Chapter 140

After the Xiongwei, Zhenlu, and Xianzhen battalions successfully fought their way up the mountain, Zhou Shixiang ordered the Hujie Battalion to seize control of the main roads on Guifeng Mountain, and detached two squads to go meet the Guard Battalion, which was slowly making its way over with the grain convoy.

Once it was fully light, Shao Jiugong and Ge Zheng sent men to report that the Zhenlu, Xiongwei, and Xianzhen battalions had completely occupied Yutai Temple.

Apart from one Han Banners company captain who had escaped, all the remaining Qing soldiers, including Regional Commander Wu Jinzhong, had been wiped out. The battalions were now combing the mountain for hidden Qing stragglers.

Hearing that Wu Jinzhong was dead, Zhou Shixiang felt a slight disappointment. He had wanted to flay alive with his own hands the man directly responsible for the deaths of his parents, wife, and children, but the man had died in the chaos of battle instead. It let him off too easily.

After that brief disappointment, Zhou Shixiang sent Zhu Er with the remaining cavalry to scout and keep watch in the direction of Xinhui.

He left one squad of personal guards and three mess teams to guard the Qing camp and the civilian laborers, then led the other two squads of personal guards up the mountain.

The climb up was a harrowing sight. Qing and Taiping Army corpses lay tangled and piled atop one another, slashed by blades, pierced by spears, shot by muskets, crushed by stones. The many ways of death were unbearable to look upon, and the air was thick with the stinging smell of blood.

Halfway up the mountain, a team of engineers from the Xianzhen Battalion was clearing the path, gathering their own dead into one place while simply hurling the Qing corpses down the mountainside. Among the piles of bodies were many wounded still alive.

The Xianzhen Battalion dealt with these wounded in a very straightforward way: their own men were carried aside and carefully bandaged, while the enemy were thrown down the mountain like the dead, no matter how they begged.

Seeing Zhou Shixiang coming up with his men, the platoon commander in charge hurried over with several squad leaders to salute. Zhou Shixiang waved them off, telling them not to mind him and to get the wounded to treatment quickly.

As for his men's treatment of the Qing wounded and dead, Zhou Shixiang understood and gave it his absolute support, for at the foot of the mountain he had already seen too many bodies hastily buried by the Qing, too many children's bodies whose eyes would never open again, too many streams dyed red with blood.

Beasts must be dealt with by the methods of beasts. Toward these murderers who had slaughtered the old, the weak, women, and children, Zhou Shixiang would never speak to them of benevolence, righteousness, or morality.

He would never use that absurd logic — a dog bites a man, but a man must never bite a dog, for if a man bites a dog, does he not become the same as a dog? — to persuade himself to treat dogs with morality and benevolence, to treat them with the best medical care and feed them the best food.

When a dog bites a man, the man cannot bite it back, but he can beat it to death — beat it to death on the spot, and never give it another chance to bite.

The Qing soldiers who had slaughtered thousands of the old, weak, women, and children on Guifeng Mountain were now dogs.

After reaching the Great Hero Hall and meeting Song Xianggong and the others, Zhou Shixiang said nothing, only asked about the casualties. The numbers he heard cut his heart like a knife.

When they had set out from Luoding, the rear camp's civilian population had totaled 10,200. Along the way they had successively "persuaded" more commoners to join the Taiping Camp, and with those who had followed willingly, the camp population had neared 13,000.

Now only 4,625 were left alive. Of those 4,625, more than nine in ten were women and children.

The number of able-bodied men left was pitifully small.

As the rear camp's only formed fighting unit, Zhao Sihai's 300 soldiers were now down to 26. The security corps, 400 strong before the battle, now had only 42 left.

The storehouse corps, 350 before the battle, now had only 29. Before the battle, the total number of able-bodied men across the camp had been 2,400; now only 159 remained.

The rear camp's casualties were nearly two-thirds. The Zhenlu, Xiongwei, and Xianzhen battalions had also suffered heavily in the uphill assault on the Qing positions.

Ge Zheng's Zhenlu Battalion had been at full strength of 520 before the battle; only 230 remained. Shao Jiugong's Xiongwei Battalion had also taken heavy losses, though somewhat lighter than the Zhenlu, with 300 left.

The Xianzhen Battalion had lost the least, with fewer than a hundred casualties.

Just as Zhao Sihai and Song Xianggong had organized the rear camp's men to kill Qing soldiers from favorable ground, the Zhenlu, Xiongwei, and Xianzhen battalions had likewise been cut down in large numbers by the Qing firing down from above as they climbed, while suffering few casualties once they gained the summit.

Another reason for the three battalions' heavy losses was the long forced march undertaken to rescue the rear camp.

In two days and one night of forced marching, the officers and men of the three battalions had severely overtaxed their strength, so that in the fight with the Qing many were killed simply from exhaustion.

The Qing side's exact casualties had not yet been tallied, because a small number of Qing soldiers were still hiding in various places around Yutai Temple, and there were Qing bodies on and below the mountain that had not yet been found and counted. A reliable count could not be made for some time.

After visiting the wounded Zhao Sihai and coming out, Zhou Shixiang told Song Xianggong to immediately organize the rear camp's women to help the front camp clean up Yutai Temple, and to muster people to rescue the wounded soldiers as best they could.

The severely wounded, of course, were beyond treatment, but the lightly wounded must be treated as well as possible, so that their wounds would not fester from lack of care and cost them their lives.

While Song Xianggong was organizing people to treat the wounded, the old monk Qilin of Yutai Temple suddenly came to him with a group of monks, saying the temple had a good stock of wound medicine that was quite effective for blade injuries, and that the monks also knew something of the healing arts.

Seeing the army had so many wounded, they said, as men who had left the world they could not bear to stand by without helping, and they begged Lord Song to allow the monks to contribute what little they could.

That the monks were willing to help save the wounded naturally delighted Song Xianggong. How could he refuse? He agreed on the spot and had someone lead the monks to where the wounded were gathered to lend a hand.

After the great battle, everyone was hungry. Though the rear camp had stripped bare the grain the monks had hidden, they had been rationing it tightly these past days.

With many mouths and little gruel, they could only just keep from starving. Now, having escaped death and suddenly relaxed after the intense tension, their stomachs naturally growled loudly — yet looking around, there was no grain to be had.

Fortunately, there was plenty of grain in the Qing camp below the mountain. Zhou Shixiang had Song Xianggong organize some people to go down and settle in the Qing camp, and also organize others to carry grain up the mountain, so that by noon everyone could eat their fill.

Inside and outside the temple, up and down the mountain, discarded weapons lay everywhere.

After the Zhenlu Battalion finished searching the east side of Yutai Temple, Zhou Shixiang pulled them out specifically to sweep the battlefield, gathering all weapons and sorting them by type.

Because Wu Jinzhong had a Han Banners unit under his command, Zhou Shixiang especially instructed Ge Zheng to collect every musket the Han Banners had thrown away on the mountain, and above all not to miss any powder.

Another half hour passed. The Xiongwei and Xianzhen battalions finished their sweep of Yutai Temple and the mountain above and below.

Including those who had surrendered earlier, they had taken more than 400 Qing prisoners, among them 46 bannermen.

There was also one who had lain on the ground playing dead, and was only discovered to be a living officer when the Taiping soldiers picked him up to throw him down the mountain and he began shouting.

According to the prisoners, this man was Lin Youxian, a Battalion Commander under Wu Jinzhong.

"Commander, what shall we do with these Qing dogs?"

Shao Jiugong and Tie Yi stood side by side before Zhou Shixiang, awaiting his orders. Emotionally, Tie Yi leaned toward executing all the Qing prisoners, for many of his engineer battalion's soldiers had had kin brutally killed by these Qing soldiers.

Shao Jiugong, whose men had no families in the rear camp, did not carry so great a hatred as Tie Yi; his view was that either way was fine.