Chapter 149: Losing Color

A quick note: these past two days there have been family matters at home. The ninth was my father-in-law's fiftieth posthumous birthday, and tomorrow, the thirteenth (by the lunar calendar), is the third anniversary of his death.

Because my father-in-law did not die a natural death (he fell from a construction site) and was only forty-seven when he died, I must treat everything concerning him with the utmost gravity.

My father-in-law had no son, so as his son-in-law I certainly have to manage everything myself and cannot let relatives and friends find fault. That is why updates have been fewer these past two days, and I ask everyone's forgiveness.

What I can say for certain is that next month there will absolutely be no family matters affecting updates, so please rest assured.

While the Qing troops at the east gate stood stunned by the sight before them, the Qing troops at the other three gates had no idea what had happened.

The tremendous boom just now made many Qing troops think the bandits were attacking the city, and that, like last year's Old Guard bandits, they had brought cannon with them.

"The bandits are firing cannon!"

"The bandits are attacking the city!"

Some Qing officer cried out in terror. The blast just now had nearly knocked him headfirst off the wall. After steadying himself, he leaned out to look beyond the city, but the view before him was utterly still — not a single figure in sight.

Where are the bandits?

The Qing soldiers on the wall were likewise at a loss, staring blankly at the empty ground outside the city. None of them knew what had happened, until someone pointed toward the east gate and cried out in alarm.

Only then did they wake as if from a dream and see the black smoke already rising into the sky.

"The bandits are attacking the east gate — it's the east gate!"

Once they realized the great boom had come from the direction of the east gate, the Qing troops, still unaware that the east gate wall had also been blown down, immediately drew off men to reinforce it.

In their eyes, the Taiping Army with cannon was no ordinary bandit gang, but a threat on the order of Li Dingguo's great army. The sight of Li Dingguo's host bombarding the walls of Xinhui with dozens of cannon the year before was still fresh in their memory.

Even now, there were several stretches of wall that looked solid on the outside, yet behind them had been hastily rebuilt and were nowhere near as strong as before.

By custom, after the cannon fired, the bandits would surely swarm the walls like ants. At such a time the defending force had to be at full strength, with no gaps whatsoever, or the bandits would seize the chance to climb up.

Acting on experience, the Qing commanders at the other three gates each sent a portion of their men to the east gate.

Su Xianting had not gone to sleep that night. After fleeing back from Guifeng Mountain, he faced a thorny problem: why had Regional Commander Wu Jinzhong died, while he, Su Xianting, had come back alive — and, moreover, thrown away every last one of the banner troops under his command?

As a booi bondservant of the Prince of Pingnan, Su Xianting understood better than anyone what those Han Bordered Blue Banner soldiers meant to the Prince of Pingnan.

One had to remember that when the Prince of Pingnan, the Prince of Dingnan Kong Youde, and the Prince of Jingnan Geng Jimao first received the imperial decree to march south together, the banner troops under the three princes combined numbered little more than seven thousand — barely two thousand and some for each prince.

With only that handful of banner troops, the three princes had swept south from Beijing unstoppably, forcibly pacifying several provinces for the Qing court.

The Prince of Dingnan, Kong Youde, led his army to take Hunan and Guangxi in succession, while the Prince of Pingnan and the Prince of Jingnan took Fujian and Guangdong one after another.

Had the Daxi Army not come north from Yunnan, and had it not possessed such a fierce general as Li Dingguo, the Prince of Dingnan, Kong Youde, would by now have bound the Yongli pretender and hauled him off to Beijing.

The Great Qing would have united all under heaven, and no Southern Ming would remain in the world!

Although the Prince of Dingnan had died at Guilin, here in Guangdong the two princes, Pingnan and Jingnan, relying on these four or five thousand banner troops, had withstood two attacks by Li Dingguo.

Though they had not been able to occupy Guangdong completely, they still controlled more than half the province, so that the petty wretches of the Southern Ming dared not look east toward Guangzhou.

The Han Banners had fought a dozen or more battles in Guangdong, including the two bitter fights at Zhaoqing and Xinhui, yet the banner troops lost under the two princes amounted to little more than a thousand men. Now, in a single stroke, he had thrown away over two hundred.

This made Su Xianting, even as he congratulated himself on escaping with his life, worry whether his head could be kept on his shoulders. Those were over two hundred banner troops, not over two hundred Green Standard soldiers!

In the eyes of the Prince of Pingnan, even two thousand Green Standard troops weighed less than his two hundred banner troops!

Better late than never. After fleeing back, Su Xianting had thought it over repeatedly: only by successfully holding Xinhui could he somewhat cool the Prince of Pingnan's fury.

Of course, there was another important point — he had to make the bandits who defeated him sound as formidable as the Old Guard bandits under Li Dingguo.

At the very least, he absolutely could not let the Prince of Pingnan learn that what had beaten him was actually a rabble of bandits thrown together.

To accomplish this and save his own skin, the cooperation of Zheng Guodong, the other defender of Xinhui, was crucial. The banner troops who had fled back were all his own men, so Su Xianting did not fear they would betray him.

He had therefore done his utmost to be friendly toward Zheng Guodong. But he had been a bannerman so long, and so accustomed to throwing his weight around, that in his speech he could not help looking down on Zheng Guodong, who came from the Green Standard.

Thus his efforts to win Zheng Guodong over had yielded little; the man had given no assurances. For this reason, Su Xianting could only pin his hopes on successfully holding the city.

As long as Xinhui was held, even if the Prince still had grievances, they could be offset somewhat. In that case, although he would certainly lose his post as company captain, his life could more or less be preserved, and his family would not be reduced to slaves of the banners.

The Prince of Pingnan was a man who remembered old ties. As a loyal bondservant who had followed his lordship for nearly ten years, Su Xianting reckoned he had a fair grasp of the old prince's temper.

Equating the defense of the city with his own head, Su Xianting naturally did not dare be careless. Zheng Guodong went to sleep after midnight, but he did not.

Though he was desperately drowsy, he remained on the wall. A veteran of ten years' service, he knew that the hours before dawn were when bandits most liked to assault a city.

The year before, Li Dingguo's troops had launched fierce attacks twice during this very period, so he was uneasy and insisted on standing guard on the wall himself until the relief force arrived from Guangzhou.

Many large water vats had been buried below the wall, and Su Xianting from time to time sent his personal guards to ask the Green Standard soldiers specially assigned to listen for underground movement.

Learning that the bandits showed no sign of digging tunnels, he felt considerably more at ease. Yet at the very moment when day was about to break, a tremendous boom suddenly came from beneath the wall.

The violent shaking instantly banished Su Xianting's drowsiness and shocked him greatly: the bandits had cannon!

"Watch out for cannonballs!"

Su Xianting instinctively shouted to the personal guards behind him. But no sooner had the words left his mouth than two guards, faces drained of color, pointed at a spot a dozen or so zhang to the left and shrieked in terror: "Disaster! The wall has collapsed! Run!"

Accompanying the shrieks of the two guards were countless flying stones and clods of earth, a column of black smoke surging into the air, and a stretch of collapsed wall that left men gaping in disbelief!

Screams and shrieks of agony rose one after another.

Su Xianting could not believe it. His upper and lower teeth chattered uncontrollably. He simply could not imagine what weapon could bring down a wall as solid as gold, a wall that tens of thousands of the Old Guard bandits had been unable to breach.

How is it possible? How is it possible? How is it possible!

Su Xianting's vision went dark, and in his ears rang the shrieks of his personal guards: "Sir, the bandits are coming up!"