Chapter 1063: Danger! The Youth Guards Division! (Please Subscribe)

The fifty-two-year-old Manchu veteran Aisin Gioro Bahana was already fully armored and had climbed to the fortress on Little Black Mountain, behind the Black Mountain Long Ramparts. The fortress here was first built in the Goguryeo era and is a stone-walled city. During the years Dodo had been developing Manchuria, it had been continuously expanded until it was much like the mountain castles of Japan.

The Little Black Mountain fortress was of course very strong! With just two or three thousand elite troops holding it, even tens of thousands of enemies would find it hard to break through in a short time — the fortress was on a mountain, after all! And Little Black Mountain was not exactly small, so cannons placed at the foot of the mountain could hardly reach the fortress above. And hauling cannons up the mountain and finding a suitable spot to set them up would be an exhausting undertaking.

However, the cannons mounted on the Little Black Mountain fortress likewise had limited range, not enough to seal off the coastal flatland west of Little Black Mountain — from the Little Black Mountain fortress west to the sea was seventeen li, and in this age no cannon of any kind could reach that far.

Moreover, to the southeast of Little Black Mountain there was another stretch of passable flatland — from the Little Black Mountain fortress southeast to the sea was twelve li. Again, no artillery piece could fire that far.

And in order to seal off these two coastal passages, Dodo had ordered the construction of two long ramparts west and southeast of Little Black Mountain — the so-called Black Mountain Long Ramparts.

Both of these long ramparts had been built under Bahana's supervision. This old Manchu general, a senior elder of the Aisin Gioro clan (of Nurhaci's nephew's generation), was of course especially unwilling to see the realm that the Taizu and Taizong had won through such bitter toil be utterly thrown away.

So he had taken particular care in overseeing the construction of the Black Mountain Long Ramparts! First, he had ordered the digging of two long trenches, one seventeen li and the other twelve li in length, three zhang wide and two zhang deep.

Then he had the earth dug from the trenches piled into two long ramparts of the same lengths.

Finally, he had a fortress built every three-odd li — six on the west, three on the east, nine fortresses in all.

The defensive system of the Black Mountain Long Ramparts, composed of mountain castle, trenches, long ramparts, and fortresses, could absolutely be described as impregnable. But no matter how strong a defensive line, it still cannot hold without sufficient troops to defend it.

Raising his telescope and seeing the Ming army's artillery positions concentrated to the southwest of Little Black Mountain, Bahana's heart sank straight down.

The Ming army had deployed at least a hundred cannons in front of the Black Mountain West Rampart — real cannons! They all looked large. They were absolutely not 3-pounders, nor 6-pounders; they were at least 12-pounders, and some were 24-pounders!

Bahana knew the general outline of the Ming army's artillery system — the Ming artillery system was modeled on Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus, composed of 3-pound (jin) guns, 12-pound (jin) guns, and 24-pound (jin) guns. The 3-pounders were for killing men, the 12-pounders for counter-battery fire, and the 24-pounders for battering cities. Moreover, the Ming army had "independently developed" wooden-base explosive shells, and their artillery's destructive power was first-rate in the world!

And the appearance of more than a hundred siege and counter-battery guns at the front of the Black Mountain Long Ramparts unquestionably meant that the Ming army's main force was also in this direction.

If the Ming army had not deployed an independent artillery regiment at the front of the Black Mountain Long Ramparts, then these field heavy guns belonged to at least six to eight Ming divisions.

With the 3,000 men in Bahana's hands, it was absolutely impossible to hold the long ramparts.

Just as Bahana was sinking into wave after wave of despair, flashes of fire suddenly appeared one after another across the Ming artillery positions opposite!

The Ming cannons had opened fire!

Bahana hurriedly turned his head toward the Black Mountain West Rampart and saw columns of smoke rising into the sky in all manner of shapes, while at the same time he heard a continuous roar of thunder.

"Explosive shells! How much gunpowder must this take! How much silver..." Seeing the columns of smoke bursting from those explosive shells, Bahana's heart was nearly breaking.

This was not fighting a battle — this was throwing money away!

The gunpowder the Ming army burned through in a single day at the Black Mountain Long Ramparts was probably more than the Qing army in Andong used in a whole year! How did they have so much gunpowder? Did their gunpowder cost nothing?

How was this war to be fought!

Just as he was thinking this, someone beside him shouted, "Angbang Zhangjing, the Ming army's main force... so many of them!"

Bahana hurriedly looked again beyond the Ming artillery positions, and what met his eyes was a vast glittering expanse — that was the sunlight reflecting off bayonets fixed to the muzzles of muskets! Judging by that great expanse of bayonets, there were no fewer than ten thousand men!

And this was only the first wave of the assault!

The old man sighed and said to those around him: "We can't hold it. Have the brothers all withdraw to the mountain fortress!"

"Withdraw to the mountain fortress? And then what?"

"Then..." Bahana sighed. "Then go take shelter by the Yalu River."

"Go to the Yalu River?" A Manchu youth in his twenties muttered, "So we're giving up the Jinzhou trading port too?"

The Jinzhou trading port lay just behind the Black Mountain Long Ramparts. It was a market town carefully built up by Jibus, and of course it could not compare with Nanjing or Shanghai. But beyond the Pass, it was absolutely a place of the first rank of prosperity. Even that so-called "Capital of the Pacific," Vladivostok, did not have a tenth of the Jinzhou market's prosperity or commercial tax revenue!

This Manchu youth's father's generation had been among the first old hands to follow Dodo beyond the Pass, and he himself had grown up in the bustling Jinzhou trading port and often went over to the Ming side to amuse himself in Lüshun Prefecture.

Now to suddenly abandon his prosperous hometown and go stay by the Yalu River — he truly could not bear it!

Bahana sighed: "Go... go. If you want to live, you must go far away!"

"Ha ha! They've charged up! Ha ha, they've already charged up!"

On a height behind the Ming artillery positions, Li Yuanyin was gesticulating excitedly as he said to Zhu Chunchen beside him: "Governor-General, our men have already charged up... they succeeded in the first wave. Truly well done!"

Zhu Chunchen did not even look ahead, because he was bent over reading a military dispatch that had just arrived. The dispatch said that the Youth Guards Division had successfully landed at the mouth of the Liao River, and that near the Liangfangkou Pass they had discovered a great camp just abandoned by the Qing army. The scale of this camp was astonishing, enough to accommodate eighty to a hundred thousand troops!

"Commander Li, take a look at this." Zhu Chunchen thrust the dispatch into his hand. "Qin Mingtao has found the Qing main force. It's right at Liangfangkou Pass — eighty to a hundred thousand men!"

"What?" Li Yuanyin was badly startled, and no longer had any mind to watch the victory unfolding ahead. "Did the landing fail? The Youth Guards Division didn't take heavy losses, did it?"

The Youth Guards Division was an infantry division built mainly around the youths of the Nine Frontiers — the original plan had been to distribute six regiments of the Youth Army among six Ming infantry divisions. But the Liaodong Pacification War had broken out ahead of schedule and thrown the Ming army's reorganization plan into disarray, so the six Youth Army infantry regiments had simply been formed into a single division. Because this division had an especially large number of men, especially good equipment (uniformly flintlock muskets), and an especially high level of training, it had been used for the landing at the mouth of the Liao River.

But no matter how elite a unit, if it encountered an enemy several times its own strength in a landing battle, it would probably still be very hard-pressed to win.

"The landing succeeded," Zhu Chunchen said. "For some reason the Qing army withdrew on its own initiative and abandoned Liangfangkou Pass."

"Then where did they withdraw to?"

"Unknown," Zhu Chunchen said. "Duoni must be planning to let the Guards Division come ashore and then attack."

"Then we..."

"We have to hurry! A hundred thousand men — the Youth Guards Division can't hold out for long. They don't even have cavalry!"

Li Yuanyin grew tense as well. "I will immediately draw out the six Black Cavalry battalions and the three heavy cavalry regiments and form a cavalry group. Once we break through the Black Mountain Long Ramparts, I will lead them to the relief of Liangfangkou."

His six Black Cavalry battalions were division-level troops, while the three heavy cavalry regiments were independent units temporarily attached to the Liaodong Army Group. If these cavalry units were combined, they would form a cavalry group of over ten thousand men, and of these, the 6,000 heavy cavalry were all mounted on Indian and Arabian horses. Their shock power completely exceeded anything the Qing army could imagine.

"Good, good. You go personally," Zhu Chunchen said. "Leave the main force to Assistant Regional Commander Wang Zhou!"

(End of Chapter)