Chapter 395: The Gravest Mistake

Amid the roaring clamor of fire and iron, twelve bronze-cast heavy cannons recoiled heavily through the gunpowder smoke, and twelve massive iron shot hurtled across the battlefield, crashing into the encircling troop formation and grinding the lele carts to dust.

Taiji Dorji had yet to see clearly what had happened at the front line when, amid the sky-filling shower of cart fragments, he saw the Jaisang commanding the forward troops suddenly duck down, followed immediately by a cry of heart-wrenching agony.

The chaos caused by the forward formation suffering several artillery strikes did not affect Taiji Dorji, who had withdrawn to the southern side.

His face remained utterly composed; instead, he nodded slowly to the rhythm of the distant cannon fire as if counting something, raised his whip as though to speak to his attendants, but in the end said nothing.

He merely nodded to himself inwardly: four times. The Han army had fired four salvos, and in three of those they had used their cannons like rapid volleys of arrows, each time firing twelve shots in succession.

Which meant that after the twelve cannonballs had blasted into the formation, during the interval while the cannons were being reloaded, the forward area was safe for him.

Dorji had discovered this pattern during the second cannonade.

Discovering this pattern was not difficult; the Marshal's Office artillery's firing drill manual was based primarily on volley fire, and unless disrupted, they would not easily resort to a full salvo.

This drill existed because Liu Chengzong often massed his cannons in one place for use, which had not been a major problem back when they were equipped with light swivel guns.

But when they switched to heavy cannons weighing a thousand catties, with dozens of catties of gunpowder igniting simultaneously inside the barrels, the thunderous roar of a full salvo was deafening, plunging the artillerymen and the surrounding officers and soldiers into tinnitus and severely hampering the subsequent issuing of orders.

This habit also bore the personal stamp of Huang Shengxiao; he called the interval between two cannons firing "the falling time," because when several cannons fired grapeshot simultaneously, the projectiles would strike the same target repeatedly, and volley fire with a slight interval could avoid wasting firepower.

For Taiji Dorji, the first time he came under artillery fire, his mind had been in a state of shock; the sounds of light and heavy cannons mingled together, not to mention the disruption caused by six Hundred-Tiger Rocket Carts firing in unison, making it impossible to calmly distinguish the cannon reports.

But once the rockets were spent and the small cannons withdrawn, the sound of the twelve heavy cannons firing in volley struck his skull like a sledgehammer blow after blow, sounding exceptionally clear.

At that time, however, he still dared not be certain, nor was he willing to gamble with his own life, so he delegated command of the forward troops to his subordinate Jaisang and led his guards to withdraw to the rear of the position to evade the cannonballs.

But this time the cannon fire was again twelve reports, which solidified his conjecture. Therefore, as soon as the cannonade ended, he decisively spurred forward; his subordinate officers could not stop him, and like a deity descending to the mortal world, he galloped his horse before the battle lines.

When camels were blasted dead and overturned by cannonballs and the wreckage of the lele carts lay shattered, the mortal fear of death under artillery fire shrouded the circular formation like a dark cloud.

The disheveled and terrified herdsmen-soldiers, crawling up from the blood-and-gore-splattered forward position, saw instead the Sixth Taiji, clad in helmet and armor and mounted on a fully barded white horse, raising his blade and charging out of the formation. With the bearing of supreme courage, he rode before the battle lines, using the most forceful gestures and a resolute voice to tell every man: Hold on!

The Khan of the Khoshut would surely send troops to their aid and drive off the Han cavalry eyeing them hungrily from behind the formation; if they held on just a moment longer, they would surely get the chance to regroup and withdraw!

This was, without doubt, the most dazzling and glorious moment on the battlefield.

No one has eyes in the back of their head; needless to say the herdsmen-soldiers, even the nobles and aristocrats commanding the troops at the front, upon suddenly seeing the Sixth Taiji galloping before the lines, were filled with a rousing excitement that could well be imagined.

Even the unlucky Jaisang at the front, whose foot had been smashed by a cannonball, endured the intense pain, propped himself up with his long spear, and shouted loudly to his left and right, ordering his men to rally.

Seeing that his outstanding performance had swept away the dejected look from the northern herdsmen-soldiers, Dorji felt slightly reassured. At the same time, calculating that the Han army's next cannonade was nearly prepared, he turned his horse southward, wanting to put some distance between himself and the front line.

Just at that moment, the distant wagon fort suddenly sounded its mournful horn blasts. Dorji, on horseback, suddenly felt a chill shoot from his tailbone straight to the crown of his head, and he looked northward in alarm.

He saw that within the sky-filling yellow dust, a blurry dark mass was rushing over at extreme speed. They paused briefly at the trenches, and only then did Dorji see clearly that the dark mass was composed of groups of war wagons.

The war wagons were not very wide, but quite long, each pulled by two warhorses and carrying three or four men. As they crossed the trenches, soldiers leaped down from the wagons, laid wooden planks over the trench passages filled with sandbags, then climbed back aboard and continued charging southward.

Dorji was initially puzzled. What use could these long, two-horse, four-wheeled wagons have on such a battlefield? Could the Han army actually be planning to use war wagons to smash through the circular formation?

Using vehicles to ram a position was not an unheard-of tactic; in battles where the Mongols aimed at plunder, if they could surround the enemy's main force and were certain that no fresh troops would attack for a short time after annihilating them, they would even mass warhorses to charge the enemy formation to break long spears and smash the battle lines.

In the mind of the Khoshut's Sixth Taiji, these war wagons were probably meant for just such a mission.

He was even somewhat afraid that the Han army had loaded the wagons full of gunpowder and would charge over and detonate it... after all, the Khoshut bordered Yarkent, a place with a practically inexhaustible supply of gunpowder.

By now, the herdsmen-soldiers on the northern side of the circular formation had also sensed something was amiss and, one after another, put down their tasks. Led by their nobles and aristocrats, they assembled and formed ranks behind the lele carts, preparing to meet the war wagons' frontal assault.

But it was at this moment that Taiji Dorji finally saw clearly: it seemed that none of the soldiers on the battlefield were holding long sabers or spears; instead, every single one was carrying a musket.

And the caliber of those muskets did not look small at all.

Over a hundred war wagons began to turn at a distance of a hundred paces from the circular formation. The convoy slowly wheeled in a single-line snake formation, and by the time the lead wagon had turned its flank toward the circular formation, the distance between the two sides had shrunk to fifty or sixty paces.

The Khoshut warriors who had formed infantry ranks behind the lele carts reacted very quickly. Seeing the Han war wagons turning, the soldiers who had already drawn their infantry bows and raised their muskets no longer waited for the enemy to enter the optimal range, but fired their guns and loosed their bows one after another.

For a moment, gunpowder smoke billowed from the northern side of the Khoshut circular formation as dozens of muskets of varying lengths and models opened fire; simultaneously, hundreds of infantry bows loosed a shower of arrows, swooping toward the charging war-wagon convoy like a sky-darkening swarm of locusts.

The Jaisang, whose foot bones had been smashed, had no time to bandage his wound and could only lean on a lele cart to observe the battlefield from the front line.

He saw that the scattered war-wagon columns were difficult to hit with sporadic musket fire, so he shouted out orders for his men to use their bows for a volley.

In an instant, the two sides clashed. Dorji, still making his way from outside the circular formation back into it, turned in the saddle to look at the arrow shower his own side had loosed. But just one glance made his eyes widen, and he lifted his leg and rolled off his horse like a loach.

Even as he tumbled, he did not forget to shout to the guard cavalry behind him: "Dismount! Cannons!"

He had seen it with perfect clarity: the edges of those war wagons were fitted with tall, large shields bearing tiger-head or lion-head designs, protecting the soldiers aboard with near-impenetrable thoroughness. Of the three men on each wagon, the front man was the driver holding the reins, while the two behind, shielded by the great shields, showed only half their heads.

But the ferocious flank of the wagon body had a firing port cut into it, and a tube over a foot long jutted up from the wagon's tail. That shape did not look like a slender, long musket at all, but rather more like a mounted long-barreled small cannon.

The next moment, gunfire roared, and men and horses were thrown into chaos.

Projectiles fired from heavy muskets, one after another, tore into the front line with immense power, felling warrior after warrior amid a spray of splintered wood.

The war wagons came quickly and left just as fast; the herdsmen-soldiers had no chance to draw their bows again. The wagons they had previously aimed at had already galloped halfway across the battlefield, and in a matter of moments, over a hundred projectiles had blasted the forward troop formation to pieces.

Even a stray bullet that passed through the outer edge of the circular formation and traveled a hundred paces through the air still struck a warhorse's head and killed the beast on the spot.

Dorji, his face buried in the sand, heard lead bullets whistle overhead, heard the pained neighing of warhorses, and heard the unending crackle of musketry firing from behind him. When he raised his head slightly, the position before his eyes was already a nightmarish scene.

The report of muskets was not as loud as heavy cannons, but it was crueler and more vicious, sweeping across the front line like a gale. Battle erupted in an instant, and the sounds of orders, agonized cries, bowstrings twanging, guns firing, and lead balls punching through wooden planks and piercing oxhide were ceaseless.

The guard cavalry behind him had been caught off guard, and several had already been shot dead. One guard who had luckily escaped the first volley crawled over, grabbed his shoulders, and began dragging him back into the formation, when suddenly there was a muffled thud, and the guard's body stiffened.

When Taiji Dorji looked again, this last guard had also been struck by a lead bullet; groaning, he collapsed onto his back, curled up, and began to convulse uncontrollably.

But these terrifying projectiles were only the war wagons' first wave of attack. When the war-wagon convoy had turned more than halfway, and the lead wagon had already reached the northwest of the circular formation, the jingal muskets—those tubes over a foot long jutting up from the wagon tails—finally opened fire from the flank.

Suddenly, a thunderous roar erupted as thick smoke billowed from the wagon tails, flames flashing within the haze. Two-and-a-half-ounce lead balls hurtled across the battlefield, piercing men and horses alike; even a sturdy camel faced only death before lead shot of such weight.

The Khoshut southern camp was thrown into passivity. If with the heavy musket fire, Taiji Dorji had watched individual nomadic warriors fall, then when the jingal fire arrived, it was row after row of soldiers collapsing one after another.

His act of galloping before the lines to boost morale now seemed utterly feeble in the face of such powerful firearms.

A difficult choice was thus thrust upon Taiji Dorji's shoulders: should he have the commanding Jaisang launch a rousing charge to forcibly close the distance against the firearms and draw the other two formations into the battle, or should he risk being charged by cavalry and withdraw beyond the enemy's range?

But precisely at this moment, Taiji Dorji saw the Jaisang, whose foot had earlier been smashed by a cannonball, slowly lower his raised scimitar. He pressed his other hand to the side of his neck, turned around, and staggered, limping, toward him.

The Jaisang's face was filled with disbelief; the neck he was clutching was spurting blood. With each staggering step, a spurt followed, tracing streaks of crimson blood across the scorching yellow sand.

From three paces away, Dorji could even hear a rasping, wheezing sound tearing from the Jaisang's throat, like a broken bellows.

Finally, this aging general, who had served him loyally for many years and possessed superb martial skill, tugged helplessly at the corner of his mouth. As if dizzy, he raised his head to look at the setting sun in the west, swayed, and at last could no longer support his armor-clad body, crashing heavily backward.

The Jaisang was fond of drink and exceptionally strong; every year he would be thrown seven or eight times in wrestling matches, and when drunk he would fall from his horse a few times as well. In his lifetime, he had participated in seven major campaigns, bore three saber scars and fourteen arrow wounds on his body, and was still lively and vigorous even after a cannonball had smashed his foot.

Yet such a robust man had died in a place no one could have expected.

What killed him was not the lead bullet, but a flying severed hand — that hand belonged to a soldier three rows ahead of him.

When the war wagon fired its heavy musket ball, it should have been a stray shot sweeping over their heads toward the rear, but that soldier happened to raise his arm, blocking the bullet's path.

The lead ball shattered against bone into fragments; seven or eight small lead chunks sprayed evenly into the three soldiers in the two rows behind, while the severed hand spun through the air, brushed past the Jaisang's shoulder, and landed on the sand — the jagged bone stub slashed swiftly and briefly across the right side of the Jaisang's neck.

Just that one light, fleeting touch, and this Khoshut tough guy — steel-whiskered, a man who had spent his whole life pissing and shitting on the King of Hell's head — was gone.

This severed hand resolved the difficult choice in Dorji Taiji's heart; he no longer had any choice at all.

After grimly enduring a volley of a hundred heavy muskets, the soldiers on the northern side of the circular formation could still remain unmoved amid the chaos, but after a hundred wall guns fired in turn, Dorji Taiji could not find a single officer on the front line who still held his post.

Even if all those herder-soldiers who only knew how to herd sheep and shoot arrows panicked, the army would not collapse — but once the officers began acting on their own, not even the Heavenly King himself could stop this army's slide into rout.

Belatedly, Dorji realized that the Han army's war-wagon tactics were the very same mounted skirmish charges the Mongols themselves most often used — simply put, swap the war wagons and firearms for cavalry and bows, and you had a nomadic cavalry force riding, shooting, and executing circular-formation charges.

The only difference was that firearms as a weapon meant the cavalry did not need to charge within ten-odd paces of the formation, release arrows, and wheel their horses away — they could sustain devastating formation-breaking killing power from fifty or sixty paces out.

The panicked Sixth Taiji, seeing the battle formation about to collapse, no longer cared whether he might die from a stray bullet; he scrambled up in haste, grabbed a soldier, and told him to order the two front-line horizontal squads — whose centurions were clearly dead — to pull back.

This was the gravest mistake he made in this entire battle.

Gunfire drowned out the officers' commands; the efficiency of receiving orders among the horizontal squads on the directly impacted front of the circular formation began to fall out of sync, and immediately after, as officers between squads were killed or wounded, they lost coordination ability entirely.

By the time the commanding Jaisang was dead, every hundred-man unit had completely lost its command. Some officers had already been thinking of leading their men to retreat rearward to find a higher-ranking officer to take over their troops.

And just at that moment, the two horizontal squads that had lost their centurions received the order from the Sixth Taiji and began retreating rearward in good order — which caused the other frantic, harried officers... to start blindly following suit.

Some thought these two squads were fleeing and, concerned for their own lives, led their units in flight as well.

Even more of the surviving officers had no idea what was happening; amid the casualties and chaos, they simply saw friendly troops leaving the front line in large numbers, assumed something important must have occurred, and then started running too.

The men on the front line felt little panic during the retreat, because from start to finish the casualties the Han army had inflicted on them were extremely limited — but a lack of panic did not mean they would not rout.

A retreat is often utterly disorderly; as each horizontal squad fell back, they saw friendly units also retreating. The continuous tramp of footsteps made men's hearts grow more and more anxious, until one walked faster than the next, and in the end it became a racing contest between unit after unit.

As Dorji Taiji watched, dumbstruck, his solid circular formation caved inward from north to south; every unit fled past him toward the rear, and even the units holding the southern face assumed their comrades had received some order — they pushed aside the blocking war wagons and ran south.

In that brief moment, the great rout became an unspoken pact among thousands of soldiers. The war-wagon unit officers preparing to return to camp from the west saw this scene, were equally dumbstruck, and likewise chose to act on their own — they led the war-wagon unit in a wide loop, then once more pursued the enemy in charging formation, delivering another volley with their heavy muskets.

And Ma Ke, positioned directly in the enemy's rout path, panicked at the sight too.

Even though he had prepared early, suddenly seeing the enemy charge toward him like a migrating herd of wildebeest on the African savanna still emptied his mind for several seconds; he sat on horseback, glaive in hand, looking left and right.

In that instant, what Ma Ke was thinking was: Should I crash into the enemy's left flank, or their right flank?

The answer to this question was not difficult for Ma Ke. The enemy's main force was to the east; if he struck the routing troops' right flank, it would force the enemy to flee east and merge with the eastern force.

That could, of course, potentially yield greater results — for instance, driving the routed troops to crash into the enemy formation and throw the enemy army into chaos.

But by Ma Ke's own measure, he judged this exceeded the capability of his five or six hundred horse soldiers; he might end up with his entire force wiped out... and that was not his duty.

In the eyes of Dorji Taiji, who had been forced to join the rout, the five-hundred-odd Han cavalry blocking their path parted at a whistle, moving toward their left flank — which made him exhale deeply in relief.

Clearly, the enemy cavalry had been intimidated by their overwhelming numbers.

His heart slightly eased, the Sixth Taiji, in the midst of flight, dispatched men anew, attempting to summon the officers of each unit to his side so he could issue fresh orders.

The frantic, harried nobles and princes moved quickly, hastily assembling around the Taiji.

Just as they were trying to identify the next rally point, Dorji heard a cry of alarm: "Look over there!"

Amid the vast, billowing dust cloud raised by the rout, the Han cavalry on their left flank had formed several wedge formations and, led by that madman wielding a great blade, were crashing into their flank in a mid-body strike!

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Good afternoon!