Chapter 439: Half a City Breached Still Counts as Breached (First Update, Five Minutes)

Fengyang city has fallen?

Shang Kele, who was supervising the battle with a niru of Bordered Blue Banner Han troops, watched the Green Standard soldiers ahead surge toward those breaches like a tide, and found it a bit unbelievable — were the Ming troops defending Fengyang really this useless?

At this level, how had Dodo still ended up in a bitter fight? Could it be that the Zhu family's Crown Prince had sent all his best troops to Shandong?

His mind wandered wildly, but his feet never stopped. He waded through the knee-deep muddy water of the moat along with the Green Standard soldiers ahead and charged up to the foot of Fengyang's wall.

The more than three hundred Eight Banners Han troops and over a hundred booi bondservants advancing with him all carried rattan shields and bows, and immediately formed a rattan-shield formation, tightly protecting this Master Zu Kele.

There were also several dozen death-defying bondservants, each wearing two layers of heavy armor and shielding their heads and faces with rattan shields, who shouted at the top of their lungs as they climbed the bamboo-and-wood ladders and swarmed up the breach.

"Seventh Master, our death squads have charged up!" a niru janggin guarding Shang Kele's side shouted.

"Good! Then we go up too!" Seeing that his own Han troops had also entered the breach, Shang Kele finally relaxed and charged forward, leading from the front — well, the ones charging ahead of him didn't count as soldiers, they only counted as cannon fodder!

So he was among the first batch of Eight Banners warriors to storm the top of Fengyang's wall!

The irresistibly brave Shang Kele "led from the front" wearing three layers of armor — one layer of cloth-faced iron armor, one layer of mail, and one layer of cotton armor underneath. Ordinary arrowheads could not hurt him at all, but now there were firelocks, and if used well they could still finish him off with a single shot.

But at the moment no crackling gunfire rang out, which meant the Ming troops inside either had no firelocks or had already been shattered by the Green Standard soldiers who had charged in earlier.

So now was the time for the Eight Banners' heavenly soldiers to display their valor!

Once Shang Kele had thought it through, he no longer needed the rattan-shield cover. He took from a personal guard beside him a Guandong great sweeper over three feet long — a straight-backed chopping blade with a longer handle that could be gripped with both hands. Because of its limited length, this weapon was of little use in formation fighting, but it was a fine tool for street fighting and melee. Many Eight Banners soldiers, who mainly supplied their own weapons, had such a war blade forged for themselves for close combat.

Many of the Bordered Blue Banner Han soldiers following Shang Kele also took out Guandong great sweepers, while most of the rest took willow-leaf sabers or goose-quill sabers plus a rattan shield. All of it was equipment suited for close-quarters fighting!

Shang Kele opened his throat and bellowed: "All you who aren't afraid to die, charge with me, damn it!"

The Bordered Blue Banner Han troops following him also howled: "Follow Seventh Master! Seventh Master is mighty!"

Amid the shouting, Shang Kele was already the first up the bamboo-and-wood ladder, climbing onto a breach.

Once on the breach, Shang Kele was certain the Ming troops defending the city had collapsed. The remnants retreating from the battered wall and from the nearby Rear Right Jia Di Gate had already lost the courage to resist, some fleeing south toward Yuehua Mountain and Fenghuang Mountain, shouting as they ran: "The Tartar caitiffs are fierce! The Han traitors are fierce!"

The Green Standard soldiers who had charged into the city earlier had scattered into groups, some chasing the fleeing Ming troops, some charging murderously into Fengyang's dilapidated streets, and some rushing toward the Rear Right Jia Di Gate.

As long as they seized that gate, the great host outside the city could pour in, and Fengyang could not possibly hold — there were over thirty thousand men outside! How many could there be inside the city? A few thousand at most. How could they resist?

Seeing the Ming troops inside the city scattering in flight, Zu Kele, Seventh Master Zu, no longer worried about whether the Green Standard troops could seize the Rear Right Jia Di Gate, and shouted to the men climbing up endlessly behind him: "All of you follow your master — we're going to loot beneath the walls of the imperial city!"

Fengyang Prefecture's city had three rings of walls. The outermost was the outer wall, over sixty li in circumference, with nine city gates and eighteen water gates. What the Qing army had just breached was the outer wall.

The second ring was the Forbidden Enclosure, nineteen li in circumference, with four gates. It lay in the south-central part of Fengyang Prefecture's city, backed against Yuehua Mountain, Fenghuang Mountain, and Wansui Mountain. South of the Forbidden Enclosure was the finest part of Fengyang. The Forbidden Enclosure was the imperial city, and even the high officials and nobles stationed in Fengyang could not live inside it, so south of the Forbidden Enclosure lay rows upon rows of official residences and government offices, and the city's commercial district was there too.

The third ring was the palace city, seven li in circumference, with four gates, lying inside the Forbidden Enclosure — Zhu Yuanzhang had originally wanted to make Fengyang the capital, so he had also built an imperial city and a Forbidden City, but they had stood empty for over two hundred years, and the buildings inside had long since rotted into ruin.

Because Fengyang city covered a very large area — more than fifty square kilometers — most of it was quite empty. In many places crops were planted, and some areas had been fenced off as pasture, intended for raising horses — the southeast of the Great Ming produced no fine horses, and there was no large pastureland for raising them either.

So the Marshal's Office and the Ministry of War had selected the sparsely populated northern part of Fengyang's outer city as a horse pasture. It had now been fenced off and grass seed sown.

But the breeding stock had not yet been bought from India, so there was only a pasture and no horses. These days, because the Qing army had crossed the Huai River, many refugees fleeing the ravages of war had flooded into Fengyang and been settled in the horse pasture by Zhu Chunchen.

At this moment, with Qing soldiers entering the city, the common people sheltering in the Fengyang horse pasture were already birds startled by the mere twang of a bow. Screaming and shouting, they surged out, crying and fleeing through the broken, muddy streets. The shrill cries in turn stirred the Qing soldiers' ferocity, and a slaughter all too common in the historical transition from Ming to Qing swept through half of Fengyang like a great wind.

At this moment, outside Fengyang's Rear Right Jia Di Gate, Kong Youde and Shang Kexi had already assembled over ten thousand Plain Red Banner and Bordered Blue Banner Han troops — Fengyang city appeared to have been broken!

What came next was the work of burning, killing, and looting. What need was there for Green Standard cannon-fodder troops? Of course it was time for the Eight Banners Han masters to go make their fortunes.

Shuozhan, in charge of supervising the battle, had formed over a thousand true Manchu warriors into a battle-supervision formation — although Fengyang had fallen, the Qing army's rules of war could not be broken. Supervision still had to be layered rank upon rank!

Now that the Han Eight Banners were going into battle, the Manchu Eight Banners naturally had to supervise them!

The city gate had already been opened by the Green Standard troops, and the drawbridge creaked as it was lowered. Then heaven-shaking war drums began to beat.

The ten thousand Han bannermen, who had long been growing impatient, suddenly let out an earth-shattering roar: "Great Qing, total victory! Kill, kill, kill — kill every Nikan in the city!"

The shout reverberated across the battlefield, throwing the people inside the city into even greater panic and driving the Qing soldiers already inside to burn, kill, and loot with even greater frenzy.

Zu Kele still worked hard to keep his subordinates in check, and had even rounded up over a thousand Green Standard troops. The force of more than a thousand men advanced south along Right Jia Di Street. Along the way, when they saw Han commoners fleeing in panic, they did not stop to kill or loot, but simply pressed on with heads down.

His goal was to charge through the mountain pass between Yuehua Mountain and Fenghuang Mountain as quickly as possible — Qing troops breaking through from the Right Jia Di Gate who wanted to attack Fengyang's Forbidden Enclosure had to break through this pass.

The Ming troops defending the city seemed to have completely collapsed, fleeing in panic with no ability to organize resistance. Once they neared Fenghuang Mountain, they all scrambled up the mountain in a single rush.

Shang Kele paid them no mind and simply led the charge forward. In the blink of an eye, he had fought his way through the gap between Fenghuang Mountain and Yuehua Mountain, shouting at the top of his lungs as he charged: "A million heavenly soldiers of the Great Qing are coming! The Great Qing's heavenly soldiers are coming!"

A million heavenly soldiers of the Great Qing! That certainly sounded terrifying!

But Shang Kele did not get to shout for long. Not long after charging through the pass, he could no longer make a sound.

Because he had walked into an ambush!

Someone had built a bastion fort in ambush south of the pass!

Inside the shabby, broken city of Fengyang, there was hidden a bastion fort with eight solid gun platforms, and one of those platforms stood squarely in the inner side of the pass between Fenghuang Mountain and Yuehua Mountain. Because the mountain blocked the view, Shang Kele and his men had not seen it at first. Only when they charged along the street through the pass did they realize they had rushed right between two gun platforms.

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