Chapter 1072: Ten Thousand Youths — A Foe Unmatched! (Seeking Subscriptions)

Hearing the dull report of Spanish muskets, Nikan's face darkened again — this was blind firing! The Ming troops were still a hundred paces away, and in the dead of night, with only the faint rise and fall of cold steel visible by moonlight, could firing now possibly hit anything?

Seeing Nikan about to lose his temper, the "black man" hastily urged, "My Prince, just let the men fire their guns to steady their nerves. Morale is wavering and spirits are low; if we don't make some noise, I fear the troops will scatter in a rout!"

"This... this..." Nikan clenched his teeth. "How could our Manchu heavenly soldiers, so valiant, have fallen to such a state?"

The "black man" shook his head and said with a bitter smile, "My Prince, the Manchu heavenly soldiers of old have long since been whittled away to nothing. Those taking the field today are all farmers from inside the Pass lured here by a few dozen mu of land. What can you possibly expect of them?"

Nikan was speechless for a moment. Then, finding the man's face unfamiliar, he asked, "You... who are you? How dare you speak like that?"

"This humble officer is Deng Ken, formerly of the late Prince Dingnan's command."

The late Prince Dingnan was Kong Youde, and this Captain Deng was a remnant of the Kong family army. Nikan remembered now: when Dodo had marched out of the Pass, he had drawn men from every banner of the Plain Green Banner, among them Kong Youde's subordinates, led out of the Pass at the time by Kong Tingxun. But later, after Kong Youde smashed his own skull with a brush-washer and died for the Great Qing, Kong Tingxun had returned inside the Pass, and the men he left beyond the Pass were swallowed up by Dodo, folded company by company into the Plain Blue Banner Han troops. This Deng Ken had then been a company captain; who would have thought he had now risen to regimental captain.

"Well, well," Nikan stamped his foot. "Blind firing is better than no firing. Let them steady their nerves!"

Nikan could do nothing with the bunch of old peasants under his command; if he pressed them too hard, he feared they would scatter in a rout! Meanwhile, the young soldiers on the other side did not so much as furrow their brows as they continued closing on the enemy at quick-march pace — they had not formed any line or square, for keeping formation on the move in the dark of night was troublesome. Nor was there any need: this was no pitched battle in ranks, but an assault on the enemy's camp, so they had adopted a comparatively dense skirmish formation organized by company.

But however dense, it was still a skirmish line, not to be compared with a dense line or square. Thus eight thousand young soldiers in the black of night presented the appearance of twenty or thirty thousand men, striking terror into the Qing troops, who could not gauge their true strength.

Of course, Qin Mingtao had chosen to attack in a broad skirmish formation not to intimidate anyone, but to keep the attacking troops from being cut down in numbers by the Qing 3-pounder cannons firing grapeshot — the Qing 6-pounders had already been largely destroyed, but their 3-pounders had not fired once, surely waiting for the Ming infantry to close in!

By not firing, they naturally did not expose their positions, and the Ming 12-catty guns had no way to destroy them.

Moreover, the skirmish formation was also meant to stretch the Qing line where they had concentrated their defenses, increase the number of Ming assault waves, and prolong the time the Qing muskets had to keep firing — the quality of Qing muskets was uneven and their gunners poorly trained; once firing went on for long, many mishaps were bound to occur, whether ramrods being shot out or muskets bursting in the barrel.

Since it was a skirmish formation, there was no concept of volley fire; when to fire was entirely up to the soldiers themselves, with officers at most giving a rough range.

Zhang Cheng knew that his vanguard battalion was meant to draw the enemy's 3-pounders into firing, and so must not open fire too early. If they did, the enemy would see they were in skirmish order, and perhaps would not fire the cannons at all, instead sending infantry to counterattack. So he set the first firing range at thirty or forty paces. Whether the men below could carry it out, though, depended entirely on their own discipline.

As the distance to the Qing positions shrank, Zhang Cheng's heart rose into his throat — if a Qing 3-pounder happened to be right in front of him, one blast and he would have given his life for the Ming realm!

Besides, the muskets on the Qing line ahead were firing away merrily, a cloud of smoke boiling up so thick that nothing could be seen — clearly they were using low-grade powder full of impurities.

Suddenly, out of the roiling smoke ahead flashed a burst of exceptionally bright fire, followed at once by a deafening cannon blast!

That must be a 3-pounder bronze cannon firing, and at close range — just over a hundred paces away!

Needless to say, what it fired was surely grapeshot!

And since Zhang Cheng could still hear the blast and felt no searing agony anywhere on his body, he had not been hit. Since he had not been hit, it was time to charge.

The Ming infantry had now closed on the Qing forward line, and the 12-catty short guns and 24-catty mortars to the rear had all ceased fire, nor could they be used to suppress the Qing 3-pounders. So it was up to the foremost infantry to finish off those cannons with bayonet and flintlock!

Zhang Cheng hastily turned his head, wanting to give the order to the bugler following behind him, but found no sign of the man. Looking again, he saw that the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old northwestern youth had pitched forward onto the ground and lay motionless. Whether he had been killed by grapeshot from the Qing 3-pounder, there was no telling.

"Guards! Charge!"

"The Guards defend the Ming, protect the sovereign and father!"

In the instant Zhang Cheng's attention had wandered, the young soldiers under his command had already charged on their own — the enemy's 3-pounders had fired!

The sound of cannon was the order to charge!

Nor were these young soldiers charging blindly; they rushed in a mass from every direction toward the nearest Qing 3-pounder — truly advancing into the enemy's fire!

A hundred-pace sprint was a race with death itself! If the Qing gunners could finish reloading before they closed in, they would reap a harvest of lives; otherwise these young soldiers would take the cannons with bayonet and musket!

Zhang Cheng no longer bothered looking for the bugler; raising his sword, he charged along with them.

As the young soldiers drew nearer to the Qing gun positions, some of them began halting to raise their muskets and fire toward the general area of the Qing cannons. Because the smoke ahead had not yet cleared, they could not aim precisely, but neither were they firing at random — they were disrupting the enemy's reloading. They could charge through cannon fire; the enemy might not be able to reload through a rain of bullets.

Whether the Qing gunners were simply too poor at their trade or were thrown off by the young soldiers' fire, in any case the cannons did not fire again even after the young soldiers had charged to within twenty-odd paces of them. By then, the smoke before the Qing line had also thinned somewhat, and visibility had greatly improved — the reason being that most of the matchlocks that had been firing wildly just now had gone silent on their own, either too hot to reload or burst in the barrel, while some had their ramrods shot out because the gunners were too nervous.

Now the Qing firepower had fallen off sharply, while the Ming youths began shooting with precision. Two or three hundred muskets were all aimed at the gunners frantically trying to reload the cannons, and a crackling volley turned the Qing artillery position into a field of corpses!

After killing most of the Qing gunners, these young soldiers did not withdraw, nor did they waste time reloading; raising their bayonet-fixed rifles, they charged on!

This thoroughly terrified the Qing musketeers on the forward line who had been firing from behind the breastwork. Though they were all issued socket bayonets, they had received no bayonet drill and had no stomach for hand-to-hand combat — according to standard Spanish tercio tactics, close combat was the work of pikemen and sword-and-buckler men! Since when did musketeers fight hand-to-hand? If musketeers did the close fighting too, what were the pikemen and sword-and-buckler men supposed to do?

So these musketeers rose and fell back one after another, running toward the pikemen drawn up in squares to the rear. And in running, they "yielded" a breastwork built with such painstaking effort to the charging Ming troops, while also abandoning six 3-pounder cannons that had fired only once!

Nikan, supervising the battle from behind the line, was so furious at the sight that he nearly jumped out of his skin — what kind of fighting was this! A position that had taken a whole day of backbreaking labor to build had been taken in a single charge, and six cannons seized along with it! He had eighteen cannons in all; now the six 6-pounders were all silent, and the six 3-pounders had been captured. How was he supposed to fight the rest of this battle?

And besides, how were those Ming infantry so formidable? What in the world was their origin?

(End of Chapter)