Chapter 170: Attack and Defense (9)

The moment the routed Green Standard troops moved, the Bordered Blue Banner Han troops and the Plain Yellow Banner Han troops moved with them. The 700 household troops of the Prince of Pingnan, who served as the main assault force, all wore double armor.

Unlike the other Bordered Blue Banner Han troops, these household troops carried no firearms — their weapons were uniformly greatswords.

They followed behind the Green Standard, but instead of swarming forward in a mob like the Green Standard, they advanced in squads of several dozen, forming more than ten detachments, keeping proper spacing front and back, and maintaining a pace neither fast nor slow.

Such a formation could only mean they knew there were cannons in the city.

Behind them, the rumble of war drums rose. Several hundred Bordered Blue Banner Han cavalry spread out in a single line, the lead riders each holding a triangular banner — a sight of formidable grandeur.

The rest of the Qing troops not taking part in the assault were also ordered forward by their officers to mass together, and along with the conscripted laborers they shouted encouragement to the attacking force.

The sheer noise was terrifying, and in an instant it swept into the city, striking fear into every heart among the people of Xinhui and filling the old, young, women, and children of the Taiping Army's veteran camp with dread and unease.

Such a display from the main camp behind them naturally fired up the morale of the troops assaulting the city. They cast off the dejection of their earlier failed attack, and with reddened eyes like ravenous wolves they charged toward the city walls.

The lure of "no sealed blades once the city falls" had deeply suppressed their fear of death, letting loose once more the beast within them that had never truly gone away.

On the battlements, as soon as the Qing troops withdrew, Zhou Shixiang ordered the officers to organize men to carry the fallen Taiping Army dead and the wounded down from the wall.

Most of the casualties on the wall had been caused by the Green Standard archers. Around a hundred or more soldiers had been struck by Qing arrows, but few of the wounds were truly fatal — most were flesh wounds and non-lethal injuries.

With rest and medicine, most could be treated and would not be left crippled or useless.

Half of the bodies carried down had died when the Green Standard stormed the wall. They had been struck directly by blades — some died on the spot, others bled out.

In this age, wounds inflicted directly by cold steel were very hard to treat, and it was even difficult to stitch such wounds closed. So those who were wounded but not yet dead could only be left to fate once carried down.

Though Zhou Shixiang had done his utmost to improve the army's medical system and had even instituted some later-era medical practices, the severe shortage of medicinal supplies and of physicians who could measure up to the "army doctors" he envisioned meant his later-era methods could only serve as token gestures.

The lightly wounded would not die; the heavily wounded could not be saved. The only real effect was helping the lightly wounded recover a bit faster and preventing some infectious diseases — that was all.

The bodies carried down dripped blood along the city bricks the whole way, staining the entire passageway.

In several places, so many had died that the ground was covered in pools of blood, and people walking over it slipped and fell — quite a few of the able-bodied young men hurrying to resupply the defensive equipment went down.

Compared to the Qing corpses lying everywhere below the wall, the Taiping Army's casualties were far smaller.

The exchange ratio between the two sides was estimated at seven to one or even higher — and that included the casualties among the conscripted young men, plus more than a dozen unlucky Han Banner captives.

One could therefore say the Taiping Army had just won a victory — at an extremely small cost, they had achieved a great triumph unmatched since the army's founding!

Since ancient times, in siege warfare — unless the city was completely surrounded, or the attacker's forces outnumbered the defenders several times over — the side suffering heavier casualties was always the attacker, especially the side lacking siege equipment.

Back then, when Yan Yingyuan, Chen Mingyu, and Feng Houdun — the three worthies — defended Jiangyin, they held out for a full eighty-one days with a garrison made up entirely of the common people of Jiangyin, stubbornly resisting tens of thousands of Qing troops, among them Bolo, Nikan, and Kong Youde, who would later be promoted to princes.

If the tiny city of Jiangyin could make the Qing army pay such a heavy price, why could Xinhui not do the same!

What was more, just last year Xinhui had been through a battle no less fierce than the defense of Jiangyin — several thousand Qing troops had used Xinhui to beat back Li Dingguo's army of tens of thousands. Today, why could the Taiping Army not replicate that miracle once more!

The blood on the ground and the cries of the wounded filled the Xinhui youths experiencing battle for the first time with fear. Fan Si was one of them.

He was truly lucky — during the Qing assault just now, several arrows had grazed past his body and landed behind him, and one had nearly struck him square in the face. Had a Taiping soldier beside him not pulled him aside, Fan Si would by now have gone to meet the King of Hell.

People are strange creatures. When the Qing army was not attacking, Fan Si was so frightened his legs cramped.

When they truly came, he gritted his teeth and held on. When the Qing withdrew, he cheered like his companions.

But after the cheering, looking at the bodies being carried down one after another, he was seized by fear once more — as if every gaping red wound on those corpses had been cut into his own flesh.

His whole body went numb, and he felt wretched, squatting there wanting to vomit but unable to, wanting to stand but unable to rise.

At last, when all the dead and wounded had been carried down from the wall, Fan Si came back to himself from his extreme terror and numbness. Then he was astonished.

He had seen with his own eyes the Qing troops outside the city surging forward in a dark mass, the war cries shaking heaven above and below the wall. He had assumed the Taiping Army's casualties must be enormous.

Yet after the battle, the bodies carried down did not seem many at all. This truly surprised him, and he looked with new respect upon these Taiping soldiers whom just two days earlier he had called "bandit troops" — and his awe of the Taiping Army deepened along with it.

Many people shared Fan Si's thoughts, especially the Green Standard and Han Banner captives. Without realizing it, they adjusted their own attitudes, no longer harboring the same strong ulterior thoughts as before.

………

Although Shang Kexi's great banner of the Prince of Pingnan's garrison command had been raised in the Qing camp, neither Zhou Shixiang, nor his officers, nor Song Xianggong and the others believed the Qing army would continue the assault — at least not today.

Their morale had already crumbled with the failed attack, and at a moment like this, unless a commander had lost his wits, no general would be foolish enough to drive troops with no fighting spirit back up the walls.

After the dead and wounded were carried down, the able-bodied youths began moving equipment stored below the wall up onto it. The Taiping soldiers on the wall, under their officers' direction, did their best to patch up breaches.

Everything proceeded in good order. Though the men on the wall were busy, no one was tense or afraid.

They all believed the Qing army would not attack again today, so their mood was unusually relaxed.

The Taiping soldiers, who earlier had freely cursed and beaten the youths and captives, were now in good temper — for once, no one raised a whip or drew a blade to threaten the men into obedience. For a time, the atmosphere on the wall was quite pleasant.

After all, they had won a battle and killed so many Qing soldiers.

But what they never expected was that in less than half a shichen, the Qing army launched a second assault — and this one was far fiercer than the last.