Chapter 103: The Roving King Arrives — Cannon Fodder, Part 1 (Seeking Collections, Seeking Recommendations)

The sound of metal being struck violently rang out through the curtain of rain, piercing layer upon layer of white mist and vapor, announcing that another assault by the Shun army had failed.

On both banks of the Wei River, two tall mounds of earth had already been piled up. Even as the siege battle raged on, commoners and laborers conscripted from the surrounding countryside were still straining to haul grass sacks full of earth up onto these two mounds, to pile them even higher. No one dared slack off, because the Shun army's veteran camp soldiers, fierce as demons, were on the spot overseeing the work! In the mud and water lay seven or eight corpses, all commoners who had tried to flee and been cut down!

The rain poured down like a waterfall, and military law stood firm as a mountain. The earth-piling work was enormous and the time was tight, and the conscripted laborers had not even had a chance to "eat his mother, drink his mother" before being dragged off to toil as coolies. Dragged off along with the people were their livestock and stored grain!

The area south of the Wei River at Tianjin, because it had the river channel as a barrier and the protection of the Tianjin naval force, had suffered relatively little in the several Manchu incursions. So the population was still fairly dense, and the common people's stored grain and valuables were more plentiful. This actually made it convenient for the Shun army now besieging the city to conscript labor and requisition grain.

But the common people now forced to carry earth and pile the mounds had hearts that were turning cold!

Was it not said that the Roving King was benevolent and righteous, that the Shun army committed no offense against the people? Why now were they conscripting labor and requisitioning grain, no different from Zhu the traitor's soldiers after all!

In truth, these laborers piling earth in the rain were still fortunate — at least far more fortunate than those who had been driven to the north wall of Tianjin to serve as cannon fodder.

The north city of Tianjin was not large. It stood against the Wei River to the north, a small fortress connected to the south city by a pontoon bridge. Between the two cities, the stretch of the Wei River east of the pontoon bridge was where the sand ships entering the Wei River anchored.

The Wei River sea-access wharf lay on the south bank, right next to the north gate of the south city, and on the other side of the pontoon bridge there was also a grain transport wharf. Grain unloaded from the seagoing sand ships could be hauled directly to the grain transport wharf and loaded onto transport barges bound for Tongzhou.

The grain transport had long since been cut off, so on the west side of the pontoon bridge, around the old grain transport wharf, there was not a single vessel. But on the river east of the pontoon bridge, the surface was now packed dense with the sand ships of the Sand Ship Gang.

These sand ships lay under the protection of Tianjin's north and south cities and the pontoon bridge, and could be said to be absolutely safe.

But once the north city of Tianjin was breached, the sand ships anchored on the Wei River would be in trouble. For once the north city fell, the pontoon bridge would also be lost. And once the pontoon bridge was destroyed, the Shun army could use the conscripted transport barges to launch an attack down the Wei River against the Sand Ship Gang's sand ships.

If the wind and rain stopped and the weather cleared, the Shun army could even use the current to launch a fire-ship assault!

The Wei River channel was only so wide — nothing like the open sea. If a large number of fire ships came sweeping downstream, Chief Helmsman Shen's sand ships would face a disaster of fire and flame.

So Li Yan, who understood something of river warfare, after a round of reconnaissance chose the north city of Tianjin as the breakthrough point. At the same time he ordered the conscription of large numbers of laborers and able-bodied men from the surrounding villages. Part of them were sent to pile earth on both banks of the Wei River — to build up high points where archers, arquebusiers, and crouching-tiger cannons could be positioned. These laborers were mainly poor peasants, so they only sold their muscle, with little danger to their lives.

The other part, able-bodied men conscripted from the wealthy households around Tianjin, were thrown directly into the assault on the north city of Tianjin!

At this moment, beneath the north city of Tianjin, the horror was ten times worse!

Because of the days of continuous rain, the water level in the moat of the north city of Tianjin had risen sharply, but several places had already been filled in with grass sacks, forming passageways. Around these passageways, the corpses of commoners and laborers lay piled in layers.

Beneath the not-very-tall city wall were scattered many shield carts and battering rams, all crudely made things, using many door panels, roof beams, and wooden pillars as materials — who knew how many civilian houses had been torn down?

Those pushing these shield carts and battering rams were also commoners, men and women, old and young. Quite a few still wore tattered silk clothes, clearly from wealthy households. They had no armor or protective gear to defend themselves, and after a few waves of assault they lay dead everywhere, soaked pale in the mud and water. But how could the Shun army soldiers care whether they lived or died? Had it been the Ming army, perhaps they would not have cared about the poor and lower-middle peasants, but those landlords and rich men with examination degrees could not be casually killed off. Otherwise a pack of civil officials at court would leap up, and the military commanders below would be dazed and confused.

But the Shun side had no such scruples! Who cared whether you were a xiucai or a juren? None of you were good people. The poor peasants, by contrast, were treated somewhat better — at least they were not immediately driven forward as cannon fodder.

But once the wealthy households around Tianjin were used up, it would be their turn!

The first to be sent into the slaughter were Tang Tong's troops. Li Zicheng's ranks also observed first-come-first-served: the veteran camp soldiers counted as original followers and were the most precious. Chen Yongfu's troops had been gathered before Li Zicheng seized Shaanxi, and counted as old soldiers. Tang Tong's troops had only recently defected, and counted as newly attached troops — naturally they were used for the grinding siege warfare. Driven by Li Guo's veteran camp soldiers, they launched wave after wave of assaults. Fighting against the defenders holding the walls or sallying out in counterattacks, the warriors on both sides wore the Ming army's mandarin-duck battle jackets, dying in heaps upon heaps together. Some not yet fully dead let out waves of despairing wails.

Outside the north, east, and west walls of the north city of Tianjin, there were also three fortifications built from grass sacks filled with earth — these were gun emplacements! Once the rain cleared and the sky brightened, the red-coated cannons and Folangji cannons brought from Beijing would be pushed into these emplacements to bombard the city walls.

On top of the city walls there were wooden screens and cloth screens for shelter from rain and arrows, shielding more than ten Folangji cannons tightly and completely. These dozen or so Folangji cannons were all under the command of Johann Adam Schall von Bell and a newly minted jinshi named Liu Liang.

The latter was a young man in his twenties, fair-skinned and refined, clearly a Confucian elite. Yet somehow he had joined the foreign religion, having studied mathematics, chemistry, and gunnery under the Catholic priest Francesco Sambiasi, who had come to China from the Kingdom of Naples. After passing the jinshi examination in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, he had even submitted a memorial reviving Xu Guangqi's and Sun Yuanhua's proposals to save the nation through firearms. But by then the Chongzhen Emperor was already utterly overwhelmed and had no funds to push military reform, so nothing came of it. Afterward, this Liu Liang remained in Beijing awaiting appointment while continuing to study Western exotic arts and crafts under Johann Adam Schall von Bell.

On the twenty-first day of the third month, he had fled together with Johann Adam Schall von Bell, Li Zubai, and the others, following Zhu Cilang. Now they were all temporarily assigned to the Military Administration Guard of the Grand Marshal's Office of the Army-Pacifying Command, with divided responsibility for firearms. Li Zubai managed gunpowder; Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Su Ziwen managed the cannons. Li Zubai's son Li Shi had been recruited by Zhu Cilang to take charge of ironworking.

Incidentally, the attitude of Ming dynasty scholar-officials toward Western exotic arts and crafts differed from that of later Qing dynasty scholar-officials. Qing scholar-officials placed greater weight on the Confucian orthodoxy and were full of wariness toward Western culture and exotic arts and crafts. Ming scholar-officials, by contrast, had stronger curiosity and a more positive attitude toward learning Western culture and technology. Proper Confucian scholars and even great Confucian masters such as Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua, Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, Li Tianjing, and Li Zubai all openly studied and translated Western technical books, and quite a few even joined the Catholic Church! They did not even bother with the doctrine of "Chinese learning as the essence, Western learning for practical use."

By comparison, the Qing was far more resolute in defending the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Historically, Li Zubai and his son Li Shi, who had gone over to the Great Qing, were sentenced to death by slow slicing because of a single book, "A General Account of Heavenly Learning"! By the late Qing period, even a great Confucian like Lin Zexu, who had opened his eyes to the world, did not know whether Englishmen's knees could bend. As for Li Hongzhang, that traitorous Westernization advocate of "Chinese learning as the essence, Western learning for practical use," he long remained a public enemy of the Confucian orthodoxy — had he not had an army in his hands, his head would likely not have been kept either...

(End of Chapter)