Chapter 174: Attack and Defense (Thirteen)

The red-barbarian cannons were far too massive, each weighing several thousand catties, so they could only fire at long range and not at close range.

Moreover, the tremendous recoil of each shot shifted the cannon's position, forcing the gunners to re-aim and reload after every round.

As a result, the dozen or so red-barbarian cannons on the east wall could only intermittently suppress the Qing army's follow-up troops, and could not inflict large-scale casualties on the Qing soldiers massed below the wall.

At this moment, the Taiping Army was relying mainly on various small cannons, including the long-pole cannons, to kill the Qing troops beneath the wall.

Rolling logs, boiling filth, forks, swinging scythes, long spears, fire lances, lime, even weighted ropes with stones tied to them, or bricks that could be grabbed at hand — all manner of killing tools ceaselessly reaped the lives of the Qing soldiers.

The small cannons fired in rotation. For a time, thick smoke covered the top of the wall, while below the wall the dead lay everywhere and screams rang out everywhere.

Where solid shot had struck, mangled corpses lay scattered in every direction; white bone splinters mixed with bright red flesh and blood, churned together with the mud, a sight too horrible to behold.

Farther away, wherever the red-barbarian cannonballs had landed, huge craters had been gouged out, earth flying in all directions and piling onto the bodies whose heads had been torn from their shoulders.

In the chaos of battle, Ma Defu, a Mobile Corps Commander of the Guangdong Green Standard, was struck directly by an iron ball, becoming the first Qing officer to die in the Battle of Xinhui.

Ma Defu's death chilled the entire Green Standard from top to bottom and grieved Lin Shanzhi deeply as well. But in the eyes of Qin Guocheng, the commander of the household troops, it was nothing at all — his eyes held only Xinhui!

In a pile of corpses behind him, one household soldier was struggling to crawl out from underneath, his whole body covered in blood, his queue tangled into a mess. A closer look showed his entire left hand had been severed.

Not far from this handless household soldier, another bannerman had been struck in the thigh by a cannonball. Pale from massive blood loss, he struggled to rise but could not, and could only crawl slowly along the ground.

As he crawled, he clawed at the earth for purchase, but the blood-soaked mud was a sodden mess and gave him no leverage. Each grab filled his hand with bloody muck, and after crawling with great effort for a long while, his body had actually moved only a tiny bit.

At last, he stopped moving, yet his eyes remained fixed on the walls of Xinhui ahead, red and glaring, indescribably dreadful.

On the wall, the Taiping Army's casualties were also severe. The Zhenlu Battalion had already lost half its strength, and officers too had suffered losses: the Chief Banner Officer Wu Xueye had fallen in battle, and two other squad banner officers had also been killed.

The bodies of the dead were being carried down by the able-bodied men. If the Qing troops below the wall could have seen them, they would have discovered that these dead Taiping soldiers, like themselves, also wore a small queue at the back of their heads.

Up to the time the Taiping Army captured Xinhui, apart from the soldiers who had joined the camp early on in Luoding, most of the soldiers recruited in the later expansions had not cut their queues. Many of them were still wearing the uniform jackets of the Qing Green Standard.

This was not because Zhou Shixiang did not want to cut the queues that symbolized servility for his men, but because there had simply been no time to do it.

Moreover, he wanted to find an opportunity to cut the soldiers' queues all at once, so that they would understand why the queue had to be cut — not merely cut it to save their lives.

Corpse after corpse was carried past him. Some he knew, some he did not.

Whether he knew them or not, Zhou Shixiang did not spare them a second glance, nor did he put on the kindly general's act of loving his soldiers like his own sons, kneeling beside the bodies and weeping bitterly so that the living soldiers would willingly die for him.

He simply swept his eyes over them once, then turned his head away and looked no more, throwing himself back into the bloody battle still raging. Living or dead, a man's name was nothing but a symbol.

If the wall fell, everyone would die; there was nothing to grieve over. He believed the dead would not curse him, their Battalion Commander, for being hard-hearted, and he believed the living shared his thoughts.

Behind them lay not only this city of Xinhui, but also those several thousand elderly, weak, women, and children.

After the Taiping Army entered the city, the empty houses in Xinhui were filled to capacity by the elderly, weak, women, and children of the rear camp. For the sake of unified management, the Taiping Army did not curry favor with the residents of Xinhui.

Instead, they drove them directly out of the houses they had originally lived in, clearing an entire area for the rear camp to occupy.

The newly expanded Security Corps was nominally under the overall command of Song Xianggong, but the actual commander was Zhao Sihai. Since this Security Corps had been built around the backbone of his Public Treasury troops, Zhao Sihai naturally became its real commander.

In the final moments of the fighting at Guifeng Mountain, Zhao Sihai had wavered. He himself knew it, Song Xianggong knew it, and Zhou Shixiang knew it even better.

Yet afterward no one mentioned the matter, and no one looked down on Zhao Sihai because of it. Still, although no one blamed him, Zhao Sihai felt somewhat ashamed deep in his heart.

He very much wanted to prove anew that he was not a coward who feared death. Therefore, three days earlier, Zhao Sihai had asked Zhou Shixiang to transfer him to the front camp, rather than continuing to hide in the rear camp watching his brothers fight the Tartars to the death.

Zhou Shixiang did not grant Zhao Sihai's request. Instead, he handed him the task of expanding the Security Corps, and beyond that said not a word more — not even a word of comfort.

Yet for some reason, after receiving this task, Zhao Sihai never again asked to go to the front camp, but threw himself wholeheartedly into the expansion of the Security Corps.

He promoted some of the old hands of the Public Treasury troops to the positions of Chief Banner Officer and squad banner officer, having them lead their men to control the streets throughout the city, while he himself led men to guard the county yamen.

Zhao Sihai's purpose was not to protect Liao Ruixiang, but to protect the public treasury hidden inside the county yamen.

He had already prepared for the worst: if the Qing army broke through the city, he would burn himself together with the gold, silver, and treasures of the public treasury. What he could not take with him in life, he would not leave to the Tartars in death.

In this way, he would also fulfill the oath he and Boss Hu had sworn back in the days when they had taken to the hills as bandits.

Inside the county yamen, Zhao Sihai and his men stood guard as if facing a great enemy. Outside the yamen, those among the rear camp's elderly, weak, women, and children who could still move were doing everything they could to prepare defensive equipment for the front camp.

Men and women alike labored to haul supplies up to the wall, while those who could not carry anything were lighting fires and cooking, so that their men on the wall could have a hot meal.

The bodies carried down from the wall were temporarily placed in several large empty houses by the east wall. Dozens of elderly men were there wiping the corpses one by one.

From time to time, women with children stumbled into the houses, then shrieked and wailed bitterly. Clearly, their men had gone from living, breathing people to cold, stiff corpses.

"Dad, Dad, wake up, wake up..."

"Mom, Mom, don't cry, don't cry..."

The children's voices pained the old men deeply, but apart from sighing, there was nothing they could do. The dead cannot be brought back to life.

"Lin Er's wife, stop crying now, don't cry yourself into trouble. The child is still young; you still have to raise him. You can't let Lin Er go without peace of mind... Get up now..."

The old men pulled and pleaded, but they could not drag the grieving women away.

After the Battle of Deqing, Zhou Shixiang had organized a medical team within the army, though it was only a rudimentary form of military medicine.

The team had no proper physicians, only half-trained healers who recognized a few Chinese herbs, plus several dozen girls who had reached the age of sixteen. Zhou Shixiang had organized these girls into the medical team and taught them some simple nursing and bandaging skills.

Now, these girls were using the simple knowledge they had learned earlier to bandage the wounded. But never before had they seen so many wounded, nor so much blood.

Screams and retching sounded from time to time, as these girls were frightened by the exposed intestines and severed limbs of the badly wounded, shrieking and flailing their arms and legs.

The healers serving as army doctors were quite displeased with the girls' reactions, but apart from frowning, they did not scold the young women. Never mind the girls — had they themselves not been frightened by the scene before them?

"All of you, shut up!"

Amid the chaos, a woman's voice rang out: "Give me needle and thread, and gauze — quickly!"

The healers looked toward the voice, and their faces all froze. They recognized the woman before them — she was Lin Wan'er, the daughter that Lin Wanfu, the Treasury Commissioner in charge of the public stores, often boasted about in front of them.

Lin Wanfu put on great airs about this daughter, saying she was the Battalion Commander's woman, the implication being that he, Lin Wanfu, was the Battalion Commander's father-in-law, and that they had all better keep their eyes open.

"What is this woman doing here?"

The healers whispered among themselves, and the screaming girls were also stunned speechless, because they saw Lin Wan'er crouched beside a wounded man, stitch by stitch sewing his wound closed. The man's wound was in his lower abdomen, caused by an arrow, and bleeding profusely.

The wound was extremely close to the man's private parts, yet Lin Wan'er showed not the slightest avoidance or taboo, focusing entirely on the needle and thread in her hands, carefully sewing the wound shut for this injured man.