Chapter 410: Still Want to Be a Traitor?

Just as Li Chengdong and Ma Degong were steeling themselves to pull out armored soldiers to serve as cannon fodder, over on the Qing side the big cannon fodder Xu Dingguo was already gritting his teeth and heading to the front line.

Xu Dingguo was simply fated to be cannon fodder! Over on the Ming side, Zhu Cilang had played him once — he served as cannon fodder and on top of that even his old nest was seized. Coming over to the Qing side, he continued as cannon fodder: first he smashed his head bloody against the C-shaped fort at Qufu and nearly lost his old life.

Now he had reached the Tu River, still serving as fodder! And he was being herded onto the battlefield by a pack of booi slaves.

This was an old Qing army rule: troops sent into battle were divided into death soldiers and shock soldiers. Now that the Eight Banners lords were not charging, naturally the booi served as shock soldiers and Xu Dingguo's Green Standard troops served as death soldiers.

Xu Dingguo was a slave who had been raised into the banners — a glorious Plain White Banner Han bannerman, which made him Dorgon's slave! Had it been any other Eight Banners lord, the old man truly would not have been afraid, but if Dodo wanted to kill him, it would be no different from crushing a bedbug.

So the old man had no choice but to take his two sons, Xu Er'an and Xu Erji, up to the front line with him, and even throw in the household retainers he had kept to guard his home. These retainers were now slaves among slaves — they could no longer serve as lordly soldiers, and the pay they received was the same as ordinary Green Standard troops! Here in the Qing realm, skimming ordinary soldiers' pay to give household retainers high salaries was not permitted.

So Xu Dingguo's household retainers now only ate a little better than ordinary Green Standard troops; they had no other special treatment.

Moreover, many of them had left their families behind in Suiyang, and they did not know whether Huang Degong's men had ravaged them or whether Hooge, who now held Suiyang, had ravaged them. Just thinking about it made them want to weep!

But they had chosen the traitor's road themselves (when Xu Dingguo was defeated by Li Ruolian last time and fled toward Qing territory, these men had all followed close behind), so even weeping, they had to keep walking it!

So now they were all fully arrayed, wearing helmets, clad in cotton armor, holding saber and rattan shield, twenty men to a squad, herding Xu Dingguo's Green Standard pikemen forward and forming a dozen-odd hollow squares that advanced slowly toward the Ming positions like a moving wall.

Xu Dingguo and his two sons, with a hundred or so of his most trusted household retainers, walked behind the dozen-odd squares to supervise the battle.

And behind them were booi slaves clad in yellow, white, and red cotton armor, also formed into ten-odd squares, some of them carrying eight-li bows — not to shoot at the Ming troops, but to shoot at Xu Dingguo's Green Standard soldiers!

If any dared not fight to the death, the booi slaves would shoot them dead without the Eight Banners lords even needing to lift a finger!

Zhang Mingzhen had already returned to the forward line. Peering through the gap between two shield carts, he saw group after group of Green Standard troops closing in on the trench ten paces from his own position, and opened his mouth to roar: "Loose arrows! Archers, loose now!"

To be honest, it was a little embarrassing: the bamboo bows and wooden bows used by the Shandong militia army truly had little draw strength. If used to shoot armor-piercing heavy arrows, they could only reach ten-odd or twenty paces at most; beyond that they had no force left.

So the Shandong militia archers did not practice long-range shooting, only close-range lobbing and direct fire. And the lobbing distance they practiced was exactly fifteen to twenty paces — which was why they had been unable to return fire when the Eight Banners troops shot arrows earlier. They had to wait until the enemy charged to within fifteen or twenty paces before they could loose a volley of ten thousand arrows.

Therefore the trench outside the wagon fort was fifteen to twenty paces from the archers' position. And this trench was neither deep nor wide, easy to cross. But on the inner side of the trench a row of cheval-de-frise spears had been set up, which would take some time to clear.

Just as the Xu family's Green Standard troops rushed into the trench and prepared to clear the cheval-de-frise spears, the bowstrings of two thousand bamboo bows and wooden bows snapped down at once, and then feathered arrows filled the sky.

The Xu family's Green Standard troops all wore cotton armor — cotton cloth outside, with iron plates inside protecting the vitals. But the arrows shot by the Shandong militia archers were all heavy arrows. Even wearing iron armor, one could not guarantee one hundred percent protection against these heavy arrows, let alone the worthless Green Standard soldiers with only a suit of watered-down cotton armor.

So when the arrow rain fell, it immediately shot down a swath of them!

"Not bad!"

That exclamation came from Dodo!

At that moment he was standing in his stirrups, holding a telescope to watch the battle. Seeing the enemy's wave of arrow fire, he could not help but praise it: "To use light bows to this degree — these nikan are not weak!"

"My prince," Helohoi said from beside him, "our Eight Banners warriors will soon answer them in kind!"

Dodo smiled: "Of course!"

The Eight Banners archers had long been waiting for this moment! Before, they had only been blindly lobbing feathered arrows, not knowing whether there was anyone behind the Ming shield carts. But now they could be certain that someone was there shooting arrows. So the Eight Banners counterattack began quickly: they no longer stayed hidden behind the shield carts, but formed ranks in front of the carts and lobbed heavy arrows in unison. They could not see the situation behind the Ming wagon fort, and there was no one to correct the fall of their arrowheads for them. So they could only shoot as "scattered" as possible, so that some arrows would always hit the Ming archers.

Because the Shandong militia army had been founded too recently, it did not have enough armor to go around. The archers, who did not need to join in hand-to-hand combat, therefore had no right to wear armor — even if the Eight Banners troops shot light arrows, they could not withstand them.

The muffled thud-thud of feathered arrows sinking into flesh sounded continuously. Zhang Mingzhen hastily turned his head to look back and immediately saw several archers struck in vital spots, collapsing to the ground. Two of them were not yet gravely wounded and were still struggling to climb back up, seemingly wanting to keep fighting! And the remaining archers were still desperately drawing and loosing their bows, none daring to retreat half a step.

The Eight Banners troops' eight-li bows could lob feathered arrows very far; a few even landed right in front of Gao Hongtu. But the tall Governor, seated upright on his folding camp stool and clad in stout armor, did not so much as blink. Several of his personal guards hurried forward, wanting to shield him with their bodies, but the old man shoved them away with one hand: "What are you panicking for? This official wears stout armor and is far from the fight — should I fear the spent arrows of the Tartar caitiffs?"

Even as he spoke, some Green Standard troops up ahead had risked death to drag aside the cheval-de-frise spears and were clambering up onto the wagon fort — this wagon fort was really just shield carts and gun carts lashed together, with earth-filled sacks piled in front of the shield carts as protection against cannon fire. Because the earth sacks were piled into a slope, they were not hard to climb. Soon Green Standard traitor soldiers had climbed up, but before they could steady themselves, javelins were already flying at them!

The first few Green Standard troops to charge up had no time to dodge and were all skewered through by javelins, falling back with shrieks.

The javelin was originally standard equipment for Ming saber-and-shield men; each saber-and-shield man was supposed to carry two javelins. According to the "Comparative Martial Arts, Rewards and Punishments" chapter of Qi Jiguang's New Treatise on Military Efficiency, the javelin test was as follows: set up three silver coins, and within thirty small paces hit them — high, middle, or low — without missing, to be considered proficient.

That is to say, in training, a saber-and-shield man had to be able to hit a target the size of a silver coin thirty paces away! Qi Jiguang's requirement was truly a bit high; by the late Ming, basically no one could meet his standard anymore.

Many officers leading troops had even forgotten this requirement, and most saber-and-shield men no longer carried javelins — they could not even eat their fill, so where would they get the strength to throw javelins?

But Gao Hongtu had actually read the New Treatise on Military Efficiency carefully, and had trained his militia according to its requirements. Hitting a silver coin from thirty paces away was impossible, but skewering a traitor dead at ten or twenty paces was no problem!

Xu Dingguo, in the rear, also saw his soldiers being skewered by javelins, and his scalp immediately began to prickle.

These Shandong militia were far more formidable than he had imagined. It was only at the very start that they had handled their firearms poorly; afterward their performance had been quite good! Their archery was good, and their javelin throwing was even better!

An army like this, placed among the Ming forces, would be an elite unit too — at least on par with the Qin army trained by Sun Chuanting! How could his own Green Standard troops possibly defeat them?

"Dong-dong-dong—"

At that moment, the death-summoning drums sounded wave after wave, each louder than the last! This was Dodo urging the attack. He did not care how many traitors died!

In today's battle, as long as they won, how many traitors could they not have?

If they could not win, what use was keeping traitors like Xu Dingguo? Keep them to serve a third master or a fourth?

(End of Chapter)