Chapter 398: Confucius Protects Us, Blades and Bullets Cannot Harm Us — Part 3

Beneath the walls of Qufu, the force commanded by Shi Dewei had already clashed with Liu Liangzuo's men!

"Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Steady now."

The man shouting "Hold your fire" at the top of his lungs was Shi Dewei. He too had a unit of matchlock musketeers under his command — not many, only three hundred men, attached to Shi Kefa's headquarters battalion. In addition, Shi Kefa's headquarters battalion also had three hundred three-eyed gun troops.

All of these firearms troops had now been led out of the city by Shi Dewei. But Shi Dewei's musketeers did not know the Maurice square, nor the bayonet-and-volley tactics of the New Army of Hardship. Their tactics were the Ming army's traditional ones: firearms in front, pikes and sword-and-shield men behind. When facing the enemy, the matchlocks fired first, then the three-eyed guns, and only last did the pikes and sword-and-shield men charge. As for the archers, Shi Dewei placed them at the rear to steady the formation.

At this moment Shi Dewei, with a few dozen sword-and-shield men acting as battle supervisors, was following behind the six hundred firearms troops, working hard to control the men in front and keep them from opening fire and wasting shot.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Scattered gunfire rang out across the battlefield. It was not Shi Dewei's men firing — it was the musketeers under Liu Liangzuo.

Liu Liangzuo's army had originally possessed a small number of firearms. After he went over to the Great Qing, Dorgon had replenished him with a batch of three-eyed guns, all procured from Shanhai Pass, of passable quality.

Liu Liangzuo, however, had no expectation that his men would use firearms well. His purpose in having his musketeers open fire at such long range was actually to lure the enemy into wasting their shot.

He had already noticed that the enemy had quite a few firearms troops — a full five or six hundred! If they got in a solid volley, the two thousand-odd Green Standard troops under his command would be mowed down in swathes — and he truly had a bit of psychological trauma about this. Last time, near Liaocheng, Li Ruolian's musketeers had beaten him so badly he was left picking his teeth up off the ground!

Unfortunately for him, Shi Dewei's men were no pushovers either, and not so easily fooled. Not only did they refrain from wasting shot, they even began shouting a slogan.

"The Sage Confucius protects us — blades and bullets cannot harm us!"

Well now — the Sage Confucius and invulnerability to blades and bullets lumped together! Who on earth came up with that? Most likely some officer under Shi Kefa who had once fought the White Lotus Sect was the first to shout it.

Hearing this slogan, Liu Liangzuo was somewhat dumbfounded. Although he had risen from the ranks, he had also done some reading, and he knew that the Sage Confucius had nothing to do with invulnerability to blades and bullets — the Sage Confucius presided over the civil service examinations. A bare-chested, muscle-bound brute howling "blades and bullets cannot harm me" — was that the Sage Confucius? Even Guan Yunchang would never have behaved like that!

"The Sage Confucius protects us — blades and bullets cannot harm us!"

Shi Dewei's men were still wildly shouting the slogan, but... it seemed to be working! The enemy's guns were cracking away on the far side, yet not a single man on this side had been killed.

That proved the Sage Confucius was protecting them! With the Sage's protection, what was there left to fear?

At once everyone's courage swelled. They shouted at the top of their lungs and strode forward in great strides, and the Green Standard troops were thoroughly frightened.

This isn't right! Could the Sage Confucius really ward off gunfire?

"C-Commander, they — they're invulnerable to blades and bullets!" A Green Standard battalion commander reported to Liu Liangzuo, who sat astride a tall horse, his voice trembling.

Crack! Liu Liangzuo lashed him across the face with his riding whip. "You worthless wretch, what nonsense are you spouting? All of you hold your ground! Damn it, they're nothing but a bunch of bookworms — what's there to be scared of?" He gritted his teeth. "Have the musketeers fall back and send the archers up! I don't believe Confucius can ward off arrows too!"

Of course Confucius could not ward off arrows — but Liu Liangzuo's archers could not ward off gunfire either! Seeing several hundred musketeers howling "The Sage Confucius protects us — blades and bullets cannot harm us" drawing ever closer, how could they not be afraid? They scarcely had the strength left to draw their bows. Moreover, Shi Kefa's headquarters troops were all armored — Shi Kefa had, after all, served as Minister of War in Nanjing, and later as Governor-General over seven provinces, so he had been able to procure two or three thousand suits of armor and cloth-faced iron armor.

And so, several hundred feathered arrows were loosed, yet they too had almost no effect!

Guns could not hit them, arrows could not kill them — were these men truly invulnerable to blades and bullets? What was to be done? Should they go find a monk to chant sutras?

Even Liu Liangzuo was growing afraid, beads of sweat breaking out all over his forehead.

Just then, the shouting from the opposite side suddenly stopped, and the formation no longer advanced...

Liu Liangzuo's heart seized — they were about to open fire! He hastily craned his neck to look, and one glance told him things were bad! His Green Standard troops were only thirty or forty paces from the enemy, well within the range where matchlocks could do their full damage!

Just as Liu Liangzuo sensed disaster, the Ming musketeers leveled their matchlocks, and then came a row of flashes large and small and white smoke! The archers loosing arrows in front of the Qing line looked as if they had been struck by lightning, convulsing and collapsing in droves. Shrieks of agony and cries of alarm rose uncontrollably!

Liu Liangzuo immediately thought of fleeing, but no sooner had he wheeled his horse around than he saw, a hundred-odd paces behind him, four niru of Eight Banners troops already dismounted and deployed into battle formation, every man with a longbow in hand — these were the elite troops supervising the battle!

When the Eight Banners fought, the death troops went in front and the elite troops behind! Now the Green Standard troops under Liu Liangzuo's command had been pushed to the front — they were the death troops! If they did not fight to the death, the Eight Banners lords behind them would show no mercy. They might not be able to kill Ming troops protected by the Sage Confucius, but could they not kill turncoat traitors who feared death?

"The Sage Confucius protects us — blades and bullets cannot harm us!"

The strangely styled battle cry once more shook the heavens — clearly the Ming army was launching its attack!

Liu Liangzuo gritted his teeth, drew his saber, and roared: "All of you who want to get rich, follow me, damn it!"

Then he charged forward with a few dozen mounted personal guards. It was not a true charge — he merely wanted to frighten the enemy a little and, at the same time, steady his own line.

But what he never expected was that no sooner had he charged forward than Shi Dewei's three-eyed gun troops were also surging forward. Had he steeled himself and charged straight in, he might well have scattered those three-eyed gun troops.

But Liu Liangzuo had no such nerve. Besides, there was still some gunsmoke on the battlefield obscuring the view, so he had not clearly seen that the Ming troops rushing to the fore were three-eyed gun troops — he had taken them for pikemen. Therefore he did not dare charge directly, but instead pulled his horse's head aside, intending to sweep across the enemy's front.

As it happened, he ran straight into a volley from the three-eyed guns!

Three-eyed guns were normally not very accurate, but today the situation was a bit special — the Ming side seemed to have the Sage Confucius's protection! And so a single ball flew unerringly into the head of the warhorse beneath Liu Liangzuo, bursting it open like a flower and splattering pink brain matter all over his face. The horse was finished too — without so much as a whinny, it pitched straight forward.

Liu Liangzuo went down headfirst, slamming directly onto the hard-packed dirt, and was knocked unconscious on the spot.

Amid the smoke, after taking another volley from the firearms (the three-eyed guns) and seeing Liu Liangzuo's cavalry knocked sprawling, men and horses alike, the Qing Green Standard troops finally fell into disorder. Many began to fall back, shouting: "Confucius is mighty! Confucius is mighty!"

What? Confucius is mighty? Had the old gentleman himself crawled out of his grave?

Helohui, who was supervising the battle, nearly toppled off his horse when he heard these cries. What sort of people were these! One moment it was "Confucius protects us, blades and bullets cannot harm us," the next "Confucius is mighty"... Since when did Confucius have anything to do with warfare? This would not do — he would have to find a copy of the Analects and study it later!

Twang! Twang! Twang!

A burst of bowstrings cut off Helohui's musings. It was the supervising Eight Banners troops loosing a wave of feathered arrows. The arrowheads landed in front of the retreating Green Standard troops, all burying themselves in the mud, with only the shafts, fletched with white feathers, sticking out and forming a continuous white line!

Whoever dared retreat past the white line would be shot dead on the spot!

The battle supervisors were Tartars, the ones doing the fighting were Confucius... Confucius was mighty, the Tartars were ferocious — being a traitorous Green Standard soldier was no easy life!

With no way left to retreat, the Green Standard troops had no choice but to turn and fight again, steeling themselves to clash with the Ming death troops, whose morale was at its peak. But they had already lost the initiative, and with their commander Liu Liangzuo nowhere to be seen, their morale was low and their formation in chaos — they were completely on the receiving end of a beating.

Meanwhile, the Eight Banners troops under Helohui continued shooting, volley after volley of feathered arrows arcing out and falling on the rear ranks of the Ming death troops. Though it was long-range arcing fire, it still brought down quite a few soldiers whose armor was incomplete — which did help the beleaguered Green Standard troops recover some face!

At the same time, the battle at the C-Number round fort had also reached its fiercest point. Qing troops had surged onto the walls in great numbers, and the militia defending the fort were completely on the back foot, being forced back step by step by the Qing troops, retreating toward the gate facing the main city of Qufu.

Some Qing troops had charged down from the walls and entered the interior of the round fort. The refugees huddled inside the fort were already birds startled by the mere twang of a bowstring. Seeing the Qing troops burst in, they screamed and wailed as they surged toward the fort's only exit. Their cries in turn stirred the Qing troops' bloodlust, and with saber and spear they struck, and in an instant blood flowed like a river. The piercing shrieks swept through the entire fort like a great gale.

At that moment, the militia who had already been driven back suddenly let out an earth-shaking roar: "The Tartars are killing people! Killing our wives and children, our fathers and mothers! We'll fight them to the death — fight them to the death!"

That cry was like a magic spell, instantly igniting the militia's fighting spirit. Every man stopped retreating, then with one great shout they turned and charged forward, clashing with the Qing troops on the wall in a desperate melee.

(End of Chapter)