Chapter 533: The Death of Li Zicheng, Part Two

This is cavalry-artillery coordination! When the thirty-two one-catty cannon Li Zicheng had arrayed before the Guangde Palace opened up with a thunderous roar, Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan on Tangjia Hill already knew something was wrong.

They had never imagined Li Zicheng would drag that many cannon all the way from Jiangling City to Gong'an!

Even less had they imagined that once Li Zicheng combined his cavalry and artillery, the Ming army, lacking both cavalry and cannon, would be thrown into a state of complete passive helplessness!

Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan were no strangers to the great general cannon; their troops had earlier been equipped with a number of great general cannon of various sizes. But because these pieces had little power and were hard to employ in field battle, they had done little good and were something of a nuisance.

To use a great general cannon against the enemy, you first had to heap up an earthen slope! The work was enormous, and what was more, it was easily spotted by the enemy. Normally, the moment the other side saw you piling up earth, they simply moved away... who would be fool enough to stand there waiting for you to shell them?

Unless they were defending a city, or... simply could not move at all!

And the reason infantry on a battlefield could not move was usually one alone: they were being watched by large numbers of cavalry.

Since ancient times, infantry overcoming cavalry has required forming up to hold ground, and infantry once formed up is usually very hard to move — unless it is formed into a Spanish tercio or a Maurice-style square of musketeers and pikemen, which can turn itself into a "moving castle," letting the musketeers slowly maneuver around the pike square.

Yet even such a "moving fortress," when it met quickly relocatable three-pounder cannon, would likewise suffer grievous losses!

On the seventeenth-century European battlefield, artillery had already become the decisive factor in victory and defeat!

The armies of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan, however, were all traditional Ming forces, and because they had fled south with Zuo Liangyu after the Battle of Zhuxian Town, their troops had early on left the north, where horses were easily obtained, and gone to horse-poor Huguang.

In the years since, the Zuo family army's horses had suffered losses with no replacements; the Zuo family's own core troops could still keep some horses, but the armies of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan, as collateral branches, gradually had no horses to draw on. By the time they reached Gong'an, only the household retainers of the three generals Zhang, Qiu, and Jin still had horses to use... the three men's retainers together amounted to only twenty-five or twenty-six hundred men — the entirety of the Ming cavalry on the Tangjia River battlefield. Of these, only Zhang Yong's thousand retainers rode one man with two horses, and could be counted as having real fighting strength.

Li Zicheng, by contrast, though he too had been forced into Huguang, had been there only a short time, and he still held the two prefectures of Xi'an and Nanyang, and had recently received the nominal allegiance of Yan'an and Yulin.

Moreover, neither the Shun army nor the Zuo family army now had the support of government horse administration, so they could only rely on their own officers and men to raise horses. And after the Shun carried out land enclosure and field grants, the officers and men had manors of their own, which made it convenient to raise horses.

Thus the cavalry Li Zicheng had now brought to the Gong'an front numbered as many as seventeen or eighteen thousand, most of whom could still maintain one man with two horses!

With that much cavalry spread across the battlefield, the infantry of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan simply could not move, and could only stand there stiffly and take the shelling...

"Feixiong, what are we to do? We can't just stand here and take this shelling!"

Jin Shenghuan, watching the battle from Tangjia Hill, was the first to lose his composure.

"Huchen, if we don't hold, what else can we do?" Zhang Yong spread his hands. "If you've got some trick, say it!"

Jin Shenghuan said: "How about we pick some shock troops and go for the bandits' gun line! I'll put up fifteen hundred men, and you two together put up fifteen hundred — what do you say?"

Zhang Yong and Qiu Lei both knew Jin Shenghuan's idea was unreliable, but they could hardly refuse — on this battlefield the Jin family army had the most men, and if Jin Shenghuan quit, the battle could not go on!

Besides, no one could endure being shelled like this!

Though there were only thirty-odd one-catty small cannon, a single volley could still send thirty-odd deadly stone balls flying.

At the start of the bombardment the aim was poor, but as they kept firing it grew better and better, and the shot was falling right into the massed ranks!

A single volley could kill or wound a dozen or more; if this went on until dark, would they not lose over a thousand?

By then what morale would the Jin family army have left? Very likely, without Li Zicheng's troops even charging, they would collapse on their own...

Zhang Yong thought for a moment and said: "An assault on the gun line probably can't succeed, but it can at least buy a little time... we must prepare for both outcomes. If the assault fails, Brother Huchen, pull your men back a hundred paces and get out of the cannon's reach!"

Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan also knew the water level of the Hudu River was falling — they could guess what had happened; such things had occurred before on the Central Plains battlefields.

So they all knew that the Hudu River now blocking the Jin family army's front could certainly be forded!

If the Jin family army fell back under the close watch of the thousands upon thousands of Shun infantry and cavalry on the opposite bank, they would very likely be struck by a sudden charge and the whole army would collapse.

"So be it!" Jin Shenghuan nodded heavily. "I'll go pick my death volunteers right now and fight it out with that Li! Who knows, we might just pull it off..."

With that, he clasped his fists to Zhang Yong and Qiu Lei, then strode down the hill.

Drums beat steadily, and under the guidance of red battle flags, more than three thousand Ming infantry, in loose order, began fording at the bend of the Hudu River.

Under the prodding of the Shun army's artillery, the Ming army had no choice but to launch a counterattack — using cannon to force the enemy's infantry to assault one's own prepared defensive position was an exceedingly common practice on the seventeenth-century European battlefield.

This time Li Zicheng had, as the saying goes, a blind cat stumbling onto a dead rat!

The counterattack personally commanded by Jin Shenghuan was, to be fair, still highly professional. He did not send the three thousand shock troops pouring out head-on against the Shun gun line, but instead launched them from the Shun gun line's left flank, aiming to strike from the side.

Considering that the Shun army on the field had many cavalry, Jin Shenghuan had half the shock troops go out with long spears, while the rest were split evenly between sword-and-shield men and archers.

The three thousand men were divided into ten companies, each formed into a square built around its pikemen, and advanced across the Hudu River.

Li Zicheng, directing the battle from Jinmao Hill, spotted the Ming counterattack from far off, watched for a moment, and could not help bursting into loud laughter: "Sure enough, they're still the Ming army I know!"

"Your Majesty, do you have any orders for the Marquis of Ru?" Gu Junen asked at his side.

Jinmao Hill was rather far from the front, and messages were hard to pass, so Li Zicheng had left the Marquis of Ru, General Liu Zongmin, in command at the front.

"No need." Li Zicheng smiled. "The Marquis of Ru knows what to do!"

His words had barely fallen when from the Shun army's right wing rose a drumbeat like muffled thunder.

Liu Zongmin had already sent troops out to meet them! The troops sent to meet the attack were infantry herded along by cavalry — in the rear ranks were old-camp cavalry, and in the front ranks a solid line of sword-and-shield men! They looked spirited enough, every man armored and armed, drawn up in passably neat ranks.

"Your Majesty," Gu Junen said, raising a telescope for a look and then turning back to Li Zicheng, "the Marquis of Ru has sent up all of Li Guoying's men."

Li Zicheng sneered: "Isn't that exactly why we brought them? If they want to be old-camp soldiers of my Shun, let them hand over heads! That's what they call a pledge of allegiance!"

Gu Junen said with a flattering smile: "Your Majesty is wise!"

He had barely finished speaking when a great shout of battle cries suddenly erupted across the field!

The ten companies of shock troops and death volunteers commanded by Jin Shenghuan had already charged the two thousand-odd sword-and-shield men commanded by Li Guoying.

Spears and sword-and-shields soon clashed together — not long before, the soldiers on both sides had been eating from the same pot under Zuo Liangyu's command; now they met blade to blade, mortal enemies on the battlefield.

And they fought with a will, too... under Zuo Liangyu they had done nothing but idle; now it was different — behind them were knives at their backs, and before them all manner of painted promises to lure them on.

The terms Li Zicheng offered were "hand over heads, enter the old camp"; once in the old camp, they would be granted land and become trusted men of the Yongchang Emperor.

And on the side of Jin Shenghuan, Zhang Yong, and Qiu Lei, there were the territories of Guangxi and Yunnan as bait — beat Li Zicheng, and they could go to Guangxi and Yunnan to become overlords of a region, and then they too could divide land and houses among the brave men under them...