Chapter 165: Attack and Defense (IV)

"Anyone who dares to turn and flee will be executed on the spot!"

Lin Shanzhi issued a strict order.

Although the Green Standard officers all wanted to withdraw — the battle had reached this point and they had already done right by their superiors — Lin Shanzhi insisted on holding to the death, so as subordinates they could only grit their teeth and stay pinned there.

The most unfortunate and most miserable were those Green Standard officers from the various counties under Guangzhou Prefecture.

Unloved by their fathers and uncared for by their mothers, they had been transferred from far away to attack Xinhui, used as cannon fodder in the assault. They could not advance, and they could not retreat.

It was truly a damned haunting.

The Regional Commander had issued a strict order, and the officers had no choice. Military law outweighed Heaven itself.

If they let deserters go back, the Regional Commander would certainly have their heads, and the banner troops would skin them alive besides! So for those soldiers who dared to turn and run, there was nothing to do but step forward and cut them down without a word.

The heads of several dozen deserters shocked the Green Standard soldiers who had wanted to flee. Tearfully they cursed the Taiping Army on the wall, and viciously cursed their own officers as well.

Then they surged back to the foot of the wall once more, braving the stones, logs, and boiling filth that rained down from above, climbing upward with hands and feet.

The corpses below the wall had piled up high. Earlier, when the camp soldiers scaled the wall, they had set their ladders on the ground; now they set them directly on the bodies.

On some ladders so many men climbed that the weight of the ladder pierced straight through the corpses beneath. At first glance, it seemed as if the ladders were growing out of the bodies themselves — how horrifying!

The smell of blood mingled with the stench of excrement, spreading over the entire top of the wall, enough to make anyone retch.

While strictly forbidding any retreat, Lin Shanzhi mustered his personal guards and ordered them to concentrate in one spot, using dense arrow fire to suppress the Taiping Army above. Then he assembled death-sworn soldiers to climb from that point, intending to seize the walltop in one push.

The suddenly dense arrow fire immediately made the Taiping Army on that section of the wall falter, with more than ten killed or wounded.

The young laborers behind, seeing so many Taiping soldiers ahead of them die all at once, trembled so badly their legs shook and their teeth chattered.

One youth named Fan Si was so frightened he soiled himself, collapsing onto his backside and letting the filth seep out through his trousers.

With more than ten killed or wounded in an instant, and the Taiping troops on either flank unable to push forward under the Qing arrow fire, a genuine gap appeared on the walltop.

When the Green Standard troops below discovered that no more stones were falling from above, they hurriedly hoisted their ladders and set them up again.

The several dozen chosen death-sworn soldiers, wearing two or three layers of armor and holding long blades between their teeth, climbed upward with no regard for their lives.

Zhou Shixiang, standing at the highest point of the gate tower and observing the entire battle, spotted the crisis. Drawing his blade, he charged down from the tower, and his personal guards rushed after him.

As he ran, Zhou Shixiang casually picked up a discarded iron pot and clapped it onto his head. That pot had not been used for boiling filth, but for cooking by the Qing troops originally on the wall.

Now worn on his head, it served as a shield, and several arrows that struck the pot were deflected away.

The personal guards behind, seeing their Battalion Commander put an iron pot on his head, followed suit. But there were not that many spare iron pots on the wall at the moment, so they could only grab whatever wooden planks they could find to hold over their heads.

Fortunately, though they were only planks, they still greatly reduced the danger of being struck by arrows. As the guards ran over, the planks on many of their heads became pincushions.

A squad of musketeers from the Guard Battalion happened to be waiting at that spot. Seeing the Battalion Commander risk his life to enter the fight, the squad leader quickly led his men running toward that place.

The Zhenlu Battalion was the only battalion in the Taiping Army fully equipped with padded armor, and its officers wore iron armor besides. It also had the most battle-hardened veterans and the strongest fighting power, which was why Zhou Shixiang had assigned it to defend the east gate.

When the Zhenlu Battalion officers saw the Battalion Commander leading men to plug the gap, they too realized something was wrong there, and immediately officers led their men forward at the risk of their lives.

"Fire down at the base of the wall! Quickly!"

Seeing the musketeers arrive, Zhou Shixiang gestured at them as he ran, telling them to fire their muskets down at the base of the wall at once. The Guard Battalion squad leader, hearing the order, rushed to the crenellations, pointed his musket downward, and fired without even looking.

With the first musket shot, dozens more rang out in quick succession. Though the muskets had not been aimed at all, dozens of barrels firing down at the base of the wall at once was enough to throw the Qing troops below into confusion.

Shooting arrows from below up at the walltop was itself very difficult. They could not see clearly and could only loose arrows wildly, as long as the arrows made it up top — there was no question of aiming.

With no way of knowing where anyone was, they could not control the force, and most arrows were either absorbed by the Taiping Army's arrow shields or flew straight over the walltop and fell behind the wall.

They caused few casualties to the Taiping Army, but wounded several dozen civilian laborers busy below the wall. When the Taiping muskets rang out, more than ten archers were immediately hit, wailing and screaming.

The Qing troops were startled when they discovered the muskets firing from the wall, but they soon realized there were not many musketeers, and that after one volley they had stopped. They knew at once that the musketeers above were reloading.

Reloading took time, so the Qing troops seized this window and climbed upward with reckless abandon. By the time the flustered Guard Battalion musketeers above had finished loading, Green Standard soldiers on four ladders had already reached the crenellations.

Most of those musketeers were novices, many of whom had only fired a musket once or twice. Now, suddenly seeing Qing soldiers climbing up and so close to them, some turned pale with terror and fired their muskets blindly.

The scattered popping of muskets somehow failed to hit a single one of the camp soldiers climbing up!

In the distance, Shang Zhixin saw this scene through his telescope and was immediately delighted. As long as the camp soldiers could gain a foothold on the wall, the city might truly be broken!

The Green Standard soldiers climbing onto the wall thought the same. After all, the defenders were not Manchu bannermen, nor the troops of the Old Bandits, but a motley force of Ming soldiers who only dared hold out because they had a strong city protecting them.

But once the wall was scaled, they would surely panic. Open a few breaches, and how could this Taiping Army dare keep resisting!

Shang Zhixin was just about to order the banner troops forward when he saw several of the camp soldiers who had climbed onto the wall suddenly jump off it!

By the time the camp soldiers climbed over the crenellations, Zhou Shixiang had already charged up with the iron pot on his head. Giving himself no room for hesitation, he swung his blade and rushed forward.

With one slash, a camp soldier who had just set his foot on the wall instinctively recoiled to dodge, lost his balance, and tumbled off the wall.

"Kill!"

Zhou Shixiang's personal guards, charging up behind him, threw away their wooden planks and roared as they rushed at the camp soldiers who had gained the wall.

Zhenlu Battalion soldiers surging in from both flanks also swarmed forward, ignoring the arrows falling from above, and used their long forked poles to push at the ladders leaning against the wall.

The camp soldiers in midair turned pale with terror, afraid of falling and injuring themselves. Fortunately, the camp soldiers below holding the ladders strained to push them back against the wall, and the ladders sprang back as if rebounding.

But before the soldiers on the ladders could steady themselves, the Taiping forked poles thrust out again, pushing them outward once more.

On the walltop, the same scene played out everywhere — ladders suddenly tilting backward, then suddenly lurching forward again, and the cries of alarm from the camp soldiers swinging back and forth with them.

The Green Standard soldiers below the ladders expended tremendous effort to hold the ladders firm, and the camp soldiers on them immediately showed savage faces. With one hand gripping the ladder and the other raising a long blade, they began climbing rung by rung.

The soldiers climbing up behind them held their blades in their teeth, gripping the ladder with both hands and climbing without pause behind the men above.

"Up! Up! Move faster!"

While the battle raged on the walltop, the Green Standard officers below, fearing they would lose the opportunity, kept shouting at the camp soldiers to climb faster.

Once the ladders were full of men, the Taiping forked poles could no longer push them away, because the ladders had simply become too heavy.

The faces of the Taiping soldiers on the walltop were clearly visible. The camp soldiers at the top began raising their blades, preparing to cut down the Taiping troops.

But the moment their hands rose, a forked pole thrust out from a crenellation on the other side. This time it was not pushing at the ladder, but sweeping directly at them.

The tip of the forked pole was a razor-sharp cross-blade, capable not only of cutting a ladder in two at the waist, but also of slicing off a man's arm.

With a scream of agony, a camp soldier's entire left arm was severed by a Taiping forked pole, and he fell like a kite with a broken string.

The men below, caught off guard, were dragged down with him — one pulling down another, six or seven camp soldiers falling together, crashing onto the men holding the ladders and causing chaos.

The ladder was also chopped in two, the broken halves toppling over. A camp soldier who had just climbed up did not notice and was struck by the broken ladder.

Fortunately for him, he passed through a gap between the rungs.

Once the Taiping troops began using their forked poles to cut at the camp soldiers, dozens of Qing ladders were hacked apart in an instant, and the soldiers on them fell together with the ladders, their screams rising and falling without end.