Chapter 75: Blasting

The blasting was scheduled for daytime, not night. The reason for this arrangement was to prevent the sound of the explosion from triggering a camp riot.

The so-called "camp riot" refers to a mutiny within the camp. Seventeenth-century armies were nothing like those of later eras.

Camp regulations were extremely strict; even speaking loudly, let alone casually spreading rumors, could cost a man his life. Moreover, a military camp was a place of pure killing intent.

Whether under the Ming or the Qing, there existed camp rules known as the "Seventeen Prohibitions and Fifty-Four Executions." Soldiers lived their days in constant fear, and the mental oppression built up year after year can well be imagined.

Furthermore, the military hierarchy of this era was excessively rigid. Officers wantonly bullied the rank and file, veterans banded together to bully new recruits, and soldiers formed cliques and factions, fighting openly and scheming in secret.

Grievances accumulated year after year, held in check only by military discipline. Before a great battle, with every man's life hanging in the balance and no one knowing when he might meet his end, the soldiers' spirits were practically at the breaking point.

A single soldier screaming from a nightmare could be enough to drive the entire camp's officers and men into collective madness. Soldiers with blades in hand, once they went berserk, would naturally slash wildly to vent their fury.

Those with grievances settled grievances, those with grudges avenged grudges. The officers who normally bullied the soldiers were essentially the first targets of that venting.

When it truly came to that, apart from a rare few who were lucky, most officers would likely die beneath the blades of those crazed soldiers.

The Taiping Camp was not an army of later times. Neither its structure nor the quality of its soldiers could compare with a later army, and it had only been formed a dozen or so days ago.

The rear camp held nearly ten thousand elderly, weak, women, and children, people whose understanding of explosions was very low. If the blasting had been carried out late at night, that tremendous sound would undoubtedly have been the fuse that set off a camp riot.

Just imagine: when a person is sound asleep and a sudden tremendous boom rings out, how is he supposed to react? Even if it did not cause a camp riot, the whole city would likely have been thrown into chaos.

One could never be too careful. At Song Xianggong's reminder, Zhou Shixiang set the blasting time for daytime, and through the camp elders he notified the camp's civilians in advance that the army would be carrying out a gunpowder explosion at the east wall.

The various units of the front camp were also notified. Most soldiers did not understand what "blasting" meant, so some who had once served in the Ming or Qing armies explained to them what cannon fire sounded like.

Under their explanation, the roar produced by the blast was basically about the same as the sound of a cannon firing.

Zhou Shixiang was not about to explain the difference between cannon fire and a blast. What he wanted was simply for the soldiers and the elderly, weak, women, and children to be mentally prepared, so they would not be frightened.

Such things were unfamiliar the first time and familiar the second. Once they had heard the first boom, the next one would be nothing remarkable, and it would not startle anyone.

The ones burying the gunpowder were Tie Yi and two squad leaders from the engineer camp.

These three could be considered the most prized disciples Zhou Shixiang had trained over the past two days, so when Zhou Shixiang decided to carry out a small-scale formal blast, the three of them volunteered to take on the task of burying the powder and lighting the fuse.

Naturally, Zhou Shixiang would not refuse this request. He could not have wished for anything better than for these men to become more and more proficient at blasting.

Before the detonation, apart from Zhao Sihai, who was guarding the public stores, all the squad leaders of the front camp were summoned to the east wall. Even Chen Mo, who commanded the convict death-squad, was called over to watch.

Liao Ruixiang brought several men to carry over a table and a few chairs for the "sirs" to sit on. Then, at a glance from Zhou Shixiang, he raised the small triangular red flag in his hand and waved it once toward the city wall.

Once the red flag was waved, everyone's breathing immediately grew tense. Those who had experienced cannon fire instinctively covered their ears, while those who had not thought nothing of it, staring open-mouthed at the wall with faces full of curiosity.

To achieve the best possible blasting effect and maximize the visual impact, Zhou Shixiang had specifically instructed Tie Yi and the others to bury that jar of gunpowder beneath a section of the wall that was already damaged and loose, and had earlier ordered men to scatter a great deal of white lime below that section of wall.

That way, the visual impression after the explosion would be considerably greater than what the amount of powder alone would have produced.

After roughly several dozen seconds, a muffled boom came from beneath the wall, utterly unlike the sharp crack of cannon fire. The ground also jolted once, though the tremor was not very strong.

Those covering their ears felt somewhat disappointed, thinking to themselves that this blasting was nothing much, not even equal to the Tartars' cannons.

Just as they were thinking this, a cloud of dust suddenly rose from beneath the wall. What met the eye was yellow and white, bricks and earth.

In a moment, that section of wall was shrouded in gray haze. In roughly the span of two breaths, the entire section of wall sank downward, revealing a hole about the height of a man.

Ge Zheng clapped his hands sharply and shouted excitedly: "It worked!"

"It collapsed, it collapsed, it really collapsed?!"

Song Xianggong still could not quite believe what he was seeing. Earlier, when Zhou Shixiang had told him that gunpowder could blast down a city wall, he had not really believed it.

Now, seeing it with his own eyes, it was true.

Although only a small section of an already crumbling wall had been blown down, and the breach revealed was only about the height of a man, when he thought that this was the power of just one jar of gunpowder, the shock in his heart could well be imagined.

Back when he had been in the bandit army of the Chuang rebels, he had many times witnessed the Chuang army besieging cities.

Every assault had been a human-wave attack, throwing the lives of commoners as cannon fodder into the moat and beneath the walls, yet more often than not the walls could not be taken.

As a result, when the Chuang army besieged a city, they mostly surrounded it without attacking, relying mainly on starving out the defenders, and also employed strategies such as building up earthworks and flooding.

But blasting walls with gunpowder like this was something he had never seen. If the Chuang army had possessed this technique back then, they might well have fought their way into Beijing two years earlier.

"This is the art of immortals, the art of immortals..."

Song Xianggong murmured to himself, his eyes flashing with light: if one jar of gunpowder had such power, then what of ten jars, a hundred jars, a thousand jars? What was blasted before his eyes was Luoding. In the future, could they not blast Zhaoqing, blast Guangzhou, blast Nanjing?

The squad leaders were all shouting, while the camp elders whispered among themselves. Every face shone with excitement and wonder. The visual impact of the smoke and dust after the blast was simply too strong; they could not help but be shaken.

Zhou Shixiang, the man behind it all, showed neither joy nor anger on his face. He merely waved for men to go inspect the blast point and see whether the bricks at the base of the wall showed signs of loosening.

Before long, Tie Yi came in person with his men to report, saying that although the wall bricks had not loosened too much, the foundation beneath had already come loose. If men were set to digging inward with force, the wall could be brought down in less than half a day.

After hearing this, Zhou Shixiang went in person to inspect the blast point. Throughout the inspection he dictated continuously while Liao Ruixiang took notes, to serve as reference for the engineer camp's training and actual combat.

"Brother Zhou... Sir Battalion Commander, with this gunpowder, can we go attack Deqing now?"

Ge Yi was accustomed to calling Zhou Shixiang "Brother Zhou," but no sooner had the words left his mouth than his elder brother Ge Zheng tugged at him, and the words became "Sir Battalion Commander."

Judging by his impatient manner, he had clearly reached the same thought as Song Xianggong, pointing toward using this blasting method to blast Deqing's city wall, then enter the city and make a fortune.