Chapter 112: Firearms

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When the Green Standard made their move, the several newly formed recruit units raised after the Xinhui campaign were all ordered to assemble at the east side of the city.

Zhou Shixiang's purpose in bringing the recruits over was simple: to let them see for themselves just what sort of character these bannermen really had.

From the second year of Yongli (the fifth year of Shunzhi), when Li Chengdong led his army into Guangdong, because his troops had originally been a peasant army, their fighting strength was several times greater than that of the Southern Ming official forces, and so they won every battle they fought.

This left the Ming army in Guangdong with no foothold anywhere, and even frightened the Yongli court into fleeing far from Guangdong all the way to Guangxi.

Under such circumstances, the common people of Guangdong naturally stood in awe of the Qing army's might, and people of the time all said, "The northerners are fierce and cannot be opposed."

Later, in the fourth year of Yongli (the seventh year of Shunzhi), Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao led their Han Banner troops into Guangdong.

Although the Han troops under the two princes numbered only a few thousand, because the soldiers were all veterans from Liaodong and their equipment was primarily firearms, their fighting strength was a cut above even Li Chengdong's force.

After Li Chengdong turned his coat and returned to the Ming, his Qing troops became the main strength of the Ming army in Guangdong.

Although Li Chengdong's death left the Guangdong Ming army leaderless and led to its collapse, the Han Banners and Manchu troops that had entered Guangdong were also a principal cause of the Ming army's defeat there.

After that, Li Dingguo, in the manner of one who had twice humbled a prince, led tens of thousands of elite troops in two attacks on Guangdong, yet suffered crushing defeats in succession at Zhaoqing and Xinhui.

This made the people of Guangdong turn pale at the very mention of the Qing.

Back when Zhou Shixiang was still a xiucai in Xinhui, he had often heard people say things like "the Green Standard must not be offended, the bannermen must not be looked at, and the Manchu soldiers must not even be spoken of."

The gist was that Green Standard soldiers could not be crossed; as for the bannermen, never mind crossing them — you could not even so much as look at them; and the Manchu soldiers were worse still: never mind looking at them, merely hearing the words "Manchu soldiers" was enough to scare a man out of his wits and send him fleeing as far as he could go.

Otherwise, at best you would lose your family fortune, and at worst your head would be parted from your body. Though these three sayings were somewhat exaggerated, one can still see from them the degree of terror the common people of Guangdong felt toward the Qing army.

The several units newly formed by the Taiping Camp after the Xinhui campaign were all made up of recruits.

These soldiers were not like the veterans who had fought several engagements against the Qing army; in their subconscious, their fear of the Qing army outweighed their fear of the Taiping Army.

Therefore, Zhou Shixiang felt it necessary to let them see with their own eyes just what sort of character these legendary bannermen — the ones you supposedly could not even look at — really had.

As long as they saw that those bannerman lords could also be afraid, could also beg for mercy, and would also die when cut down, the fear in their hearts would naturally fade.

Manchus, Han Banners, Green Standard — they were all human. As long as they were human, they were all born of fathers and raised by mothers, with no extra head or extra hand compared to anyone else. Cut off their heads and they died just the same.

If once was not enough, then twice; if twice was not enough, then three times. After enough repetitions, these recruits would have no reason left to fear the Qing army.

Of course, the premise was that the Taiping Camp could keep winning without interruption. Otherwise, a single defeat would be enough to scatter everything the Taiping Camp had built into smoke.

The one-sided slaughter was deeply satisfying. Although it was the Green Standard soldiers doing the killing, the recruits of the Taiping Camp watching it found it just as gratifying.

Quite a few of them vomited over it, but it had its effect all the same — at the very least, Zhou Shixiang heard some recruits muttering things like "so the northerners are nothing special after all."

"Nothing special" was exactly what he wanted to hear!

When Qin Zhisheng had earlier proposed taking in the surrendered bannermen, Zhou Shixiang had been tempted for a moment, but he immediately rejected the idea, because he believed that bannermen were bannermen.

These men were not like the Green Standard; in their bones they were no longer Han.

Many of them had surrendered to the Manchus in Liaodong even before the national calamity of the Jiashen year, and after the Qing army entered the pass, its overwhelming superiority over the Ming army had only hardened their loyalty to the Qing court.

In particular, their status as Han Banners made them consider themselves a cut above the Han people inside the pass, and with that mentality, expecting them to still remember their identity as Han was simply impossible.

To use a later term, Zhou Shixiang preferred to call these Han Banner bannermen "second devils."

Facts had proven that second devils were far more hateful than the original devils, because when it came to slaughtering their own countrymen, they were often more savage and more unscrupulous than their masters themselves.

Driving a pack of second devils who slaughtered their own countrymen as a matter of habit to fight against their former masters — Zhou Shixiang admitted that for the moment he had neither the ability nor the magnanimity for that.

More importantly, the Han Banners in Guangdong had all come with their entire families from Liaodong, fighting their way to Guangdong under Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao.

Their dependents were all in Guangzhou, so they could never wholeheartedly follow the Taiping Camp — unless one day they, like the Green Standard today, burned their own bridges behind them — buying their lives with Manchu heads.

In short, the Taiping Camp's current strength was not yet sufficient to absorb these bannermen, who could never be truly won over.

Zhou Shixiang had no desire to raise tigers only to court disaster, so he could only use their heads to cut off the Gaoyao Green Standard's route of retreat, while at the same time letting the recruits in camp see the true character of the bannerman lords.

This would indirectly expand the ranks and indirectly boost morale — killing two birds with one stone.

After witnessing more than a hundred bannermen hacked to pieces by a flurry of blades, the recruits received new orders: drag the dead bannermen outside the city.

The order was to drag them outside the city; it did not say to burn them, nor to bury them — just to drag them outside the city.

As for whether the corpses would be eaten by wild dogs or buried by the people of Gaoyao after the Taiping Camp left, that was not a question Zhou Shixiang concerned himself with.

What concerned him now, besides incorporating these two hundred-odd Gaoyao Green Standard troops, was the captured Han Banner firearms.

Unlike what later records would claim, the firearms used by the bannermen Zhou Shixiang had captured were of superior quality and considerable power. They were by no means the sort where you fired a shot and the enemy could still come lunging at you full of vigor.

Though they could not compare with the firearms of later ages, they were absolutely lethal weapons. If they could be mass-produced and mass-deployed, these primitive firearms could completely eliminate any advanced cold weapon.

Zhou Shixiang did not know much about firearms. Qin Zhisheng, Jiang He, and the others who had served as squad leaders in the Ming and Qing armies knew rather more.

According to them, the firearms used by the Ming army in the past often burst when fired, so the soldiers did not dare use them with confidence. Over time, firearms became little more than fire pokers in the army.

Any commander with any options at all always avoided equipping his men with firearms, instead requesting as many swords and bows as possible — even extra cotton armor was preferred over extra firearms.

There were many reasons for the poor quality of Ming army firearms, and accounts differed, but one point was universally acknowledged: the court had not provided enough silver.

Without enough silver, there were not enough raw materials, and the men tasked with forging the firearms were hereditary craftsmen, just like the military households.

These men could not even keep their own families fed and clothed, so how could they be expected to put their hearts into making firearms?

In this vicious cycle, firearms that had once allowed the Ming army to range across the northern deserts became the abandoned orphans of the army.

Unlike the Ming dynasty, which lacked the silver to forge firearms, after surrendering to the Qing, Kong Youde and others brought large numbers of craftsmen over to the Qing army, and they received the highest regard from Hong Taiji.

The craftsmen who manufactured firearms were given rewards far exceeding anything the Ming dynasty had offered — not only gold, silver, and land, but even official posts. As a result, the craftsmen's enthusiasm for production was greatly increased.

Add to that the Qing court's almost exacting standards for firearms, and the absence of the embezzlement practiced by Ming officials, and it would have been a miracle if the firearms the craftsmen produced were of poor quality! (A pie falling from the sky — a great event!

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