Chapter 117: Tianjin Has Fallen! Surrender and Your Lives Are Spared!

"Thousand Years, you misunderstand this subject. Though this subject comes from a merchant family, I have always been loyal and true to my word — how could I possibly do something like fleeing the field? Just now my fleet was not fleeing, but merely withdrawing temporarily to avoid being burned by the fire ships…"

By the time Tang Tong became a loyal martyr of the Shun, Zhu Cilang was listening to another loyal merchant and good subject of the Great Ming explain why he had fled the battlefield.

This loyal merchant and good subject was Shen Tingyang. When Hongniangzi's fire ships burned the pontoon bridge, his fleet had bolted in a flash. But it had not gone far — after catching sight of Zhu Cilang's dragon banner appearing on that earthen mound, it had turned and rowed back upstream. Shen Tingyang had even come ashore in person to explain to Zhu Cilang why he had temporarily withdrawn…

You crooked merchant! Do you take Us for the Chongzhen Emperor? Zhu Cilang was clear as a mirror in his heart; he knew Shen Tingyang was talking nonsense.

But he did not expose Shen Tingyang to his face. Instead he said with a chuckle, "We understand now. You truly are a loyal subject and good merchant of our Great Ming… Then how many of your sand ships are still fit to fight?"

"Reporting to Thousand Years, this official's sand ships have suffered no real damage. Only some sails were burned and a few hulls slightly damaged, but all can be repaired."

Li Yan and Hongniangzi had still underestimated the pirates' skill. Pirates wrestle with wind and wave at sea; how could canal-boat crews and Huai River water bandits compare to them in damage control?

Moreover, meeting fire attack in a sea fight is perfectly ordinary, and the pirates were quite experienced in preventing and extinguishing fires. How could their sand ships possibly be burned up by fire arrows?

So Li Yan and Hongniangzi's fire-attack plan had merely frightened Shen Tingyang's sand ships into flight, without inflicting any great loss.

"However…" Shen Tingyang frowned and put on a troubled look. "However, this subject's sand ships are short of hands. Most of them carry only twenty or thirty men. With fair wind and current they could still fight, but now there is no southeast wind, and the sand ships must be driven by oars — so the men aboard are not enough."

"That is easily solved!" Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "Let the new troops of the Endure-Hardship Army board the ships."

Shen Tingyang still looked troubled. "But water warfare is not like land warfare. Army officers cannot direct it…"

Zhu Cilang laughed heartily. "We know that. We shall issue an edict at once: your ship captains shall command the battle!

In addition, We shall board a ship Ourselves to oversee the fighting! Does your family have a large ship fit for Us to ride?"

"Yes, yes." Shen Tingyang said quickly. "My family has a centipede war junk, built under the supervision of a Portuguese master craftsman from Macao. It is called the Great Dragon Head — extraordinarily sturdy, fast, and most suited for water warfare."

"Good!" Zhu Cilang nodded, then turned to Cao Youyi, who had just come over from the north city of the Tianjin Guard. "Guard Commander Cao, you arrange for the troops to board the Shen family's sand ships… Transmit Our edict: all officers and men who board ship to fight must obey the commands of the Shen family ship captains. Whoever disobeys this edict shall be dealt with by military law!"

"This subject receives the edict!" Cao Youyi raised no objection. The Endure-Hardship New Army was not his private force anyway, so it made no difference who commanded it. He at once took Zhu Cilang's edict and went off to arrange for the Endure-Hardship New Army's officers and men to board the ships.

The Right Division of the Endure-Hardship New Army had four brigades. Two brigades had now been taken by Wu Sanfu to deal with Tang Tong. Another brigade was escorting the wagons and supplies withdrawn from the north city of the Tianjin Guard, and was heading toward Zhu Cilang's position. So the force with Zhu Cilang amounted to one brigade, plus some directly attached units and men from the Military Orders Guard of the Grand Marshal's Office of the Army-Pacifying Command — about three thousand men in all.

While Cao Youyi was busy arranging for these men to board the ships in separate groups, Zhu Cilang took Chen Yidao, Wu Sanmei, and the others aboard Shen Tingyang's command ship, the flagship Great Dragon Head.

Because Shen Tingyang was arranging for the Endure-Hardship New Army's officers and men to board ship together with Cao Youyi, he did not board the Great Dragon Head with Zhu Cilang. The one who received the imperial presence on the deck of the Great Dragon Head was the ship's captain, Huochong Liu.

"This humble one, Huochong Liu, kowtows to His Highness the Crown Prince." The captain of the Great Dragon Head called himself Huochong Liu — evidently an expert with firearms. He wore a short jacket and water suit, no armor, with his sleeves and trouser legs rolled high, exposing skin tanned dark red.

"Rise," Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "We do not understand water warfare. Since We have boarded the Great Dragon Head, We too must follow the arrangements of you, the captain."

Huochong Liu started, then rose and stole a glance at Zhu Cilang and the several dozen guards who had boarded with him, and his brow furrowed slightly.

"What is it? Is there something inconvenient to say?" Zhu Cilang asked with a chuckle.

"Oh," Huochong Liu said with a cupped-hand salute. "It is nothing much. Only — could Thousand Years and Thousand Years' guards remove their armor?"

"Remove armor?" Wu Sanmei, standing nearby, frowned at these words. "On a battlefield, swords and blades spare no one. How can armor be removed?"

Huochong Liu glanced at Wu Sanmei and recognized that she was a girl. "This young lady does not know: in a water fight it is very easy to fall overboard… Once a suit of iron armor goes into the water, not even the immortals could save you.

Besides, water battles nowadays are mostly fought with firearms and cannon. Iron armor cannot stop them at all."

"Cannon?" Zhu Cilang was taken aback. "Your ship has cannon?"

"It does!" Huochong Liu said rather proudly. "In the belly of this Great Dragon Head are two great red-bronze cannon cast by the Bocarro foundry in Macao. They can fire shot of ten jin."

Zhu Cilang rolled his eyes. This great sand ship actually carried two twelve-pound bronze cannon — and "original imports" cast by the Portuguese in Macao at that!

And Shen Tingyang had thought of fleeing without firing a single shot, yet still called himself a loyal merchant and good subject. He was plainly a death-fearing crooked trader!

"Good, good, good! With cannon, all is well!"

The Crown Prince nodded repeatedly. For now he would not pursue Shen Tingyang's crime of "fleeing the field." The man was a merchant by origin; it was only natural for him to fear roving bandits.

Zhu Cilang turned and saw that Tang Ruowang and Su Ziwen had also boarded the ship with him, so he ordered: "Director Tang, Secretary Su — Su Ziwen has also been given the post of Eastern Palace Secretary by Zhu Cilang — you two both understand cannon. Go with Captain Liu and inspect those two great guns.

Everyone else, remove your armor. Since we have boarded ship, we must follow shipboard rules… Sanmei, come help Us remove Ours!"

…

"Tianjin city has fallen, Tianjin city has fallen! Surrender and your lives are spared!"

A voice now rose within the south city of the Tianjin Guard. At first it was faint, but then who knew how many people took up the shout together, until it swelled into a roar like ocean waves, beating in surge after surge.

The south city of Tianjin had been breached by Chen Yongfu!

The Shun army under Chen Yongfu's command was not the strongest old-camp troops, but its fighting power — especially its ability to storm cities — was not much inferior to the old camp's. Compared with the hastily formed Endure-Hardship Battalion, it was stronger by who knew how much!

Earlier, the uprising launched by Juren Zhang and Juren Fan had shaken the defenders of Tianjin's south city for a spell, and Chen Yongfu's officers and men had seized the chance to storm the south wall in one surge!

Although Zhu Chunjie immediately shifted troops to counterattack and fought a bloody battle with the Shun army atop the wall, in the end he was just a little short of strength and could not drive the enemy who had mounted the wall back out.

Chen Yongfu was indeed fierce and brave. Seeing that the slaughter on the gate tower had reached its critical moment, he led his own household retainers straight into the assault.

The commander personally leading his retainers in a charge at once became the last straw that crushed the Ming troops on the wall, and the south gate of the Tianjin Guard's south city was quickly taken by the Shun army.

After seizing a city gate, the Shun army poured into the south city of the Tianjin Guard like a flood tide.

But what happened next took Chen Yongfu by surprise. The Zhu-family troops inside the city had clearly been defeated, yet they were beaten but not broken, and almost none surrendered. Instead they fell back in droves toward the Tianjin Governor's yamen and the Tianjin Regional Commander's yamen, and finally gathered into a single mass, resisting the Shun army's assault with all their remaining strength!

A note on this book's pacing: recently some readers have said the pace is too slow and that the protagonist has stayed too long in Beijing and Tianjin, so here is an explanation. Perhaps some readers regard the arrival in Nanjing as the start of the main story, with everything before it as foreplay, and only Nanjing as the real drama. But historically, after Hongguang stumbled into Nanjing, how utterly powerless he was — he dared not suppress the Donglin faction that opposed him, could only let the slanders against him spread, and in the end drowned his sorrows in drink day after day, muddling through in a daze. Why? Because he had no real strength, and no one listened when he spoke. The protagonist of this book, by contrast, will keep gathering strength and reorganizing his forces during the flight south, and in the end will enter Nanjing with an army powerful enough to crush the Nanjing Capital Camps. Only with real strength can one truly control the wealth of the southeast. Without strength, an empty title makes one nothing more than another man's puppet. So the flight south is also the process of the protagonist's growth, and it will necessarily be rather long. Please bear with me.

(End of Chapter)