, in traditional Javanese culture, the southern Indian Ocean was the domain of the Goddess of the South Sea—sacred, perilous, and not to be profaned. Neither the people nor the military would readily set foot there.

Thus in the entire history of Mataram and even the Majapahit Empire, no one had ever landed south of Yogyakarta, and so this direction was virtually undefended. This was not stupidity—it was simply that technical limitations combined with cultural constraints had made the notion of an enemy coming from the southern coast an impossibility in the minds of Mataram's nobles.

If one had to defend the southern coast, why not also defend against enemies crawling out of the volcano's crater?

Wang Ruzhong's advance had also happened to coincide with Sultan Agung's personal campaign, leaving Yogyakarta and central Java's standing forces drained to the last man.

The few troops that remained had been sent by the prime minister left to govern the realm to reinforce Semarang.

The last soldiers squeezed from between the cracks—those five hundred black-turbaned men—had been slaughtered like chopping vegetables.

Send more men, and there would be no one left to defend the walls of Yogyakarta itself.

Of course, Mataram had a large population and vast reserves of conscripts to draw upon. Under the sultanate's laws, one man was conscripted from every ten of age, so central Java could still raise a force of fifty to sixty thousand.

Unfortunately, mustering conscripts took time—from issuing the order to full assembly, the fastest was two months.

And how much reaction time did Great Xia give Yogyakarta?

Two days!

Two days isn't even enough time to draft a conscription order—even if they mobilized the standing troops near Yogyakarta, it would still be too late. The messenger was still on the road, and the marines were already at the royal capital's walls.

That afternoon, Xiong Beizi had already arrived outside the south gate of the Yogyakarta royal capital and begun pitching camp and setting up defenses. A hundred and fifty men, yet they put on the full posture of preparing to storm the city. When word reached the palace, the regent and chief ministers were still mocking the Great Xia people for overreaching themselves.

But by evening, Wang Ruzhong's main force had also arrived outside the city. With a siege camp of over a thousand men established, the nobles in the palace finally panicked completely. The regent sent fast horsemen to the Batavia front to beg the Sultan for aid, while simultaneously ordering the entire city sealed off, commanding all nobles' private troops onto the walls to defend, and press-ganging able-bodied men from the populace to guard the city.

The Grand Imam called for a "holy war" at the Tianfang Mosque, but few responded—first, because Mataram's Islamization was still incomplete; the nobles followed the Muslim faith, while the common folk still believed in their native religions.

Second, there were no fools living in the royal capital. Everyone knew the elite troops had followed the Sultan to attack Batavia, and Yogyakarta couldn't be held by militia alone. Quite a few households had already packed their belongings, ready to flee into the mountains to the north.

Late at night, the streets had descended into chaos. Nobles scrambled to move their families and escort their valuables, while commoners banged on the gates demanding to leave the city, or shut themselves behind their doors and refused to come out.

On the streets, shops were closed, doors and windows boarded up with planks. Gangs of thugs took advantage of the chaos to loot in the open, and seeing no one stopping them, grew ever bolder—even setting fires in broad daylight. Reports of emergencies from all corners of the city drifted onto the regent's desk like falling snow. He couldn't handle a single one of them, and could only frantically write letters begging for aid—besides sending them to the Sultan at the front, he also wrote to every patih in the surrounding regions.

As for political consequences, as for face—none of that mattered now. Holding the royal capital was the paramount concern.

The next morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, Wang Ruzhong climbed a stretch of high ground and gazed out over the city of Yogyakarta.

He saw that Yogyakarta had two layers of city walls. The outer ring was a low rammed-earth wall, less than one zhang tall, no more than three chi wide at the top, ringed on the outside with sharpened wooden stakes. There were no firearms of any kind, and the soldiers standing guard were sparse.

Between the inner and outer walls stretched a vast expanse of light-brown thatched roofs, rolling like a sea of grass spreading without end—covering an enormous area, stretching beyond the eye's reach. It was indeed a great city.

Within the thatched houses of the outer city, several fires were still burning, and five or six columns of black smoke rose into the sky—the flames must have been extinguished not long ago.

Through the gaps between the thatched eaves, one could make out empty streets and the occasional arsonist thug passing by.

At the heart of that sea of thatched roofs, a wall of blue-gray brick rose abruptly from the ground—that was Yogyakarta's inner city wall.

The wall stood less than two zhang tall, with crenellated parapets, brick corner towers at each of the four corners, and a moat some two zhang wide surrounding the city.

Beyond the inner wall, one could glimpse exquisite multi-tiered eaves and intricately carved beams, pillars, doors, and windows. The whole was painted in no heavy colors, its style somber and weighty—surely the royal palace lay within.

Beyond the outer wall stretched endless deep-green rice paddies, with coconut and mango trees scattered here and there. In the distance, the conical form of a volcano half-hid among the clouds, a thin column of pale gray smoke rising from its crater straight into the sky.

"General, the cannons are ready!" A subordinate stepped forward and reported.

Wang Ruzhong took a deep breath. The tropical morning air, laced with the scent of rice blossoms and damp earth, filled his lungs.

"No time to waste. Wake the Mataram people up."

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen