Chapter 160: Holding the City

Xinhui guards the southern gateway to Guangzhou, and lies extremely close to the city itself.

The Taiping Army's occupation of Xinhui was certain to bring the entire Qing army in Guangzhou out in force, and to prevent the Qing army from intercepting the Taiping Army on its march to Xiangshan, at the council of war two days earlier Zhou Shixiang had made it clear to all his commanders: they would settle the contest with the Guangzhou Qing army right here at Xinhui.

Back then, the Qing army had been able to use Xinhui's strong walls to beat back the tens of thousands of troops of the Prince of Xining, Li Dingguo; today, the Taiping Army could likewise use these strong walls to beat back the Qing army's heavy forces from Guangzhou.

None of the commanders raised any objection. Whether or not they understood warfare, all knew that holding out behind strong walls was far more certain than fighting the Qing army in the open field.

The Taiping Army had no cavalry, and most of its battalions were new recruits, no match for the elite Qing troops at Guangzhou. What was more, the Han Banners at Guangzhou had cavalry.

If they could not use Xinhui's walls to beat back the Qing army, the Qing army would surely attack them on the march to Xiangshan, and when that time came, the odds would be grim.

The brothers Ge Zheng and Ge Yi and the others, however, were thinking that ever since the rising at Luoding they had been constantly on the run. They called it a strategic shift to find the whole camp a base, but after all this marching, Xiangshan County was still not reached.

Since today they had taken Xinhui in one stroke, why not simply make Xinhui their base? That way, these former "mountain kings" could at last have a taste of the prestige of being officials.

With a city came common folk, and with common folk naturally came tribute. The men had risked their necks fighting alongside Scholar Zhou precisely for this day.

Since Scholar Zhou was not abandoning Xinhui, they would stake everything and fight the Tartars to the death. Win, and from now on all the land around Xinhui would be the Taiping Army's domain.

Lose, and it was only a bowl-sized scar. As the saying went, who in this life does not die?

It only mattered how big a man you were when you did.

Fight! Fight! A Tartar has one head and one prick, and I've got the same pair of balls as they do. Let them come — we'll see whose prick is harder, theirs or mine!

While the Taiping Army on the walls was busy preparing siege equipment, inside the city there was equal bustle.

By order of the Taiping Army's Battalion Commander Zhou Shixiang and the quartermaster-general Song Xianggong, the Shaoxing secretary Liao Ruixiang was appointed County Magistrate of Xinhui.

Taking up the great seal left behind by his predecessor, the Qing county magistrate Huang Zhizheng, he posted several proclamations, and with the help of a security squad dispatched by Song Xianggong, mobilized all the remaining commoners in the city.

Old and weak, sick and disabled, even women — all were organized to take part in the defense of Xinhui.

After the disaster of the Qing army's devouring of the city the previous year, Xinhui's population of nearly eighty thousand had been reduced to fewer than two thousand.

After Li Dingguo's great army lifted the siege at the beginning of the year, the new Qing Governor-General of Guangdong, Li Shuaitai, in order to cover up the Qing army's atrocity of mass slaughter and cannibalism, ordered Guangzhou Prefecture and neighboring prefectures and counties to move batches of commoners into Xinhui.

In addition, poor folk from the countryside around Xinhui, coveting the ownerless houses in the city, had moved in, bringing Xinhui's population back to ten thousand. Among them were several hundred wealthy households from Guangzhou.

After the Taiping Army entered the city, because the Zhenlu Battalion under the centurion Ge Zheng had run wild, most of these wealthy households suffered military disaster, and not a few had their families broken and wiped out.

To repair the breached walls before the Guangzhou Qing army arrived, Zhou Shixiang ordered that the captured Qing soldiers and the city's runners and able-bodied men all be pressed into hard labor, repairing the walls at any cost in human strength.

As a result, most of the able-bodied men in the city ended up at the wall worksite.

After Liao Ruixiang was appointed County Magistrate of Xinhui, he was vexed by the shortage of able-bodied men and had no choice but to grit his teeth and order the old, weak, women, and children all conscripted, joining the remaining women and children of the Taiping Army's rear camp in preparing food and the corresponding materials for the city's defense.

Liao Ruixiang came from a secretary's background and was skilled at mundane affairs. Though advanced in years, he arranged all matters in good order, so that the Taiping Army's forward camp did not need to draw men away for logistics.

Song Xianggong praised him highly for this, and put in a few good words for Liao Ruixiang before Zhou Shixiang. Pleased, Zhou Shixiang ordered a reward of twenty taels of silver for him.

Having received a reward of twenty taels of silver, Magistrate Liao worked all the harder. He knew that the Taiping Army practiced a public-treasury system: all spoils and plunder had to be turned over to the common store, and afterward were distributed uniformly by the treasury.

Although he had been appointed county magistrate, no salary had been set for him; like everyone else he ate from fixed rations. So the sudden gain of twenty taels of silver delighted him beyond measure.

He had originally been a condemned prisoner awaiting death for "seditious poetry"; but for the Taiping Army, his head would long since have fallen. Now he could not only keep his life, but hold office and earn silver.

With such good fortune, how could he not give his all? As the saying went, a scholar dies for the one who knows his worth.

While all Xinhui was mobilized, Zhou Shixiang was not idle either. He made frequent rounds of the walls and discussed the city's defense with his commanders.

He knew the Qing soldiers who had escaped would certainly report the fall of Xinhui to Guangzhou, and that Guangzhou would certainly send troops at once to retake it.

Otherwise, Xinhui would be like a knife pressed against the throat of the Qing army at Guangzhou, making it impossible for them to swallow. Had he been in their place, he too would have thrown everything into retaking Xinhui.

For otherwise, the Taiping Army would not even need to do anything else; merely sending men west to contact Li Dingguo would instantly transform the situation in Guangdong.

For the city's defense, the Zhenlu Battalion held the east gate, the Xiongwei Battalion the west gate, the Hujie Battalion the south gate, and the Xianzhen Battalion the north gate. The Jinwei Battalion served as a mobile reserve to reinforce any gate at any time.

In addition, the rear camp's security squad was expanded into a security regiment of a thousand men, drawn mainly from the city's able-bodied men and captured Green Standard soldiers, to be filled out once the wall repairs were complete.

The security regiment was under Song Xianggong's control, serving as the rear camp's armed force: on the one hand ensuring the rear camp's safety, and on the other working with the county magistrate's office to maintain order in the city.

The Taiping Army had stormed a strong city and routed the Qing army, and morale was high throughout the camp.

Though the rear camp at Guifeng Mountain had suffered grievous losses, the dead and wounded were mostly the old, weak, women, and children, which to a certain extent relieved the Taiping Army of a considerable burden.

So although the soldiers' hearts were pained, for the commanders there was inevitably a sense of relief. Zhou Shixiang was no saint.

He certainly grieved for the dead, but the dead could not be brought back to life, and the living had to look forward.

With the great burden of the rear camp gone, the Taiping Army's mobility and fighting capacity could be greatly improved, and this gave him considerably more confidence in his plan to hold Xinhui and beat back the Qing army.

To hold a city, one must have grain; without grain, all is lost.

The Taiping Army certainly could not, like the Qing army, kill people for food. Therefore it had to have ample grain to supply the whole army; otherwise, once the grain ran out, the whole army would be in peril.

Fortunately, there was plenty of grain in Xinhui. When Li Dingguo besieged the city the previous year, the Qing army inside had never run short of grain.

After the battle, when Li Shuaitai entered the city and inspected, the remaining grain in the city could still feed the Qing army for half a year.

With so much grain, plus the batches that had been shipped in over the past few months, even without the grain the Taiping Army had gathered from various places, there was enough to guarantee the Taiping Army could hold Xinhui for more than half a year.

Holding out for half a year was Zhou Shixiang's bottom line.

But he did not think the Qing army had the ability to besiege Xinhui for as long as half a year, because according to the prisoners' confessions and estimates of Qing troop strength along the route, the overall Qing forces in Guangdong did not seem particularly strong.

By conservative estimate, the troops the two princes of Ping and Jing at Guangzhou could send would never exceed ten thousand.

To exceed ten thousand, they would have to draw troops from other prefectures and counties, and if they did that, the Ming forces in Guangdong could not fail to notice.

Zhou Shixiang reckoned that Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao would not resort to such a measure of robbing Peter to pay Paul, because if they did, even if they took Xinhui in the end, by then all the other prefectures and counties of Guangdong except Guangzhou would likely be in Ming hands.

The urgent task was to contact the Ming forces in various places, so Zhou Shixiang sent orders to Zhang Ying, telling him to do everything possible to spread word of the situation at Xinhui, and no matter what, to send men to Gaozhou.

Whether or not Li Dingguo was actually in Guangdong at the moment, and whether or not he was locked in open or covert struggle with Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo had to be made to know that the city of Xinhui, which he had besieged bitterly for a year without success, had now been taken by the Taiping Army.

At this point in history, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo were on the verge of falling out, so Zhou Shixiang did not dare place his hopes for overturning the entire situation in Guangdong on Li Dingguo. He could only do his best.

As for whether Li Dingguo could seize this opportunity to lead a great army into Guangdong again, that was up to Heaven.

He held no hope for Li Dingguo, but the other Ming forces in Guangdong might be won over.

He did not expect them to come to Xinhui and hold out together with the Taiping Army, but he could strive to get them to attack the Qing forces facing them, tying down Qing strength and thereby reducing the pressure on Xinhui.

For this, Zhou Shixiang focused mainly on General Linghai, Chen Qice, and also sent men to the surrounding area to take in and recruit remnants of the Ming army, to strengthen the city's defense.

The three hundred-odd Green Standard soldiers transferred from Chaozhou to Xinhui were all sailors by background.

After entering the city, Zhou Shixiang had not had time to deal with them, and he had doubts about their loyalty, so he had them serve as laborers as well, to be assigned properly once the wall repairs were complete.