Chapter 202: Collapse of the Jin Kingdom

Sizhou, Two Huai River front line. On the eve of the war, the Jin Army's southern front camp was strangely quiet. Wanyan Kuang sat behind the parapet at the highest point of Sizhou city tower, an unfolded map laid out in front of him, the four corners of the map pressed down by four stones—one was a fragment of blue brick brought from Lingbi, one was rammed earth peeled off the city wall of Dengzhou, one was a pebble picked up in front of the Tangzhou government office, and one was a remnant of a stone projectile smashed by a trebuchet under Suzhou city. Each stone was a city he had once defended and eventually lost.

He flicked the wick with a withered branch, the flame jumping, illuminating the three cities circled in cinnabar on the map: Sizhou, Lingbi, Suzhou. These three cities were the iron triangle of the Jin Kingdom's southern front, the defense line he had built brick by brick over many years. Now they crouched on the north bank of the Two Huai River, silently looking at the ominous silence on the opposite bank. The opposite bank of the Two Huai River was too quiet. No bugles, no campfires, no neighing of warhorses. So quiet it did not seem like tens of thousands of troops were assembling.

Wanyan Kuang had confronted grassland cavalry on the northern border for three years and had seen all kinds of armies, but he had never seen an enemy like this. Their camps had no sound of drums, no fluttering banners, no clamor of soldiers shouting "Long live" when generals patrolled the camp on horseback, only a low, continuous sound of metal friction coming from deep within the earth. That sound drifted over from the fog on the opposite bank of the Two Huai River, day and night. He knew it was not a trebuchet—he was too familiar with the sound of trebuchets, the creaking of wood and hemp rope, like an old ox pulling a plow. But this sound was not that; this sound was metallic, rhythmic, like a giant beast breathing.

Twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, early morning. A thin fog drifted over the Two Huai River, the river surface covered in a thin layer of ice, the ice reflecting the scattered firelight from the opposite bank. In the main camp of the Jin Army's southern front, Wanyan Kuang convened the final military council. Present were the only remaining generals of the southern front—Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong had rushed over from Suzhou, Wanyan Wanyan Alubao had remained in Sizhou to recover from his wounds after retreating from Tangzhou, and several thousand-household commanders who had just rushed to reinforce from the border wall of the northern border, their boots still stained with the yellow sand of the border wall. These people were the final command core the Great Jin could scrape together for the southern front.

"The enemy's troop strength is estimated to be between fifty thousand and eighty thousand." Wanyan Kuang's voice was very heavy, but very steady, as if stating a fact unrelated to himself, "Divided into two routes, one crossing the Two Huai River from the front of Sizhou, one bypassing along the upper reaches of the Two Huai River; the goal should be to wipe out Sizhou and Suzhou simultaneously. Within two days, the Two Huai River defense line will be under attack along its entire length."

The tent was dead silent. Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong's one eye stared at Sizhou on the map, not speaking. He had fought a bloody battle against the Song Army in Lingbi for fifteen days and defended Suzhou for two months; he knew better than anyone how fragile the Two Huai River defense line was. But this time, the enemy was not the Song Army.

"Our troop strength," Wanyan Kuang continued, "Sizhou has less than three thousand defenders, Suzhou less than four thousand, Lingbi has already been abandoned, and the rest of the southern front adds up to less than thirty thousand, scattered along a defense line of several hundred li from the Two Huai River to Bianjing. The main force on the northern border cannot be moved. The garrison on the western front cannot be moved either. It is not that His Majesty will not mobilize troops—it is that if they are mobilized, the northern border will be empty."

"In other words," Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong finally spoke, his voice hoarse, as if ground by sandpaper against an iron plate, "we have to use less than thirty thousand defenders to block a modernized corps of fifty to eighty thousand people, fighting a defensive war with no terrain to rely on on the Two Huai River plain."

"It is not a defensive war." Wanyan Kuang said, his voice suddenly becoming very light, as if talking to himself, "It is a war of time. We cannot block them, but we can drag it out. Drag it out for one day, it is one day; drag it out for two days, it is two days. Drag it out until His Majesty finishes reinforcing the defenses of Bianjing, drag it out until reinforcements from the northern border—if His Majesty decides to mobilize them—rush to the Yellow River. If we cannot drag it out, the Great Jin will perish by the Two Huai River. If we drag it out, the Great Jin will be able to die one more time by the Yellow River."

No one in the tent laughed. This sentence was not funny, but it was real. Real to the point of cruelty.

At the same moment, on the opposite bank of the Two Huai River. The command post of the First Field Army of the Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Army was set up in an abandoned River God Temple. The statues in the temple had long been moved away, and the empty shrine was filled with maps, rulers, and a hand-cranked field telephone. The telephone line was pulled from the temple entrance all the way to the artillery observation post on the bank of the Two Huai River, and every quarter of an hour, the observation post would call, reporting wind speed on the river, fog concentration, and changes in the firelight of the Jin Army on the opposite bank.

The combat order had already been issued. The order text was jointly signed by Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Committee Chairman Nie Huaishang and the Military Commission, the full text less than a hundred characters, with only one core instruction—"Advance along two routes, force a crossing of the Two Huai River, and encircle and annihilate all major Jin Kingdom troop groups in the region south of Suzhou." There was no "fight bravely," no "raise our national prestige," no "report to imperial grace"—in the military documents of the Jiangnan base, there were never these clichés. There were only tasks, time, routes, and the results that must be achieved.

The forward attack units had already entered their departure positions. The engineer unit's pontoon bridge equipment had already been transported from the rear to the river bank; this equipment had undergone two full years of targeted improvement before being transported—not traditional wooden boats and floating bridges, but modular floating platforms assembled from steel frames and inflatable leather bags, which could be carried by mules and horses after being dismantled, and could carry light artillery and armored vehicles after being assembled. For this equipment, the steel workshops of the Jiangnan Arsenal worked day and night, and the tungsten-manganese alloy sent from the grassland base was prioritized for the load-bearing joints of the floating bridge components. The weld seams of every steel plate were repeatedly inspected, and the tensile strength of every cable was measured.

The assault units had already been silently crouching in the reed marshes on the river bank for half the night. Their uniforms were gray, almost blending into the reeds in the fog. Every soldier had a circle of hemp rope wrapped around their steel helmet, both to prevent reflection and to increase friction when climbing the river bank. The dew had condensed a layer on the barrels of the rifles they held in their arms, but no one went to wipe it—discipline did not allow it. A gun was a soldier's second life, and water in the barrel would cause it to explode, so before going to the battlefield, everyone wrapped the gun mechanism with oilcloth, and only at the final moment before the charge would they uncover it.

The assault company commander crouched at the very front of the team, leaning against a bundle of anchor ropes for the floating bridge, chewing on a reed stalk. He could not be older than twenty-five. Two years ago, he was carrying bags at the Jiankang docks and had three ribs broken by the dock boss; it was an underground party member of the Robin Society who smuggled him out of the city in a manure cart and sent him to the base's health clinic. He lay in the health clinic for three months, learned to read, learned to read maps, and learned to operate a mortar. Now he was in charge of one hundred and twenty soldiers, every one of them a young man who had crawled out of a hard life like him.

There was less than a quarter of an hour left until the general attack.

Twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, 5:00 AM. The morning light had not yet appeared, and both banks of the Two Huai River were still shrouded in iron-gray fog.

The first artillery shell landed on the city tower of Sizhou's south gate; there was no whistling sound—the muzzle velocity of the 75mm mountain gun was far higher than the slow-moving stone projectiles the Jin soldiers were accustomed to; the sound of the shell leaving the muzzle was still traveling through the air, but the warhead had already smashed into the target. What the Jin soldiers heard was a dull explosion, then the crisp sound of city wall bricks shattering, then the sound of the shockwave carrying shattered bricks and flesh and blood spraying out from the city tower. The Jin Kingdom flag on the city tower, along with the flagpole, was blown off, the flagpole falling crookedly, the flag cloth burning into a ball of black floc in the firelight.

Wanyan Kuang was shaken by the explosion in the main camp less than a li away from the city wall, causing the map on the table to jump. He rushed out of the camp and saw a plume of thick smoke rising from the direction of Sizhou's south city, the smoke mixed with brick-red dust. It was not that he had never been shelled—the Song Army's trebuchets under Dengzhou city had smashed for two months, and the city wall was covered in dents from stone projectiles. But those were stone projectiles; this was artillery. It was a standard mountain gun manufactured by the Jiangnan Arsenal using two full years of repeatedly improved processes, using tungsten-manganese alloy steel sent from the grassland for the gun barrels, and assembled using standardized production lines. This gun could be dismantled into seven parts, carried by four mules and horses, completed dismantling, marching, and reassembly within half an hour, and then pour high-explosive shells and incendiary shells onto any target. The Jin Kingdom's city walls were designed to defend against siege hammers, scaling ladders, and trebuchets of the cold weapon era, not to defend against this type of weapon.

On the surface of the Two Huai River, the thin fog of the early morning had not yet dissipated, and the Jin Army's archers were still rubbing their sleepy eyes behind the parapets. The heavy machine guns on the opposite bank rang out. Not one, but one every hundred paces along the entire river bank line, the crossfire blocking every beachhead fortification on the Jin Army's south bank. Bullets hit the rammed earth breastwork like a rainstorm hitting banana leaves, rammed earth fragments splashing everywhere. The Jin soldiers lay behind the breastwork, unable to even lift their heads. They had bows, crossbows, and bed crossbows—the bed crossbows the Jin Kingdom was proud of, the crossbow bolts as thick as spears, with a range of three hundred paces. But the range of the heavy machine gun was three times that, and the rate of fire was a hundred times that. From loading the bolt, pulling the string, to aiming and firing, it took the Jin crossbowman at least a dozen breaths, while that steel monster on the opposite side had already sprayed out over a hundred bullets in those dozen breaths. The bed crossbow's string was snapped by bullets, the ox-horn decoration on the crossbow arm was smashed by bullets, and the crossbowman lay behind the crossbow frame, not daring to move.

The Jin soldiers began to panic. It was not that they had never lost a battle, but they had never fought this kind of battle—they could not even see where the enemy was, and their comrades fell row by row.

At the same time the heavy machine guns suppressed the Jin Army's beachhead fortifications, the assault units' floating bridges were pushed out from the reed marshes. The engineers pushed the modular steel frame floating platforms into the Two Huai River one section at a time; in the turbulent river water, these floating bridge components were held firmly by invisible hands, motionless. The rockets fired by the Jin soldiers were sporadically nailed to the floating bridge, the flames of the arrowheads flickering and extinguishing on the steel skeleton—this was the only counterattack they could make.

The assault infantry followed behind the engineers, charging across the floating bridge bent over. The company commander charging at the very front was the one from the docks, having walked an unimaginably long distance from the Jiankang docks to the Two Huai River floating bridge. After crossing the bridge, he was the first to leap onto the north bank beachhead, his boots stepping on the soil of the Jin Kingdom's southern front defense system, where the morning fog had not yet dissipated. He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger at a Jin crossbowman loading a bolt behind the breastwork. The gun rang out. The Jin crossbowman fell backward, the crossbow bolt in his hand shooting toward the gray sky. Behind him, one hundred and twenty assault infantry surged onto the beachhead, advancing deep into the Jin Army's first line of defense under the cover of heavy machine gun fire.

From the first artillery shell landing to the first red flag being planted on the Jin Army's beachhead position, the time it took for the Two Huai River defense line to be torn open exceeded the psychological preparation of any Jin Army general.

East wing. Sizhou. Main attack direction.

Sizhou was the core support point of the Jin Kingdom's southern front defense system, with nearly three thousand defenders, the city wall personally reinforced by Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong, and two trenches and one line of deer-horn defenses outside the city. These defensive facilities lasted less than two quarters of an hour in front of the Jiangnan Corps' firepower.

The shelling was not the traditional rhythm of firing at intervals; it was continuous, uninterrupted, covering bombardment like an assembly line—the first row of artillery hit the arrow towers on the city wall, the second row hit the firing points at the base of the city wall, the third row hit the assembly area for reserves inside the city gate, and the fourth row went over the city wall to hit the depth of the city. The entire rhythm of firepower was as tight as a precisely operating machine; one shell exploded on the target, the smoke and dust had not yet dissipated, and the next shell had already landed on the adjacent target. The Jin Army had no chance to catch their breath. They were accustomed to the way of fighting where the siege side used trebuchets to slowly smash a few stone projectiles, and then infantry charged up with scaling ladders. They had experience, methods, and routines for dealing with that kind of war. But this was not war; this was harvesting. Death was not holding a sickle and slowly cutting; death was pushing an invisible harvester and pushing flat across the wheat field.

The east corner platform of Sizhou city was the first to be blown down. The high-explosive shell of the 75 mountain gun hit the junction of the rammed earth and brick of the corner platform's base, the shockwave generated by the explosion tearing the rammed earth structure from the inside, the entire corner platform splitting a large opening from the middle, then collapsing with a bang. The two bed crossbows on top, along with six crossbowmen, fell together, bricks and corpses piled together at the base of the city wall.

The city gate of the south gate was hit by three armor-piercing shells in the same position in succession. The first hit the outer wooden board wrapped in iron, the second exploded inside the gate tunnel, and the third blew away the remaining door frame. Sizhou's south gate opened wide, like a person who had had their front teeth pulled out, mouth agape. The siege hammer was not used, the scaling ladders were not used, and even the infantry charge had not yet had time to launch—the city gate had already opened itself.

The assault units surged in from the south gate. Not the traditional swarming in with shouts, but tactical formations by squads and platoons, covering each other, clearing street by street and alley by alley. Every corner, every window, every rooftop was confirmed safe by light machine gun fire or had a grenade thrown in by a grenade launcher before the infantry advanced. The Jin Army's experience in street fighting was accumulated from the war against the Song, and the Song Army's siege tactics were cold weapons plus a small amount of firearms. Facing the Jiangnan Corps' clearing-style street fighting, the Jin soldiers were completely unable to adapt—they hid in houses waiting for hand-to-hand combat, only to have a grenade launcher grenade fly in first. They hid at the alley entrance preparing for an ambush, only to hear the light machine gun firing tentatively at the corner first.

Sizhou's three thousand defenders were completely crushed in less than half a day. Over one thousand died in battle, over one thousand five hundred were captured, and a small number of remnants fled from the north gate. The Jiangnan Corps suffered less than a hundred casualties. This casualty ratio was unheard of in the entire history of cold weapon warfare.

West wing. At the same time, the second route unit bypassing along the upper reaches of the Two Huai River was rushing toward Suzhou.

This unit's mission was to penetrate and bypass, cut off the connection between Sizhou and Suzhou, prevent the Jin Army's southern front units from reinforcing each other, and encircle and annihilate all remaining Jin Army southern front forces in the region south of Suzhou. They did not carry heavy artillery, but lighter mountain howitzers and a large number of mules and horses, moving extremely fast. The vanguard unit led the way with cavalry, and the follow-up infantry rushed north along the tributaries of the Two Huai River on steam tugboats—those steam tugboats rushing day and night on the river surface from Jiankang to Zhenjiang were fully loaded with ammunition and supplies, entering the Two Huai River water system like entering an uninhabited land. The Jin Army's sentry posts deployed along the river watched in a daze as those iron ships emitting white smoke went upstream, faster than the fastest cavalry running on the river bank, completely not knowing how to respond.

Just before the news of Sizhou city's fall reached Suzhou, the bypassing unit had already taken a step ahead and cut off the official road south of Suzhou. Suzhou defender Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong led less than four thousand defenders to hold the isolated city. Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong had spent his whole life fighting against the Song people, the Western Xia people, and the grassland cavalry; his military experience was the richest among the generals on the Jin Kingdom's southern front, and his defensive will was also the strongest—fifteen days in Lingbi, two months in Suzhou, he had proven with actions that he was the general who could defend the best in the Great Jin. But he now had to face a cruel fact: all his defensive experience was based on the foundation of cold weapon siege warfare. How to arrange trenches, how to configure bed crossbows, how to organize reserves, how to organize street fighting counterattacks after the city wall was breached—these experiences, when facing an enemy possessing 75 mountain guns, heavy machine guns, reconnaissance balloons, and steam tugboats, all failed. Just like a person who had spent a lifetime learning how to use a bamboo pole to hit dates, only to find the date tree was made of iron.

Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong put down the battle report sent by the scouts and was silent for a long time. Then he looked up, looking at the direction of the enemy's position looming in the distance, and said one sentence—"I waited my whole life, wanting to wait for an enemy who could defeat me head-on. Now he has come."

Twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month. On the plain between Sizhou and Suzhou, the last two field units of the Jin Army's southern front that could still maneuver were urgently contracting toward Suzhou. These two units were elite forces Wanyan Kuang had drawn from the defense line outside Sizhou, totaling twelve thousand people, including three Jurchen cavalry thousand-household offices and one Han army conscript infantry ten-thousand-man unit. Their mission was to retreat to Suzhou, meet up with Heshilie Heshilie Zhizhong, and fight a decisive battle against the Jiangnan Corps under Suzhou city. But they did not make it to Suzhou. The bypassing unit responsible for penetration intercepted them on an open field south of Suzhou.

This was a head-on collision between cavalry and modernized infantry. The three Jurchen cavalry thousand-household offices charged at the very front, the iron-armored heavy cavalry setting up the most classic Jurchen cavalry charge formation—front row sabers, back row spears, both wings light cavalry flanking. This was the tactic the Jin Kingdom had been most proud of for a hundred years since its founding; back then, Wanyan Aguda used this tactic to crush the Liao Kingdom's Pishi Army, and Wanyan Zongbi used this tactic to crush the Great Song's Western Army. Iron hooves like thunder, sabers like snow, lined up in a steel torrent on the Huaibei plain.

After discovering the Jin cavalry, the Jiangnan Corps' infantry quickly lined up. Their formation was not a traditional square, but a horizontal skirmish line the Jin soldiers had never seen before. The reconnaissance balloon of the artillery observation post had already risen into mid-air. The observer on the balloon transmitted the movements of the Jin cavalry to the artillery command post in real time via wired telephone—bearing, speed, distance, formation, every piece of data precise to a degree the Jin people could not understand. The artillery command post quickly calculated firing parameters based on the data transmitted by the balloon and transmitted the order to the mortars and 75 mountain gun batteries that had already entered their positions.

When the Jin cavalry charged to about eight hundred paces from the Jiangnan Corps' position, the first round of mortar shells fell. These shells fell from the sky, not fired horizontally, but smashed down from overhead in a steep parabolic arc. The Jin cavalry had never experienced the strike of indirect fire—their past war experience was: the most dangerous thing in the charging process was the arrows and bed crossbows from the front; as long as they charged to a certain distance, the arrows would be useless, and entering hand-to-hand combat would be their world. But now, death was falling from overhead. Mortar shells exploded in the cavalry cluster, each one bursting and spraying dozens of cast-iron fragments, the fragments flying, horse legs blown off, cavalry thrown from their horses, horses behind tripped by the corpses in front, the formation beginning to chaos.

The surviving cavalry who rushed through the mortar fire net continued to advance, and when they were about three hundred paces from the Jiangnan Corps' position, the heavy machine guns rang out. This distance of three hundred paces was carefully calculated by the Jiangnan Corps' staff—at a distance of three hundred paces, the firepower density of the heavy machine gun was enough to cover the entire front of the cavalry cluster, while the range of the Jin Army's bows was less than two hundred paces. This gap of more than one hundred paces was a death zone that could not be crossed. Heavy machine gun bullets hit the horses, the horses knelt directly, the cavalry on the horses were thrown out, and before they could land, they were caught up by the bullets behind. Hitting the people, the armor was directly pierced, the helmets flew up, and corpses piled on corpses. The rear cavalry were still charging because they could no longer stop. The inertia of the cavalry charge determined that the rear could only move forward, while in front was a wall woven of bullets. Artillery shells exploded overhead, bullets swept from the front, and the cavalry's shock force was annihilated by the unit between three hundred and one hundred paces. Corpses paved the entire charge route, the corpses of people and horses piled together, covering the green seedlings in the winter wheat fields.

Twelve thousand Jin field units were completely annihilated in less than half an hour. Not routed, but annihilated. Over half died in battle, the rest either surrendered or scattered. And that Jurchen heavy armored cavalry that had once crushed the Liao Kingdom and destroyed the Northern Song was torn into fragments by the steel storm at a distance of three hundred paces without even seeing the enemy's face.

The remaining Han army conscript infantry ten-thousand-man unit did not charge. They stood on the distant fields, watching with their own eyes the entire process of the Jurchen iron cavalry being harvested. The weapons in their hands were spears and shields, and the armor they wore was leather and paper, facing an enemy they had never seen even in their nightmares. After the smoke of the battlefield dissipated, the Jiangnan Corps sent a political instructor, holding a tin horn, walking to the front of the formation, shouting to the remaining Jin conscript infantry. The content of the shouting was very simple: put down your weapons, and you will not be killed; those willing to go home will be given travel expenses; those willing to stay will be incorporated into the People's Armed Forces, land will be divided, and you will no longer be soldiers for the Jurchens.

The time it took for the conscript infantry ten-thousand-man unit to waver was no more than a stick of incense. First, the spearmen in the front row stuck their spears into the ground and raised their hands, then the archers in the back row cut their bowstrings and threw them on the ground, and then the bugles of the entire ten-thousand-man unit stopped blowing. The ten-thousand-man unit surrendered as a whole. This was something that had never happened since the founding of the Jin Kingdom—it was not that no one had surrendered, but there had never been such a large-scale, organized, and voluntary surrender of Han conscript soldiers. The Jiangnan base's political slogan of "Anti-Song, Anti-Jin" and the policy of land reform were too familiar to these Han conscript soldiers. Their hometowns had long been singing about it, and their elders had long been looking forward to it. The Jin Kingdom imperial court used blades and guns to drive them to the battlefield, while Jiangnan used land and freedom to summon them off the battlefield. They chose the latter.

Twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Sizhou and Suzhou were all controlled by the Jiangnan Corps. From the Two Huai River to Bianjing, the Jin Kingdom's southern front defense system no longer existed. Three thousand defenders, over half died in battle, nearly ten thousand captured, remnants scattered. Wanyan Kuang led a few personal guards to break out from the north gate of Sizhou, running wildly north on the Huaibei plain, behind him the burning Sizhou city and red flags all over the mountains and plains. He looked back at the horse—the smoke and fire of the Two Huai River defense line reddened half the sky. He knew his military career had ended here, the Great Jin's southern front defense system had ended here, and the Central Plains hinterland that had never been lost since the founding of the Jin Kingdom had opened its doors from this moment on. He turned his head, spurred his horse north, and did not look back. Bianjing was next.

And the Jin Emperor Emperor Zhangzong, Wanyan Jing, was patrolling the defenses in Bianjing city at this time. ===== CHAPTER 203 =====