Chapter 777: Loyal Minister — a Complicated Word

A pall of gloom hung over Shouzhou city. On Purple Gold Mountain, the defense line that Liu Renzhan had spent years building with vast manpower and resources held out for only six days before it was overrun.

Of the more than ten thousand men who finally withdrew, fewer than half came back. From Deputy Military Governor Yao Feng on down, more than seventy officers died in battle.

Moreover, when the Zhou army pursued, they chased hard along the covered causeway, and also smashed the two stockade forts that the Qinghuai Army had set up behind Purple Gold Mountain to guard the causeway.

The Zhou vanguard pursued the Qinghuai Army directly, crossing the Fei River on the pontoon bridge the Qinghuai Army itself had built. Had it not been so late in the day, Liu Renzhan believed the Zhou army would even have dared to rush the gates.

On the twentieth day of the tenth month, Zhang Zhao moved his forces outside Shouzhou, simultaneously attacking the Qinghuai Army's river stockade on the Huai and its land forts from both water and land.

Almost at the same time, the Southern Tang made its move. Zhu Kuangye, Military Governor of the Bao Xin Army at Luzhou, sent his son Zhu Lingyun and the young lord's Chief Supervisor Zheng Zhong'en with fifteen thousand Bao Xin troops north from Luzhou to the rescue.

But Liu Zaisheng had long been prepared. At Anchun Ford on the upper Fei River, he blocked the channel with large ships, and when the Southern Tang fleet arrived, both banks raked it with powerful bows and heavy crossbows.

The Bao Xin Army collapsed in utter defeat. Zhu Lingyun alone escaped with his life. From Zheng Zhong'en on down, officers and soldiers died by the thousands, their corpses sinking until they covered the riverbed.

On the twenty-second day of the tenth month, the main army cleared away every defensive work outside Shouzhou and surrounded the city on all four sides.

Liu Zaisheng ordered Murong Xinde to carry Zheng Zhong'en's armor on the tip of a spear, and to hold up the Bao Xin Army's command banner and recognition flag as he paraded before the walls of Shouzhou in triumph.

The Qinghuai Army in the city was thrown into shock, its morale shattered. Liu Renzhan wept on the wall. Zheng Zhong'en had once been a Chief Supervisor under his command, and it must have been for that reason he had come to the rescue. He had never expected the rescue to fail and cost the man his life instead.

Outside Shouzhou, Zhang Zhao had just ridden around the city once. Although the city was now tottering on the brink, he still had no intention of calling for surrender, nor of forcing an assault.

He would not call for surrender because a city that surrenders after being urged can never carry the same intimidating force as one taken by storm.

He would not force an assault because Zhang Zhao did not want to waste his soldiers' lives at the very moment the city was about to fall. There was another reason too: he was waiting for a divine weapon — the cannon invented by Cao Yanming.

"Heave-ho! Heave-ho!" Dozens of laborers hauled from the front and pushed from behind. Four sturdy mules were so exhausted that white mist puffed from their nostrils.

A great cannon, its bore as thick as a man's head, was loaded on a specially built flatbed cart. The wooden wheels labored over the muddy road.

Zhang Zhao studied it carefully. This giant cannon weighed at least four thousand jin. The breech, the axle, the muzzle ring, and the rest were basically the same as in later ages — Zhang Zhao had carefully drawn the plans for it.

The cannonballs were polished round stones, each about twenty jin.

Why not use iron shot? Because casting and transporting iron shot was troublesome. Stone shot was far simpler — the material could be found everywhere and was easy to polish, requiring only a few stonemasons. And in terms of power, the difference was not great.

Another reason was that the gunpowder of this age was not yet advanced enough, and stone shot could fully withstand it.

Zhang Zhao measured it. The barrel was only a little over five chi — about one hundred sixty or seventy centimeters. That was a third shorter than the mature cannons of the Ming and Qing periods, yet it weighed half again to a third more.

And because the barrel was too short, the muzzle diameter had to be made larger. Since the gunpowder's energy was inferior to that of the Ming and Qing periods, the powder charge also had to be very large.

This is a freak! Zhang Zhao blinked and sighed to himself.

Judging from the current data, its performance was superior to the first-generation cannons the Europeans made at the end of the thirteenth century, but clearly inferior to those of the Ming and Qing periods — especially the red-coated cannons that began appearing in large numbers in the Wanli era.

No, wait! Zhang Zhao's heart clenched painfully. This was not just a freak — it was a goddamn freak made of gold.

It was cast from bronze!

One jin of bronze, even minted into the highest-purity gold-backed coins, could make about two hundred coins.

Four thousand jin of bronze was eight hundred thousand coins — eight thousand strings of cash. And that did not count wastage, labor, and the rest. Altogether it required at least ten thousand strings.

And ten thousand strings of gold-backed coins circulated at three times face value on the market — so ten thousand strings was worth thirty thousand strings.

Thirty thousand strings was enough for Zhang Zhao to raise an elite battalion of eight hundred to a thousand men, sixty percent armored, with both cavalry and infantry complete.

Goddamn it. If he built a hundred or so of these, it would bankrupt the treasury outright. Given the productive capacity of this age, it was still too much.

Zhang Zhao thought it over. For now, he should not develop heavy cannon. Better to develop small crouching-tiger mortars for lobbing projectiles, and small cannons that horses could pull around, firing grapeshot specifically to blast dense enemy formations.

Cao Yanming sat on the cart, stroking the cannon beside him, looking around with smug satisfaction, the very picture of a man saying "I envy you all so much." He was still hoping Zhang Zhao would praise him as a heaven-sent genius.

Instead, Zhang Zhao rubbed his forehead in disgust and told him to get out of his sight at once.

The moment I, Sage Zhang, saw that great pot belly of his, I could not help thinking that the money he had sunk into this thing could have raised an army of tens of thousands. My heart ached terribly.

Having received no praise from Zhang Zhao, Cao Yanming lifted his head in a huff and immediately ordered his laborers to haul the cannon forward, thinking to himself: once the cannon fires, it will surely scare my Sage Zhang's face as pale as dirt.

The Zhou soldiers outside the city did not know what these big tubes were, but they were not surprised. After all, the Duke of Ziting's Institute of Heavenly Works was always producing strange contraptions.

Still, many people stared at these big tubes and drooled. Damn, these were no weapons — they were moving treasuries.

The Qinghuai Army on the walls naturally did not know what they were either. No — they did know. Many of them took the things for battering rams. Liu Renzhan's third son, Liu Chongjian, even ordered men to prepare fire oil and kindling, ready to burn the carts.

Horn calls rang out one after another. The Zhou army raised its scaling towers, and large numbers of soldiers with shields, bows, and crossbows pressed forward and began the assault.

This was, of course, also to cover Cao Yanming as he moved the cannons closer to Shouzhou. The barrels were too short, and the range was not far.

Qingfeng, panting heavily, dug a large pit together with the laborers, then packed the cannon down firmly with coarse sacks filled with earth.

The terrifying scene from last time at the Six Gates Patrol Office in the Divine Capital, when the two-thousand-jin cannon had flown into the air, was still vivid in his mind.

Cao Yanming worked with his own hands, loading powder and stone shot like a fat hamster. He did not trust anyone else with this shot. After all, the Institute of Heavenly Works consumed an astronomical annual budget of over a hundred thousand strings. The plate armor had just been botched; if the cannon failed too, he would have let everyone down badly.

Once the surrounding soldiers entered combat, no one paid them any attention. The Qinghuai Army on the walls was merely puzzled. Their arms were growing sore from holding up the fire oil, yet the strange battering carts opposite still had not come forward. Both sides had entered the killing, and no one gave the matter much thought.

"Boom!" At that moment, a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering roar erupted, and everyone jumped in fright.

The people of this age had never heard such a violent blast — apart from thunder.

The sharpshooters on the scaling towers were knocked sprawling. Around the cannon, quite a few of the crossbowmen simply turned and ran.

It was not that they lacked discipline. It was simply too terrifying, and they had no mental preparation at all. In the two nearest crossbow formations, many men were so frightened their bodies went limp, and they vomited and retched.

The Qinghuai Army on the walls of Shouzhou was frightened even worse. Many saw only a burst of black smoke suddenly erupt from the opposing battering cart, and what seemed to be a flash of fire.

Then the wall directly in front of them shook violently, as if struck by the hand of a god, and a depression the size of a washbasin appeared in it.

Fortunately, the walls here were still mostly rammed loess, not the sturdier brick and stone walls of later ages — otherwise the effect could never have been this great.

It missed! Cao Yanming's heart tightened. After calculating the angle, he hurried over and called the laborers to push the cannon into another pit. The two cannons that had not yet fired also had their angles adjusted.

To batter down a city wall with this kind of stone shot — well, an ordinary wall, yes. But a strong city like Shouzhou, definitely not. They had to aim at the gate and blast the gate to pieces.

Heaven and earth seemed to fall silent. Countless eyes stared as Cao Yanming and his men bustled about. Toward this weapon beyond their understanding, the Zhou army felt both excitement and fear; the Qinghuai Army felt only fear.

At last, under the gaze of all, the three cannons had their angles calibrated. As for ballistics — no one had any concept of that yet.

With a wave of Cao Yanming's fat hand, the cannons fired in succession, letting out the same terrifying roar as before. Three stone shot of more than twenty jin each, trailing almost visible afterimages, howled as they hurtled toward the north gate of Shouzhou.

Clang! Crack!

The stone shot hurtled out, first smashing the raised drawbridge to pieces, then slamming heavily into the north gate of Shouzhou — built of hardwood and weighing over a thousand jin — punching two enormous holes clean through it.

Outside Shouzhou, the Zhou army's cheers shook the sky. On the walls, the Qinghuai Army looked as though their parents had just died.

Although only the north gate had been blasted apart, there was still a barbican inside the north gate that could be used for defense just the same, but the barbican also had a gate, and at worst they could push in and blast apart the gate between the barbican and the outer wall.

Moreover, a barbican was a weapon that could only be used once, and when it was used, if you could not drive the enemy out, it would lose its effect and instead become a fortification the attackers could make use of.

The Qinghuai Army had fought to this point, and of its thirty thousand men, ten thousand had been lost over these months, especially in the last five or six days. It could no longer fight on.

Even the local strongmen of Huaiyin Prefecture and the two prefectures of Hao and Si, who had suffered losses when Zhang Zhou carried out land equalization and had fled to Shouzhou, as well as the local magnates who feared the Zhou army would continue land equalization in Shouzhou, were all terrified beyond measure and had lost the nerve to resist.

Liu Renzhan stood atop the city wall, and in his mind he made a deep review of all that had happened over the past year and more. Suddenly he cried out, and at last he understood everything.

His second son Liu Chongliang and third son Liu Chongjian heard the cry and came over to support Liu Renzhan. Liu Chongjian was utterly terrified, and he looked at Liu Renzhan, trembling.

"Father, you alone have held the northwest for the state, while all the other ministers refused to resist. Only our Liu family would not bend the knee. But having fought to this day, we have done right by the sovereign in Jiangning City. Why not... why not surrender?"

Liu Chongliang said nothing, but his eyes also showed approval.

In history, Liu Chongjian had indeed been unable to fight on, and had risked crossing the Huai River to offer surrender to Guo Rong, only to be seized by a colonel patrolling the river. Liu Renzhan, in a fury, had him cut in two at the waist on the charge of treason.

This deed secured Liu Renzhan's fame as a loyal minister for all ages, but for Liu Chongjian, it was truly cruel.

Liu Renzhan frowned, wanting to roar in anger, but no sound came out.

By his temper, those words alone would have earned Liu Chongjian a sound beating, but compared with the harsh policies of the Later Zhou in history, Zhang Zhou now surpassed them by who knew how many grades in benevolence and righteousness.

Perhaps if Zhang Zhao had not been in such a hurry to settle the north before the south, and had used conciliatory measures, even a hardliner like Liu Renzhan might not have refused to surrender.

But now, there was no need to speak of that. Liu Renzhan was also very clear in his heart, because he had just understood everything.

And so this famous general of the Southern Tang could only raise his face to heaven and sigh: "Since our Great Tang's Emperor Liezu replaced Wu and founded Qi, it has straddled the Yangtze and Huai, preserving culture and refinement. Now that its altars are about to topple, how can there be no loyal minister to shed a full measure of hot blood for it?"

The brothers Liu Chongliang and Liu Chongjian wept aloud and prostrated themselves on the ground. The Qinghuai Army soldiers around them heard this and could not help shedding tears.

Although Liu Renzhan was leading them to their deaths, in his five years governing Shouzhou he had been diligent in governance and loving toward the people, utterly impartial, and clean and self-disciplined, and so his prestige was high, and he had won the support of all in Shouzhou, high and low.

The Liu brothers still wished to weep and plead, but Liu Renzhan sighed long once more, took his two sons by the hands, and said: "If I do not die, how could the Son of Heaven of the Great Zhou spare you two brothers?"

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