Chapter 534: The Death of Li Zicheng, Part 2

The bloody close-quarters fighting soon erupted on the Shun army's right flank. First, the wall-like advancing pikes thrust into the ranks of the sword-and-shield men, the sharp spearheads carrying tremendous momentum and instantly piercing the cloth-faced armor worn by the sword-and-shield soldiers. Then came the counterattack of the waist sabers! Shielded by their bucklers, the saber men charged up to the pikemen, blades rising and falling, slashing and stabbing at the gaps in the pikemen's armor. Casualties on both sides began to soar. The archers behind the Ming lines and the mounted Shun officers supervising the battle both began loosing volley after volley into the opposing ranks.

The archers on both sides were quite good — all veterans who had served for many years and could shoot well. Against the Tartars they might not have been much to look at, but now they had met their match, and under the concentrated volleys, the melee troops on both sides fell to arrows in droves.

Still, arrowheads were not bullets, after all, and lacked much "stopping power" against armored targets, so those actually brought down by arrowheads were not many.

Not long after the fierce fighting began on the Shun army's right flank, on the open plain east of Tangjia Mountain, the cavalry of both sides also clashed. But it was not Zhang Yong's one thousand light cavalry engaging the Shun cavalry — rather, it was sixteen hundred heavy cavalry that had sallied out from inside Gong'an city, advancing in four waves of one battalion each, launching dense charges from four different directions at the Shun cavalry patrolling the plain east of Tangjia Mountain. Amid the rumbling of hooves, more than six thousand hooves kicked up dust that filled the sky, truly carrying an earth-shaking, mountain-trembling momentum.

This assault was something Zhu Cilang had decided to launch on the spur of the moment after learning that the Ming troops at the Tangjia Mountain front were being shelled.

He knew that twenty or thirty great general cannons would not inflict too many casualties on a Ming force of as many as fifty thousand men, but being shelled was a very "morale-draining" matter, especially when one could only take the hits without striking back.

So he had to find a way to counterattack... The twenty-four three-pounder cannons in Wu Guoyong's hands could not fly over here, and the only thing he had available was Sun Fugui's cavalry regiment.

These were ironclad cavalrymen who had drilled in massed charges!

Moreover, their close-combat ability was not weak either. Every man wore a suit of splint iron armor, and at least a third were also equipped with a deadly close-quarters weapon — the wheel-lock pistol! The rest were equipped with armor-breaking weapons such as throwing axes and iron maces.

By the way, the reason they were equipped with so many close-combat weapons was that they would fight hand-to-hand with the enemy after a massed charge ended, rather than quickly breaking contact and launching another charge. The reason for this was mainly that their horses lacked stamina.

Zhu Cilang could give each of them two horses, but he had no way to provide them with truly first-rate warhorses.

Or rather, the horses they rode would not even meet the standard for warhorses among the Qing army and the Shun army!

Horses — the south can raise them!

But the cost of raising horses in the south is many times higher than on the steppe or even in the Central Plains, so it was impossible to maintain a huge herd.

And the steppe method of horse-raising, which emphasizes quantity, selects tall, strong colts by picking one in a hundred, gelds them, and uses them as warhorses.

But the horses raised in the south were both few and expensive. If one had to pick one in a hundred, then there would be no horses left to use!

So after these ironclad cavalrymen charged fiercely for a while, they were utterly exhausted and could not run anymore. Without going back and resting properly, they simply had no strength to charge a second wave.

Therefore, Zhu Cilang's shock cavalry had to fight hand-to-hand after charging, and simply could not employ the so-called modern shock cavalry tactics.

Fortunately, their close-combat ability was not weak, their equipment was good, and they also had four waves of massed charges as a foundation. The two or three thousand cavalry Li Zicheng had deployed on the east bank of the Hudu River were immediately sent sprawling, men and horses toppling, suffering heavy casualties and retreating step by step.

Tian Jianxiu, who commanded the Shun army operations on the east bank of the Hudu River, was stunned by this storm-like assault from the New Army cavalry, and had no choice but to send out several infantry battalions in dense formations to push forward and cover the retreat of his own mounted units.

Sun Fugui, having won a round, did not dare to press the fight, because although his men had good armor and good weapons, they did not have good horses to ride. The charge and combat just now had nearly exhausted the strength of those nags. Now they had to take it easy. So Sun Fugui also ordered his men to lead away the horses of the Shun riders that had lost their masters and were wandering about the battlefield, and withdrew first.

Meanwhile, on the west bank of the Hudu River, the battle of the Shun army's right-flank infantry cluster had already been decided. The picked vanguard warriors commanded by Jin Shenghuan had fought hard, but still came off worse. It was not that they were defeated by the Shun infantry commanded by Li Guoying — rather, the Shun cavalry that had been supervising the battle from behind, after loosing their arrows, also threw themselves into the fight. They circled around the infantry of both sides locked in fierce combat and turned up behind Jin Shenghuan's picked vanguard. Before they could even launch their attack, the Ming picked vanguard collapsed and fled on their own. As a result, they became the quarry of the Shun infantry and cavalry in pursuit!

Two or three thousand routed soldiers fled at full speed, driven by the Shun infantry and cavalry toward the Hudu River.

Just as the one-sided slaughter was about to unfold, over a thousand Ming cavalry came around from the west bank of the Hudu River west of Tangjia Mountain and launched a charge.

This cavalry force was the household retainers personally led by Zhang Yong. Although they numbered only a thousand riders, they seized the opportunity and caught the Shun army commanded by Liu Zongmin completely off guard — it turned out they had not crossed the river all at once as a thousand riders, but had split into twenty squads, disguised as scout cavalry detachments crossing in batches, deceiving the Shun cavalry watching that stretch of the Hudu River.

After crossing the river, they moved toward the bend of the Hudu River while completing their assembly, and as it happened, they arrived just in time for the rout of the picked vanguard commanded by Jin Shenghuan.

Zhang Yong made an immediate decision and led his cavalry in a charge. The Shun infantry and cavalry pursuing the Ming troops were in disordered formations and entangled with the enemy. Faced with the sudden assault of over a thousand light cavalry, they had not the slightest ability to resist!

But the Shun cavalrymen on horseback were all veteran roving bandits of many years, and were highly experienced in dealing with such situations. Cries of "Pull out!" rang out one after another, and the mounted riders could be seen wheeling their horses around and fleeing in the direction of Guangde Temple, abandoning the Shun infantry on the battlefield to the enemy — these infantrymen were originally the old troops of Zuo Liangyu and Zuo Menggeng, and no one would feel any heartache if they were all slaughtered.

Zhang Yong, however, was in no hurry to slaughter the soldiers of Li Guoying's infantry, who had already fallen into complete panic. Instead, he led his mounted troops in pursuit of the Shun army's old-camp cavalry, also charging in the direction of Guangde Temple.

The thirty-odd one-catty cannons in front of Guangde Temple were the key to today's battle!

If they could be captured, then the battle of Tangjia Mountain would be as good as won...

Zhang Yong spurred his horse and leveled his spear, charging at the very front of the formation under the protection of a group of trusted household retainers, his eyes unblinking, fixed intently on the Shun artillery position in the distance where gunpowder smoke kept billowing up. Company after company of pikemen, archers, and sword-and-buckler men had already marched out of Guangde Temple and begun forming up on the northwest side of Guangde Palace, directly facing Zhang Yong's force, clearly intending to block his cavalry.

But Zhang Yong was no easy mark. Just as his mounted troops were about to approach the Shun infantry formation, Zhang Yong suddenly wheeled his horse and turned left, leading his thousand-odd light cavalry in a gallop along the line of the Shun army's deployed formation, and finally turned right again at the end of the Shun infantry line, charging straight at the front of the Shun artillery position!

He was going to charge head-on at the thirty-odd great general cannons arrayed in front of Guangde Temple!

If these cannons were the three-pounders of the Hard-Working New Army, what he was doing would undoubtedly be suicide. The gap between "one catty" and "three pounds" might not seem large, but the two sides differed enormously in artillery technique, the lightness and flexibility of gun carriages, and grapeshot technology.

Moreover, the gunners operating these "one-catty" cannons were all surrendered troops of the Zuo family army. Seeing over a thousand cavalry charging at them like a flood bursting a dike, they were all terrified and trembling — how could they possibly load lead shot and powder? They all abandoned their cannons and fled for their lives.

Zhang Yong immediately seized the opportunity and led his cavalry in a fierce charge, taking the artillery position in a single assault.

But Zhang Yong and his cavalry had not brought hammers and nails with them. They did not know to spike the touchholes, and instead set fires everywhere to ignite the gunpowder.

Just as Zhang Yong was leading his men around wreaking havoc, deafening cheers suddenly erupted across the battlefield. It turned out Li Zicheng had descended from Jinmao Mountain and was personally leading more than ten thousand Shun infantry and cavalry in a general assault!