Chapter 143: Doubt

On the sixth day of the fifth month of the ninth year of the Great Ming's Yongli reign (the twelfth year of the Qing Shunzhi reign), the eminent monk Qilin, a master renowned throughout Guangdong, passed away seated in meditation at Yutai Temple.

Before his death he left behind these parting words: "This departure shall not lead me to the Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss, but into Avici Hell, that I may relieve the suffering of the world."

After Monk Qilin's death, Zhou Shixiang, a battalion commander of the Great Ming's Taiping Army, gave him a lavish burial in the stele grove on the rear mountain, and the monks all praised him without exception.

After word of Monk Qilin's death spread, in the south of Xinhui a young monk faced Guifeng Mountain, gnashed his teeth, and made a solemn vow: "If I do not destroy the villains and avenge my master in this life, I swear I am no man." His vow made, he went to Guangzhou to join the army.

With the Tiger's Swift Camp providing cover, the Guard Camp arrived at Guifeng Mountain at dusk escorting the grain convoy. Though the journey had been arduous and the roads extremely difficult, fortunately no laborers had fled and no carts or horses had overturned.

Upon receiving word that the Guard Camp had arrived, Zhou Shixiang immediately issued orders: the Guard Camp need not come up the mountain, but was to bivouac in the Qing army camp at the foot of the mountain, with the grain and laborers settled inside as well.

The Tiger's Swift Camp was to handle sentry duty and defense; everyone else was to rest and regroup at once.

Shortly after, Zhou Shixiang issued another order for all officers of company commander rank and above to assemble in the Great Hero Hall of Yutai Temple to discuss the assault on Xinhui.

Because Li Dingguo's great army had besieged Xinhui the previous year without taking it, the officers at the council were not optimistic about capturing the city.

Qin Zhisheng and others even proposed that instead of forcing an assault on Xinhui, they should find a way to gather boats, cross the Tan River, and circle around to the rear of the city.

Crossing the Tan River by a roundabout route would avoid the losses of a forced assault on Xinhui, which for a Taiping Army that had just suffered heavy casualties in a major battle was undoubtedly a wise choice.

But how to gather boats was another problem — never mind whether there were even any boats on the Tan River for the Taiping Army to use; even if there were, the Taiping Army had no time to collect enough boats to ferry the entire force across.

If they lingered too long around Xinhui, the Taiping Army would find itself trapped between the strong walls of Xinhui ahead and Qing encirclement behind. Unless the Xinhui garrison commander was a fool, he would have sent fast riders to Guangzhou for reinforcements long ago.

And Xu Erxian, the Regional Commander at Zhaoqing to the rear, had most likely figured out the Taiping Army's intentions by now and was probably already mobilizing troops to pursue.

Once those two main Qing forces — the very ones Zhou Shixiang had been straining to avoid — came bearing down, there would truly be no door to heaven and no road to the underworld.

"No one needs to think of anything else. Xinhui must be attacked, and it must be taken. Otherwise, the whole army has no path but death!"

Zhou Shixiang once again reaffirmed his resolve to take Xinhui.

"If the battalion commander is determined to attack Xinhui, then this subordinate must remind you, sir, that there are a dozen or more Red-coated Generalissimo cannons mounted on Xinhui's walls."

The speaker was Li Fuguo, a probationary company commander of the Guard Camp. Since being appointed probationary company commander of the Guard Camp, he had done his duty well enough.

His performance escorting the grain convoy with the Guard Camp had been respectable, and drawing on his past experience as a Green Standard battalion commander, he had to some degree made up for the problems of detail caused by Baldy Jiang He's rough temperament.

He had also worked pleasantly enough with the Guard Camp's other probationary company commander, Lin Zaisheng. At the very least, after Jiang He came up the mountain he had not privately reported anything amiss about Li Fuguo to Zhou Shixiang.

"Red-coated Generalissimo cannon?"

Zhou Shixiang was somewhat taken aback, not knowing what kind of cannon this was.

Shao Jiugong, standing nearby, hurriedly told him that the so-called Red-coated Generalissimo cannon was in fact the Ming dynasty's Hongyi cannon, but because of the taboo against the character "yi," Hong Taiji had renamed the Hongyi cannon the Red-coated Generalissimo cannon.

"The Hongyi cannon was purchased by the Ming from Macao during the Chongzhen reign.

When Kong Youde's rebellion at Dengzhou and Laizhou failed, he led his men across the sea and surrendered to the Manchu Qing. Because he had captured many of the Ming's cannon-making artisans at Dengzhou and Laizhou, the Manchu Qing had him build cannons for the Qing army.

The cannons Kong Youde built at that time were modeled on the Hongyi cannon, and even now, most of the men operating the Qing army's artillery are those ancestor-forgetting bastards of the Han Banners."

With Song Xianggong's explanation, Zhou Shixiang understood at once. Li Fuguo, eager to show off his knowledge, picked up where Song Xianggong left off and went on, this time describing the strengths and weaknesses of the Hongyi cannon.

Combining what Li Fuguo said with his own judgment, Zhou Shixiang could roughly conclude that the Hongyi cannon's performance was largely the same as the artillery used by Europeans of the same period — all muzzle-loading cannon.

The drawback of muzzle-loading cannon was their extremely slow rate of fire.

After each shot, water had to be poured into the bore to extinguish any sparks, then a dry cloth wrapped around a rod had to be thrust into the bore to wipe it dry, then powder and combustibles were loaded, the shot rammed in, and only then could it be fired.

These steps were extremely slow and tedious, and that did not even include adjusting the gun's position.

Yet the advantage accompanying these drawbacks was the Hongyi cannon's tremendous killing power. In a straight line, a single shot could pass through dozens of men, and when the ball struck the ground and skipped, it could smash men and horses alike to pulp.

Though not as fearsome as the explosive shells of later ages, the sight of a cannonball hurtling toward you the moment the cannon roared was still enough to make one's heart quail and flesh tremble.

Song Xianggong then mentioned another matter, saying that the old slave Nurhaci had been killed by a Hongyi cannon beneath the walls of Ningyuan. Shao Jiugong and Li Fuguo, hearing this, seemed somewhat dismissive — apparently they had never heard of such a thing.

Whether the old slave had been killed by a Hongyi cannon was of no concern to Zhou Shixiang. What concerned him was how to deal with the dozen or more Hongyi cannons on Xinhui's walls, along with no fewer small cannons besides.

In his previous life he had heard a famous saying: the cannon is the king of war. Though this king of war would in time be replaced by new weapons such as the tank, before such new weapons appeared, the cannon's power among weapons of its era was indeed the big brother.

Especially in seventeenth-century China, an age still dominated by cold steel, the cannon's influence on warfare was absolutely enormous.

The most direct example was this: when one's own soldiers charged the walls, the enemy above kept firing cannonballs to reap lives, while one's own side could only take the beating without striking back.

Such a completely passive battle was certain to bring enormous casualties, and the blow to one's own army's morale would be just as great.

Zhou Shixiang had to come up with a way to counter the artillery. Otherwise, the moment the cannons roared, the Taiping Army — nine out of ten of whose soldiers had never heard a cannon or seen one — would truly be helpless before Xinhui.

After deep thought, Zhou Shixiang raised a question he urgently needed answered.

"What is the maximum range of a Hongyi cannon?"

"That?"

Few of the assembled officers had ever seen a Hongyi cannon, so how could they know how far its shot could reach? Song Xianggong had never seen one with his own eyes either.

Qin Zhisheng, Shao Jiugong, and Li Fuguo had all seen one, but on the question of how far a Hongyi cannon could actually shoot, the three gave different answers.

Qin Zhisheng said a Hongyi cannon could fire seven or eight li. Shao Jiugong said not that far — only about two or three li. The figure Li Fuguo gave was only about one li.

Which one was correct, Zhou Shixiang could not judge, and no one else could say for certain either.

"Why does the battalion commander ask this?"

Song Xianggong did not waste effort guessing which of the three was right; what concerned him was what Zhou Shixiang intended to do.

"Regarding our army's assault on Xinhui, I discussed this matter with Company Commander Tie back when we were at Gaoyao.

At the time I resolved to breach Xinhui's walls by demolition, then have the whole army pour in through the gap. I have not changed that decision.

We will not force an assault on Xinhui — nor do we have the capital to force one. The Prince of Xining's tens of thousands of troops could not take Xinhui; can my Taiping Army, a mere two thousand men, take it?

Therefore demolition is our only path!"

Pausing briefly, Zhou Shixiang explained further: "But before that, we must determine how far the Qing army's cannons can shoot. That way we can dig a tunnel and lay the powder beneath the walls from outside their cannon range.

Otherwise there will be no way to deliver the powder, and moreover, we cannot simply stand there as live targets for the Qing cannons to blast."

"Demolition?"

Among the assembled officers, only Li Fuguo had never heard the term and did not know what it meant. Lin Zaisheng beside him explained a few words, and only then did he suddenly understand — though his face immediately took on a doubtful look.

In Li Fuguo's understanding, city-taking battles had always been fought mainly by bombarding the walls with cannon. Zhou Shixiang, however, wanted to use gunpowder demolition to blow the walls apart — a method he had never heard of.

Instinctively he felt this plan was likely unsound, or at least unlikely to achieve its goal. Could city walls really be so easily collapsed by gunpowder?

"Battalion Commander, will this demolition method really work? Can Company Commander Tie and his men truly blow Xinhui open?"

Li Fuguo asked this half believing, half doubting — after all, he had not seen the demolition test Zhou Shixiang had conducted at Luoding, nor did he know the power of granulated powder.

Zhou Shixiang nodded with certainty: "It can. All of you, follow me."

With that, he rose and led the group toward the Vanguard Camp. Tie Yi, already knowing what the battalion commander intended to do, had long since ordered his men to bring out the two great coffins from the camp.

At the sight of those two enormous reinforced coffins, Li Fuguo was genuinely startled.

After Tie Yi explained the purpose of the two coffins, he stared at them for a long while before shaking his head and saying worriedly to Zhou Shixiang: "These two great coffins are too conspicuous a target.

The Qing troops in Xinhui are not blind — how are they to be placed beneath the walls? If they are carried by hand, I fear they will be hit by the cannons on the walls or shot by their firelocks before they reach the spot.

Would that not make all our efforts for nothing?"

What Li Fuguo said was the truth. That much powder packed into two coffins would indeed be terrifyingly powerful, but even if it could blow apart Xinhui's walls, who could guarantee the coffins would not be hit by Qing fire during transport?

Gunpowder was no plaything — it exploded at the touch of a spark. If it went off before reaching the walls, it would blast a swath of one's own men to death.

Zhou Shixiang gave a soft laugh: "That is precisely why we must determine the maximum range of the cannons on Xinhui's walls. Only by knowing their range can we safely dig a tunnel and deliver the coffins beneath the walls."

"How many li of tunnel would that take? Can it even be done?" Li Fuguo's face went pale.

Zhou Shixiang's gaze turned to Tie Yi. "Don't forget — Company Commander Tie and his brothers all come from the mines. What they do best is dig pits and bore tunnels."

"Last year when the old bandit... when the Prince of Xining's great army besieged the city, the Qing troops inside set up large vats at various points to listen for mining.

If the Vanguard Camp digs a tunnel, the Qing troops cannot fail to notice. If the defenders discover we are digging, will it not still be useless?"

Li Fuguo, judging from his own experience, feared this method still would not work.

This time it was not Zhou Shixiang who answered, but Tie Yi, who laughed heartily and said: "We're not digging a tunnel into their city! Even if they hear us digging, so what!"

Zhou Shixiang's face suddenly turned stern: "Tie Yi, are you absolutely certain about this tunnel?"

"Rest assured, Battalion Commander.

The brothers from the mines may not know much else, but digging pits and boring holes is what we do best. This officer guarantees he will get these two great coffins in place and light them with his own hands to blast Xinhui's walls.

If this officer botches the job, there will be no need for the battalion commander to send anyone to do it — this officer will cut his own throat, to spare the battalion commander and everyone else the trouble of cursing this officer's mother!"