Chapter 103: Governor-General

Caution was one thing, but Zhou Shixiang did not want to pour cold water on the Ge brothers and dampen their enthusiasm, because he too was optimistic about taking Gaoyao City smoothly.

As long as they made no major mistakes and were willing to expend a modest amount of gunpowder, seizing this county town garrisoned by only a little over five hundred Green Standard troops posed no great problem.

Still, to be safe, he wanted to ask Shao Jiugong, who had once served in the Green Standard, for his opinion. After all, Shao was familiar with how the Green Standard operated, and having him as an adviser would make their judgment more reliable.

Shao Jiugong mulled it over for a while, compared the situations of both sides in his mind, and then said forthrightly, "Commander, the Green Standard garrison at Gaoyao City should be troops from elsewhere. Out-of-town troops won't fight to the death defending a city.

If we attack, we should have a seventy or eighty percent chance of victory."

Hearing Shao Jiugong's words, the Ge brothers were immediately relieved; they had feared this Jiangxi fellow would hold them back.

After following Zhou Shixiang for several days on the march, the two brothers had not so much as glimpsed the shadow of a single Qing soldier, and Zhou Shixiang would not let them plunder the towns along the way.

The supplies the troops carried were nearly exhausted, and if they did not find a city to strike soon, the men would likely sicken from sheer frustration.

"Since we marched south, my engineer battalion has yet to carry out a wall demolition.

We might as well use Gaoyao City to make an example, and let the Tartars know what our Taiping Camp is made of. However," Tie Yi was not worried about taking Gaoyao City, but he was somewhat concerned about Zhaoqing Prefecture, "the only thing to worry about is Zhaoqing.

If we strike Gaoyao City, the Qing troops at Zhaoqing Prefecture cannot possibly stay put. If they get tangled up with us, we'll be in trouble."

"What trouble?"

Ge Zheng scoffed at that.

"We're not holding Gaoyao City to the death.

We just fight our way in, grab what we need, and run. Are those Qing curs from Zhaoqing supposed to chase us the whole way?

Besides, the Commander already said that our vanguard battalion's approach to Zhaoqing this time is meant to make the Zhaoqing Qing army think we're coming for their prefectural seat. If we don't take Gaoyao City and give them a good scare, they certainly won't take us seriously.

If they really do come out and bite at us, that's when we'd have trouble."

What Ge Zheng described was the strategic plan Zhou Shixiang had set half a month earlier, when the vanguard battalion left Xinxing Town.

The plan was for the vanguard battalion to concentrate its strength and thrust toward Zhaoqing, sweeping aside or frightening off the Green Standard garrisons in the counties under Zhaoqing Prefecture, thereby allowing the rear battalion to move safely toward Xinhui from the opposite direction.

To put it plainly, the plan used the vanguard battalion's movements to cover the rear battalion, substituting a feint at Zhaoqing for the Taiping Camp's true intention of shifting to Xiangshan.

To support this plan, Zhou Shixiang racked his brains recalling the series of military operations the Iron Army of later ages had carried out during the Long March, and he drew up plans to lure the enemy, exhaust the enemy, and ambush the enemy in the same rough fashion.

Although his plan would have looked utterly childish in later times, in this era Zhou Shixiang firmly believed the Qing army would surely be misled and defeated by the Taiping Camp's movements, because they had no advanced means of communication and no means of transport that could move quickly.

Consider that even in later times, when wireless telegraphy existed, the Iron Army had been able to rely on astonishing endurance and speed to mislead and defeat the enemy forces encircling them—how much more so in this era still dominated by cold steel.

Very often, the Taiping Camp and the Qing army might be separated by only a few li, yet those few li, in the absence of effective means of communication, made it very hard for the Qing army to discover them and muster more troops to close in.

Most importantly, Guangdong's terrain is crisscrossed by waterways, and its rolling hills rise and fall unpredictably, making it utterly unsuited to cavalry operations.

Therefore, apart from the several hundred cavalrymen under the Han Banners of the two feudatories, the Prince of Jingnan and the Prince of Pingnan, the rest of the Qing forces in Guangdong had no cavalry at all—only nags used for riding and hauling supplies.

When Li Dingguo twice attacked Guangdong, he too mostly deployed infantry, preferring to bring more war elephants than cavalry, precisely because Guangdong's terrain is unfavorable for cavalry, and cavalry brought there would be of no use at all.

With no cavalry threat to worry about, under Zhou Shixiang's tactical command the Taiping Camp could naturally dart left and charge right through the gaps between Qing forces, leading them around by the nose.

Avoid battle with numerically superior Qing forces, avoid grinding siege and attrition battles with the Qing, avoid stalemates with the Qing—use speed and endurance alone to drag the Qing along, then pick the moment to destroy them!

Even with a time difference of just a single day, the Taiping Camp could slip out from under the Qing army's very nose, because the era itself limited their opponents.

The Great Ming's official armies organized countless large-scale encirclement campaigns against Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, often with forces numbering in the hundreds of thousands, yet in the end the Ming realm was still overthrown by the very "roving bandits" the official armies despised.

The reason was that Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, and their like fully understood where their own weaknesses lay and where their strengths lay.

They knew to strike the enemy's weakness with their own strength, rather than foolishly striking the enemy's strength with their own weakness.

Had Li Zicheng and the others from the start fought head-on pitched battles against the Ming army with the rabble under their command, contesting every city and every stronghold, they would likely have gone to meet the King of Hell within a year.

And without the roving bandits as a mortal threat at its heart, how could the Great Ming have fallen to the alien race of the Manchus?

With the successful examples of the peasant armies of the present and the Iron Army of later times before him, Zhou Shixiang had no reason not to adopt the same methods.

Looked at from another angle, the Taiping Camp was the peasant army, and the Qing army was the Ming army; or the Taiping Camp was the Red Army, and the Qing army was the White Army. The situation was exactly the same.

If Zhou Shixiang did not use the tactics that had succeeded for his predecessors, then his brain would truly have gone soft.

The facts turned out exactly as Zhou Shixiang had anticipated.

After the vanguard battalion advanced from Xinxing toward Zhaoqing, because they made no effort to conceal their movements and instead went about openly and with great fanfare, they were quickly spotted by the Qing army.

Xu Erxian, the Regional Commander at Zhaoqing, was stunned by this Ming force that had suddenly emerged from the Yunwu Mountains, because just a few days earlier, the Gaoyao Garrison Commander Tang Sanshui had raised troops and recaptured Luoding Prefecture, which had been seized by Li Dingguo's Southern Ming forces.

Looking at the map, Luoding sat astride the route the Gaozhou Ming army would have to take to advance east. Without rooting out the Qing forces at Luoding, the Gaozhou Ming army could not hope to launch an offensive against Zhaoqing.

Yet now Luoding had just been retaken by Tang Sanshui, and the Ming forces at Gaozhou had made no offensive moves at all. So how had a force flying the Southern Ming banner, with soldiers dressed in black, suddenly appeared right under his nose?

Xu Erxian could not figure out whether this force of soldiers in black uniforms belonged to the Gaozhou Ming army or to some other Southern Ming force, so he issued strict orders for the Green Standard garrisons in each county to investigate promptly.

But the county Green Standard forces sent out one scouting party after another, and the reports that came back were a jumble of contradictions.

Some said it was Li Dingguo's force from Gaozhou; others said it was the governor's standard troops under the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Lian Chengbi; still others said it was the force of the Southern Ming Grand Secretary Guo Zhiqi; and some simply said it was bandits who had crawled out of the Yunwu Mountains.

In short, a great deal of intelligence gathered at the Regional Commander's headquarters, but not one report was delivered in a definite tone—most were vague and unclear, infuriating Xu Erxian into cursing them all as a pack of useless fools.

After cursing his useless subordinates, Xu Erxian still had to pull himself together and deploy his troops.

Otherwise, if this unidentified force fought its way to the prefectural seat or went about burning, killing, and looting within the prefecture, then even though he, Xu Erxian, was a Han Bannerman and a trusted confidant of the Prince of Pingnan, he could not withstand the pressure from the Governor-General's office.

If that Governor-General were to slip a few unflattering remarks about Xu Erxian into a memorial to Beijing, then His Excellency Xu's career would likely be at an end.

Xu Erxian was truly wary of the current Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Li Shuaitai, because this man's status was hardly inferior to that of the two princes.

Not only was he of the Plain Blue Han Banner, but back in the day he had won the favor of the late Emperor Taizu, who had given him a daughter of the imperial clan as his wife. By that reckoning, this Governor-General Li was kin to the imperial house.

Nor was marrying a daughter of the imperial clan all there was to Li Shuaitai—he also had a record of distinguished military service.

In his early years he had followed Emperor Taizong, Hong Taiji, on campaigns against the Chahar and Korea, and in attacks on the Ming city of Jinzhou.

He had also followed the beile Abatai in attacks on Shandong inside the passes, and for his merits was promoted to Meiren Janggin of the Plain Blue Han Banner.

In the first year of Shunzhi, he concurrently held the post of Vice Minister of the Board of Punishments and led troops garrisoned at Jinzhou. In the fourth month, he followed the Prince Regent Dorgon through the passes and inflicted a great defeat on Li Zicheng.

He then led troops to strike Shandong and Henan, beheaded Li Zicheng's general Zhao Yingyuan, and forced ten thousand men of the Dashun army to submit to the Qing.

In the second year of Shunzhi, he followed the Prince of Yu, Dodo, in inflicting a great defeat on Li Zicheng at Tong Pass, then led a large army south to capture Yangzhou and Nanjing, after which he divided his forces to pacify Suzhou, Songjiang, and other places.

In the course of all this, Li Shuaitai's hands were, one might say, soaked in Han blood.

In the third year of Shunzhi, Li Shuaitai followed the Prince of Duanzhong, Bolo, in attacks on Zhejiang and Fujian, and for his merits was enfeoffed as a second-class adaha hafan, concurrently holding the rank of tuwasara hafan.

In the fifth year of Shunzhi, when Zheng Cai invaded Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, and other places in Fujian, the Qing court ordered Li Shuaitai and the General Who Pacifies the South, Chen Tai, to suppress Zheng Cai together, and they recovered the two counties of Changle and Lianjiang.

When Zheng Cai fled in defeat, Li Shuaitai also captured and killed the Governor-General Gu Shichen whom Zheng Cai had appointed, among others.

In the sixth year of Shunzhi, Li Shuaitai went north again to campaign against the rebel general Jiang Xiang at Datong, captured Baode, and seized Jiang Xiang's confederates Niu Hualin and others, for which he was again promoted to tuwasara hafan.

In the eighth year of Shunzhi, Li Shuaitai was transferred to the Board of Civil Office and appointed Grand Secretary of the Hongwen Academy.

In the tenth year of Shunzhi, the Qing court, acting on the recommendation of the Grand Secretary Hong Chengchou, appointed Li Shuaitai Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi. It had now been only a few months since this Governor-General took office.

After assuming his post, Li Shuaitai had impeached one after another a group of civil and military officials who had performed poorly when Li Dingguo attacked Guangdong, and from time to time he adopted a posture of standing up to the two princes, Pingnan and Jingnan.

Because of his status, neither Shang Kexi nor Geng Jimao dared offend him.

If even the princes were like that, how much more so a Regional Commander like Xu Erxian.

Although he too was a man of Liaodong and had rendered great service to the Great Qing, compared with a kinsman of the imperial house like Li Shuaitai, he was nothing more than a slave's slave.

Under such circumstances, how could Xu Erxian dare let that unidentified force approach the prefectural seat of Zhaoqing?

Under his direction, the Green Standard garrisons of Xinxing, Sihui, Yangjiang, and other counties were sent one after another to attack the Taiping Army's vanguard battalion.

Yet under Zhou Shixiang's command, the vanguard battalion relied on long forced marches and the cohesion of a united force to leave these Green Standard garrisons far behind, and within Sihui County successfully ambushed the Sihui Green Standard, annihilating 380 garrison soldiers below the rank of Company Commander—their second victory since setting out from Luoding.

The Battle of Sihui also greatly boosted the morale and fighting spirit of the Taiping Camp, and the captured Green Standard soldiers swelled the Taiping Camp's strength. At present, the Taiping Camp's total strength had reached as many as 2,000 men.

Unless Xu Erxian, the Regional Commander of Zhaoqing, personally led his main force against them, the Green Standard garrisons of the various counties under Zhaoqing Prefecture, coming singly, were no longer a match for the Taiping Camp.

"Brother Ge is right.

These past days we've fought smoothly, but we've never once captured a city, and the Qing army may well look down on us for that. So in my view, Gaoyao City not only should be attacked, but attacked hard.

We should strive to take it in one push. Only then will the Qing troops at Zhaoqing feel afraid, unsure how many men we have or whether we'll strike Zhaoqing Prefecture next.

Only then will they shrink back inside their walls and not dare come out. Otherwise, today one pack of Qing curs nips at our heels, tomorrow another pack blocks our path—where will it end?

The brothers aren't immortals. Holding out this long is already remarkable; anyone who saw them would have to praise them as elite troops.

If we drag this out any longer, I fear the men won't be able to hold on."

Qin Zhisheng, the platoon commander who had always been quiet during war councils, spoke his mind, and reminded everyone that after half a month of marching and fighting, the vanguard battalion's nerves and stamina were in fact already stretched to the breaking point.

If they could not get some rest and replenishment, they might not be able to hold out.

The bald man Jiang He, hearing Qin Zhisheng's words, slapped his thigh and said, "The brothers have indeed had it hard these days, and we truly need a place to rest and regroup for a few days. What's more, the rear battalion is about to run out of grain.

If we can't raise provisions soon, morale is going to waver."

Ge Zheng immediately said, "In that case, let's set out now and attack Gaoyao City. Otherwise, if the rear battalion really runs out of grain, won't the men under me mutiny?"

"The brothers fight and risk their lives for their wives and children. As long as we tell everyone how things stand with the rear battalion, the men can hold on a while longer. Commander, give the order!"

Tie Yi rose and looked at Zhou Shixiang.