Chapter 909: Don't Fire — We Surrender! (Please Subscribe)

The twentieth day of the eighth month, in the eighth year of Hongxing of the Great Ming.

Eight gun bastions, each two zhang high and built up from rammed earth and sandbags, had already been laid out in an arc, appearing beyond the Chaoyang Gate fortress.

Amid wave after wave of work chants and the neighing of horses, eight 48-pound bronze cannons had been hauled and pushed up onto their firing platforms by the combined strength of dozens of Percheron horses and several hundred tall, powerful Ming soldiers. The muzzles of the eight great cannons were all aimed at the outer wall of the Chaoyang Gate barbican fortress. The so-called Chaoyang Gate fortress was not the original barbican, but a bastioned outwork located outside the Chaoyang Gate barbican. About two li away from the north and south sides of this bastioned outwork stood two other bastioned outworks of identical design — one called the Dongzhi Gate fortress, the other the Little East Gate fortress. The Dongzhi Gate fortress lay just outside the Dongzhi Gate barbican, while the Little East Gate fortress was situated outside a small new city gate called the Little East Gate.

The reason the Qing garrison had opened a new small city gate in the eastern wall of Beijing was precisely to build this bastioned outwork between the Chaoyang Gate fortress and the Southeast Corner fortress (that is, the fortress outside the southeastern corner of Beijing's wall). In this way the Little East Gate fortress could support and be supported by the Chaoyang Gate fortress and the Southeast Corner fortress. Without this fortress, the distance between the Chaoyang Gate fortress and the Southeast Corner fortress would have been too great — as much as five li. That already exceeded the effective range of the Hongyi cannons, so the two could not support each other. It had therefore been necessary to build a new fortress between them, and to support that fortress, the Little East Gate had been opened.

In addition, the Qing army had opened three new small gates in the northern wall of Beijing and built three bastioned outworks there. They had also opened one small gate in the western wall of Beijing and built one bastioned outwork. In this way, the city of Beijing now had fourteen city gates and eighteen bastion forts.

If the attacking Ming army could not destroy at least one of the eighteen bastion forts, then even if they demolished a section of the wall, they could not possibly send infantry in a frontal assault under the crossfire of two bastioned outworks.

Therefore the Zhu Emperor's 48-pounders could not yet bombard the city wall. They could only pound the bastion forts by day and shell the city at random by night — the aim being to lower the defenders' morale.

Zhu Cilang and the Chongzhen Emperor had already arrived together at the front and entered a forward command post built of timber and earth. This command post was located south of the arc of gun bastions, five li outside the wall directly between the Little East Gate and Chaoyang Gate fortresses. Although the Hongyi cannons could just barely reach it, by the time a shot traveled that distance its remaining force was spent, and it could not penetrate the timber-and-earth fortification.

Even so, Zhu Cilang and Chongzhen did not dare enter this timber-and-earth fortification in daylight. Instead they chose to enter in the early morning, when visibility was poor. Nor did they enter from ground level, but through a communication trench extending three li in the direction of Tongzhou.

Inside the fortification many officers were already waiting, a great assembly. Seeing the Zhu Emperor and the Retired Emperor Chongzhen enter, they all bowed in salute. Senior commanders such as Wu Sanfu, Shi Kefa, Yan Yingyuan, Feng Sizhong, and Zhu Chunchen, along with foreign officers such as Condé, were all waiting for the bombardment to begin.

About a hundred paces in front of the fortification, a parallel trench and several communication trenches were being dug. Countless Ming infantrymen and army laborers had been working furiously for several days already, and no one knew how much longer they would be at it.

The Zhu Emperor was not naive enough to think that eight 48-pound cannons could destroy the great fortress of Beijing — for this fortress had not only been converted into a bastion fort, but had also been reinforced and fortified with sandbags, which were superb at resisting cannon fire. It simply could not be destroyed by seventeenth-century artillery!

Therefore, to take this fortress, apart from siege and psychological warfare, the Zhu Emperor would have to personally step forward and do some mathematics.

How to calculate dead ground, how to dig parallel trenches, where to deploy 48-pound and 24-pound mortars, how to use cannons to fire ricochet shot — these were all basically mathematical problems, and on top of that they required surveying skills. Of course, the Zhu Emperor would not personally do the surveying, because it was too dangerous; the engineers had to get close to the enemy's fortifications and could easily be killed by their cannon fire!

In order to capture the Beijing fortress, the Zhu Emperor had also ordered the creation of a special branch of troops that used hand-thrown grenades — the grenadiers! And he had specially designed a wooden-handled grenade — one much larger and much heavier than the wooden-handled grenades familiar to later generations! Because there was no high explosive, the grenade's warhead could only be filled with gunpowder, so it had to be made larger; otherwise it would have no power. The grenade's wooden handle was hollowed out and also served as a wooden tube fuse. When throwing it, one first had to light the fuse, then brave the enemy's hail of bullets to hurl the grenade with all one's strength.

Because grenadiers could throw bombs with greater density and speed than artillery, and because they threw at close range with high accuracy, in theory, as long as the parallel trenches were dug inward layer by layer until they reached beneath the enemy's outwork, the mortars and grenadiers could blast the defenders on the outwork into utter chaos.

In addition, using cannons with reduced powder charges and elevated firing angles to fire explosive shells was also a good way to deal with a bastion fort. The shells could pass over the bastion's wall, then bounce up behind the wall, with a certain probability of exploding in midair and causing enormous casualties!

Zhu Cilang raised his telescope and, through an observation slit, silently watched the great fortress before him — one that felt both familiar and strange to him. For some reason, his mind kept wandering elsewhere. After retaking Beijing, it would be the turn of the lands beyond the passes and Joseon! He reckoned Li Hao could not hold out at Namhansanseong until the Great Ming's heavenly troops came to the rescue. By then, even if Dodo brought Goguryeo back to life, he still had Spain behind him — another great enemy!

Moreover, the Shun's northern expedition army had also stood them up — it had gone north to Burma instead!

This was a huge surprise. Burma was a vassal of the Shun! Li Guo had actually disregarded the bonds between suzerain and vassal — truly the nature of a bandit!

The current Toungoo dynasty was already weak, and it probably could not defeat the powerful Shun army. The question now was how the Shun would handle the aftermath.

Just as he was pondering, Feng Sizhong's voice came through: "Your Majesty, the artillery is ready. Please give the order!"

The Zhu Emperor turned and glanced at Chongzhen, whose brows were tightly knitted. "Retired Emperor, you give the order!"

The Retired Emperor Chongzhen nodded heavily. "Fire! Give them a fierce pounding!"

Just after the hour of Chen on the twentieth day of the eighth month, at the Retired Emperor Chongzhen's command, the eight 48-pound cannons roared, hurling eight explosive shells at the Chaoyang Gate fortress three li away.

The Battle of Beijing had officially begun!

Boom— The earth shook and the mountains trembled!

Inside Namhansanseong, the body of the Joseon king, Li Hao, shuddered once more!

The taste of hiding inside Namhansanseong while being shelled was truly unbearable!

When the Byeongja Horan broke out nineteen years earlier, Li Hao, then still Grand Prince Bongrim, had not followed his father, King Injo, into Namhansanseong, but had been sent to Ganghwa Island for refuge. He had therefore never personally experienced the previous battle of Namhansanseong, and could not comprehend the despair and helplessness his father had felt back then. Instead, after word of his father's surrender arrived, he had felt boundless humiliation and unwillingness to accept it.

It was precisely because he had never experienced the terror of being besieged and attacked by the Qing army that, after ascending the throne, Li Hao had conceived the idea of resisting the Great Qing, doing everything he could to expand the army and prepare for war. And when word came of the Great Qing's first collapse, he had resolutely raised troops against the Qing.

The Great Qing was gone, so rebelling against the Qing could hardly carry any risk, could it?

But he never imagined that the new army he had painstakingly built up over so many years would prove utterly incapable of withstanding a single blow when it ran into Jin Dodo's great army north of the Yalu River. One thousand cavalry of the palace guard, twenty-one thousand men of the Royal Guard Command, and ten thousand men of the Military Training Command — in all thirty-one thousand infantry and one thousand armored cavalry — had been routed in a single assault by a Qing force of less than twenty thousand. Of the northern expedition army of more than thirty thousand, in the end fewer than one thousand men returned alive to Hanyang!

What was even more terrifying was that the Japanese pirates had seized the opportunity to invade the southeast, first taking Guryongpo, then attacking Ulsan Fortress, and then advancing on Gyeongju.

The Great Qing meant to carve up Joseon with Japan!

Boom— Another 24-pound shell slammed into the wall of Namhansanseong. Needless to say, another long stretch of the wall must have collapsed.

Unlike nineteen years ago, the Great Qing's heavenly troops now had the help of Spain and possessed irresistible large-caliber artillery. Joseon alone could no longer stand against them.

Li Hao finally shed tears of remorse, and in a trembling voice gave the royal command: "Tell them to stop firing. We are willing to submit to the Great Qing!"

(End of Chapter)