Chapter 447: It Must Be Sorcery

"Push harder! Hurry, hurry, hurry..."

Feng Sizhong, who had once been Zhu Cilang's lead guard, then served as Guard Commander of the new army at the Xiaoling Mausoleum, only to botch that posting and be demoted two grades to battalion commander, was now stripped to the waist pushing a cannon, shouting work chants at the top of his lungs as he pushed. He was dark and gaunt all over, looking like he had truly suffered.

Serving as an official under Zhu Cilang was damnably hard! That cursed last-place elimination system lashed at your backside like a whip. And ahead of you, there were always all sorts of painted cakes luring you on. Land, silver, women, office, noble titles... so long as you hadn't renounced the world, there was always something you wanted tugging at your soul!

Feng Sizhong was one of those who couldn't see through it. After dropping two grades, he still scrambled desperately to climb back up! And he actually found a chance to climb back one grade. It wasn't that he had whipped the Xiaoling new army into shape, but rather that the bit of mathematics and construction skill passed down in his family gave him a boost.

His family belonged to the Tianshou Mountain Mausoleum Guard Office, and they were skilled ones at that. From their founding ancestor Feng Wangli onward, generation after generation had built tombs and tended graves for the old Zhu family. This was a refined business: one had to understand construction, read geomancy, observe the heavens, and also divine and calculate. His finger-counting skill far outstripped Song Xiance's.

And construction, geomancy, astronomy, and divination all rested on a foundation of mathematics and natural philosophy. So Feng Sizhong's mathematics and natural philosophy were quite good, which made learning gunnery easier for him.

So after the foreign officer Ferreira arrived, Feng Sizhong was transferred into the artillery regiment. Not only could he study Western gunnery under the foreign devil Ferreira, but Zhu Cilang also frequently imparted to him knowledge of Western mathematics and natural philosophy.

Feng Sizhong, being something of a science-minded man, learned at astonishing speed. In just a few months he could already do simple ballistic calculations!

As for the markings on the gunner's quadrant, he could not only recite them from memory but also understood the principles behind them and could do the calculations himself. This was real skill. The Great Ming still had a pile of general's cannons lying around; if their quadrant scales could all be calculated, they would become far more formidable in use.

Moreover, Feng Sizhong could estimate range by eye! If one couldn't even judge distance accurately, how could one read geomancy? Within three to five li, his margin of error was under ten paces.

This ranging ability combined with his mathematical talent made him a veritable artillery prodigy! He could shoot with great accuracy without even bothering to worship the cannon or Confucius.

And accuracy was only one aspect of gunnery. Zhu Cilang's requirements for artillerymen also included shooting fast and moving fast!

Shooting fast increased the density of fire, inflicting greater casualties on the enemy. Moving fast allowed rapid repositioning and also facilitated the concentrated use of cannon.

A three-pounder cannon was no light thing these days. Not counting the carriage, the barrel alone weighed six hundred pounds, which was over five hundred and several tens of jin. Add a sturdy, solidly built carriage, and the whole thing came to over a thousand jin.

But with six draft horses and a dozen or so artillerymen working together, the gun carriage still flew along the official road with lightning mobility — far faster than the shield carts pushed by the Eight Banners' booi!

Oboi was on the left wing behind the Qing army's shield-cart line. He was not mounted but advancing on foot, wading through the ever-deepening stream. Around him were the stout warriors of the Plain Yellow Banner, about a thousand of them, all with bows slung on their backs.

The shield carts pushed by the booi slaves were a dozen or so paces ahead of these Plain Yellow Banner warriors. Their wheels had already sunk into the water, but they were still creeping forward.

Oboi peered ahead through the gap between two shield carts and saw a stretch of flickering firelight. These were bonfires the Ming troops had lit, placed in front of their main formation.

The weather tonight was fine. By the light of the moon and the bonfires, Oboi could faintly make out Ming soldiers in red cloth-faced armor drawn up in formation. Within their ranks, countless sparks were glinting — these must be the glow of burning matchcords on their firelocks!

So many sparks meant the number of firelocks was astonishing, perhaps several thousand.

But Oboi was not afraid, because right now he was the foremost warrior of the Manchus, sheltering behind a shield cart... so he had no fear of firelocks!

It was somewhat laughable to say, but the war between Ming and Qing was, to a certain extent, a contest between the Ming's crudely manufactured firearms and the Qing army's sturdy, solid shield carts!

Without these shield carts, those tens of thousands of Eight Banners sons would not have been enough to die!

If the quality of Ming firearms had been a bit better, no shield cart could have stopped them! The shield carts were actually somewhat similar to the European wagon-fort tactic, and later in history Galdan's camel-wall warriors were much the same sort of thing.

But who still played with wagon forts in the Thirty Years' War? Likewise, Galdan's camel wall was blasted to bits by the Kangxi Emperor's cannon!

Boom, boom...

Another few cannon shots. It was the six Hongyi cannons mounted on the slope of Daqiang Ridge opening fire!

But this time they weren't shooting at Zhu Cilang — too far, no chance of hitting. So Hooge had ordered the Hongyi cannons to bombard the Ming main formation instead.

But they didn't hit. The cannonballs flew over the heads of the Ming soldiers. Oboi noticed that those Ming soldiers standing ramrod straight hadn't so much as flinched... These Nikans were far too slow to react! Oboi thought to himself: stupid fools, how could they ever beat the Celestial Soldiers of the Great Qing?

Just then, a booi slave of the Plain Yellow Banner under Oboi's command came sprinting through the water. Before he even reached Oboi, he shouted: "Master! Master Oboi! The southern bandits' cannon are coming up!"

"What? The cannon are coming up? What do you mean?" Oboi couldn't make sense of it.

"It means, it means the southern bandits are hauling their cannon up!"

"Ah!" Oboi was a bit dumbfounded. "Is it assault cannons or crouching-tiger cannons?"

"It's big cannon... at least general's cannons!" The booi had reached Oboi and saluted. "Master, Captain Li sent this slave to ask whether the firelock troops should go up and fire a volley?"

Captain Li was the captain of a Plain Blue Banner Han Chinese firelock company. His name was Li Yingzhong, the adopted son of the arch-traitor Li Jiucheng, who had gone over to the Qing together with Kong Youde. Because he had always followed Hooge, his official luck was poor, and he was now just a company captain.

"Fire! Get up there and fire a volley, quickly!" Oboi said at once. "Don't let the southern bandits set up their general's cannons!"

"Ja!"

Even before Oboi's order arrived, the battle-hardened good slave of the Plain Blue Banner, Li Yingzhong, had already ordered his firelock troops to deploy and advance.

Apart from their excellent shield carts, the Qing army's firelock troops and artillery were no weaklings either! Their firelock troops in particular had two special skills: one was luring the enemy into opening fire at long range; the other was a close-range volley!

Don't think a close-range volley is so difficult — advancing under enemy fire to get close and fire a volley is what takes real courage. When the enemy has no ability to fight back, a close-range volley is not hard at all. Even a firing squad executing a prisoner can manage that.

And at this moment, Li Yingzhong and his men all thought of themselves as a firing squad — a rare opportunity! The Ming troops must have taken the wrong medicine, actually hauling twenty or thirty cannon up to the front line, intending to set them up and fire on the spot... Who ever used cannon like that? Even Kong Youde's adopted son Kong Sixi didn't have that kind of skill.

Clearly, those Ming artillerymen didn't know what they were doing at all!

"Brothers, get up there fast, close in and fire!" Li Yingzhong shouted excitedly. "Shoot these southern barbarian artillerymen who don't know a damn thing!"

"Kill them!"

"Follow the company captain and there's meat to eat!"

"Kill!"

The firelock troops under his command were astonishingly brave! Even the lobsterbacks of history weren't as badass as them, daring to charge at twenty-odd three-pounder cannon... This wasn't volley fire by ranks, this was execution by cannonade in ranks!

The grapeshot from twenty-four cannon would blast them to pieces!

"Regimental Commander, the Tartar soldiers are coming!"

"They're firelock troops..."

"Good God, they are brave! Even the Ottoman Sultan's Janissaries cannot compare with them!"

As Feng Sizhong directed the artillery deployment, the gunners' exclamations rang in his ears. Among them, an old foreigner surnamed Lu, who had fought in the Thirty Years' War, was giving a thumbs-up and praising the Tartars' courage... Truly too brave — brave to the point of throwing their lives away!