Chapter 121: Military Strength

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Zhaoqing was the gateway west of Guangzhou, lying across the route from Gaozhou and Luoding; Xinhui was the gateway south of Guangzhou, lying across the route from Leizhou and Lianzhou. In the eyes of the Qing army in Guangdong, these two places had to be held at all costs.

When Li Dingguo first entered Guangdong, he had thrown his entire army straight at Zhaoqing, only to be beaten back by the Zhaoqing Regional Commander Xu Erxian, who held the city and defended it to the death.

On his second invasion of Guangdong, Li Dingguo bypassed Zhaoqing and drove straight for Xinhui.

During the siege, Zhou Shixiang, then a xiucai, had heard people say that the old bandit had come to Xinhui in order to link up by sea with the Southern Ming Zheng clan's fleet, so that land and sea forces could jointly surround Guangzhou.

Whether Li Dingguo's strategic purpose in attacking Xinhui was to link up with Zheng Chenggong's fleet — time has passed, and Zhou Shixiang, not being a party to those events and having no way to know what Li Dingguo had decided that day, naturally could not know.

What lay before him now was the question of how to get past the strong city of Xinhui and reach Xiangshan County.

Crossing the Tan River did not mean the Taiping Army had entered Xiangshan County. Ahead there was still the West River, which was far wider than the Tan River, and on the river was the newly formed Qing naval force of Guangdong.

Trying to ferry over ten thousand men across the river right under the noses of the Qing navy sounded like a fool's dream. Unable to cross the river, Zhou Shixiang was left with only one choice — take Xinhui city, then push straight on to Xiangshan by land.

Li Dingguo's assault on Xinhui had employed the classic siege methods of antiquity — scaling the walls like ants, felling trees to fill the moat, digging tunnels, bombarding the city with cannon — yet none of these methods had succeeded in the end.

From this one could see how solid Xinhui's walls were, and how elite its garrison was. But on that day Zhou Shixiang had personally slain the defending commander You Yunlong with his own hands.

Whether the Xinhui garrison, without You Yunlong, would still be as formidable as when it faced Li Dingguo's great army was an unknown.

Gaoyao was too close to Zhaoqing.

Although the Taiping Army, through its earlier series of maneuvers, had successfully confused the Green Standard garrisons in the various counties of Zhaoqing Prefecture, as time passed, the Zhaoqing Regional Commander Xu Erxian would eventually be able to judge the true nature of this force from the traces of the Taiping Army's movements.

Therefore Gaoyao city could not be held for long; in three days at the latest, the Taiping Army would have to leave Gaoyao and shift toward Xinhui.

Although the rear camp of old and weak led by Song Xianggong had avoided the county towns and moved only through the countryside and hills, by now they had probably reached the mountains southwest of Xinhui, and that was no safe place either.

Zhou Shixiang had to break contact with the Qing forces at Zhaoqing at once and rejoin the rear camp; otherwise, the rear camp would likely be in serious trouble. After all, the rear camp had far too few men capable of fighting — only the three hundred under Zhao Sihai.

If they truly ran into a large Qing force, the odds would be grim.

With no other choice, Zhou Shixiang pinned all his hopes for getting through Xinhui on the Vanguard Battalion.

He summoned Tie Yi and ordered him to turn most of the gunpowder remaining in the camp into corned powder, and to search the city at once for fine timber to build two large coffins.

Zhou Shixiang had only one requirement for these two coffins: they had to be completely sealed, absolutely airtight.

Tie Yi was somewhat puzzled by Zhou Shixiang's purpose in having coffins built. When Zhou Shixiang told him he intended to blow up the walls of Xinhui by demolition, he was a little startled, then with a solemn expression accepted the order and left.

Previously, the Vanguard Battalion had only conducted two small-scale demolition tests on the walls of Luoding, using clay jars to hold the charges.

Although the blasting effect had shocked everyone, Tie Yi had had no opportunity in the battles since to try demolishing a city wall with explosives.

This time Zhou Shixiang told him personally that he was going to demolish the walls of Xinhui, and that two large coffins would be used at once, with a charge amounting to most of the powder in the camp. If that went off, the power would surely be astonishing.

But precisely because the charge was so large, Tie Yi could not help feeling uneasy, worried that the demolition would fail.

Zhou Shixiang made it clear: if they could not blast open Xinhui's walls, the Taiping Army would be trapped in a Qing encirclement, and then none of them would survive.

With the whole army's survival at stake, Tie Yi was naturally extremely cautious.

After returning to camp, he immediately sent men to seize the manager and workers of a coffin shop in the city, brought back several of the shop's best coffins, and had men work through the night improving them.

Two full extra layers of thick timber were added, and pine resin and the like were brushed on again and again.

When finished, the coffins were placed in water with lime inside; after soaking overnight they were lifted out, and only when he saw that the lime had not gotten wet did Tie Yi breathe a sigh of relief.

The two coffins were too large and too heavy; it took a dozen men with ropes just to lift one. The difficulty of traveling with two such huge objects could well be imagined.

When Zhou Shixiang learned the coffins were finished, he hurriedly sent men to hand over to Tie Yi the dozen or so nags requisitioned from the cart and horse agency in the city. These dozen nags would haul nothing else — only the two coffins.

The Taiping Army marched out of the city on the 17th. That day, many of the city's common folk saw the two great coffins drawn by a dozen horses and speculated about which important figure of the Taiping Army lay inside — never knowing that they were completely empty.

As they marched out, the Gaoyao recruits in each battalion were somewhat reluctant to leave their homeland, and some even harbored thoughts of deserting. But under the strict watch of the squad leaders and soldiers in each unit, not many managed to escape.

"You've eaten my food and become my soldier, so you'll follow me and fight!"

This remark, which Zhou Shixiang had once made casually to his subordinates, had now become a line many officers often shouted at the recruits.

Whenever it rang out, it was always accompanied by the fierce glares of officers and veterans, and some officers would even make a show of half-drawing their swords.

This approach was admittedly far from the "people's army" Zhou Shixiang had in mind, but it suited the Taiping Army's present situation. Without such ferocity, who knew how many of those recruits would run off when the time came.

If they merely ran, so be it; what was feared was that these recruits, who by now knew something of the Taiping Army's true strength, would report to the Qing army. That was something Zhou Shixiang absolutely could not accept.

Shao Jiugong's Xiongwei Battalion was the last to leave the city and took on the rearguard task.

Although the scouts sent out reported that the Qing forces in Zhaoqing had not left the city, Zhou Shixiang still had Shao Jiugong make every preparation, keeping the Xiongwei Battalion always half a day's march from the vanguard, so that the Qing forces at Zhaoqing could not cling to the Taiping Army's heels.

Fighting was not something Zhou Shixiang feared, but right now he could not fight; rejoining the rear camp was the vanguard's most urgent task.

Before leaving the city, the Taiping Army had spread a large number of false rumors in the city, the intent again being to confuse the Qing army and keep the Taiping Army's true intentions concealed for a while longer.

The grain requisitioned and solicited from the county yamen and wealthy households filled a full hundred carts, escorted by the Guard Battalion.

For this, nearly every cart and horse in Gaoyao city had been requisitioned, and three hundred civilian laborers had also been conscripted to do the hauling. To these laborers, Zhou Shixiang made the same promise as before: once the grain was delivered, they could go home.

West of Gaoyao, at first one could still see a few villages, but farther west there was no sign of human habitation. Abandoned fields and ruined villages were everywhere; apart from the occasional flock of birds bursting from the fields and a pheasant or hare or two, no living thing could be seen.

Most of Guangdong had a well-developed network of waterways — many great rivers and many small streams too. Whenever the Taiping Army camped, the frogs and snakes in the nearby streams were basically all caught and eaten.

This made Zhou Shixiang sigh with feeling: it was true enough that Cantonese loved eating snake.

That day, Xiang Guoqing, company captain of the Han Banners' Bordered Blue Banner, had fled toward the west of Gaoyao city. Ge Zheng had led men in pursuit for over ten li before losing all trace of them.

During the Taiping Army's days in Gaoyao, Zhou Shixiang had sent out several squads to search along both sides of the official road west of the city, but apart from a torn strip of cloth, nothing else was found.

As to where Xiang Guoqing and his men had fled, Zhou Shixiang was not as anxious as his subordinates. West of Gaoyao lay the direction of Leizhou, and the Qing forces at Leizhou had recently been badly mauled by General Chen Qice, who bore the title General Who Crosses the Sea.

Presumably they had no ability to threaten the Taiping Army. The only force that could threaten the Taiping Army was the Qing army at Zhaoqing.

Xu Erxian was an old soldier from Liaodong, a fierce general under Shang Kexi. But the troops he had garrisoning Zhaoqing were not many.

The Taiping Army had moved repeatedly through Zhaoqing territory and annihilated the Sihui battalion, dragging two other Green Standard forces around until they were dizzy.

Presumably, before he had final confirmation of the Taiping Army's true strength and intentions, Xu Erxian would not lightly leave the city — after all, the gain or loss of Zhaoqing city mattered far more than the Taiping Army.

Besides, when Xu Erxian had defeated Li Dingguo's great army, it had been by relying on Zhaoqing's tall walls. If he truly abandoned the city to fight in the open, his meager forces would clearly not be enough to give Li Dingguo a hard time.

Shao Jiugong and Li Fuguo, the two Green Standard officers, had both been interrogated by Zhou Shixiang after surrendering to him. From their accounts, Zhou Shixiang gained a rough initial understanding of the Qing military strength in Guangdong.

Unlike the fear he had felt as a Xinhui xiucai, when he had believed the Great Qing troops were incomparably powerful, the Zhou Shixiang of now was not afraid of the Qing army at all, and he knew that the Qing forces in Guangdong were not as strong as he had once heard.

The Qing forces in Guangdong were currently composed of three groups. The main force, and the core, was naturally the Han Banner feudal troops under the Prince of Pingnan, Shang Kexi.

But the feudal troops under the two princes were not very numerous — all together only about four or five thousand men.

Apart from the feudal troops, the governor-general's and governor's standard troops under the Guangdong Governor-General Li Shuaitai were another crack force of the Qing army in Guangdong, numbering around 2,000 men.

The remainder was the Green Standard, huge in numbers but dispersed in garrisons across the region, with a total strength of roughly twenty to thirty thousand. In addition there was the newly formed Guangdong navy, with a strength of around 3,000 men.

All the groups combined, the total Qing strength in Guangdong was around forty thousand men.

Forty thousand men taken alone — even ten more Taiping Camps would be no match for them. Fortunately, Guangdong province was not held by the Qing alone.

In the southeast, the Zheng clan watched hungrily from Chaozhou and Shantou; along the southwestern coast, Ming naval forces and volunteer militias raided; in the northwest, they faced directly the great army of Li Dingguo, a hundred thousand strong; and in Gaozhou, Lianzhou, Leizhou and elsewhere, other Southern Ming forces were entrenched.

The existence of these forces directly dispersed the Qing strength in Guangdong, so that the Qing army in Guangdong could not form an overwhelming advantage over the Ming forces on any front.

As long as the Yongli Son of Heaven of the Southern Ming existed for a single day, the Qing army in Guangdong could never occupy the whole province.

Compared with the situation in Guangdong, the Hunan battlefield was now the focus of both the Ming and Qing sides. (A pie falling from the sky — a great event! Cool phones waiting for you!

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