Chapter 204: Tanks Breach the City

On the fourth day of the first lunar month, at Mao hour. Outside the Nanxun Gate of Bianjing, the mist had not yet fully dispersed, and the vanguard of the Jiangnan Army Group had already advanced to within less than three li of the city walls. At the artillery positions, sappers were using shovels to tamp down the final few anchor stakes—not to defend against the Jin soldiers, but to prevent the recoil of the mountain guns from loosening the frozen ground. A reconnaissance balloon rose slowly in the south wind; the observer in the basket held a telescope in one hand and the receiver of a wired telephone in the other, looking down upon this ancient capital that had not seen war for eighty years. The telephone line hung down from the balloon, its other end connected to the artillery command post on the high ground to the south. A duty staff officer marked the position of every target on the map, then spoke a string of orders into the mouthpiece. The gun muzzles slowly lifted, like a row of silent steel fingers pointing at the southern city wall of Bianjing.

Wanyan Kuang stood on the Nanxun Gate tower and saw that balloon through his spyglass. In the lens, the shadow of the person in the basket was leisurely writing something. Wanyan Kuang lowered the spyglass and said dryly, "They are drawing our city defense map."He guessed half right—the observer was not just drawing; every coordinate he reported over the phone was being converted in real time into artillery firing data, with an error margin of no more than thirty paces. This was a form of warfare the Jin generals had never seen: before the enemy even fired a shot, they had already measured you from head to toe.

At the same time, two li behind the artillery position, in the assembly area, a convoy unknown to the Jin army was making its final preparations.

They were steam tanks—primitive armored fighting vehicles driven by steam engines, developed by the Jiangnan Arsenal through nearly two years of repeated trials, with tungsten-manganese alloy armor plates provided by the Grassland Base. Their appearance did not resemble the streamlined tanks of later eras; they looked more like iron coffins overturned onto tracks. The hulls were less than two zhang long, with armor no thicker than half an inch at its thickest point; rivets were densely arranged on the steel plates like rashes growing on tin. The tracks were cast iron, each link weighing several dozen jin, clanking and groaning as they turned, a sound audible from several li away. Two firing ports were cut on each side of the hull, mounting light machine guns; a heavy machine gun sat on the roof, operated personally by the tank commander. The driver's field of vision was limited to the narrow observation slit directly ahead, so he drove almost blind, relying entirely on the commander's orders to correct direction. Every steam tank had a name, painted crookedly in white on the side of the hull—"Laborer," "Iron Ox," "Dawn," "Revenge."These names were not given by headquarters, but by the workers who built them. Half the workers who built the "Laborer" were coolies who had escaped from the Jiankang docks a few years prior; they gave the tank this name to mean: In the past, the Jurchens trampled us with iron cavalry; now it is our turn to crush them with iron.

Three steam tanks lined up in a row, their boilers heated to rated pressure. Assault infantry followed behind the tanks in squads and platoons. The commanding officer crouched at the very front of the formation, repeatedly instructing the soldiers behind him—stay close to the tanks, do not run ahead of them, do not stray more than three paces from them. The tank armor can stop arrows and lead balls, but your flesh and blood cannot. Every soldier stuffed two small wads of cotton into their ears. Not to block the Jin soldiers'battle cries, but to block the noise of the tanks. The sound was too loud—the roar of the steam engines, the clanking of the tracks, the rapid fire of the machine guns, all mixed together could burst a person's eardrums.

At the third quarter of Mao hour, three red signal flares rose into the sky. The general assault began.

The roar of the 75mm mountain guns was not one by one, but wave after wave. The gunners on the artillery position sent the shells of the first salvo out of the barrels almost simultaneously; the Nanxun Gate tower was instantly swallowed by fire and thick smoke. The blast wave tore the Jin national flag and its pole apart on the tower; the flag cloth burned into a black tuft in mid-air, drifting down onto the ice of the Hulong River. Immediately, the second and third rounds of shelling struck the merlons and barbicans of the city wall, the crisp sound of crumbling bricks intertwining with the booming of exploding shells. Jin soldiers lay behind the merlons, unable to lift their heads—not because they didn't want to, but because the shockwaves and shrapnel had turned the merlons into death traps.

The shelling lasted for two quarters of an hour. Two quarters of an hour later, all the barbicans on both sides of the Nanxun Gate had been blown down, and a stretch of dozens of zhang of the city wall merlons had been shaved flat. The city gate was struck squarely by an armor-piercing shell; the iron-clad outer wooden planks exploded into fragments, exposing the internal structure of the gate passage like a person with their teeth knocked out, mouth agape.

As soon as the artillery fire ceased, the three steam tanks charged out of the smoke, driving side by side across the frozen ice of the Hulong River. The ice surface emitted a teeth-grinding cracking sound under the weight of several dozen tons, but it did not collapse—the sappers had already surveyed the ice thickness; the winter ice of the Hulong River was sufficient to bear the weight of the tanks. The tanks left three white cracks on the ice surface; ice chips kicked up by the tracks splashed onto the sandbags of the Jin army's outer fortifications like a hailstorm of steel. The ballistae on the Jin army's arrow towers began to fire. The crossbow bolts were as thick as spears, with a range of up to three hundred paces, striking the tank armor with a dull thud. One bolt pinned itself into the frontal armor of the "Laborer," penetrating the half-inch thick steel plate; the arrowhead got stuck in the gap between rivets, the exposed half of the shaft vibrating with a hum. Inside the tank, the driver saw that shaft drilling in just a few inches above his head; his palms were covered in sweat, but he did not slow down, nor did he swerve even slightly—the instructor had said during training that the tank is the infantry's shield, and a shield cannot stop. If you stop, the infantry behind you are exposed.

The tanks continued to advance forward, their front armor bristling with arrow shafts like a steel rhinoceros pierced by arrows yet unaware. After passing out of the range of the arrow towers, the tanks began to return fire. The heavy machine gun on the roof swept fiercely against the defenders on both sides of the Nanxun Gate breach; bullets struck the rammed earth walls, sending flying debris of broken bricks, while Jin soldiers lay behind the merlons, too terrified to move. The assault infantry following the tanks quickly rushed up the city wall breach and fanned out to both sides under the tanks'cover. Each infantry squad was equipped with one light machine gun and two grenade launchers; their tactical movements were clean and efficient—first, a grenade launcher fired a shell behind the merlons, then the light machine gun swept the area, then the infantry rushed up to mop up the remaining enemies, then repeat. The Jin army's cold weapon formations could not deploy at all on the narrow terrain atop the city wall; rows of axe and sword wielders were blocked by light machine guns at the corners of the wall, and before they could charge a few steps, they all lay dead in pools of blood.

Wanyan Kuang attempted to rally the fleeing soldiers on the ruins of the collapsed Nanxun Gate tower; his hoarse voice was almost inaudible amidst the roar of artillery fire. He drew his sword and stood on a pile of broken bricks, waving it, with a few personal guards still by his side. A steam tank had already rolled in through the Nanxun Gate breach; the light machine gun on the right side of the hull swept the inner rampart road. Wanyan Kuang saw that tank—an iron coffin belching white smoke, its tracks coated with powder from the city wall debris and ice chips from the Hulong River, advancing slowly into the city. Wanyan Kuang shouted something, but it was completely drowned out by the tank's machine gun fire. Then a shell landed less than twenty paces from him; the flying debris knocked him to the ground. When his guards dug him out from the pile of broken bricks, his face was covered in blood, and a deep gash from a shrapnel wound had opened on his right arm, bone visible, but he was still alive.

After the fall of the Nanxun Gate, the tactics of the Jiangnan Army Group underwent a subtle shift. They did not flood into the city to engage in street fighting as in traditional siege warfare—because it was unnecessary. The balloon reconnaissance had already marked the precise locations of all military camps, granaries, command posts, and key transportation routes within the city; based on these coordinates, the artillery conducted a blanket bombardment of the city's depth inside the Nanxun Gate, street by street and alley by alley. Shells flew over the city walls, landing directly on the heads of the defenders' reserves, disrupting the assembly orders delivered by messengers, cutting off reinforcement routes between the various city gates, and slicing the command structure of the city's defenders into disconnected fragments.

The Jin army's command structure was already fragile. The defenders of Bianjing came from different systems—there were the remnants of Wanyan Kuang's southern front, the Imperial Guards transferred from Zhongdu, local conscripts from Henan, and the western front troops who had rushed day and night from Shaanxi to reinforce. The various units spoke different languages and received different orders; once the messengers were cut off by artillery fire, each camp could only fight on its own. When one section of the wall was breached, the defenders in adjacent sectors showed no reaction whatsoever. Facing this tactic of "paralyze first, then mop up," the Jin army's city defense system was like a giant whose spine had been broken; its limbs still twitched, but it could no longer stand.

On the eleventh day of the first lunar month. The shelling entered its eighth day; almost all viable targets within Bianjing had been bombed. The siege forces advanced simultaneously from the south and east directions; infantry, under the cover of artillery creeping fire, mopped up remaining enemies street by street, steadily compressing toward the city center. Wanyan Jing was no longer in the city; the news that he had broken out northward through the water gate at the northwest corner of the city late on the ninth day of the first lunar month was something Wanyan Kuang had told no one. But the defenders eventually learned the truth from the mouths of the fleeing Imperial Guards. This news spread like a plague through all the city-defense units. The first to lay down their weapons were the Han army conscripts; their hometowns were mostly in Henan, and they had never been willing to die for the Great Jin anyway. Next were the old, weak, and new recruits forcibly conscripted into the Jurchen infantry thousand-household offices. The last ones still resisting were Wanyan Kuang's personal guards and a few veteran Jurchen soldiers, who held their ground inside the Xuande Tower, the main gate of the Imperial Palace. No cannons, no reinforcements, no hope. Only a few dozen people, a few dozen swords, and a palace gate already beaten to pieces.

On the twelfth day of the first lunar month, at dawn. The last steam tank, "Dawn," rolled over the pile of broken bricks at the ruins of the Zhuque Gate and slowly turned toward the Xuande Tower. Infantry followed behind the tank, their gun barrels pointing at every window and doorway. Roars in the Jurchen language and the clashing of swords and knives echoed from inside the Xuande Tower. The assault infantry did not charge in—they set up light machine guns at the windows and swept the interior. The sweeping stopped. Silence fell inside for a moment, then the door of the Xuande Tower was pushed open from within, and Wanyan Kuang walked out. His armor was covered in sword marks and bloodstains; his right arm was wrapped in a torn military banner—not the Jin wolf-head flag, but the red flag of the Jiangnan Army Group, retrieved by his personal guards from the ruins of the Nanxun Gate. He used this flag to bind his wound. His left hand was empty; his right hand could no longer hold a sword. Behind him lay the last few dozen personal guards, fallen in pools of blood. He stood alone on the stone steps at the entrance of the Xuande Tower, gazing at the devastated city of Bianjing beyond the Zhuque Gate. On the twelfth day of his defense, he was the last one alive standing there. The Nanxun Gate was lost, the Chenzhou Gate was lost, the Dailou Gate was lost; all the city gates were lost. The ice surface of the Hulong River had been shattered by artillery fire, turning into a quagmire. The Jin national flags on the city walls fell one after another, replaced by red flag after red flag.

Wanyan Kuang slowly drew his sword with his left hand. An assault infantryman raised his rifle, but the political commissar beside him pressed down on the barrel. The commissar shook his head. Wanyan Kuang looked at them once, then held the sword horizontally before himself. He spoke a sentence in Jurchen; no one understood it. Then he knelt, facing north—that was the direction of Hebei, the direction of Wanyan Jing's breakout, the location of the remaining hope of the Great Jin. A flash of sword light, and his body slowly fell to one side, collapsing on the stone steps before the Xuande Tower, his face pressing against the cold bluestone. His blood flowed down through the cracks in the steps, from the first step to the second, from the second to the third, finally absorbed by the moss in the crevices of the stone steps. This Jurchen veteran general, who had fought from the northern border to the Huaihe, from Tangzhou to Bianjing, finally stopped.

On the thirteenth day of the first lunar month, in the morning. The last scattered resistance within Bianjing was cleared out at the northern corner tower of the Imperial Palace. Sappers of the Jiangnan Army Group began clearing the broken bricks at the Nanxun Gate breach; follow-up troops filed into the city through this gap. The city gates stood wide open; Bianjing, this fortress that had once cost Genghis Khan great effort, changed hands in eleven days. No one organized street fighting; no one held out to the end. Eleven days was not because the Jin army was too weak, but because the siege technology of this era had surpassed the critical point of wall defense. The traditional city wall defense system was designed for cold weapons and early firearms; it was built on two premises: the besieging force must camp outside the walls, and the defenders can organize continuous resistance on the walls. The Jiangnan Army Group used heavy artillery to breach the walls, used balloon reconnaissance to paralyze the command structure, used steam tanks to cover infantry assaults on the breaches, and used combined infantry-artillery tactics to mop up nodes within the city. From the first shot fired to the control of the entire city, the Jin defenders never had any opportunity for an effective response.

Nie Huaishang, Chairman of the Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Committee, entered Bianjing the day after the city fell. He did not ride a horse into the main gate in a show of force; instead, he walked into the city through the Nanxun Gate breach, accompanied only by a few staff officers and one secretary. The broken bricks on both sides of the breach had not yet been fully cleared; the air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and burnt wood. He walked over the broken bricks across the city wall breach—a breach that was an old wound left when the Jin soldiers broke Bianjing eighty years ago, later filled with bluestone by the Jin people, and now blown open again by the Jiangnan mountain guns. Old wounds and new scars, layered on the same stretch of wall. After he passed, he stopped, turned back, and took one last look at that breach.

"Repair it,"he said. "Repair the city wall. Not to defend against enemies—but to leave for future generations to see. Tell them this city was breached twice. The first time, by the Jurchens'iron cavalry. The second time, by the people's iron fist."

At noon, a huge red flag was raised atop the Xuande Tower. Besides the hammer and sickle emblem, the flag bore the names of several ordinary soldiers who had walked from the Jiankang docks, the Shaoxing dyeing workshops, and the Qianshan tea plantations all the way to the city walls of Bianjing. Those names were written in ink on the bottom right corner of the red flag, crooked and uneven, big and small, but every name represented a living person. The common people of Bianjing peered out from door cracks, from behind burnt window lattices, from under the half-collapsed doorboards of shops, secretly watching that red flag. They did not know what this flag meant, did not know what the Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Committee was, did not know who Nie Huaishang was. But they knew one thing—that this flag was not a dragon flag, not a wolf-head flag. There were no dragons or phoenixes, no fierce beasts on this flag, only the hammer and the sickle. These were tools for farming, tools for ironworking.

At the very moment the red flag rose on the Xuande Tower, in the icy snowfields of the Hebei Plain, Wanyan Jing's carriage was slowly moving north along the muddy official road. He looked back once toward the south—the direction of Bianjing showed no fire, because the fire had already burned out. The sky held only a layer of gray winter clouds, like a shroud, covering the last embers of the Great Jin's eighty-year dream of the Central Plains.