Chapter 436: The Fall of Fengyang!

…to save the Great Ming!

Seeing that the brothers under his command had finished loading, Kong Sixi took up a small red flag, gave it a sharp wave, and shouted: "May the Cannon God, Grandfather Confucius, protect us! Amen! Light the fuse…"

He was of course no Catholic; he had merely picked up this "Western spell" from his Portuguese teacher, and so before every shot he would chant it once — and it was most efficacious, for in all his years of handling cannon he had never once had a barrel burst.

"Amen!" One of the gunners likewise recited the "secret incantation," pressed his palms together and bowed once toward the cannon, and only then touched the fuse with his torch. Then he watched the fuse as it hissed and spat sparks, his face taut with tension.

Although the Great Qing's laws were strict, and the booi bondservants who cast the cannon all worked with the utmost diligence, technical problems could not be solved by chopping off heads. Even England after the Industrial Revolution was for a very long time unable to achieve a cannon-casting yield rate anywhere near one hundred percent. It was not until the hollow-casting process appeared in the mid-nineteenth century that the casting problem was completely solved.

So the Hongyi cannon used by the Qing army also had a rather high probability of bursting!

The fuse spat sparks and soon burned into the touchhole. Suddenly there was a flash of fire at the touchhole, then a cloud of thick smoke belched from the muzzle, and only then came the earth-shaking roar.

A stone shot was hurled from the muzzle, tumbling through the air toward the walls of Fengyang more than three li away, rapidly shrinking to a black speck that slammed with visible speed into a section of rammed-earth wall.

At once a hole appeared in the wall, throwing up a cloud of dust; through a telescope one could even make out clods of earth large and small tumbling downward.

"A hit!" Kong Sixi cried. "First shot on target — great luck and great fortune!"

The gunners around him cheered along with him: "First shot on target — great luck and great fortune…"

Kong Youde, watching from behind a breastwork, lowered his telescope and let out a heavy breath: "Good! We've knocked a hole in it. Fengyang's walls are indeed none too sturdy… We've set out twenty Hongyi cannon; each piece can fire at least twelve stone shot in one double-hour, so twenty pieces make two hundred and forty rounds, and twelve double-hours a day make more than twenty-eight hundred! Two days at most and the walls of Fengyang will be battered down!"

He was reckoning on the generous side. Fengyang's rammed-earth walls, already wrecked once by Gao Yingxiang and afterward hastily repaired, were never very solid to begin with; a single day's bombardment by twenty Hongyi cannon would most likely bring them down.

Shang Kexi, for his part, slapped his chest and said to Shuozhan: "Meiren i janggin, once those shabby old walls of Fengyang come down, I'll personally lead the charge — I guarantee we'll take the city within a day!"

The men under the Wise and Compliant Prince Shang Kexi had earlier captured a "tongue" and gotten the full picture. The garrison of Fengyang was not large: just two brigades under the Central Capital Garrison Commission plus one regiment of the left army of the New Army of Hardship. Altogether five or six thousand men. While the combined forces under Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, and Bai Guang'en numbered over thirty thousand — an overwhelming advantage!

"Good!" Shuozhan nodded heavily. "Then I shall report it to Prince Su thus… two days to tear down the walls of Fengyang, and one more day to take the city!"

"Fine, report it to His Highness Prince Su just like that!"

In fact Hooge had made no demand to break the city in three days; it was Shuozhan who had added that condition on his own authority, and now it looked as though it could be fulfilled.

"Take Fengyang in three days… heh, it seems Kong Youde and Shang Kexi do have some ability after all!"

Hooge received the dispatch sent by Shuozhan's men while in the Yingwu Guard city, twenty or thirty li east of the East Hao River.

"My Prince," Oboi, his face streaming with sweat, at once pressed forward, "the only worry now is that the southern bandits at Dingyuan may march north to Fengyang… According to the scouts' reports, they have forty or fifty thousand men there. If they move north, Kong Youde and Shang Kexi will have no choice but to withdraw."

"No fear, no fear!" Hooge set down the field report in his hand, picked up a paper fan lying on a rickety table beside him, and fanned himself vigorously. "The southern bandits still have too few cavalry; they can only mass them to screen their flanks and rear — spread out, they'd be nothing to look at. So they have no idea of our exact position, while their every move is under our observation. If the southern bandits march north to Fengyang, Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, and Bai Guang'en will have ample time to pull back — at worst they can withdraw to the bridgehead on the Huai and hold off the southern bandits there. And we, for our part, can head south and water our horses in the Yangtze… Even if we cannot cross the river, we can still plunder along its banks for a spell. Would that not be a fine pleasure?"

"Your Highness is truly wise," Oboi said with a flattering smile. "Then shall we proceed south at once?"

"Of course!" Hooge said. "We'll bypass Dingyuan, ford the Chi River directly, and encamp at Daqiang Ridge."

"Daqiang Ridge?" Oboi was taken aback. "Are we not going to water our horses in the Yangtze?"

"Heh, all you ever think of is seizing people and plunder. You've been reading the Analects every day these past days — how is it you've made no progress at all?" Hooge said with a chuckle. "To tell the truth, I too would like a good hearty bout of plunder, but the southern bandits at Dingyuan will most likely not ignore us… Though they are chiefly infantry, they march none too slowly. If we let them chase us the whole way, there'll be nothing hearty about it!"

"Oh," Oboi nodded. "Your Highness means to fight a decisive battle with the southern bandits at Daqiang Ridge?"

Hooge smiled and said nothing.

Oboi thought for a moment, then added: "But we have only a little over eighteen thousand men at hand. Is that not somewhat few? To guarantee victory, we should still wait for Kong Youde and Shang Kexi to come south and join us."

"Eighteen thousand is indeed a little few, and more than half of them are true Manchus — we cannot afford to spend them!" Hooge laughed. "But the southern bandits likewise dare not fail to follow us… We'll face off against them around Daqiang Ridge, and once Kong Youde and Shang Kexi have taken Fengyang, we'll summon them to join us. Then the two forces will combine — forty or fifty thousand men — and the initiative to fight or not will rest entirely in our hands. What chance of victory could the southern bandits have then?

Even if they win, our true Manchu Eight Banners will not suffer much loss; at worst we fall back to the prefectural seat of Fengyang… As far as the larger picture goes, with the prefectural seat of Fengyang in our hands, we are still the winners!"

"Brilliant!" Oboi was overjoyed at these words. "Your Highness, you are truly brilliant — Oboi is in awe!"

The spectacle of eighteen thousand cavalry on the move was a most imposing one! Even though the light cavalry sent out by Zhu Cilang was suppressed by the Eight Banners troops and could not get close to reconnoiter, they could still, from a distance, judge the general situation by observing the dust clouds kicked up by the great mass of horsemen on the march.

Word that a large force of Tartar cavalry had forded the Chi River and was advancing on Chuzhou was quickly delivered to Zhu Cilang, who was stationed with his army at Dingyuan.

"What? They've bypassed Dingyuan and gone south? What are the Tartars up to?"

Hooge's dispositions had clearly caught Zhu Cilang off guard — for all his cunning and ruthlessness, and his endless schemes for tormenting people and squeezing money, when it came to warfare he was in fact half an amateur. He had ambushed Duolong, the foremost warrior of the Manchus, at Dagu — but that had been a special case, built on the foundation of the Ming army, long utterly useless, suddenly rising up, and it had completely overturned the expectations of Duolong and Geng Zhongming. That was how he had picked up a great victory for nothing.

But his present opponents, Hooge and Oboi, had already grasped the fact that the New Army of Hardship was rather formidable, and they would not stupidly go ramming into the prepared positions Zhu Cilang had laid out!

And even if they did ram, they would not use their precious Eight Banners troops to do it! With tens of thousands of Han traitors under Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, and Bai Guang'en just sitting there, why send Eight Banners troops to their deaths? With that kind of intelligence, could they have founded the Great Qing?

And once the Tartars' wits came online, defeating them was truly no easy matter!

"Your Highness the Crown Prince," the military adviser Li Yan proposed, "this subject suggests we pay no heed to the Tartars moving south, concentrate the whole army, and march north — first wipe out the Tartars around the prefectural seat of Fengyang!"

Wu Sanfu shook his head: "No, no… The Tartars' roving scouts are surely spread all across the ground between Dingyuan and Fengyang. The moment our main force moves, the Tartars at Fengyang will know of it at once. Then they'll pull back to the banks of the Huai, throw up fortifications, and hold fast. What would we do then? Assault them head-on?

And that Tartar cavalry that has thrust into Chuzhou will not just wander about once and leave! If we do not keep close on their heels, they could wreak havoc all the way to Yangzhou Prefecture!"