Chapter 776: Defeated, Defeated

In the fourth year of Shaoming, 949 CE, at the end of the ninth month, Zhang Zhao personally arrived at the foot of Purple Gold Mountain and set up his camp a mere two li from the mountain.

The Zhou army's elite Hanshan Capital inner and outer commands, the personal army's Left and Right Jinwu Guards, the Right Baotao Guard, the imperial army's elite Hanhai, Yingyang, and Shunhua garrisons, plus six guard-post armies and the long-service braves of the various patrol inspectors, a total of fifty-three thousand troops, launched a fierce assault on the Southern Tang Qinghuai Army's stockades on Purple Gold Mountain.

Although Liu Renzhan had diverted the Huai River in advance and turned the foot of Purple Gold Mountain into a quagmire, Zhang Zhao had a way to deal with it.

It was just after the autumn harvest, the slack farming season, so Zhang Zhao ordered the Bureau of Military Affairs and the Ministry of War to coordinate the Chief Minister offices of the Zhili, Hubei, and Jianghuai provinces to conscript more than two hundred thousand laborers from the eight prefectures of Chen, Su, Bo, Shen, Cai, Ying, Hao, and Si.

He had them haul up straw from rice, wheat, millet, and other crops, then mix these stalks with planks, mud, and the like and lay them directly over the silted ground Liu Renzhan had deliberately created.

The Qinghuai Army sallied out several times to disrupt the work, but each time they were beaten back.

By the start of the tenth month, with more than two hundred thousand laborers laying ground in millions of shifts, in just over ten days they had built a road several li wide.

After that things were simple, because Purple Gold Mountain was indeed as Gao Huaide and the others had said: far less steep than the Luliang Mountains of Hedong, and although the Qinghuai Army had built many stockades on the mountain, their terrain advantage was not so obvious.

Moreover, the Qinghuai Army had a huge flaw: their troop strength was simply not enough.

Liu Renzhan's father, Liu Jin, had been one of Yang Xingmi's Thirty-Six Heroes and one of the founders of the Yang Wu and Southern Tang state.

To put it precisely, Liu Jin and his son Liu Renzhan were shareholders of the Southern Tang, not merely subjects.

But this led to a problem: although the Liu father and son were utterly loyal to the Jiangning court, the Southern Tang court did not refrain from limiting the strength of the Shouzhou Qinghuai Army, and the court's imperial troops were even less likely to be sent to reinforce Shouzhou.

Thus from the moment Liu Renzhan returned to Shouzhou, he was in fact fighting alone. Even though the Bao Xin Army of Luzhou was not far from him, to this day not a single soldier had been sent to reinforce him.

Relying only on the seven counties of Shouzhou, plus prefectures and counties like Guangzhou that were willing to stand with Liu Renzhan, he had managed to support no more than thirty thousand troops in all.

And of those thirty thousand, several thousand had been lost in the earlier attack on Sizhou, and several thousand more after Huangfu Hui was just defeated, leaving only a little over twenty thousand. On all of Purple Gold Mountain there were now only a little over ten thousand men.

The entire Zhou army, by contrast, numbered fifty-three thousand, of whom those who could be called elite certainly exceeded thirty thousand, and in equipment they held an even more overwhelming advantage.

Faced with such disparity, no wonder Gao Huaide and the others did not take the stockades on Purple Gold Mountain seriously.

On the ninth day of the tenth month, Zhang Zhao dispatched in succession Zhang Zhaojiu (Dunzhu), Zhang Cheng, Gao Huaide, Yang Jiye, Murong Xinchun, Wang Quanbin, Wang Shenqi, and other commanders, each leading elite troops, to attack Purple Gold Mountain from all sides.

The Zhou army exploited its elite troops' superiority at night fighting, often choosing to begin the battle at the hour of shenzheng, that is, four in the afternoon, and continuing until the end of the hour of you, that is, past seven in the evening.

This made the Qinghuai Army on the mountain extremely uncomfortable. Their troops' quality, and even their food, could not compare with the Zhou army's. Although they did not quite suffer from night blindness, once night fell their vision was clearly nowhere near as good as that of the Zhou troops, who ate beef and mutton freely.

Moreover, the Zhou troops mostly wore armor, and the evening was cooler, better suited to fighting in armor. And with visibility limited, the Zhou army could also close in and fight a melee, preventing the Qinghuai Army from using formations to offset the Zhou troops' individual valor and superior equipment.

On the fourteenth of the tenth month, after five days of high-intensity grinding battle, the Zhou army, led by the Hedong foot armor and Hengshan Tangut foot skirmishers expert in mountain warfare, with superhuman warriors like Dunzhu, Gao Huaide, and Yang Jiye as the core, used small-unit tactics of five hundred men to repeatedly assault the Qinghuai Army's stockades on Purple Gold Mountain.

The Qinghuai Army finally could not hold. Time and again, a stockade defended by five or six hundred men, with the advantage of terrain and a large store of stones to hurl from above, would be breached by about five hundred Zhou troops in a single charge.

On the fourteenth of the tenth month alone, the Zhou army took six stockades in succession.

On the walls of Shouzhou, Liu Renzhan watched the silver-white banners of the Zhou army fluttering in the wind on distant Purple Gold Mountain and listened to the faint cheers, and he knew the matter could no longer be reversed.

He had made another enormous strategic blunder. He had thought the Zhou army came to attack Shouzhou in order to open the Huai River and continue south to strike Luzhou, so he had built the great camp on Purple Gold Mountain, hoping the stockades built on the heights would delay the Zhou advance.

But in truth, Zhang Zhao simply wanted to take Shouzhou city and kill him, Liu Renzhan, as the chicken to frighten the monkeys Li Jing and Qian Hongchu.

So if Liu Renzhan's political instincts had been a little sharper, he should have withdrawn everyone into Shouzhou city.

That way Shouzhou would have had at least twenty-five thousand men, with high walls and thick defenses, the Huai River as a moat, and grain enough for a year. It could not have been taken in a short time.

Historically, when the Later Zhou attacked Liu Renzhan after he had pulled his entire army into the city, Guo Rong mobilized more than a hundred thousand troops and over four hundred thousand laborers, and fought for more than a year.

It was only after besieging Purple Gold Mountain to strike at reinforcements, and after wiping out every Southern Tang force capable of relieving Shouzhou, that Shouzhou ran out of grain and the city could finally be taken.

Although Zhang Zhao's siege methods were now far superior to those of the historical Later Zhou, the Qinghuai Army could still hold out for two or three months without problem, and if they could hold that long, it would undoubtedly give Li Jing greater confidence.

But by now it was too late to say anything, and Liu Renzhan had not even realized this yet. Seeing him deeply worried, the Military Governor's Deputy Yao Feng cupped his hands.

"Lord Liu, the Zhou men still do not know we have a covered passage to Purple Gold Mountain, and the main stockade on the mountain has not yet fallen. Give me three thousand picked troops, and I will slip up Purple Gold Mountain under cover of night and drive the Zhou army all the way back down!"

Liu Renzhan considered it. Of the ten thousand Qinghuai troops now in Shouzhou, three thousand armored soldiers could still be scraped together.

If they could use the covered passage to achieve surprise, the odds of victory were not low. Did the Zhou army not love to fight night battles in the evening? That would be perfect cover for Yao Feng to go up the mountain.

At that moment Gao Huaide was crouched halfway up the mountain, surrounded by the three commanders Murong Yanzhao, Wang Quanbin, and Wang Shenqi, and behind them young rising stars in their teens and twenties like Zhang Deqing, Lin Renzhao, Li Zun, Fan Changgong, Gongsun Nian, and Han Huzi.

The men were in full armor, resting. Wang Shenqi scratched his head and fished a small cloth bundle from his chest.

Not far above their heads was the Southern Tang's largest stockade on Purple Gold Mountain, which likely held fifteen hundred Southern Tang armored soldiers.

Their four hundred men had already taken two stockades, so naturally they needed a rest, and they ate high-oil, high-salt rice balls made with honey, refined salt, lard, and glutinous rice to replenish their energy.

Gao Huaide wolfed down his rice ball in a few bites, then pulled out a wine flask and drank deeply, then passed it to Murong Yanzhao.

He looked with satisfaction at the armored soldiers behind him. Every man here was absolute elite, the Sage's bears and tigers, each with twenty or thirty lives on his hands.

At the mountaintop stockade, Yao Feng was somewhat out of breath. Although there was a covered passage, climbing the mountain in armor was still no easy task, and the armored soldiers behind him were much the same, several of them staggering and swaying.

Yao Feng was about to berate them, but thought better of it. He would soon need them to charge downhill and retake those captured stockades.

At a moment when they had to fight for their lives, he should not demand too much. That they had begun donning armor the moment they reached the main stockade was already good enough.

Zhang Deqing held aloft a huge shield covered with a layer of raw iron plate. A thing of thirty-some jin, nearly forty, only a beast of a man like him could hold it one-handed and run forward.

Boom! Yao Feng was still resting when a commotion erupted on the right side of the main stockade. Who knew how many Zhou troops had already charged in through a breach.

It turned out they had all covered their armor with very black black robes, so in the evening light they were hard to make out. By the time the Southern Tang soldiers spotted them, they had already run up close.

Gongsun Nian, great axe in hand, hacked the chevaux-de-frise on the right side of the main stockade to pieces in a few strokes, and Zhang Deqing charged in holding his great shield.

Yao Feng waved his hand, and crossbow bolts shot out, but unfortunately, Zhang Deqing was holding that thing precisely to guard against crossbow bolts.

As soon as their crossbows fired, Fan Changgong and the others immediately returned fire with stiff bows, and amid a clatter of clanging mixed with screams, the foremost Southern Tang troops were shot down in heaps.

Only at this moment did the Southern Tang troops inside the stockade realize the Zhou troops had already slipped in.

With a thunderous roar, Gao Huaide's five hundred men split into six squads and attacked fiercely toward their assigned directions.

Fighting few against many, they had to turn the battle into a melee. If they fought in formation, the enemy would use numbers and formation to make up the gap in martial prowess, and then they would be the ones to suffer.

Yao Feng's heart jolted, but he quickly recovered, because the Zhou troops charging in were clearly too few in number, six or seven hundred at most.

And he now had three thousand men, with more than a thousand still in the main stockade. Eight or nine men against one — could he possibly be driven back?

At that thought, Yao Feng was about to loudly order his armored soldiers to counterattack when suddenly a burly man, his black robe torn to reveal the silver-white cloth-faced iron armor beneath, leaped high from atop a wagon and came crashing down into the mass of Southern Tang armored soldiers.

Yao Feng could not help clicking his tongue. The man's armor had to weigh forty or fifty jin, and the two iron maces in his hands another dozen or so, yet he could leap so high. He must have the strength of a thousand jin — something Yao Feng could never do.

The moment Zhang Deqing landed, countless blades, spears, halberds, and pikes came at him, but he was utterly fearless. He did not even look at where the enemy weapons were coming from, but charged like a wild bull and bowled over four or five Southern Tang armored soldiers in a single collision, then charged hard toward the spot where the men had been sent sprawling.

This was the instinct of an expert in melee fighting: if you stand still, the enemy will immediately encircle you in a ring, and then even with three heads and six arms you could not defend against attacks from every direction.

But now, once you smash out a gap and charge hard in one direction, the enemy can only chase after your back.

It looks overwhelming, but with men packed shoulder to shoulder, only a few can actually attack you at any moment.

Of course, this requires you to charge fast enough — if you're slow, you'll still get surrounded.

Within Zhang Zhou's army, Zhang Deqing was regarded as the next-generation Savage Bear — before the little black bear, barely sixteen, had fully grown.

Standing six chi three cun tall — over one meter ninety-three — weighing two hundred ten jin, with legs like cast iron, able to seize a bull by the horns and overturn an eight- or nine-hundred-jin water buffalo, Zhang Deqing was the ceiling of single-combat strength.

Even a fierce man like Gao Huaide was no match for him one-on-one.

An eight- or nine-jin wrought-bronze jian in Zhang Deqing's hands seemed like a plastic toy. He ran and struck as he went, and whoever was touched was beaten bloody and broken, or else took a jian straight to the chest and crumpled to the ground.

In barely a dozen breaths, more than twenty armored soldiers of the Qinghuai Army were wailing and down, unable to rise. The rest still roared loudly, but those truly willing to throw their lives forward at once grew few.

Gao Huaide was provoked to full ferocity by the sight. Historically, Gao Huaide was the ceiling among the founding heroes of the Northern Song — even Zhao Kuangyin, in raw martial strength, likely fell short of him.

Murong Yanzhao shouted from behind Gao Huaide: "The enemy is many, but this is a fine chance for merit and glory. For so many to appear suddenly, there must be a tunnel leading to Shouzhou City!"

Gao Huaide laughed. "Only by fighting the many with the few can our valor be shown. Follow me, all of you, and crush the enemy!"

The words had barely left his mouth when Gongsun Nian, long-handled great axe in hand, had already leapt out of the formation. Swinging it, he cut down Southern Tang soldiers until men and horses toppled. Gao Huaide too, gripping his wolf-tooth great club, personally charged.

Fan Changgong climbed onto a rooftop in the main camp. Seeing Yao Feng in mingguang armor, hengdao saber in hand, directing from a hundred paces away, he took the bronze-limbed iron-backed bow from his back, drew a deep breath, and loosed two arrows in succession.

The Southern Tang army, assaulted by fierce men like Gao Huaide and Zhang Deqing, was beaten back in continuous retreat. Yao Feng was just hesitating over whether to send his personal guards forward when suddenly he felt as if his chest had been struck by lightning!

He swayed twice, and a mouthful of fresh blood sprayed out. On the mingguang armor over his chest, two arrow shafts stood starkly embedded.

The armor penetration was not deep, but Yao Feng could feel that his internal organs had likely been wounded.

He opened his mouth, wanting to tell his personal guards not to panic, to hold steady — but his guards had long since been terrified out of their wits. The moment they saw Yao Feng vomiting blood and unable to speak, they panicked outright, seized him, and tried to retreat.

Fan Changgong had sharp eyes and at once shouted: "They're routed! Routed!"

Below the building, Southern Tang turncoat generals like Lin Renhan and Lin Renzhao saw this and immediately shouted in Jianghuai dialect: "Routed! Routed!"

In that moment, the Qinghuai Army, already being beaten down, finally could not withstand the pressure. They looked back and indeed saw that Yao Feng in his mingguang armor had vanished. At once the army collapsed like a mountain.

(End of Chapter)

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