Chapter 120: The Strong City

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Assassination has been a means of warfare from ancient times to the present, and even a tool frequently used by politicians. When two armies are locked in stalemate, assassinating an enemy general can often break the deadlock and produce unexpected results.

Zhou Shixiang's purpose in weeding out half the old and weak from the death squad, keeping only half the able-bodied, was simple: he wanted to transform this death squad into something like the special forces of later ages, dedicated to battlefield disruption and decapitation missions.

Given that Chen Mo's men had never been given sufficient attention, left entirely to their own devices, the death squad had failed to play any role in battle and had even degenerated into a tool for Chen Mo, the "kidnap king," to rob and enrich himself.

Zhou Shixiang therefore spent half a day working out a special-operations training method and expressly ordered Chen Mo to train his men strictly according to it from then on. The core of this training method was team consciousness.

What Zhou Shixiang wanted was the coordinated operating model of a special forces unit, not the chaotic brawling of jianghu fighters.

To Zhou Shixiang's surprise, Chen Mo, who could not read a single character, grasped the special-operations concepts he proposed with remarkable speed and could even draw inferences from one instance to another.

Although some aspects still left something to be desired, he had at least begun training his subordinates according to Zhou Shixiang's requirements. This greatly satisfied Zhou Shixiang and dispelled his idea of reassigning men to form a special-operations squad.

Since they were being trained as special forces and would carry out special-operations missions in the future, Zhou Shixiang naturally hoped to provide Chen Mo with as much equipment as possible.

But the weapons and gear of the special forces he remembered from later ages were things he could draw but could never build. For now, he could only equip them with tools such as iron wall-climbing hooks.

Once they reached Xiangshan County, Zhou Shixiang planned to send men to Macao to purchase a batch of short muskets for the special squad. If none were available, he would do his best to have a batch of crossbows made.

At short range, the crossbow bolt was more powerful than the bow and had a higher hit rate, making it ideal for surprise assassinations. Unfortunately, the camp currently had only thirty bows and no crossbows, so they would have to be equipped later.

The archers in the bow unit were all half-baked as well — not one could be called a master marksman.

Otherwise, a few could have been transferred to the special squad to serve as snipers, allowing them to shoot enemy generals dead directly on the battlefield, far safer than infiltrating for an assassination.

Although the cavalry unit numbered only thirty-odd men, Zhou Shixiang gave it the establishment of a full company. Its commander was Zhu Er, an old brother from Dajiao Mountain.

Zhu Er's formal name was Gan, which sounded like "pig liver," so Zhu Er disliked people using his formal name. Being the second son in his family, he preferred to be called Brother Zhu Er, or Brother Zhu the Second.

Like the brothers Ge Zheng and Ge Yi, Zhu Er had in his early years made his living as a bandit. One could say he and Chen Mo had been in the same trade.

He most enjoyed kidnapping the womenfolk of wealthy households. Over all these years, relying on the horsemanship he had honed in his youth with the horse caravans, he had simply never been caught.

Compared to Chen Mo, who had slipped up, landed in prison, and nearly had his head chopped off, his luck was not just ordinarily good.

Dajiao Mountain origins, skilled horsemanship, a past as a bandit, and a quick-witted nature — with all these qualifications combined, Zhu Er was the obvious choice for cavalry company commander.

As soon as the cavalry unit was formed, Zhu Er received his first mission after taking office: to lead men secretly toward the Xinhui area to scout Qing army movements, send men to contact the rear camp, which was currently on the move, and have the rear camp go into hiding southwest of Xinhui.

He was also to ask Song Xianggong to detach some men from the camp to receive the grain soon to be transported from Gaoyao.

Xiangshan County and Xinhui both belonged to Guangzhou Prefecture. On the map, Xinhui was the gateway to Guangzhou, wedged between Guangzhou and Zhaoqing Prefecture.

With water and land routes converging there, it was the gathering point of the Four Counties and a strategic choke point of the Pearl River Delta. The Taiping Army, if it wished to reach Xiangshan, had to pass through Xinhui.

The only alternative was to cross the Tan River by boat.

The Tan River, also called the River of Gentlemen, was counted together with the West River, East River, and North River as the four great water systems of Guangdong.

The West, East, and North Rivers converged to form the Pearl River, and most of the counties under Guangzhou Prefecture lay on this Pearl River Delta, with Xiangshan County being the southernmost county of the delta. Xinhui lay on the lower reaches of the Tan River.

At Shuangshui Town in Xinhui County, the Tan River turned south, passed through Yinzhou Lake, and emptied into Huangmao Bay through the Yamen mouth.

As a native of Xinhui, Zhou Shixiang naturally knew the course of the waterways within Xinhui. But knowing was one thing; deciding how to get past Xinhui was another, and he could not make up his mind.

Xinhui had originally been a small county. Throughout the Ming dynasty, its walls, like those of most county seats in Guangdong, had not been particularly tall.

But after the Qing army entered Guangdong and occupied Guangzhou, and the Southern Ming army retreated to western Guangdong, Xinhui, by virtue of its geographical advantage, became the gateway to Guangzhou Prefecture.

From the third year of Yongli (the sixth year of Shunzhi) onward, the Qing army repeatedly reinforced the walls of Xinhui.

In the eighth year of Yongli (the eleventh year of Shunzhi), Li Dingguo led tens of thousands of troops from Liuzhou, Guangxi, in a second attack on Guangdong, taking Hengzhou, Lianzhou, and Gaozhou in succession, and defeating in turn Qing Regional Commander Gao Hu, Gaozhou garrison commander Zhang Yue, Vice Regional Commanders Chen Wu and Li Zhizhen under Shang Kexi's command, Leizhou Regional Commander Xian Qiyu, and other Qing generals.

On the third day of the third month, Li Dingguo personally arrived at Gaozhou. Loyalist forces across Guangdong rose in response.

The Qing Prince of Pingnan Shang Kexi, Prince of Jingnan Geng Jimao, and the governor-general's and governor's troops all dared not give battle, concentrating their forces to defend the Guangzhou area and sending eight-hundred-li express dispatches to Beijing, begging Beijing to send Manchu troops to Guangdong to resist Li Dingguo's surging advance.

Because Xinhui lay at the gateway to Guangzhou, and the gain or loss of Xinhui directly determined whether Guangzhou could be held, the two princely commands dispatched their finest troops and strongest generals to garrison Xinhui.

The garrison commanders were Assistant Regional Commander You Yunlong of the Han Banners and Wu Jinzhong, Right Wing Regional Commander.

After these two generals entered Xinhui, they conscripted civilian laborers in the city to reinforce the walls, making the walls of Xinhui no less formidable than those of the Guangzhou prefectural seat.

At that time, Zhou Shixiang, inside the city, witnessed day and night the Qing army driving the laborers to build the fortifications. Every day, the bodies of laborers who dropped dead beneath the walls and were hauled outside the city numbered in the hundreds.

At the same time, Li Dingguo had originally planned to personally lead his main force against Guangzhou, but unexpectedly fell ill in the fourth month and had to send his senior general Wu Zisheng to lead the attack on Guangzhou.

By the time Wu Zisheng's army reached Xinhui, the city had long since been made impregnable by the Qing army, and Wu Zisheng attacked for months without breaking it.

In the tenth month, Li Dingguo personally led a great army, claimed to number two hundred thousand, to attack Xinhui.

He employed in succession such tactics as digging tunnels, bombarding the city with cannon, and felling trees to fill the moat, but every one was detected and defeated by the Qing troops inside the city.

Afterward he besieged the city for several months, until finally the Manchu Jingnan General Zhumala arrived from the north with Manchu and Han troops, forcing him to lift the siege and withdraw.

During the siege by Li Dingguo's great army, the Qing troops inside the city, though their provisions were not yet cut off, actually killed people and ate them, so that the parents, wife, and children of the xiucai Zhou Shixiang all perished horribly.

Even now, thinking back on it, the Zhou Shixiang possessed by a man of later ages still felt anguish over it.

Yet amid the anguish there was the need for revenge. But if even Li Dingguo's great army could not break Xinhui, how could the Taiping Army, a mere two thousand strong, possibly take the city?

Without taking Xinhui, the old and weak of the rear camp could not move on to Xiangshan.

To avoid the strong city of Xinhui, the only way was to cross the Tan River with a large number of boats — but where was Zhou Shixiang to find so many boats? (A great event with pies falling from the sky — cool phones waiting for you!

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