Chapter 396: Joining Battle

With a thunderous "Boom—", great billows of white gunpowder smoke slowly drifted up into the sky.

A red barbarian cannon of the Qing army fired the first shot at the Qin army's camp from over three li away.

Immediately after, one deafening roar after another rang across the heavens—more than thirty Qing cannons fired in succession, and gunpowder smoke soon shrouded the entire position as black cannonballs streaked across the sky at visible speed, flying toward the wooden palisade of the Ming army opposite.

After the first volley was complete, owing to the guns still being sighted in, only a few of the dozens of cannonballs struck the palisade, sending splinters flying from the camp gate and wooden fence built of thick logs.

Of the remaining balls, a small portion landed early, bounced several times on the hard ground, then rolled to the foot of the palisade and stopped; most of the balls, however, sailed over the palisade and flew into the Ming camp.

Fifty paces directly opposite the gate inside the Qin camp, behind the first low wall built of double rows of sandbags, a hundred musketeers sat resting with their backs pressed against the wall, while nearly a thousand more musketeers waited for orders behind several low walls several hundred paces from the camp gate.

With the help of conscripted laborers, the Han Banner gunners shouted work chants as they righted and realigned the cannon barrels that had been knocked askew by the tremendous recoil, then swabbed out the bore and the touchhole with long brushes, loaded the propellant charge and the ball—fully a quarter of an hour of bustling labor before they were ready for a second shot.

"Damn it! Can these Jianzhou barbarians even fire a cannon? I say, even if I stood right at the gate, these sons of bitches couldn't touch a single hair on my head!"

After the Qing army's first bombardment, Li Sanwa leaned his upper body against a low wall, turned his head, and sneered at a row of musketeers sitting on the ground.

Though some of the balls the Qing had just fired had flown into the camp, they had all landed after clearing the first row of low walls, bounced once, and been stopped by a row of sandbags.

"Battalion Commander, but just now when the barbarians fired, you curled yourself into a ball, didn't you! Heh heh heh heh!"

Cheng Laosan, the Company Commander under Li Sanwa, exposed him on the spot without mercy, drawing a burst of stifled laughter from the musketeers.

"Bullshit! My gut was acting up just then—lying flat made it feel better! Hey, I say, Cheng Laosan, are your hide itching or what? Wait till the fighting's done and see how I deal with you! You don't believe me, do you? When the barbarians fire again in a bit, I'll stand right here on this spot—if I move so much as one step, I'm a turtle in the water! Cheng Laosan, you dare stand with me?"

Exposed as he was, Li Sanwa felt not the slightest shame; instead he smugly squared off against Cheng Laosan.

"Yes, yes, yes! The Battalion Commander is mighty! The Battalion Commander is about to be promoted to general—how could he fear these little pellets of the barbarians! Heh heh!"

Cheng Laosan was also one of the deserters who had come over with Li Sanwa from Yansui Command; the two were especially close in private, and bickering and joking between them was an everyday affair.

As the two traded jokes, a great "Duang—" sounded from afar—the Qing army's second bombardment had begun.

Startled by the thunderous noise, Li Sanwa instinctively flinched and was about to drop flat on the ground, but then he remembered the big boast he had just made; with no choice, he straightened up and stared at the sky to see whether any balls were falling, his face turning pale.

Fierce and valiant on the battlefield, Li Sanwa feared cannon more than anything.

When he had first joined the army at Yansui Command, he had watched a Tartar raider cavalryman, just a dozen-odd paces away, take a one-jin Folangji cannonball to the head fired by the government troops—that horrifying sight of a head suddenly bursting apart became a shadow he could never shake from his heart.

Fortunately, this time the Qing cannonballs were all aimed at the camp gate and palisade, and none flew into the camp; once the cannon fire stopped, Li Sanwa's complexion quickly returned to normal.

The Qing army's second bombardment wrought tremendous destruction on the Qin camp—no matter how sturdy the timber, it could not withstand the blows of iron balls flying over with tremendous kinetic energy; the camp gate in particular, struck by over a dozen balls, had already cracked in several places and looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Zhang Yuan, standing on the gun platform at one corner of the square camp, was observing the Qing army's movements and paid no heed to the damage to the gate and palisade.

Those things existed to be expended in the first place—broken was broken; what mattered was dealing with the Qing assault that would follow.

At this moment the Qing gunners were busy preparing a third shot, while several hundred Qing soldiers had begun to assemble under the command flag of a jala janggin clad entirely in white armor.

"Pass the order: the first rank of musketeers is increased to six hundred! Battalion Commander Li Sanwa to personally oversee them! The moment the barbarians break through the gate, open fire! Gunners on the east and west platforms, ready your ammunition and await the general's command!"

Zhang Yuan gave the order as he watched the Qing troops finish forming up.

At Zhu Youjian's request, besides the Yongwei Camp and the Capital Camps, the Qin army had also undergone large-scale re-equipment. Many of the original spearmen and sword-and-shield men had been converted to musketeers, while only two hundred archers of outstanding marksmanship were retained among the bowmen for emergencies.

As trumpets of varying lengths sounded from the gun platforms, Li Sanwa immediately mustered his five hundred musketeers into formation, then filed past row after row of low walls toward the camp gate.

Moments later, the Qing army's third bombardment rang out once more.

Under the concentrated hammering of cannonballs, the Qin camp gate finally crashed to the ground with a roar, laying the entire camp bare before the blades and spears of the Qing army.

"Load your ammunition, light your matchcords!"

At Li Sanwa's command, the Ming soldiers behind the first low wall sprang into action; in less than a few dozen breaths, all one hundred musketeers were ready, while several hundred paces opposite, five hundred Qing infantry advanced bearing heavy weapons—hammers, axes, iron staves, and long spears.

Unlike the Ming army, which prized neat, orderly formations, the Qing army cared little for formation discipline and sneered at this Ming tradition.

In the eyes of the vast majority of Qing soldiers, having fought the Ming for years and clashed with them in countless battles, no matter how tight the Ming formation, it would collapse and flee under the strike of Qing elite wearing two layers of heavy armor.

Though they knew the Ming troops they faced this time were elite unlike any before, troops who had repeatedly inflicted heavy casualties on the Eight Banners, to Qing soldiers who had never fought this new-style Ming army, so long as they paid a small price to break their formation, the Ming would still be routed as easily as in the past.

"Raise muskets!"

Li Sanwa stood at the far right of the first rank of soldiers behind the low wall and gave the command.

One hundred musketeers leveled their firelocks, the dark muzzles pointing toward the camp gate.

Though this was the Qin army's first clash with the legendary fierce Eight Banners troops, seeing that the enemy, for all their menacing bearing, carried only the cold weapons the Ming had long since discarded, Li Sanwa could not help curling his lip in contempt: "Are these dog barbarians tired of living? You think you can get close carrying hammers and axes? What bullshit 'invincible'—today we'll make these barbarians taste the power of the musket!"

Five hundred Qing soldiers approached the camp gate in loose skirmish formation, but these battle-hardened veterans still advanced at a steady ordinary pace; to conserve their strength, the Qing did not launch a charge.

Though the Qing soldiers had already entered the range of the Folangji cannons, Zhang Yuan did not order them to fire.

He was afraid the cannon fire would drive the Qing back—that would deny him the chance to inflict even greater casualties.

Just as the leading company of nearly a hundred Qing soldiers reached the camp gate, the jala janggin leading them gave a command, and in an instant these hundred-odd Qing soldiers silently quickened their pace into a sprint; in the blink of an eye they had crossed the ruined gate and charged at the Qin soldiers behind the low wall.

"Fire!"

At Li Sanwa's shout, one hundred muskets went off almost simultaneously.

Amid a continuous crackling like popping beans, great clouds of white smoke screened the Ming soldiers behind the low wall from view.