Chapter 177

After paying a loss of over a hundred men, the Shang clan's household troops once more scaled the wall. This time, each of the household troops at the very front carried a shield, holding it over his head as he climbed with all his might.

With the shields for cover, the household troops' casualties from fire while scaling the wall dropped sharply. Seeing this, the Taiping soldiers on the wall slashed open sack after sack of lime and poured it down.

At once a white mist rose below the wall. The shield-bearing household troops at the top were unaffected by the lime, but every one of the comrades beneath them was choked by it.

Many Qing soldiers got lime in their eyes and reached up to rub them, but the more they rubbed the worse the pain grew, and tears streamed down without stopping.

Once lime entered a man's eyes, if no tears came it was bearable, but the moment tears did come it began to seethe, and the pain made those Qing soldiers wail to heaven and earth.

At last, some Qing soldiers truly could not endure the lime raining down from the wall and leaped from the scaling ladders, while those below who had not yet begun to climb simply turned and retreated — only to be driven back again at once.

It was Qin Guocheng, commandant of the household troops, standing there with his personal guards and booi to oversee the assault.

"Any who retreat — behead them!"

"Press the attack! No one is permitted to fall back!"

Gazing at the walltop, Qin Guocheng blazed with fury, and his heart ached as well. These household troops were not only the apple of the Prince of Pingnan's eye; they were the apple of his eye too.

Every one of them was a stout fellow he had personally picked from the banners, and now so many had been buried here at Xinhui. How could his heart not drip blood?

Under Qin Guocheng's supervision, the household troops and those bannermen instinctively turned back once more to scale the wall. Every second, countless lives were lost above the wall and below it.

Beneath the wall, the corpses piled ever higher. Both sides had gone red-eyed in the slaughter, and even the Green Standard troops had red eyes by now, hurling themselves recklessly up the scaling ladders.

"You men — ram the gate!"

Seeing that the wall assault could not break through, Qin Guocheng, his face a mask of blood, shouted the order to the personal guards and booi beside him.

"Zha!"

Qin Guocheng's booi wore not cotton armor but true iron armor. They were stout lads from Liaodong who feared neither hardship nor death.

They charged the gate, and apart from a few vehicles ramming the gate itself, the rest actually drove straight into the wall. After several back-and-forth blows, a great hollow dent appeared in the wall.

The dents battered into the wall grew more and more numerous. The Taiping soldiers on the wall attacked them with boiling oil just as before, but they could do nothing against these ironclad men in several layers of heavy armor.

The ironclad soldiers did not fear boiling oil or fire at all; aside from a few who were scalded, the rest did not even bother to dodge.

The grass on the ground, though, was scalded yellow, and when fire arrows struck it, it blazed up at once — but the flames were too limited to threaten those ironclad soldiers.

Several dozen ironclad soldiers pressed over a hundred camp soldiers to hammer ceaselessly at the gate and wall, while the remaining camp soldiers, under their officers' direction, took out the iron spades hidden on the shield carts and dug furiously at the base of the wall, intending to hollow it out and then bury gunpowder to blast the wall down.

The gate tunnel was a blind spot for the defenders.

The Taiping soldiers on the wall could not see them at all unless they craned their heads out to look, but the Qing archers holding the line were viciously accurate, picking off exactly those Taiping soldiers who showed their heads.

After more than a dozen were shot dead in succession, the Taiping soldiers no longer dared poke their heads out to check on the Qing troops in those blind spots.

"This can't go on. Sooner or later they'll hollow the wall out!"

Zhou Shixiang paced in agitation. His eye fell on several long, slab-like stone steps not far away, and a plan came to him. With a shout, he led a dozen or so personal guards to carry one of the long stone slabs over.

The long stone slab was not only long but heavy — a single one weighed a full seven or eight hundred jin, and ten-odd strong men strained terribly to lift it. Another dozen or so able-bodied young men hurried over to help.

Together they slowly hauled the long slab to the edge of the wall, let out a single shout, heaved it above their heads, and hurled it down at the Qing soldiers below.

The great stone fell from the sky. With a thud, before the ironclad soldiers could react, it struck them square.

No one knew how many men were crushed beneath the long stone; all around it was nothing but flesh and blood. Heads, hands, and feet stuck out on every side, and blood and white matter welled out from under the slab — a sickening sight.

The trick worked. Zhou Shixiang at once ordered the soldiers to bring another slab.

This time they moved a little to the south, where several dozen Green Standard soldiers were grunting and digging furiously at the base of the wall. One of the diggers, tired, looked up and instantly went pale, letting out a wail.

The other camp soldiers stopped their work and all looked up together. Before they could even blink, a great stone slab had crashed down.

Apart from seven or eight who ran fast, all the camp soldiers were struck, and like the ironclad soldiers before them, they were smashed to pulp — dead beyond any doubt.

The great stone slabs crashing down from the walltop so terrified the ironclad soldiers and camp soldiers digging at the wall base that they no longer dared remain beneath the gate, and all fled screaming backward.

At that moment, from the Qing army's main camp to the rear came the sound of drums, redoubled in fervor. It was Shang Kexi, seeing through his telescope that the assault on the city was making no progress, who had ordered the drums beaten to bolster the attacking troops' courage.

On the walltop, the Taiping army's resistance grew ever fiercer. The two sides traded blow for blow. Gunfire crackled from the battlements from time to time, and what rained down was not only bullets but arrows as well.

Below the wall, the Qing army's arrows also fell like rain upon the walltop. Some Qing soldiers who shot especially well could even send an arrow through the small loopholes beneath the battlements, inflicting real harm on the Taiping musketeers sheltering behind them.

A musketeer of the Guard Battalion had just fired a shot and was reloading when, before he could draw his barrel back in, six or seven sharp arrows flew at him. He was struck in the left cheek, the right chest, and the neck, and with a scream he toppled backward.

The musketeers beside him saw it, and none dared stand to reload.

One by one they crouched carefully, and after loading their powder they would look all around, and only after making sure it was safe to show their heads would they spring up, fire a shot down at the city without even aiming, and then duck back down at once.

They were so fast that even the Qing army's finest archers found them hard to catch.

So it was that later, some of the better Qing archers merely drew their bows and held the string without releasing, watching the battlements, and would not shoot until a Taiping soldier showed his head.

In this way they hit more than ten unlucky Guard Battalion musketeers, but it also frightened the Guard Battalion musketeers so badly that they hardly dared raise their heads, and with that, the crackle of gunfire on the walltop grew sparser and sparser.

Beneath the gate, the surviving ironclad soldiers were still ramming the gate. In the gate tunnel there were probably a dozen or so ironclad soldiers and over thirty camp soldiers.

The Taiping army's stone slabs could not reach them, and their thunder bombs were used up. Seeing that the Taiping soldiers could do nothing to them, the Qing troops rammed the gate without restraint, until the gate posts and stones behind the gate began to loosen.

The Taiping soldiers behind the gate, terrified, hurriedly summoned the able-bodied young men and frantically packed the gate tight again.

The Qing soldiers who had suffered from the stone slabs had learned their lesson. They no longer dug at the wall, but instead shot arrows up at the walltop.

These ironclad soldiers were all master archers and killed quite a few Taiping soldiers. The Taiping army had only firelocks, bows, and crossbows, and could do nothing against these iron-armored Qing soldiers.

They could only watch helplessly as the enemy shot arrows up at the wall.