Chapter 55: Slaughter to the Last

The Qing cavalry continued their fearless charge—one had to admit their discipline was remarkable; any ordinary army would have long since broken apart under such conditions.

With volley after volley of gunfire ringing out like a symphony of death, the Qing soldiers screamed one by one as bullets tore through their bodies, every hit blowing open a bowl-sized hole of blood.

The entire battle had lasted only a few minutes, yet to the Qing troops, it felt like a hundred years.

Of the six hundred Qing cavalrymen who had charged under Tantai's command, more than half had already fallen, and the survivors had pushed to within just over thirty paces of the Yongwei Camp's musketeer line.

In the past, if Qing cavalry ever reached thirty paces, the Ming troops would surely have panicked, thrown down their weapons, and fled.

Yet what terrified this group of Qing soldiers was that these Ming troops showed not the slightest panic—the musketeers at the front had already fallen back in orderly fashion, and what they now faced were soldiers gripping long pikes.

The Yongwei Camp's pikemen threaded their way through the musketeer formation, holding their pikes at an angle as they stood behind the shield bearers, resting the four-meter-long pikes in the grooves atop the shields, bracing to meet the dwindling Qing cavalry.

The Yongwei Camp's shield bearers, holding shields in their left hands and two-meter pikes in their right, worked in concert with the pikemen to stab the last few dozen riders off their horses.

The Qing cavalry, long accustomed to invincibility, now cut a truly pitiful figure—none of them had ever imagined that after breaking through the passes and rampaging hundreds of li through the heart of Ming territory, they would die here so senselessly.

The men of the Yongwei Camp had no mind to spare for such thoughts—those who live by the sword die by the sword.

At that moment, the nearly two thousand Qing infantry advancing behind the cavalry also pressed forward.

Sun Yingyuan signaled with his flags, and the musketeers who had fallen back to the rear and flanks once again formed three ranks at the front with remarkable speed, followed by another round of rotating volleys that sent Qing infantry tumbling down row after row.

The Qing infantry moved far slower than the cavalry—every step across the hundred-odd paces was paved with blood, utterly gruesome.

"Fire!"

"Reload!"

Following command after command and drumbeat after drumbeat, the Yongwei Camp's musketeers remained unmoved by the carnage before them, calmly firing, swapping guns, firing again, and swapping guns once more.

The farther a Qing soldier advanced to the front, the faster he died—by the time the Qing infantry had closed to within fifty paces, nearly half of them had already been wiped out.

"Now this is what you call a true firing-line execution!" Zhu Cilang remarked, even as a chill ran through his heart.

As the Qing soldiers drew ever closer, Zhu Cilang could clearly see this near-slaughter unfolding before him; the thick stench of blood drifted on the wind, nearly making him vomit—he had underestimated the cruelty of war.

Wu Zhong, who had been following at Zhu Cilang's side, had long since turned away, unable to watch; his stomach churned with nausea, yet he forced it down, terrified that vomiting would shake the army's morale.

Huang Degong, Sun Yingyuan, and the other commanders also felt a cold dread in their hearts—this tactic was ruthless as hell. They looked at Zhu Cilang, wondering how someone so young from the Eastern Palace could have devised such a vicious strategy.

Finally, one Qing infantryman could take no more—he let out a great shout and ran madly to the rear, and many others, swept along by his example, turned and fled as well.

With Tantai and many niru commanders dead on the field, almost no one remained to stop the Qing retreat.

In their headlong panic, many soldiers collided with the Qing troops still pressing forward from behind, plunging everything into utter chaos.

Seeing this, Zhu Cilang immediately ordered Huang Degong to lead the Yongwei Camp's cavalry out in pursuit of the routed Qing forces.

Though the Yongwei Camp's cavalry was not numerous, it still numbered a full thousand riders—a thousand horsemen chasing down a thousand-plus infantry was as easy as slicing vegetables.

Finally getting their chance to fight, and against a beaten foe at that, every cavalryman was brimming with excitement. Huang Degong let out a wolf-like howl, spurred his warhorse forward, and led the massed cavalry charging at the scattering Qing soldiers.

The Qing infantry, thrown into complete disarray, had no power to resist the Yongwei Camp's cavalry charge and could only fall back in defeat.

In all previous battles between Ming and Qing forces, especially in open field engagements, it had always been the Eight Banners' iron cavalry chasing down and slaughtering the Ming troops.

Now the tables had turned—the Yongwei Camp's cavalry rode hard on the Qing soldiers' heels, firing shot after shot, cutting them down until they dropped dead one by one.

Every Yongwei Camp cavalryman carried a flintlock musket and a saber; most of them couldn't be bothered to reload and simply drew their sabers, slashing sideways at the fleeing Qing soldiers—each swing carving away a swath of blood.

The Qing soldiers were slaughtered into throwing away helmets and weapons alike, desperately fleeing toward Shijingshan, cursing their parents for not giving them extra legs.

Seeing the Qing army's miserable state, Zhu Cilang could not help but laugh heartily. Turning to the Yongwei Camp men around him, he declared loudly: "These slave rebels claim to be invincible in the field—and this is all they amount to!"

The officers and soldiers of the Yongwei Camp were wild with joy, nodding in agreement—after so many years of soldiering and so many battles, who would have thought that fighting alongside His Highness the Crown Prince would make killing Tartars this easy!

Zhu Cilang breathed a quiet sigh of relief—after the baptism of this battle, the Yongwei Camp, into which he had poured all his heart and effort, had finally earned its place as a true elite force.

Just then, a cavalryman rode back to report: "Your Highness, over a hundred slave rebels have knelt and surrendered. Assistant Regional Commander Huang requests your orders on how to deal with the prisoners?"

Zhu Cilang declared loudly: "Prisoners? Keep them to celebrate the New Year? Pass my order—the cavalry continues the pursuit, kill them all to the last man, not a single surrendered soldier is to be spared!"

The cavalryman's face lit up at these words, and he hurried off to relay the order.

Court regulations stipulated that each severed slave-rebel head earned a one-rank promotion, or fifty taels of silver in lieu of military merit—so whenever the chance arose, no one ever thought of keeping prisoners.

The reason Huang Degong had sent someone to ask was that he worried the Crown Prince might want to keep some prisoners to present in the capital.

Upon receiving Zhu Cilang's order, Huang Degong was overjoyed. He led the cavalry in pursuit for a full half-hour and essentially annihilated this entire Qing force.

Seeing that most of the Yongwei Camp's cavalry had returned, Zhu Cilang ordered an immediate cleanup of the battlefield and a tallying of losses and gains.

In this battle, the Yongwei Camp lost a total of seventeen men killed, mostly shield bearers, with over fifty cavalrymen wounded—of whom only twenty-odd were seriously hurt, and it was expected that at least half of those would die of their wounds.

These figures surprised Zhu Cilang somewhat, though on reflection it made sense—the Yongwei Camp was itself an elite unit with strict discipline, equipped with advanced weapons like flintlock muskets, and had outnumbered the enemy two to one.

In later ages, the Battle of Baliqiao between Qing cavalry and the Anglo-French forces had ended much the same—and there the Qing cavalry had numbered over ten thousand, backed by tens of thousands of worthless infantry, yet they had only managed to kill a handful of Anglo-French soldiers, a loss ratio of a hundred to one.

In the end, the Yongwei Camp seized over a thousand suits of iron armor, mail, and leather armor, along with several hundred warhorses and thousands of assorted swords, spears, and shields. They also recovered over fifty thousand taels of silver and more than eight hundred taels of gold from the Qing soldiers' bodies.

Zhu Cilang ordered that the captured armor, weapons, horses, and supplies be transported to the New Camp for repair and use by its soldiers. The severed heads were all loaded onto carts and sent back to the capital, while the gold and silver were divided on the spot.

Every soldier of the Yongwei Camp walked away holding ten taels of silver, grinning from ear to ear, with half a severed head per man on average besides. His Highness the Crown Prince had said there were more great battles ahead—he would lead them to pick up silver and earn military merit.

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