Chapter 1451: Fear Not the Tartar's Ferocity — Fear the Tartar with Culture

"Ura! Ura! Ura."

The crack of muskets and cannon suddenly fell silent, and then a heaven-shaking, earth-moving battle cry erupted.

The ones shouting and launching this desperate, death-defying assault were the Nerchinsk garrison under Urasov's command! As the defending side, they should have sat comfortably inside the fortress, waiting for the savage Tatar hordes to surge like a tide against the Nerchinsk bastion and throw their lives away.

But now they had no choice but to steel themselves and sally forth, because if they did not come out for a decisive battle, they would not even have a sliver of hope of breaking through and escaping.

Earlier, when Urasov had dared to give Stroganov his absolute guarantee, he had naturally had some confidence — the present city of Nerchinsk had been built two years before, and when completed it had been a simple bastion of timber and earth. After Urasov assumed the post of Governor-General of Irkutsk, he had concentrated manpower and resources to reinforce the Nerchinsk bastion.

Once the reinforcement work was fully completed, the defensive capability of the Nerchinsk fortress had improved markedly. Not only in the desolate wilds of eastern Siberia, where there were only "savages" all around, but even on Russia's western frontiers facing Poland, Sweden, and the Ottomans, fortresses sturdier than Nerchinsk were rare.

In the city of Nerchinsk there were about 1,500 Cossacks and streltsy officers and men. With full mobilization, the garrison could be increased by another 1,000 men.

Moreover, the Nerchinsk garrison was well equipped, possessing twenty or thirty light cannon, three hundred flintlock muskets, more than a thousand matchlocks, several hundred warhorses, and a large quantity of cold weapons, while some of the Cossack warriors had even brought their own bows and arrows.

So when Peter Andropov brought back word that "the Tartars possess large mortars and cannon" and numbered over ten thousand, Urasov still firmly advocated fighting and rejected the surrender request put forward by Oboi and Yolo — to capture a sturdy bastion like Nerchinsk, large mortars and 12-pounder and 18-pounder cannon alone were useless. Unless the besieging side had engineers skilled enough to direct infantry in digging parallel siege trenches and zigzag communication trenches around the bastion, and to place mortars and 12-pounder and 18-pounder cannon in the correct positions. For the Tartars along the Amur River, such a requirement was simply too high.

As far as Urasov knew, even the Ming army and the Dzungar army fighting Russia in Central Asia did not have that level of skill, let alone these Tartars from the Amur River basin!

But when the great armies of Oboi and Yolo advanced by both water and land and arrived before Nerchinsk, Urasov realized he had been wrong — and very badly wrong.

Because what he now faced were not ordinary Tartars, but a new breed of Tartars with knowledge, with culture, and who even understood mathematics, physics, and chemistry!

The Tartars nowadays were not only ferocious, they had culture too — and they were the kind of Tartars who had mastered mathematics, physics, and chemistry and could go anywhere in the world without fear. Were they going to leave the Russians of Nerchinsk any way to live?

Of course, the cultured Tartars were not Oboi, nor were they Yolo — not that those two were illiterate, but the knowledge they possessed was outdated. Oboi was an old hand who had distinguished himself back in the era of Hong Taiji; this year he was already over sixty and had never studied the new learning at all. Yolo was younger, but he too was in his late forties, and the Tartars of his generation had not studied any new learning either.

But under the influence of the "Zilun Gewu Pian," among the noble scions of the Eight Banners born after the early years of Shunzhi, there was a batch of new-style Tartars thoroughly versed in the new learning.

The representative figures among them were Sengge's two great monk-ministers, Sanbao Lama and Mingzhu Lama! And in the Amur and Andong armies, there were such men as well. The more outstanding ones were Daishan's grandson Jin Jieshu and Fiyanggū of the old Donggo clan. Both had been born in the second year of Shunzhi (1645) and had received a half-new, half-old education from childhood. When the Great Qing fell, they were both in their teens, and both swore through their tears to study for the revival of the Great Qing, and so they applied themselves all the harder.

Later the two of them went together to Vladivostok and studied at the Vladivostok Official Academy founded by Dodo (actually an army academy), and later still they joined Doni's army and fought a battle against the Ming army. After Doni's defeat, the two followed Shang Ke'ai (who was then in charge of Vladivostok) and submitted to the Great Ming, and were recommended by Shang Ke'ai to the Tianjin Imperial University. After graduating from Tianjin Imperial University, the two went to serve under Oboi and Yolo, both in the same post, serving as Bureau Secretaries of the Works Section in the Protectorate — that is, officials in charge of engineering and construction. Over the past dozen or so years, the two Protectorates of Amur and Andong had a great many engineering and construction projects — city-building, road-building, bridge-building, port-building, a whole pile of them, more than could ever be finished, and most of them were civil engineering works.

Jin Jieshu and Fiyanggū had already studied a bit of engineering (sapper courses) at the Vladivostok Official Academy, and later laid a solid foundation in mathematics and the natural sciences at Tianjin Imperial University, and after that had spent so many years learning on the job while doing engineering and construction — how could their skill be poor? Bastions of the standard of Nerchinsk, they had built at least thirty or forty of them over the years. And those who know how to build bastions usually also know how to breach them!

Moreover, the hypothetical enemy of the Amur and Andong garrisons had always been the Ming army, whose siege capability was extremely strong, so Jin Jieshu and Fiyanggū had spent the past ten-odd years studying Ming siege tactics. One can well imagine the level of these two men.

Under their command, 2,000 "pseudo-Russian troops" and 2,000 naval troops who had come ashore, carrying large quantities of fascines and gabions (wicker baskets filled with earth, used to build breastworks against fortress fire), advanced to three li east and north of the Nerchinsk bastion and simultaneously began digging approach trenches. In just one day and one night, they used the approach trenches to push forward nearly two li, and also completed a parallel trench just one li from the fortress.

Because the engineering work was extremely well organized, and gabions and sandbags were used to form protective breastworks, during the first day's construction Oboi's and Yolo's troops suffered not a single casualty.

After that, Oboi's and Yolo's troops used the first parallel trench as a base and continued sapping toward the Nerchinsk fortress. Sapping and covering alternated, and the organization was extremely skillful. First they used a zigzag communication trench three paces wide (wide enough for cannon to pass through) to advance half a li, then began digging a second parallel trench half a li from the fortress. During the construction, large bodies of "pseudo-Russian infantry" and cavalry stood ready at all times, and cannon were also set up and kept up a continuous heavy bombardment of the Nerchinsk fortress to hinder any Russian counterattack.

On the fourth day after the siege of Nerchinsk began, the second parallel trench was completed, and that night the mortar units of Oboi and Yolo began moving into the second parallel trench. Twenty-four-jin explosive shells began to be lobbed continuously into the small city of Nerchinsk!

In fact, by the time Oboi's and Yolo's troops finished digging the first parallel trench, Urasov already knew something was wrong. He must have run into engineer-Tartars. Judging by the standard of their trench-sapping work, their leader might well have studied in France!

Knowing that the Nerchinsk fortress could not be held, Urasov immediately proposed a breakout to Stroganov!

But a breakout was easier said than done. Nerchinsk was built at the confluence of the Shilka River and one of its tributaries, with waterways on both the southwest and south sides. The Russians had no naval force, so breaking out by river was impossible. And the north and east sides of Nerchinsk were blocked by the enemy's parallel trenches and breastworks.

So Stroganov could not make up his mind to break out for a time. But after he hesitated for three or four days, the enemy's second parallel trench was completed, and then twelve 24-jin mortars were moved into the parallel trench and began firing 24-jin explosive shells into Nerchinsk day and night without cease.

By this point, Stroganov, Urasov, and all the Russians in Nerchinsk knew they could not stay and wait for death.

So on the sixth day after the siege of Nerchinsk began, the defending Russian troops had no choice but to risk their lives in a desperate breakout!

But how could they possibly break through the "pseudo-Russian troops'" defenses made up of breastworks, parallel trenches, and communication trenches?

(End of Chapter)