Chapter 260: Cannon Fire

Around the wei hour on the nineteenth day of the sixth month of the tenth year of Chongzhen, the Yongwei Camp troops who had arrived beneath the city walls split into three divisions and, under the leadership of several Assistant Regional Commanders and Mobile Corps Commanders, headed for the east, west, and south city gates, beginning preparations to launch an assault on Yizhou. Hong Chengchou, Zu Dashou, and others sat upright under heavy guard on an earthen platform raised by the baggage camp, watching the battle from several li outside the south gate of Yizhou, while Vice Regional Commander Mao Yuanyi of the Yongwei Camp took charge of directing the assault on the city.

Because the Daling River, which originates in the mountains of western Liaoxi, flows past the north of Yizhou city before bending southward, it happened to wrap half of Yizhou within its curve. Moreover, since the city had been built to guard against the Jianzhou barbarians from the northeast, and the Daling River already provided a natural barrier, no moat had been dug when the city was constructed. This time the Ming army came from the south, saving them the time and effort of having to fill in a moat.

Just as Tanggudai had expected, the Yongwei Camp placed its main assault on the south gate. Four thousand soldiers formed four square formations in strict array about three li from the city gate. Four red barbarian cannons, each weighing roughly fifteen hundred jin and hauled by ox-carts, were deployed in front of the formations, their dark muzzles aimed at the defenders on the walls on either side. Twenty Folangji cannons weighing roughly five hundred jin each were lined up in a row one li from the city gate, with the gunners of each cannon rapidly adjusting their aim toward the gate. Not far from either flank of the artillery position stood a thousand cavalrymen as guards, the riders already dismounted and waiting, with cotton cloth stuffed in their horses' ears to keep them from being startled by the tremendous noise when the cannons fired.

Driven back by the Ming cavalry, the five hundred Eight Banner horsemen could not possibly approach the Ming infantry, and the so-called harassment and delay strategy that Tanggudai had devised failed. Although a dozen or so white-armored soldiers led them, and these five hundred Eight Banner cavalrymen were all elite troops, facing an opponent ten times their number they dared not charge forward rashly—that would not be bravery, that would be throwing their lives away.

While the Ming gunners busied themselves nervously, Tanggudai, standing on the wall beside the south gate, was observing the Ming army's formation.

Tanggudai was very familiar with the armor, banners, and flags of the distant Ming cavalry—he knew those were the household retainers of the Zu family generals. The two sides had fought for years and knew each other all too well.

But the Ming infantry below the walls gave Tanggudai a feeling of both strangeness and alarm, and a vague sense of foreboding rose in his heart.

The several square formations the Ming army had arrayed were impeccably ordered. Countless banners of every size fluttered in the wind. The soldiers all wore black lamellar armor, stood erect with heads raised and eyes fixed forward, and the arquebuses, spears, swords, and shields in their hands all appeared meticulously maintained. The entire formation exuded a dense killing aura—judging from this alone, this was a well-trained elite force.

These were absolutely not the Ming troops of Ningyuan and Jinzhou! Although the Ming soldiers along the Ning-Jin line included many brave and fierce fighters, their formations never carried this kind of momentum, nor were their armor and weapons so finely made.

Where had this army come from? Could it be the Ming troops that had suppressed the rebels within the passes?

What puzzled Tanggudai even more was that, since they had come to attack the city, the Ming troops below the walls carried no scaling ladders or other siege equipment. Could the Ming army intend to rely on their numerical superiority and settle in for a long siege? But didn't besieging a city require digging trenches on all sides?

When he saw the Ming army pushing several dozen cannons of various sizes to the front of their formation, Tanggudai's heart pounded violently, and an extremely intense sense of danger suddenly flashed through his mind.

He recognized these red barbarian cannons and had witnessed their power before. When Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, and Geng Zhongming had surrendered to the Qing with their forces, they had brought along several cannons of much the same kind. During routine drills of the Han Banner, Hong Taiji had brought the banner masters of each banner and important generals to watch on site—the thunderous roar like heaven's wrath and the devastating destruction wrought by the iron shot had chilled everyone to the bone.

"Everyone withdraw to the base of the wall and stand close against it!"

Tanggudai knew how to guard against cannon fire and immediately ordered the Eight Banner soldiers and booi bondservants on the wall to pull back and await orders.

As Tanggudai's command was rapidly relayed, the Eight Banner soldiers on the wall and the booi bondservants with them filed down the steps in groups, and the wall, which had been crowded with people, suddenly cleared considerably—only Tanggudai and a few personal guards remained where they were, looking down to observe.

Not long after the Jianzhou barbarians on the wall had gone down, a thunderclap-like explosion resounded across the fields, followed by a thick plume of smoke rising slowly—one of the Yongwei Camp's red barbarian cannons had fired first.

The fifteen Portuguese who directed and personally operated the cannon fire had all served in their homeland's military and had been specially recruited at great expense from Macao by the Embroidered Uniform Guard on Zhu Youjian's orders to serve as artillery instructors for the Yongwei Camp. Their leader was a former lieutenant who had served in the Portuguese army—Diego Azores. Five years after retiring from the military, he had followed his nation's merchant ships to the Great Ming, and because he was enamored of the Great Ming's customs, culture, and cuisine, he had remained in Macao. Over time he had learned to speak fairly fluent Mandarin. When he learned that the Great Ming court was hiring foreign gunners, Azores contacted several soldiers with backgrounds similar to his own and accepted the Ministry of War's commission.

Besides his love of Ming culture, what most moved Azores was the exceedingly generous price the Ming offered: the leader received one hundred fifty taels of fine silver per month, the other gunners eighty taels per month, and if they achieved a decisive effect in battle, there would be additional heavy rewards. Such income was far more generous than what military officers in Portugal earned, and for these men who had drifted ten thousand li from home, the temptation was fatal and irresistible.

After simple testing in Macao, the Embroidered Uniform Guard officers confirmed that all fifteen men could skillfully operate cannons, and so they brought these high-nosed, deep-eyed foreigners back to the capital together.

In fact, as early as the third year of Chongzhen, the Chongzhen Emperor at that time had issued an edict recruiting Portuguese gunners. These hired Portuguese had played an extremely important role in battles against the Jianzhou barbarians and had fought with both bravery and loyalty before all dying in battle in the fourth year of Chongzhen.

Many of Kong Youde's and Shang Kexi's subordinates had received training from these Portuguese mercenaries, and the defection of this firearms unit to the Qing posed an enormous threat to the Ming army. Zhu Youjian, having traveled through time, naturally understood all of this—this recruitment operation he had spearheaded was merely following in others' footsteps.

Through Azores and his men's meticulous training and guidance, the gunners of the Yongwei Camp and the Capital Camps had greatly improved in proficiency and accuracy when firing cannons, and had also learned standardized operating procedures. When Zhu Youjian heard the news, he was overjoyed and took three thousand taels from the privy purse to reward these fifteen men. Azores and his companions, delighted, were unstinting in their praise of the Great Ming's generous and benevolent Emperor, and swore they would surely help the Great Ming government eliminate those barbaric rebels.

With the shrill shriek of the shot tearing across the sky, a ten-jin solid iron ball traced an arc and, at a speed visible to the naked eye, smashed toward the walls of Yizhou. After a dull thud, the ball destroyed a crenellation and, its momentum undiminished, continued flying forward for a distance before landing on the broad walkway atop the wall, then instantly bounced up, cleared the wall, and crashed into the roof of a house, piercing through the tiles and landing inside.

A burst of miserable cries rose up as the shattered crenellation became dozens or even hundreds of fragments that struck the Jianzhou barbarians and Han booi bondservants crouching nearby, leaving them bloody and battered. Before they could recover their senses, one thunderous roar after another followed in succession—the remaining three red barbarian cannons at the south gate and the twenty Folangji cannons fired in turn. Immediately after, the sound of cannon fire also came from the east and west directions. For a moment, as if the Thunder God of heaven were enraged, the skies and fields around Yizhou were engulfed in thunderous noise, and everyone on the walls, Tanggudai included, was shaken to the depths of their souls by the successive explosions.

After the red barbarian cannons had fired and a round of ranging shots was completed, starting from the second volley, the twenty Folangji cannons lined up in a row all struck the city gate accurately with their one-jin shots. By the time Tanggudai suddenly realized the Ming army's method of breaching the city, it was already too late—after four volleys, the heavy city gate had been blasted to splinters, and Yizhou's gateway was completely thrown open.

Hong Chengchou, Zu Dashou, and the others watching from afar were also utterly stunned by the scene before them.

Although Zu Dashou and the other western Liaoning generals had witnessed the power of cannons before, and although several great cannons were also placed atop Jinzhou's walls—back when defending Ningyuan, under Yuan Chonghuan's command, the Ning-Jin army had used cannons to inflict enormous casualties on the Jianzhou barbarians—the red barbarian cannon was extremely cumbersome, requiring nearly half a quarter-hour to fire once, and its accuracy was terribly poor. Nothing like the Yongwei Camp's artillerymen this time, who were so nimble they could fire once every few dozen breaths, and with extremely high accuracy—their shots basically all landed on the city walls. If the walls had been crowded with defenders, it would have caused massive casualties to the defending side.

And the Folangji cannons, with their extremely rapid rate of fire, had managed to break through the city gate in less than a quarter-hour. With such deadly weapons in hand, what use would thick and tall city walls be in the future? The costly tactic of scaling walls like ants would henceforth be completely obsolete.

Although Hong Chengchou had spent ten years suppressing bandits, the imperial troops he commanded were primarily equipped with traditional bows, arrows, sabers, and spears, and the roving bandits' weapons were even far inferior to the imperial troops'. Though he knew of the power of cannons, he had never personally witnessed such concentrated artillery bombardment. Beyond his shock, Hong Chengchou—who had originally worried that the Emperor was being too hasty—suddenly felt filled with confidence about the decisive battle against the Jianzhou barbarians in the coming year.

This artillery tactic had been deliberately arranged by Mao Yuanyi. In truth, the red barbarian cannons need not have been brought out at all—the Folangji cannons alone could have broken the city gate—but Mao Yuanyi was extremely indignant at the disloyalty of the military establishment throughout western Liaoning toward the court, so this time he had deliberately brought out the red barbarian cannons to intimidate the western Liaoning military families.

With a sharp blast of a trumpet, the cannon fire outside the south gate ceased abruptly, and the artillerymen began packing up their position to withdraw, while the sound of cannon fire from the east and west gates continued intermittently.

A personal guard beside Mao Yuanyi waved the red banner in his hand left and right a few times before pointing forward. From the central formation, one hundred infantrymen wielding great axes and clad in mail armor stepped out and advanced toward the city gate, with one thousand arquebusiers and one thousand spearmen following on either side.

Tanggudai, knowing that Yizhou could no longer be held, did not withdraw through the north gate. After the Ming cannons ceased firing, he ordered over a thousand women from among the booi bondservants to be selected and sent separately to the east, west, and south gates, placing these women at the very front, with a layer of booi bondservant men bearing weapons behind them, and finally the thousand Eight Banner soldiers within the city at the rear.

Tanggudai vainly attempted to use the women as shields, driving the booi bondservants forward to throw the Ming formation into chaos, after which the Eight Banner soldiers would seize the confusion to slaughter—even if Yizhou ultimately fell, he would inflict heavy casualties on the Ming army.