Chapter 164: Attack and Defense (III)

At the front, the Green Standard troops assaulting the city were suffering horrific casualties, yet the Qing camp behind them was utterly silent — no gong sounded to recall the troops, no orders came to send reinforcements; only dispatch riders came and went.

After paying nearly half their number in casualties, the Guangzhou Green Standard finally closed in on the walls of Xinhui. This time the garrison troops no longer feared the cannon on the walls, but the stones that came crashing down from time to time were more terrifying than any cannonball.

When a cannonball struck, a body split apart, but at least it still kept some shape. When a stone fell, it flattened a man's head along with it, mashing it together with the mud and blood on the ground into a shapeless pulp — red, white, and black, sticky and glistening, a grisly sight.

The Guangzhou Green Standard was using the classic ancient method of storming a city. They fought their way to the foot of the walls and raised countless scaling ladders against them, the troops climbing over one another as they swarmed upward.

Over at the gate tunnel, after more than a dozen shield carts had been smashed to pieces, two carts finally managed to force their way in at the risk of death and then rammed the gate with all their might, sending the stones packed behind it sliding loose again and again.

The cannon fell silent. The defense of the city had reached its critical moment. At every crenel on the wall, Taiping Army soldiers thrust downward with long spears.

The garrison troops' archers finally found their use once they reached the foot of the wall. The best marksmen among them aimed at the crenels, and nine of every ten arrows found their mark.

Those less skilled drew their longbows at an angle, their arrows either striking the wall or sailing over the parapet to fall inside the city.

The garrison troops' arrows were devilishly accurate, so much so that the Taiping Army no longer dared lean out to look down, and for a time the pressure on the wall surged.

On the south side, more than a dozen ladders were already crawling with garrison troops, the highest climbers less than a man's height from the crenels.

Seeing this, the petty officer above shouted an urgent order, and at once several Taiping Army soldiers yelled and hauled together on the iron chains, hoisting the cauldron of boiling, splattering "golden juice" up over the crenel, then let go all at once.

"Splash!"

The scalding oil poured down from above, and instantly the Qing troops below howled like ghosts and wailed like wolves. The faces of the first few garrison troops to take the brunt were scalded beyond recognition — blackened, with raw blood-red showing through.

There was no face left at all; they looked like nothing but skulls.

The garrison troops lower down were not so badly off, but every one of them was still scalded and screaming. Those wearing double armor fared somewhat better — at worst the hot oil burned their scalps.

The unlucky ones had oil run down into their bellies; with a "sizzle" came a piercing pain, and when they reached to touch it, the touch only hurt worse. Those badly scalded found that one wipe peeled away a layer of flesh.

The garrison troops without armor suffered the worst. They were not scalded to death, but their entire bodies were covered in large-area burns; not a single patch of skin was left unmarked.

And that "golden juice" was not just hot oil — it also contained night soil, stinking to high heaven and teeming with countless poisonous germs. The burns themselves were a small matter; the real danger was infection in the wounds.

Even if a man survived, he would be crippled.

The Taiping Army on the wall resisted stubbornly. From time to time a man, struck by an arrow, toppled from the wall.

The Qing ladders fell and were raised again, one after another. Above and below the wall, both sides fought with blood-red eyes, neither willing to yield a step.

The gate had long since been sealed shut on Zhou Shixiang's orders, so no matter how the Qing shield carts battered it, it did not budge. The stone heap behind it was shaken loose several times, but each time the able-bodied laborers packed it tight again.

The able-bodied men of Xinhui whom the Taiping Army had conscripted were now grasshoppers tied to the same rope as the Taiping Army. If the Qing army broke through, their fate was easy to imagine.

Moreover, before the battle Zhou Shixiang had ordered Song Xianggong to tell these laborers all the horrors the Qing army had committed while garrisoning Xinhui, and to tell them how the Qing army slaughtered cities after taking them.

These laborers — most of whom were not originally from Xinhui — had no choice but to grit their teeth and hold out to the death.

The Qing prisoners, meanwhile, were growing restless, but the Taiping Army kept them under the strictest watch. Despite the shortage of men on the wall, they had deliberately detached troops solely to guard the prisoners.

So even if the prisoners wanted to make a move, they first had to weigh whether they, barehanded, could outrun the swordsmen behind them.

Cauldron after cauldron of golden juice was poured down, stone after stone was hurled down, handful after handful of lime was scattered down. The Taiping Army had prepared everything that could kill or wound the Qing troops, and at the last they began hurling whole logs down as well.

Those logs were long and thick. Rolled down along the wall, a single log could take out at least four or five ladders at once.

The Qing troops on the ladders who could not dodge in time were smashed straight off; those with sharp eyes and quick hands had nowhere to hide either, and could only jump from the ladders a second early.

The battle had now gone on for nearly half a shichen, yet apart from the garrison troops still milling in chaos below the wall and trying to climb, not a single Qing soldier could be seen anywhere on the wall.

The garrison troops' assault was ferocious, but they were bound to exhaust themselves eventually. On the Taiping Army side, apart from those hit by sniping arrows, casualties were not too heavy.

The reserve guard battalion had not even been called up. The battle was tilting in the Taiping Army's favor.

Zhou Shixiang had been watching the Qing main camp across the way the whole time, trying to judge when the Qing main force would come up. But look as he might, he saw no sign that the Qing army was preparing a full assault.

Puzzled, he could not understand why Shang Kexi did not press the attack and take the city in one surge, instead leaving these Green Standard troops to die uselessly beneath the walls.

In the Qing camp opposite, someone was also watching the city through a spyglass — none other than the Prince of Pingnan's heir, Shang Zhixin. From the moment he had ordered the Green Standard to attack, he had been following the battle closely.

When he saw that the Green Standard had been under the walls for so long without managing to scale them, he shook his head, handed the spyglass to an attendant beside him, and said to Ban Zhifu, "This Taiping Army seems stronger than the other Ming forces.

The defending commander has nerve too — look at the wall, there's no panic at all. It seems Lin Shanzhi will not be taking Xinhui."

"Sending Lin Shanzhi up with his troops was only a probe.

If he takes it, so much the better; if not, it hardly matters. Once we've surrounded them for a few days and His Highness arrives in person, there will surely be men in the city who fear death.

Then, with help from within and attack from without, Xinhui will fall whether it wants to or not."

Ban Zhifu had fought in countless siege battles since his days in Liaodong, and the tactic of inside help combined with outside assault had never failed him. The Taiping Army's defense was strong, but could it be stronger than the great Ming's Liaodong garrison of old?

How elite those Liaodong border troops had been — and what had become of them in the end? How had those supposedly impregnable fortresses fallen?

In this world, a strong city was not what one should fear; what one should fear was the hearts of men. Intelligence had already come in from all quarters: this Taiping Army was a lone force, with no more than ten thousand soldiers.

Such a thin force holding a lone city — the outcome was already decided. They only needed to besiege it for a while, and men in the city who feared death would offer it up themselves.

Ban Zhifu, seeing that Lin Shanzhi had attacked for so long without success and with such heavy casualties, could not help asking, "Your Highness, shall we order a withdrawal?"

"Let us watch a while longer." Shang Zhixin cared nothing for the deaths of these Green Standard troops. "I want to see what other tricks this defending commander still has up his sleeve."

With the assault dragging on and over a thousand men packed beneath the wall being slaughtered like fish on a chopping block, the garrison troops were not made of iron. Some began trying to flee backward, only to be cut down by the officers behind them.

Lin Shanzhi's eyes had gone red too. He had wanted to show his mettle before the heir, but who could have known this Taiping Army would be so hard to crack?

The battle had gone on to this point, and his own side had already lost over half its strength. Though the losses were all garrison troops from the various counties under Guangzhou Prefecture, and his own core forces had barely suffered, the loss of face was too great.

How was he supposed to face the heir afterward, when he had earlier beaten his chest and vowed to take the city in one stroke!