Chapter 427: Stubborn Barricades

"Go! Fetch some booi bondservants to dismantle the chevaux de frise! Bring more of them!"

Abatai gazed at the chevaux de frise formation the Ming army had set up several hundred paces away, along with the long row of cannon platforms behind it. Agitated and anxious, his brows knitted tightly together.

He had fought the Ming army for over a decade and participated in more than a hundred battles large and small, yet he had never seen such a formation.

Previously, when he had fought field battles against Ming forces of varying sizes beyond the passes, the Ming troops were not only weak in combat strength, but their minds were not as sharp as they were now. They always foolishly formed up and engaged the Eight Banners troops, only to have their formations broken by the Eight Banners' heavy-armored infantry, followed by one-sided slaughter.

But the Ming army before him now was not only extraordinarily formidable in combat power, they also produced all sorts of strange and novel methods without end. This made the Eight Banners, both high and low, who were accustomed to easy victories through traditional tactics, feel extremely ill at ease.

The Ming army's endlessly inventive defensive works had already surpassed the bounds of what the Eight Banners could comprehend.

And these works were the result of Zhu Youjian summarizing the experience of later generations and instilling his own concepts and ideas into several senior officials of the Ministry of War.

This method of three-dimensional firepower strikes at close, medium, and long range truly surpassed the era. It was like a bright lamp lit in the darkness of night, casting a flood of light before the eyes of Ministry of War officials who had always been constrained by traditional methods of warfare.

While marveling at the Emperor's creativity and ideas, Yang Sichang and others took the lead in conducting small-scale experiments among the Yongwei Camp, the Qin Army, the White Pole troops, and several other forces near the capital.

After repeatedly simulating the various countermeasures the Eight Banners might employ, everyone from the senior officials of the Ministry of War and commanding generals down to the low-ranking officers of each army unanimously agreed that adopting this method—which was equivalent to transplanting siege defense onto the field of battle—to fight the Jianzhou barbarians meant that, given the weapons and troop composition currently in the Jianzhou barbarians' hands, even if they ultimately managed to break through the Ming army's fortifications, the price they would pay would surely be more than they could bear.

All those in the know, including Yang Sichang, Sun Chuanting, Qin Liangyu, and others, were full of admiration for the Emperor's stroke of genius.

Whether in public settings or private discussions, everyone was astonished by the Emperor's ingenious thinking that could change the course of war, regarding it as a gift from heaven, and a sense of reverence welled up in each person's heart.

In their view, the fact that an Emperor who had never set foot on a battlefield could devise such an unprecedented method of warfare could not be explained by any reasoning other than divine inspiration.

Afterwards, the Ministry of War immediately sent dispatches to the Yongwei Camp, the Capital Camps, the Qin Army, and other defending forces beyond the passes, detailing the specific operational methods of this three-dimensional combat model, and specially drew up detailed diagrams for the commanding generals of each army to reference.

And so it was that the Qin Army's Zhang Yuan unit produced the classic battle example of defeating a larger force with a smaller one—inflicting heavy casualties on the Jianzhou barbarians using fortifications before withdrawing with composure.

For Abatai, and even Yoto, Dorgon, and the many other high-ranking generals of the Eight Banners, this unprecedented new thing truly gave them headaches, and for a time they could not think of any good method to deal with it.

Since that was the case, they would simply overwhelm skill with brute force—after all, there was no shortage of lives to throw into the fray.

After the better part of an hour, three thousand booi bondservants were transferred from the rear camp. Many of them carried great axes, large saws, ropes, and other implements, prepared to forcibly dismantle the Ming army's chevaux de frise formation.

Facing the sea of humanity several hundred paces away, two thousand White Pole infantry and one thousand archers and crossbowmen sat leisurely on the ground resting and waiting, as if they had not come to fight but to sightsee.

On the several cannon platforms directly facing the approaching bondservants, some of the gunners and loaders were checking the cannons' readiness, others were pointing and gesturing at the dense crowd opposite, and some gunners even leaned sideways against the cannon barrels idly looking around, paying no heed whatsoever to the enemies gathered in clusters.

As the earliest troops to drill with this defensive formation, the Qin Army and the White Pole troops had absolute confidence in their own defensive line. Watching those bondservants—who shared the same Han faces as themselves—about to come and throw away their lives, the soldiers felt not a shred of pity in their hearts.

Whatever the reason they had become slaves of the Jianzhou barbarians, they were now serving in the enemy's ranks. Such people dying was no loss.

Knowing full well the power of the Ming army's cannons, the Qing army divided the three thousand bondservants into several groups to reduce the killing power of shot against dense targets.

Each group of bondservants numbered roughly five to six hundred. Each group was led by the headmen who ordinarily managed them, and behind every group rode several dozen cavalrymen holding bows and blades to supervise the ranks, ready to suppress any bondservants who tried to flee when cannon fire struck.

Amidst the Qing army's shouts and curses, the bondservants, who had already seen the Ming cannons, advanced toward the chevaux de frise formation with hearts full of terror.

"Load ammunition!"

On the several cannon platforms facing the bondservants, the master gunners gave the order in unison, and the loaders immediately sprang into frantic activity.

The gunners gripped the handles of their linstocks and thrust them into the burning braziers on the other side. Before long, the tips of the linstocks glowed a dull red.

With a tremendous "Duang," one Folangji cannon fired first. A great cloud of gunpowder smoke rose up, then was quickly blown away by the warm southern wind.

A one-jin shot traced a beautiful arc through the air, flying toward a group of bondservants nearing the chevaux de frise.

Immediately after, amid a continuous series of thunderous reports, several more Folangji cannons fired in succession.

On the adjacent cannon platforms, gunners and loaders worked together to shift the gun carriages, swinging the muzzles from the flanks to bear on the bondservants surging forward.

Hearing the cannons roar, before the bondservants could even look up, several shots slammed viciously into the densely packed crowd. The shots, bouncing and skipping across the ground after landing, instantly plowed several bloody furrows through the mass of men.

In an instant, screams and wails rang out in a cacophony. Severed limbs and copious spurting blood quickly left several patches of ground in utter disarray.

This horrifying scene and the screams resounded in all directions. The bondservants who had not been struck involuntarily let out desperate cries, shoving and dodging one another, all desperate to flee the places where the shots had landed.

They were still more than ten paces away from the chevaux de frise, yet the groups of bondservants had already dissolved into chaos.

Just then, the Folangji cannons, whose loading and firing speed was extremely fast, thundered again in succession. The shots streaking in at high speed once more stirred up a storm of blood and gore among the crowd.

After being ravaged by three volleys of shot, the bondservants, divided into several groups, could no longer endure this bloody scene and the immense terror it brought. Weeping and screaming, they cast down their tools and scattered in a great rout.

The Qing soldiers charged with supervising the ranks said not a word. Those with blades spurred their horses forward and hacked down at the fleeing men; those with bows drew and loosed, shooting down the fastest runners.

In the blink of an eye, over a hundred bondservants either lost their heads or died from arrows. The remaining bondservants, paralyzed with fear, all stood rooted to the spot, not daring to move.

"By order of the Beile! Dismantle the chevaux de frise and each man gets fifty taels of silver and two shi of grain! The first ten to earn merit will be raised to banner status! Those who die in battle get ten taels for burial expenses! Anyone who retreats will be executed!"

At Abatai's instruction, several guards galloped toward the groups of bondservants, loudly shouting out the rewards on offer.

Since ancient times, wealth and riches have stirred men's hearts—let alone such lavish and enormous rewards.

"Forward means death, and retreat means death too! Let's all fight for our lives! Who knows, if we make it back we might become masters!"

"Right! Right! Worst case, we die! We'll risk it all! Ten taels to buy our lives—worth it!"

"The cannonballs can only kill a few people at a time! They can't possibly hit all of us! Let's go for it!"

Several diehard bondservant headmen seized the opportunity to shout.

Sure enough, incited by these men, the thousands of bondservants finally erupted with a long-dormant ferocity. They snatched up the axes and saws they had thrown to the ground and, shouting war cries, charged once more at the chevaux de frise formation.

Unfortunately, their ferocity was not directed at those who had plundered and oppressed them.

It is a complex in which the victim develops feelings toward the perpetrator, even going so far as to help the perpetrator. This emotional state causes the victim to develop fondness for and dependence on the abuser, and even to assist the abuser.

The victim develops a psychological dependence on their captor. Their life and death are in the captor's hands, and when the captor allows them to live, they are filled with gratitude.

They share the captor's fate, treating the captor's future as their own future, and the captor's safety as their own safety.

As a result, they adopt a "we against them" attitude, treating their rescuers or the righteous side as their enemies.

These are the classic symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.

The more than a million Han Chinese who had been abducted from Ming territory by the Eight Banners over the years were patients of this syndrome—a group of fools, hopelessly afflicted, beyond all cure, pitiable yet hateful.