Chapter 134: Surrender

"The bandits are now completely surrounded. Your subordinate observes that every one of them has lost heart and is powerless to resist. The outcome is settled, and we are here to congratulate you, Regional Commander!"

"In this battle our army fought with fewer against many and took heads by the ten thousand. It was all thanks to your command, sir — otherwise how could we have won such a great victory!"

"After this battle, the Regional Commander is certain to be promoted to Provincial Military Commander. If anyone in Guangzhou dares say a word against it, we brothers will never let it rest!"

Outside the Great Hero Hall, Wu Jinzhong calmly accepted the congratulations of his officers. Though the casualties in this battle were somewhat heavy, what did a trifling number of casualties matter compared with the enemy slain?

Besides, most of the dead were Green Standard troops. So long as the banner troops had not been badly hurt, it did not matter how many Green Standard troops died.

Seeing that the bandit army trapped around the Great Hero Hall had fallen into a desperate plight, with his own troops on every side, Wu Jinzhong ordered all units to close the encirclement on the spot and forbade any attack without orders.

His subordinates were all puzzled by this order. The bandits clearly had no strength left to fight — why would the Regional Commander not order a single all-out charge into the hall, but instead order the attack halted?

Wu Jinzhong had his own reasons for ordering the attack halted. He understood all too well the principle that a cornered beast still fights.

Though the bandits who had fled into the Great Hero Hall had all lost heart, judging by their bearing they had not fled in rout but had withdrawn in good order, with men covering one another as they pulled back.

From this one could see that the bandit leader had some ability, and that the men who had withdrawn into the hall were not entirely without the strength to fight.

Looking around the Great Hero Hall, the bandits clearly held the high ground, and had thrown up rough defensive works at every key point. Crude and simple as they were, they could not be taken easily; a real assault would still cost some effort.

Moreover, the Qing army had suffered excessive casualties in the fighting up the mountain. Though Wu Jinzhong did not care about casualties, if too many men died he would have trouble explaining it to Guangzhou.

After all, he was only suppressing a rabble raised by a gang of bandits, not a proper army. If too many of his soldiers died, he would lose face.

Since the bandits' cause was already lost, it was better to reduce needless casualties. For this reason, Wu Jinzhong decided to send someone to urge surrender.

"Urge surrender?"

The officers were all astonished, wondering why the Regional Commander wanted to urge surrender.

Wu Jinzhong could not be bothered to explain to his subordinates. He barked, "Get to it!"

"Yes, sir!"

The officers had no choice but to send someone to urge surrender.

On the square before the Great Hero Hall, several thousand camp followers of the rear camp milled about in chaos, jostling one another. Everyone had lost all order, and everyone was frightened out of their wits.

Fear and unease spread through the hall. Whether the old, weak, women and children, or the remnants of the rear camp who had fallen back, none now held any hope of holding out until reinforcements arrived.

The soldiers too had lost the courage to fight on. When they had fallen back from the front just now, many had fled down at a dead run, and now they had not a bit of strength left.

They simply sat or collapsed on the ground, looking as though they cared nothing for heaven or earth. Most of their weapons had been thrown away; now fewer than two or three hundred men still held weapons.

The rest were empty-handed, staring dully around them, not a spark of life in their eyes.

They could not be blamed for being in such a state, for none of them had expected the Qing attack to be so fierce, nor the fighting so cruel.

They had done everything they could, yet still could not stop the Qing army's advance up the mountain, still less save their wounded comrades. It had left them utterly exhausted in body and spirit.

Even more fatal was that Qing troops had appeared on the rear slope, something no one had ever expected. The appearance of this Qing force startled everyone, and the screams coming from the rear slope made everyone's breath catch.

By now, whether regular soldiers, security team members, storehouse troops, or the old and weak men, all had lost the courage to fight on, and lost hope as well.

Everyone understood that the reinforcements Chief Administrator Song claimed were coming would probably never arrive to save them.

Soldiers without hope or courage are little different from blocks of wood. Though men still guarded the key points laid out beforehand, every face plainly bore the word "despair," and the wailing of the women and children crowded on the square sapped what little fighting spirit they had left.

Collapse was only a moment away.

With the whole camp on the verge of collapse, the Qing army suddenly halted its attack and began loudly urging surrender outside. This stirred strange thoughts in some of the rear camp.

The public storehouse commissioner Lin Wanfu was the first to react to the Qing call to surrender — and his reaction was not to look for his daughter, whose fate was unknown, nor to look for his sons, who were hiding somewhere, but to seek out the crew who had worked under him when he was storehouse commissioner.

These men were in fact all clerks from Lin Wanfu's former rice shop, twenty or thirty of them. Because they were responsible for the public storehouse, none had been drafted to the defense line.

However, more than half of the money and grain in the storehouse had been lost during the retreat up the mountain.

What remained had been placed by Song Xianggong in a side hall behind the Great Hero Hall, where it was now guarded by these clerks, a few regular soldiers, and a dozen or so security team members.

After Lin Wanfu found these clerks, he told them the battle could not be won, and that if they kept fighting, everyone would only die. If they surrendered now, they would certainly suffer hardship, but at least their lives could be kept.

Those clerks had always obeyed him as their master, and now they followed his lead all the more, every one of them wanting to save his own skin. So they agreed to their old master's request and went to contact the camp elders and camp managers of the various camps on his behalf.

Soon the clerks came back one after another to report that, apart from the camp from the old Laofeng Village copper mine, the camp elders and camp managers of all the other camps agreed to surrender to the Qing army.

With so many camp elders and camp managers in agreement, Lin Wanfu at once gained confidence. But the agreement of the camp elders and camp managers alone was not enough; he had to persuade the men holding weapons, or he would be risking his own life.

Those men with weapons could not beat the Qing army, but killing him, Lin Wanfu, before the Qing broke in would be a trivial matter.

At a moment like this, those men would probably not care that his daughter was a maidservant of Battalion Commander Zhou, or that he, Lin Wanfu, was Battalion Commander Zhou's nominal father-in-law.

For safety's sake, Lin Wanfu sought out the camp elders and camp managers who had agreed to surrender, then led them all together to find Zhao Sihai.

When they met Zhao Sihai, none of the camp elders would speak first. Lin Wanfu had no choice but to take on this inglorious role himself.

After hearing Lin Wanfu's proposal of surrender, Zhao Sihai did not turn on him in fury and cut him down. Instead, after a moment's hesitation, he agreed to go to Song Xianggong and raise the matter of surrender. This made Lin Wanfu and the camp elders both relieved and overjoyed.

Some wondered: this Zhao Sihai was Zhou Shixiang's trusted man, so by rights he should not agree to surrender. Why then did he consent?

Others quietly explained it to them: trusted or not, Zhou Shixiang and Zhao Sihai had all been bandits before. How much backbone can you expect from a bandit?

As the saying goes, a wise man knows the times. Not surrendering means death.

At a critical moment like this, did you really think he would die for Zhou Shixiang? Of course he would save his own skin if he could!