Chapter 640: A Thousand Li

Shrieking fire arrows streaked wildly above Tomsk city; the crash of explosions rang out one after another in the outer city.

In the bell tower, the head of Ivanovich Ramodanovsky, Voyevoda of the Russian Tomsk Voyevodate, entered a very strange state.

The fully armored Kalmyk cavalry outside the city could not surprise him, the Kyrgyz cavalry in rebellion, galloping swift horses and brandishing stiff bows as they shot and yelled, was an all-too-common sight, and those shrieking, sky-climbing, flame-trailing explosive projectiles... well, those were admittedly quite novel.

But the shock all of those gave him could not compare to the several great banners of red background amidst the vast besieging army.

Some of those enormous banners bore coiled dragons, some soaring dragons, and still others were painted with characters that Voyevoda Ivan did not recognize.

Yet there were always those two banners, upon which the resounding dynastic title and khanly title were written in Uyghur-Mongol script, that sent a shudder from the crown of his head to his tailbone.

"Dunta Ulus, Daichin Khitan Khan."

Khitan.

This word haunted men's dreams.

One could even say that in ages far more distant, ever since Marco Polo, all of Europe had been searching for Khitan — it had all begun long ago.

The English began searching for Khitan in the tenth year of the Hongzhi reign of the Great Ming's Xiaozong Emperor, forming fleet after fleet at sea to sail northwest again and again, trying to find the Khitan of their dreams, until three years ago they sailed a ship that had set out from England straight into the Arctic Ocean and realized there was no sea route to Khitan in the northwest.

And from the other direction, via the Siberian route pioneered by the Russians, they searched for Khitan time and again, to the point that when England agreed to act as intermediary in mediating the war between Sweden and Russia, one of the conditions was to permit English merchants to seek a route to India and Khitan via the Ob River.

In truth, by that time, men from Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England had all already made contact with the Great Ming, and the Russians had also made contact with the Khalkha Mongol's Sechen Khan Sholoi and the Tümed Khan of the Inner Mongols.

Yet people still steadfastly believed that in this world, beyond the Great Ming, there was still a Khitan.

No matter what, that Macau in the south, Zhangjiakou in the north, and Dunhuang in the west were all under the rule of a single man — this, to the vast majority of people in the world, was so absurd as to be preposterous.

Even when Sechen Khan Sholoi, just a few years ago, very earnestly told Russian officials that there was no Khitan, that to the south there was only a Great Ming, they did not believe him.

Even though Sholoi's title in official Russian documents was the Altan Emperor, no one was willing to believe that he did not know where Khitan was.

How could they believe it? Khitan was the very foundation that propped up the entire European Age of Discovery; for over a hundred years, all the efforts men made at sea and on land were for the sake of finding the legendary Khitan that bordered India.

Whoever mastered the road to Khitan would seize the initiative in trade and national power.

This myth had made men so stubborn that even when they actually saw the Great Ming, they felt it fell somewhat short of "Khitan."

The Russians had deceived the English in just this way; the Tsar wrote in a letter to the English: "The envoys of the Altan Emperor are still with me; he says that from their place to the Great Ming takes a month by fast horse, and there is no water along the way, only desert."

"Setting out from my Tomsk, you must travel an overland route of eighteen weeks, also without water along the way, the entire journey exceptionally perilous."

"When you reach the Great Ming, you will find it has a ring of high walls enclosed by brick; to circle the city takes ten days of walking, and beyond the city walls there are no subordinate counties whatsoever."

"The Great Ming is by a river, not by the sea; do not search by the seashore. What that river is called, even the Mongols do not know. There is no such thing as Khitan."

"Moreover, the goods produced by the Great Ming are exceedingly few, without any gold or precious ornaments. Do not waste your efforts."

Although this had a slight discrepancy of about a hundred million points from the intelligence about the Great Ming or Khitan that the Tsar himself possessed, telling such lies in fact carried no sense of guilt whatsoever.

Because there was no evidence in the entire real world that could prove that mysterious Khitan truly existed.

And now, right before the eyes of Tomsk Voyevoda Ivan, cannons and guns roared across the earth, fire arrows shrieked through the air, and that great banner, clearly written in Mongol script, was right outside the city — Khitan was here!

It truly existed!

It was not until an iron ball hurled by a lion cannon smashed into the Byzantine-style domed bell tower, destroying its supports and sending the Byzantine cross symbolizing the Orthodox faith crashing to the ground, that the Voyevoda, sunk in delusion, was finally jolted awake.

The siege continued.

The outer defensive works of Tomsk Fort were extremely well-prepared; the perimeter had sharpened wooden stakes and barbs, the log palisades were tall and sturdy, and every few dozen paces there were peaked blockhouses rising higher than the palisade, from which the Voyevodate's Tatar archers could shoot outward.

More Cossacks hid on the higher-earthed inner-city firing platforms, bracing large-caliber, old-fashioned arquebuses atop the palisade, using the height differential and range to fire out of the fort.

This method of defense had been extremely effective in the past when facing Kyrgyz counterattacks.

For the cavalry of the Kyrgyz tribe were exceptionally traditional, wielding Mongol-style sinew-horn bows and riding swift horses, fighting in what was called the "wheel dance formation," circling the enemy and pouring a torrential rain of arrows into their ranks.

Ninety percent of those arrows would be blocked by the wooden stockade, finding it difficult to harm the soldiers within the fortifications.

Thus, in the vast majority of cases, armies composed of Kyrgyz and even some Oirat men were merely staging an armed parade outside the fortress.

In frigid Siberia, so long as one held a fortress for a period of time, any besieging army would inevitably be forced to lift the siege.

The Russian army holding the fortress would absolutely never choose open battle, even if their troop strength were equal, for in their ingrained impression, no one could defeat the Oirat in open battle.

In open battle, Russian and Polish cavalry often suffered at the hands of the Crimean Khanate and even the Nogais, and the cavalry of the Crimean Khanate was at best roughly equal to the Mongols, their equipment level even a grade inferior.

And the Oirat? The Oirat cavalry were a freak of nature; they possessed absolute dominance in open battle against nomadic cavalry.

In fact, within the hundred years before and after this era, there was a very particular term in Eastern European history: the Little Mongol Invasion Period.

"Little Mongols" referred to the Oirat; to some extent, it was precisely from this time that Eastern European cavalry began to grow formidable, having been inspired by the Oirat people.

During this period, the Oirat cavalry's victory rate in open battle against their Eastern European cousins exceeded ninety percent.

The secret lay in just two things, simple to the point of absurdity.

First, the mass equipping of cloth-faced iron armor; second, every man bearing a lance.

In this era, long arms among cavalry mostly existed only in the hands of armored cavalry; light cavalry, to preserve combat effectiveness, would carry bows, firearms, and sabers or swords, avoiding melee as much as possible.

And the Oirat, in their long struggle against the Mongols, facing the same bows, the same horses, the same tactics, had distilled a set of brutally effective, blood-cost tactics.

Since battles were often decided by Mangudai-style shooting, finding a gap, and then using melee cavalry for a concentrated charge to tear apart the formation and scatter the enemy, then why not give the light cavalry a few lances as well?

Thus it formed exactly what Liu Chengzong had seen in Qinghai when fighting the Oirat coalition forces.

The Oirat had many crudely equipped nomadic cavalrymen; wearing nothing but a leather coat over their whole body, they carried one lance or several, many of the lance heads made only of ox horn and flint, and the poorest herdsmen cavalry even just sharpened a wooden pole, roasted it over a fire, and took it to the battlefield.

Yet it was precisely this tactic, so simple and so efficient, that allowed them to grind the cavalry of the Nogais, Cossacks, and Poles to dust in the bloody battles of the North Caucasus, and to batter the Crimean Khanate on the Black Sea steppe until their pleas for peace went unanswered.

On the battlefield, a few noble tin-cans hiding behind the soldiers were utterly powerless to stop the rout once the front-rank soldiers had all been skewered to death by a single lance thrust.

In truth, against the crude Oirat lances, even the tin-can armor was useless; whether an Ottoman Pasha or a Qarachi of the Crimean Khanate, if they dared stand before the Oirat cavalry, there was only one road — death by impalement.

So much so that in Russian writings of this period, for a time they directly and plainly referred to the Oirat cavalry simply as "the Lances."

The only thing that could deal with lances was wooden ramparts.

But at Tomsk today, even the wooden ramparts could protect no one.

Voyevoda Ivan, standing at the city's commanding height, quickly saw the clue; the situation on the battlefield was not right.

Outside the city were thousands of cavalry, those horsemen in skirmishing formation drifting back and forth, drawing a rain of arrows from the fort's blockhouses, but in truth they caused hardly any casualties or damage.

On the contrary, it was the two small squads within the besieging army operating cannons and muskets — though their numbers were pitifully few — who kept up a continuous fire from their muskets upon the blockhouses and palisade walls, and were the true killers of the battle.

Their firearms were immensely powerful and terrifying.

Under cover of the Oirat cavalry, infantry carrying flying-rocket cannons could push the battle line up to the outer ring of sharpened stakes and lob cylindrical shells near the inner artillery platforms.

The Cossack gunners had never seen small grenades like these, and the soldiers manning the platforms were nearly wiped out by a single shell in the opening exchange.

Even after they gained experience, these arcing, lobbed shells still crushed the morale of the Cossack musketeers behind the palisade.

And the rockets flying wildly everywhere scared the Tatar soldiers between the two walls so badly they wailed for their mothers, at one point even wanting to withdraw into the inner citadel and abandon the fort walls.

Only the streltsy inside the inner citadel, forcing them at long-axe and musket-point, kept them holding their positions.

Fortunately, though the besieging firepower was ferocious, these strange-looking Khitan soldiers had limited supplies — those terrifyingly powerful rockets fell silent after just a few volleys.

Outside the fort, four small field cannons took turns bombarding the stockade walls. They fired for half a shichen before the defenders inside found a gap in the shooting and used more small cannons to push them back beyond the two hundred paces of effective range outside the walls.

The lion cannons could still fire beyond this distance, but they could no longer shoot flat-trajectory; the lighter shells lost too much power on the downward arc. The fearsome besieging army soon left behind a sky-covering rain of arrows, dragged away several dozen wounded men struck by arrows and shells, and gradually withdrew southward to a safe distance.

Inside Tomsk Fort, they were also tallying casualties. The situation was much the same as outside, with the difference being more dead inside the fort — and far more gruesome.

Outside the fort, aside from a few unlucky souls directly hit by shells, most were only wounded by arrows. What was more heartbreaking was the loss of over a dozen warhorses.

Inside the fort, however, not many soldiers suffered arrow wounds — nearly all were killed by cannon fire, and the deaths were hideous to behold.

The Marshal's Army's firearms were highly specialized for dealing with enemies behind wooden walls.

The lion cannons actually had very limited shock value, but the wall guns fired lead balls. Even after punching through a wooden wall, the log fibers would split the ball into several or even a dozen lead needles. If those scattered onto several people, it was manageable — just a few more wounded. But if they all struck one man, it was like being pierced by a volley of arrows on the spot; there was simply no saving him.

The flying-rocket cannons and rockets were even more hateful. If they didn't detonate, they just gave you a scare. If they did, they sprayed a cloud of lead pellets. The worst part was that a man would be riddled like a sieve yet still wouldn't die cleanly or quickly.

Even after Chokur lifted the siege and this side had made camp and started cooking, the wailing from inside that fort still carried far across the Siberian sky.

Though both sides had paid a price, when tallying casualties and seeing the gruesome state of their own soldiers, both commanders unconsciously revealed ill-timed smiles.

The garrison commander inside the fort, Ivan, seeing thousands of enemy troops recede like the tide, naturally felt an immense weight lift from his shoulders.

At the height of Chokur Camp's assault, he had truly believed he would die in this fortress today.

Having survived the calamity, Ivan couldn't help but laugh at his own cowardice — he really had been frightened by Chokur Camp's gunpowder.

Yes, not the weapons. Those weapons were indeed bizarre and formidable, but not enough to terrify one of Tsarist Russia's military commanders in Siberia.

It was the sheer quantity of gunpowder that terrified him.

When Chokur Camp withdrew, the first order Ivan gave was not to tend to the wounded, but to have an armed attendant swiftly retrieve an unexploded rocket for him.

He didn't understand the thing's principle, but he could roughly guess: packed with earth, the tube could hold seven jin, plus the bursting charge — at least eight jin.

Just of these alone, the besieging army outside had fired thirty or forty. Wall guns and flying-rocket cannons, plus the sustained half-shichen bombardment from four small cannons — in that brief siege, they had emptied a thousand jin of gunpowder.

What did that mean?

Tsarist Russia treated its officials and soldiers on Siberian expeditions extremely generously. An infantry commander of a fortress earned an annual salary of twenty rubles.

In this era, a ruble was a silver bar weighing about one liang and eight qian, roughly equal to two and a half German thalers. It could buy a sable pelt, or an old musket in Würzburg in Prussia.

In other words, an infantry commander's annual salary could buy eight old muskets.

Yet that same twenty rubles could only buy fifty jin of gunpowder — bullets and shells sold separately.

In Europe, this stuff was practically the most expensive of all military supplies.

Typically in Siberia, every man in an expedition was armed with a gun. One hundred jin of gunpowder was the entire gunpowder and shot supply for a hundred-man expedition equipped with a single iron cannon.

Before the battle began, the entire gunpowder stockpile inside Tomsk Fort was less than a thousand jin.

After this battle, Ivan could brag for half a lifetime back in Moscow: I survived an assault that burned through a thousand jin of gunpowder.

Outside the fort, Zhou Riqiang and Chokur were also smiling happily.

Because the hundred-man battalion under Wang Jinzhong's command had conducted a highly successful probing attack on Tomsk. Though the defenders had a strong fort and superior numbers and guns, their firepower was essentially on par with theirs.

In fact, thanks to the wall guns and individual-portable small cannons like the flying-rocket cannons, they could even faintly suppress the defenders.

Zhou Riqiang watched Chokur rubbing his hands eagerly. "The Heavenly Army has lifted the siege. The Oros soldiers inside the fort will surely suspect we've run out of powder and shot. Tonight, they'll most likely come raid our camp!"

Chokur, however, did not favor this guess. He slowly shook his head and said in stiff Chinese, "They won't dare. Fight me in open field."

Zhou Riqiang paused, then waved his hand dismissively. "No matter if they don't dare — someone else will. When the Heavenly Army besieges a fort, the surrounding mountain forts and river forts are bound to send reinforcements. In the next few days, General, lead the cavalry to besiege a point and strike the reinforcements. Wipe out every last one of their relief forces."

After speaking, Zhou Riqiang exhaled heavily through his nose, his gaze burning as he looked toward the fortress. He raised a hand to straighten his sleeves, then planted both hands on the leather belt at his waist. "When the Grand General personally leads the fleet here with muskets, cannons, divine arrows, and all manner of firearms to settle the overall situation, our Grand Marshal's northern frontier can advance another one thousand five hundred li!"

"Tomsk? Hah. Taimeng Garrison — a land where auspicious signs sprout and life flourishes endlessly!"