Chapter 1071: Ruthless Beyond All Humanity! (Please Subscribe)

"Fix bayonets!"

Zhang Cheng, a native of Yin County, Ningbo Prefecture, Zhejiang Province, gave the order in Beijing-accented Mandarin. Behind him, the young soldiers of the Nine Border Garrisons, drawn up in a single line, silently fitted their bayonets onto the muzzles of their guns, producing a ripple of faint metallic clinks.

It was already the small hours of the morning — the darkest time of a Liaodong winter day — but for the officers and men of the Young Guard Division, accustomed to night fighting, this was the moment when they could shine.

Behind Zhang Cheng, who held the rank of Vice Chiliarch and served as commander of the First Battalion, Second Regiment of the Guard Army, stretched a forest of bayonets!

Zhang Cheng glanced back. By the dim moonlight he saw thousands of helmets behind him gently rising and falling; every man was in the standard kneeling position, forming a dense skirmish line, all watching Zhaojiazhuang opposite, which was being pounded by shellfire. After suppressing the Qing artillery, the Ming army had hauled six 24-jin mortars onto the battlefield and turned them on the Qing positions as well. These guns had a short range but terrifying power: each 24-jin wooden-base explosive shell burst over a wide area, and huge fireballs kept blossoming over the Qing forward positions — the exact direction of the Young Guard assault force's main attack.

Sixteen 3-jin bronze cannon had also been pushed up to the front line, but they had not opened fire; they simply crouched silently in the night. Zhang Cheng knew that eight of these sixteen 3-jin guns were already loaded with canister, and the other eight with solid shot — if the attacking troops were checked at the front, these cannon would be pushed forward to provide fire support!

But Zhang Cheng did not think that would happen, because he had complete confidence in the Nine Border youths under his command!

Through his own strenuous efforts, his battalion had been made the vanguard battalion for the coming assault, and he himself knelt at the very front of the formation, his face cold and expressionless, silent.

As one of the few southern officers in a new-army officer corps overwhelmingly dominated by northerners, this clansman-nephew of Zhang Huangyan (Zhang Huangyan had recommended him for the military academy) had always shown himself harsher and more hard-driving than the northern officers. Only in this way could he hold his ground in the army — because Zhu Cilang practiced last-place elimination among officers, the senior officers all wanted a few harsh, hard-driving "villains" under their command.

Because he was too harsh with his subordinates and gave his colleagues no friendly looks, Zhang Cheng had earned the nickname "Zhang the Little Demon" — meaning that while the King of Hell is easy to meet, the little demons are hard to deal with.

Of course, the senior officers under heavy "performance pressure" all liked such little demons. If all their subordinates were good-natured softies and bootlickers, they themselves would surely be eliminated in the last-place cull.

And when Emperor Zhu's treasured Young Guard Division was being formed, it drew "all sorts of little demons" from the various new-army divisions to serve as battalion and company commanders — and so Zhang Cheng, Zhang the Little Demon, was transferred into the Young Guard Division.

Because every one of his colleagues was hard to deal with (none of them were good people), Zhang Cheng's pressure grew even greater. He not only had to be a "demon," he had to be a demon unafraid to die — only then could he have a chance to climb upward!

Truly, the Great Ming now had a tyrant above and ruthless officials below; basically no good people could stand firm in officialdom. And what was even more speechless-making was that under Zhu Cilang's rule, such villains and ruthless officials generally never got their comeuppance.

Killing the donkey after the millstone is done was not Zhu Cilang's style!

They were all being ruthless officials and villains for the state and for His Majesty — great and loyal subjects, and the history books would speak well of them!

"Division Commander, all assault units have entered their start positions!"

A staff officer strode up to Qin Mingtao, saluted, and reported.

The kind of man Qin Mingtao was could be inferred from the fact that Zhu Cilang had placed him in command of the Young Guard Division. He had been a military jinshi in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, and had earned Emperor Zhu's notice by his merit in defending the palace gates to the death during the Battle of Tianjin. But the reason he had risen to his present post was entirely his harsh discipline and ruthless generalship — one had only to look at his string of night attacks since landing at the mouth of the Liao River to see how ruthless his use of troops was!

It was now bitterly cold, and heavy snow had just fallen; the battlefield on the east bank of the Liao River was a world of ice and snow, with nighttime temperatures of minus ten-some degrees. To make a bunch of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys crawl through ice and lie in snow in this weather, and then attack a Qing strongpoint — and to use eight thousand men from four regiments to assault more than twenty thousand of the enemy — it was simply ruthless beyond all humanity!

But Qin Mingtao's ruthlessness was absolutely necessary in this decisive campaign.

The Young Guard Army that Zhu Cilang had built at great expense and with much time even more precious than money (how precious is the Emperor's time! Not even enough for debauchery and misrule!) was brave and battle-hardened, but if it were truly thrown into a set-piece battle, it could not withstand tens of thousands of Qing troops grinding it down in waves — and at this moment Qin Mingtao also knew he had run straight into the Qing main force!

To fight a set-piece battle with them at this moment would be sheer folly!

As for withdrawing to Liangfangkou Pass and holding it in a tight defense, that would be safe enough — but then the eastern barbarians' main force could return to Shenyang unmolested, and Huang Degong, isolated deep in enemy territory on the northern route pretending to be the main force, would be in grave danger. Now that heavy snow had fallen in Liaodong, the mobility of the black-gun mule troops was certain to drop sharply; they could only shrink back and hold their ground. Eventually the eastern barbarians would probe out their true strength, and it was entirely possible that one fierce beating would defeat Huang Degong's column. For the overall strategy of pacifying Liaodong, if Huang Degong's column were defeated, it would be a severe blow.

So Qin Mingtao adopted the tactic of night attacks and daytime defense, fully exploiting the Young Guard Division's strength in night fighting (a skill beaten into them by the inhuman Emperor Zhu forcing them to work night shifts). He attacked only at night; by day they either rested, held their positions, or marched. In short, he would not fight the eastern barbarians in a set-piece battle in daylight!

But to use a little over ten thousand men (including artillery and one regiment in reserve) to attack Nikan's twenty thousand-plus at night was truly pushing ruthlessness to the limit. If the attack failed and enemy reinforcements arrived in force, the losses would be catastrophic.

Qin Mingtao understood this logic perfectly. At this moment he stood atop a cart used for transporting mortars, gazing northward. In the starlight and moonlight he saw row upon row of cold gleams flickering like waves — the bayonets of the eight thousand young soldiers' firelocks and the points of their pikes. They waited only for his single command, and this pack of howling wolf-cubs would hurl themselves forward to savage the eastern barbarians.

Commander Qin's face had gone cold. Without wasting words, he gave a light wave of his hand: "Begin the attack!"

The staff officers and orderlies around him immediately passed the terse order down the line. In front of Commander Qin's position, a full row of suona players sounded the advance in unison.

Zhang the Little Demon had long been waiting for this moment. He sprang to his feet, drew his sword, and pointed forward: "For Sovereign and Father, defend the Great Ming — Guard Army, advance!"

"For Sovereign and Father, defend the Great Ming — kill the enemy!"

The young soldiers of the Guard Army instantly burst into frenzied shouts! Then wave after wave of cold steel surged as all eight thousand officers and men rose to their feet, and with Zhang Cheng's infantry battalion in the lead, they advanced at quick march toward Zhaojiazhuang!

Nikan, too, was now fully armored and, with his Manchu personal guards, had pushed up to the front line, braving the threat of explosive shells that might burst over his head at any moment.

Where the Ming army would attack was obvious — it was exactly the place they were now frantically shelling. And all Nikan could do now was concentrate as many troops as possible there to take the shelling. The shells would not kill many — three to five hundred at most — but the blow to morale was enormous. To stand and be shelled without striking back — no one could endure that!

But Nikan was also a ruthless man. He issued iron orders: first, no sorties! Second, no retreat! Third, no lying flat to avoid the shells — because once a man lay down, he might as well be playing dead, and he would never get up again!

They all had to stand bolt upright and take the shelling!

"My Prince, the Ming barbarians are coming up!"

A "black man" — a company captain whose face had been blackened by gunpowder, very likely grazed by an exploding shell — sprinted up to Nikan and reported in a trembling voice.

"What are you panicking for?" Nikan barked. "Never killed southern barbarians before?"

The "black man" shook his head. "My Prince, these southern barbarians are different! Their momentum is terrifying, and they are ferocious beyond measure."

"So what?" Nikan glared at him. "The Prince Regent's reinforcements are already on the way. We only need to hold until dawn, and we will win!"

His words had barely faded when crackling gunfire erupted from the front — the Qing matchlock muskets had opened fire!

(End of Chapter)