Chapter 178

At the critical moment, Peng Dazhu, a probationary centurion of the Guard Battalion, arrived with four long-barreled muskets. These long muskets were more than twice the length of ordinary firearms, and their barrels were much thicker.

When one fired, it was like a small cannon going off — no matter how many layers of armor you wore, you were knocked flat. Even if it could not pierce your armor, the sheer impact force would shatter your bones.

But this long musket had a fatal flaw: it was far more prone to bursting its barrel than an ordinary firearm. Often after only a few shots, the barrel would explode, so the Taiping Army was reluctant to use these long muskets.

It was only when Peng Dazhu brought his men up as reinforcements and saw how formidable the Qing armored soldiers were that he thought of the long muskets and hurriedly had men haul over a few. The moment they were set up, Peng Dazhu could not wait and roared: "Fire!"

The musketeers hurriedly lit the fuses, and at once came the thunderous "Bang, bang, bang" — but there were only six reports; one musket had misfired!

The musketeer of that gun thought it strange and leaned in to look, but the musket suddenly went off — "Bang!" — striking him full in the face.

His face was blasted into a mess of blood and flesh; flesh and blood flew everywhere, and his whole face was left like a skull, a horrifying sight. The soldier clutched his face and shrieked piercingly, but after only a few cries, he breathed his last.

This scene badly frightened the musketeers, and the men handling those long muskets trembled all over, staring at the weapons in their hands with unspeakable dread. The Taiping musketeers were terrified, but down below the wall the Qing armored soldiers had been solidly hit.

Amid a chorus of screams, several armored soldiers were blasted backward off their feet — either their armor was broken through or their chests seized up, as if struck by a great sledgehammer, every bone shattered.

"Fire!"

The six long muskets fired again despite the musketeers' fears, and more screams rose from below the wall. By rough estimate, no fewer than ten armored soldiers had been killed by the long muskets.

Seeing how fearsome the Taiping firearms were, the armored soldiers dared not stay where they were and instinctively fell back, the farther from the wall the better.

On the several ramps leading up to the wall, able-bodied men hurried back and forth carrying corpses and wounded soldiers. The ramps were slick with blood, and the physicians below the wall could not possibly treat them all.

As the wounded and dead multiplied, the old, weak, women, and children in the rear camp grew restless and fearful. The terrible scene of the Qing army nearly breaking through the defenses at Guifeng Mountain rose again in their minds.

They kept casting terrified glances toward the walltop, dreading the sight of Qing soldiers climbing up. Fortunately, the front camp fought stubbornly; though casualties were heavy, the Qing troops had not broken through.

By this point in the battle, the Zhenlu Battalion was already crippled — only a little over a hundred men remained in the whole battalion, and among them were several dozen wounded who had not yet left the wall.

Jiang He's Guard Battalion was in no better shape; by rough count, it likely had fewer than three hundred men left. The inexperienced Security Corps members had lost dozens in their first action, and of the able-bodied laborers, more than half were dead.

More than half of Zhou Shixiang's personal guards had also fallen in battle; only six remained at his side.

Such heavy casualties naturally made the defensive line on the wall unstable, so Zhou Shixiang immediately ordered the Xiongwei, Xianzhen, and Hujie Battalions to send up reinforcements; otherwise there was no way to suppress the Qing assault below.

Once the long-ready reinforcements from the three battalions — Xiongwei and the others — reached the walltop, the Qing climb was beaten back once more. Dozens of scaling ladders were destroyed, and morale sagged somewhat.

The assault on this city was simply too costly. Beneath the two-li stretch of wall, Qing corpses lay piled high.

Though most were Green Standard troops rather than bannermen — and while the household troops had suffered over a hundred casualties, they had not been crippled — the losses still pained Qin Guocheng, and he began to waver, wondering whether to press the assault further.

With casualties mounting and the Taiping troops on the wall showing no sign of exhaustion, Qin Guocheng had a growing sense of foreboding.

He felt that Xinhui could not be taken today no matter what, and if they kept fighting, his household troops might well bleed dry beneath the walls of Xinhui.

But he had boasted so boldly — if he did not take Xinhui, he, Qin Guocheng, would have to bring his own head to the Prince of Pingnan. So however terrible the fighting, the order to retreat was something Qin Guocheng absolutely dared not utter.

He could only force himself to remain composed and keep dispatching men to urge every unit to press the attack harder.

He also saw that Geng Zhongde's five hundred Plain Yellow Banner troops were not assaulting the city at all, merely shooting arrows up at the wall, suffering very few casualties.

At this point Qin Guocheng no longer cared about guest troops versus his own, or about "royal uncle" this or that — he sent a man straight over to order Geng Zhongde to attack immediately, and at the same time dispatched a messenger to the Prince of Pingnan requesting reinforcements.

Without an order to retreat, the Qing troops could only keep attacking, but their momentum was clearly weaker than before.

On the wall, the oil boiling in the great cauldrons was now hot. Seeing the Qing troops massing again, the Taiping officers quickly waved to the able-bodied men tending the oil.

At once, six men braced the great cauldron with iron rods and lifted it, slowly carrying it to the crenel, then heaved it up and tipped it over the wall.

Six great cauldrons tipped at once, and the boiling oil poured down like waterfalls. Below the wall rose a chorus of inhuman shrieks.

The Qing soldiers doused head-on by the hot oil were scalded until their skin split and flesh burst open. Unlike the armored soldiers, they wore only a simple padded cotton jacket — how could that thin cotton armor withstand such hot oil!

The cotton armor itself sizzled and smoked with a "chi-chi" sound. Those camp soldiers without armor fared even worse: their faces were instantly scalded open, as if cooked — red and raw, tender-looking...

Their hands were covered in blisters, patches of red skin peeling away from the flesh, hanging there in strips.

The household troops and armored soldiers fared somewhat better, but they were stunned frozen by the sight of the scalded camp soldiers. However fierce and brave they were, at this horrific scene they could not help but show hesitation on their faces.

On the wall, the Taiping troops kept hurling down battering logs, and stones of all sizes rained down here and there, inflicting heavy casualties on the Qing soldiers scaling the wall and bringing still more fear to men whose morale was already flagging.

The Qing troops began to shrink back. They no longer climbed boldly upward, nor dared they stubbornly mass beneath the wall. At first it was only a group of camp soldiers falling back, but then the bannermen too began to retreat.

Seeing this, Qin Guocheng flew into a rage. He raised his hand, and at once the dozen-odd Goshiha behind him drew their bows and nocked arrows, aiming at their retreating comrades.

"Any who retreat — death without mercy!"

"Get back! Get back!"

Qin Guocheng drew his sword and roared furiously. The Goshiha began drawing their bowstrings taut.

Staring at those sharp arrowheads and hearing the bannerman commander's roars, the Qing soldiers had no choice but to summon their courage once more, grit their teeth, pick up the scaling ladders from the ground, and turn back toward the wall.

"Up!"

Under the officers' shouted orders and compulsion, camp soldiers and bannermen alike were all herded onto the scaling ladders.

But before they had climbed halfway, the Taiping troops on the wall poured down hot oil again, scalding the Qing soldiers on the ladders until they wailed like ghosts and tumbled off.

The Qing soldiers on nearby ladders saw this and all tried to climb down in terror — but below them it was packed with men; there was nowhere to go.

They stared up at the crenels in boundless dread, hearts in their throats. Heaven be praised — they waited a moment, and no more hot oil came pouring down from the Taiping troops on the wall!

"They're out of oil! They're out of oil!"

The Qing soldiers cheered as if delivered from death — no more oil on the wall, no more oil on the wall!

It was not that the wall had no oil, but that it was not yet hot; poured down now, it would not scald anyone to death.

Below the wall, the Qing troops' spirits soared. More than a hundred household troops climbed up a dozen-odd scaling ladders. Those ladders were slick with oil; a foot set on them slipped at once, and only by using both hands and feet could they barely keep their footing.

"Up! Quickly, up!"

The officers bellowed impatiently. No sooner had one man climbed up than another was shoved on after him, for fear that if they did not hurry, the Taiping troops would pour down oil again.

But when the household troops at the tops of the ladders again drew close to the crenels, the Taiping muskets fired once more. Through a cloud of gunsmoke, a dozen-odd household troops screamed and fell from the ladders.

Yet some were unhurt and, with a jolt of urgency, swiftly climbed another stretch. Stones, wooden blocks, wall bricks — anything on the wall that could kill was hurled down by the Taiping troops with reckless abandon.

Below the wall, the Qing arrows never stopped flying upward. Plagued by the sheer volume of Qing arrows, the Taiping troops could only defend passively, and gradually the defenders at some crenels grew thinner and thinner.

The household-troop lieutenant Shi Tingyu had over a hundred men under him. Unexpectedly, before they even neared the wall, more than ten of his men had become casualties, all killed by the Taiping cannon fire from the walltop.

After closing on the wall, Shi Tingyu's ferocity flared; he personally directed the assault, and when the attack stalled, he resolutely led from the front and climbed a scaling ladder himself.

As a lieutenant, the armor Shi Tingyu wore was even better than that of Commander Qin Guocheng's personal guards: an innermost layer of chain mail, covered by an iron-studded cotton jacket.

Under the protection of this double-layered armor, the Taiping muskets and arrows could do him no harm. But wearing armor weighing several dozen jin also left Shi Tingyu somewhat breathless and drenched in sweat, as if shut in a stifling box — extremely uncomfortable.

By now Shi Tingyu no longer hoped to win any great merit; he only wished to take the city quickly and put an end to everything before him. He had had more than enough of this nightmarish siege assault.

Heaven rewards the determined. Inspired by Shi Tingyu leading from the front, household troops on several ladders were actually about to reach the walltop.

At the front, casualties were devastating; at the rear, Ban Zhifu and the other commanders could no longer sit still.

Seeing especially how few household troops remained, Ban Zhifu anxiously seized Shang Kexi by the hand and pleaded bitterly: "My Prince, this city can no longer be assaulted. If we keep attacking, everything will be wiped out!

My Prince, pull the men back first!"

Assistant Regional Commander Wang Guohui, Company Captain Zhou Bingzheng, and the others all joined in urging retreat. Shang Zhixin did not speak, but the helpless look on his face was plain enough.

It was not only the commanders who did not want to keep attacking — even the common Qing soldiers did not want to spend another second beneath the walls of Xinhui. The enormous casualties had already exceeded what they could mentally bear.

If no breakthrough came and the fighting went on like this, it likely would not be long before the Qing soldiers collapsed on their own, even with swords at their throats.

That isolated, besieged Xinhui should have cost him so many men — could the Taiping Army inside really be just a lone force of two or three thousand? And was its commander truly a bandit?

The stubborn fighting power shown by the defenders had already made Shang Kexi doubt the true state of the Taiping Army inside the city. Ban Zhifu's earnest pleas finally cooled him down, and he too began to waver.

But when he saw that household troops on several ladders were about to break through, he hesitated no longer. Pointing his spyglass that way, he shouted: "It's taken!

It's taken!"

Following Shang Kexi's gesture, Ban Zhifu and the others were also stunned. They saw three scaling ladders set together, and household troops were streaming up them onto the walltop in a continuous flow.

And who was that first man onto the walltop if not Lieutenant Shi Tingyu?!

The one blemish on this parade review was that the broadcast camera work seemed less than perfect and could not fully capture the grandeur of the march-past; moreover, members of a certain ethnic group wearing white caps seemed to appear on camera rather too frequently, which was as revolting as swallowing a fly.