Chapter 756: Breach

Heavy muskets roared through the gaps between shields, and wall guns bellowed five paces before the foe.

Straight-bladed Western-style sabers hacked and stabbed before the formation; though the Western Tribe soldiers fought fiercely and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, their lack of sturdy armor let the foe tear breach after breach in the wagon line.

The Bordered Blue Mongols had charged on a single breath, refusing to break even under point-blank heavy musket fire, precisely because they saw the enemy wore only light armor — once the line was pierced, collapse was certain.

Yet that breath, the moment they broke the line and found red-armored Han troops surging toward them, was instantly shattered and scattered.

In that moment, those behind pressed forward while those in front fell back, jamming into the jagged breach torn in the line, crushing tighter and tighter.

Behind them, every Niru Zhangjing was burning for merit; before any could react, several cannon blasts erupted from within the formation.

Powder smoke burst forth; amid the shriek of tearing metal and silk, canister shot left fleeting honeycombed tunnels through the haze. A thousand-odd iron balls fanned out from inside the formation, striking twenty paces, churning flesh and spraying blood mist out beyond the line — stopping the onrushing Mongol bannermen dead in their tracks.

The Niru Zhangjing had no time to issue further orders. Before them, the front line of battle lay flattened, and even the great long-shield barriers to the left and right, which had not been breached, suddenly swung open. Red-armored soldiers in bowl helmets, leveling banner-tipped spears, trampled over the bleeding wounded and charged out rank by rank, blades raised and roaring.

In the foremost wave, the remnants of several niru instantly collapsed and fled.

Even a few Western Tribe heavy musketeers, who had swallowed a bellyful of frustration, ran beyond the line carrying their heavy muskets, fired a shot from a distance, then reversed their grip and savagely clubbed fallen enemy soldiers over the head with the butt.

One rout, and then rout everywhere.

Gūsa Ejen Husibu wheeled his horse around, ready to accept that the assault had failed and to advise Fiyanggū that the enemy line stood unshakable and must not be lightly provoked.

But he had ridden barely ten paces before he yanked his horse's head around and ordered the broken troops to regroup.

Fiyanggū was already overwhelmed — in the time it took them to assault the line, the Bordered Blue Banner's own formation had collapsed.

Zuo Guangxian's Ranger Battalion had first driven off Tang Tong's cavalry outside the formation, then, without so much as a glance at the horsemen who had broken in, wheeled away to harry Fiyanggū's main camp.

Fiyanggū's men were mounted as well; the two forces immediately opened a cavalry engagement on the flank of the battlefield. In moments, over four thousand horsemen were stabbing, pursuing, shooting from the saddle, and driving each other across the flank.

As the mounted columns maneuvered, the battle's footprint swelled rapidly, soon spilling into the Northern Yuan Camp on the main flank battlefield. Many Northern Yuan riders locked in melee burst out of their formation, looked up to see Eastern Brigand horsemen running everywhere, and instantly strung their bows and hurled themselves into the fight.

The Bordered Yellow Banner troops that Daicing had sent from the right wing were in a similar state.

Seeing the Bordered Blue Banner join battle from afar, they too quickened their pace behind, so much so that their artillery, infantry, and cavalry pulled apart into three separate segments. Several hundred cavalry raced for the battle line and threw themselves into the assault the moment they arrived.

Yet such an obvious blunder in maneuver was one the Marshal's Army could not exploit.

One advantage of the One-Two formation was that it thoroughly masked the flanking intent of troops shifting from the rear toward the wings.

They marched along interior lines behind three successive battle lines; even if the enemy commander noticed, he was powerless to reach them.

Moreover, the two camps of Northern Yuan loyalist elders under Šastu Taiji and Wu Sihu, after repeated charges and bloody fighting, no longer had the strength to fight on.

Behind the battle lines, in the Marshal's Army central command camp, runners from every battalion were reporting the flow of battle to Liu Chengzong like running water.

To prevent the battle from becoming so chaotic that the enemy could send false reports, each battalion had left eight messenger riders at central command, and the Feathered Forest Camp likewise kept messengers with every battalion.

Now, with the vanguard locked in melee and both wings engaged, every battalion was sending its latest situation reports. Zhang Xianzhong and the Feathered Forest officers were collating them, using wooden figurines on the map board to lay out the battle situation.

Still, none of that compared to the clarity of Liu Chengzong personally scanning the field with his telescope.

He could not see small adjustments or waving banners, but the collisions between camps and formations, and the enemy's large-scale movements — even when the troops themselves were invisible, the dust clouds rising from the ground into the sky told him everything clearly.

Emperor Chongde was frantically shifting troops.

The battle line was thinning rapidly.

"Marshal, Yanmen Camp is spent and should be pulled back; Northern Yuan Camp fights doggedly and craves merit — no report from them yet, but they too have been locked in bitter combat a long while."

"The Imperial Clan Camp…" Zhang Xianzhong looked somewhat speechless, frowning as he said, "Jin Chanzi and Sun Long of Liaoyang Camp are demanding to fight — they request to advance."

The Minister of Rites muttered inwardly: Lunatics!

He had not expected Liu Chengzong to be even more deranged, as the latter said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Order the Imperial Clan and Liaoyang Camps to advance with their wagon formations and screen the front of Northern Yuan and Yanmen Camps."

"Marshal, Daicing is shifting formation and will surely counterattack. These two camps cannot hold."

"No matter. Let them advance. Also send word to the First Brigade: order Gao Yingdeng to follow with his troops."

Liu Chengzong knew perfectly well that Hong Taiji would counterattack, and he also knew that the Imperial Clan and Liaoyang Camps could not hold the battle line.

But at this moment there was no choice — they had to push the wagon formations forward. Push them forward, and perhaps they could hold.

Because if they did not push forward, they would be abandoning the gains already won. The moment Northern Yuan and Yanmen Camps withdrew, Daicing's forces would counterattack at once and carry off the incapacitated soldiers of the fallen Plain Blue and Bordered White Camps.

Even if those two camps' soldiers were taken back, they could hardly be thrown back into the fight, but as long as they were not dead, Liu Chengzong did not count them as results.

By the same token, Liu Chengzong also knew exactly why Jin Chanzi and Sun Long were so eager to advance.

The soldiers of the Imperial Clan Camp might get cocky in this battle.

Roughly thirty percent of the camp's troops had never fought a proper battle before — they had only followed Liu Chengzong's endless marches, cutting paths through mountains and building bridges over rivers.

Their only experience was being chased and hacked at by the Marshal's Army regulars and Mongol-Tibetan troops.

So a battle like this, positioned amid a powerful army and striking the enemy's flank, could easily scramble their understanding of warfare and make them think the Eight Banners troops were utterly feeble.

In truth, from such a position, caught off guard mid-march, anyone would look utterly feeble.

An army that could, amid the chaos, regroup at the cost of one or two camps was already a force of wolves and tigers.

In the battle of the Khingan Range, the Marshal's Army's northern detached force — composed of Wang Cheng'en, Ding Guodong, He Huchen, and Feng Rang — had paid the price of Ding Guodong's camp being smashed in two, whereupon the mounted columns of Wang and He swiftly reinforced, allowing Feng Rang to deploy his wagon camp so the main army could reform its ranks.

The situation now was much the same, except these Eight Banners troops were far inferior to the elite Eight Banners of the Khingan battle, and so they paid an even heavier price.

But Liu Chengzong was quite certain that Colonel Jin Chanzi would not let a hot head make him cocky.

This was a fierce warrior of the imperial clan.

The scene outside Pingliang City years ago was still vivid: wielding a podao — a firewood knife shafted onto a pole — and riding a black donkey that bit anyone in reach, he had rampaged at will, sending Pingliang Guard troops and Han Princely Establishment clansmen fleeing in all directions, until finally the imperial clansmen, the rebel army, and the Lion Camp had formed a great circle to watch the donkey show.

Later, when Liu Chengzong entered Qinghai, one Jin Chanzi after another died; only this second-generation one was an evergreen. By the time Liu Chengzong fought his way back from Qinghai into Guanzhong, he was still alive, running a mountain stronghold in Ningzhou and living quite well.

To call him mediocre — in military strategy and tactics, he and his veteran imperial clansmen certainly could not match the first-rate fierce generals and crack troops of the Great Ming frontier forces.

But neither was he like the other imperial clansmen who had never fought a battle at all.

Jin Chanzi surely understood the stakes.

Add Sun Long, an old rebel who had swept through the Eastern Route armies alongside Li Jiucheng — with these two jointly requesting to advance, Liu Chengzong reckoned they too wanted to claim the fruits of breaking the enemy's assault.

In fact, it was much as he thought.

Messenger riders raced across the battlefield; the moment the order to press the line forward arrived, the Imperial Clan Camp's battle flags unfurled. Wall guns and war wagons turned in unison, grinding over the corpses strewn everywhere, firing sporadic heavy shot as they rumbled forward.

Behind this line of war wagons, however, things were far less orderly.

Sun Long's Liaoyang Battalion left only half its soldiers to advance alongside the war wagons; the men behind were rapidly clearing the battlefield. Whenever they saw someone wearing their own side's concealed armor, they dragged them to the rear and ignored them. Whenever they saw someone in Ming armor, they stabbed them twice first, then stripped off the blood-soaked Ming armor and pulled it onto themselves.

Sometimes, even when they spotted their own wounded, if the man lay still and silent, they would strip off his armor and weapons too.

Of course, they hadn't forgotten friend-or-foe markings — those Zongren Battalion fellows in python robes had all had their sleeves removed.

The Liaoyang Battalion had torn them into cloth strips while waiting for orders. Those lucky enough to pick up a helmet wrapped a circle of red silk around the brow plate; those without helmets simply bound their heads with the red silk.

Even if they hadn't picked up iron armor — whether it was a leather coat or a pressed cotton armor — they pulled it on all the same, grabbed bows and blades, filled their arrow quivers, and jogged to catch up with the wagon column.

When the Zongren and Liaoyang Battalions began their advance, many of the white-armored soldiers on the front line — the ones who had cut their queues and fought to the death — were still battling back, surrounded and encircled by cavalry.

This was not because they were so formidable, but because Wu Sihu and Chaktu Taiji were utterly ruthless, determined to pen them in and slaughter them. The routed troops clustered around the white-armored soldiers; they could not break out, and there was nowhere to run. They could only launch foot charges again and again, their bodies bristling with arrows.

Inside the encirclement, they were cut into one small squad after another. By the end, the white-armored soldiers could barely walk. The cavalry did not even close in to hack or stab; they merely galloped and struck from the flanks, preventing them from supporting one another, leaving them to bleed to death within the encirclement.

It was not until the Zongren Battalion's jingal war wagons rolled over them and the wolf-tiger ferocious Liaoyang Battalion surged forward... These men truly threw themselves into the melee, swallowed up the remnant soldiers in the blink of an eye, and stripped them utterly clean.

Just at that moment, within the Daiching lines, the front-line commander Yoto had his telescope trained on the Marshal's army formation shifting, and immediately issued attack orders to the Han Banners and Mongol Banners.

Yoto's judgment for ordering the attack was simple: the formation moved.

A formation that does not move, do not attack; once an army formation moves, you can strike. If the formation stays still but men move within it, you can also strike.

As long as men are moving inside the formation, it signals a weak point in the army formation that can be assaulted; and when the entire army formation is in motion, to him that was also a signal to attack.

Trumpeters all along the front line blew the conch horns — some were unadorned sea conches, others were cast from conch molds into brass horns shaped like conches.

The drawn-out wailing rose like an ancient and distant war cry. Hearing the horn calls, the Eight Banners' front line advanced simultaneously from left and right, pushing shield carts, muskets, and cannon, surging straight at the Zongren Battalion's wagon formation.

In an instant, the Northern Yuan and Yanmen Battalions hastily withdrew inside the wagon formation. The Zongren Battalion held the wagon fort, firing muskets and blunderbusses without pause, while the opposing Han Banners advanced in breach-column formation, taking cover behind shield carts and firing cannon and muskets in return.

Two mobile wooden rampart fortifications — built from war wagons, shields, and shield carts — slowly ground toward each other in the exchange of fire.

Bullets and shot fell like rain, sending wood splinters flying from both armies' front lines.

Jingal heavy shots punched through shields; solid cannonballs hurtled through the air and likewise bored holes through the jingal war wagons.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the Marshal's army, on the position of Gao Yingdeng's First Brigade Main Battalion, nine cannon platforms a zhang high mounted thousand-jin field guns that roared incessantly, hurling heavy solid shot into the Daiching front line two li away.

A shield cart was smashed over by a cannonball; several soldiers pushing from behind were instantly crushed beneath it, wailing in agony.

But the overturned shield cart was quickly righted again by the Han Banners, who continued advancing under its cover.

Nearly every shield cart could shelter thirty to forty men behind it.

These Han Banners soldiers carrying bird guns, shielded by the carts, were like conveyor belts moving forward one after another.

They advanced four abreast. As the shield cart slowly pushed forward, the two men on the outside fired their bird guns, then stepped behind the cart, halted, and reloaded; the musketeers originally behind them then stepped forward two paces, fired, and likewise stepped behind the cart, halted, and reloaded.

By the time the first two soldiers behind the cart finished reloading, they had reached the rear of the column; they rejoined the advance, fired again, and repeated the process of stepping behind the cart to reload.

In truth, however, neither the shield carts nor the jingal war wagons were invincible defenses. They were field equipment meant to give soldiers partial protection, reduce their casualty rate, let them reload calmly, and spare them excessive fear.

During the advance, jingal war wagons could be pierced by cannonballs; shield carts could be pierced by cannonballs just the same.

But even after being pierced, these things still offered the soldiers protection.

In field battle, the greatest function of this equipment was that when a soldier wanted to flee, hiding behind the cart was safer than turning and running away from the battle line.

When the distance between the two armies shrank to thirty or forty paces under the exchange of gunfire, the Han Banners in the Eight Banners' single-line formation halted, continuing to fire with muskets. At the same time, through every breach-gap in the battle line, Mongol Banners pushing shield carts screened the foot soldiers and cavalry as they began advancing.

In every small squad, infantry firearms and mounted archers covered one another; in every small formation, the Han Banners and Mongol Banners covered one another. Though the advance was slow, directly opposite every breach-gap where the Zongren Battalion's jingal line faced the Han Banners, they poured forth a continuous, dense storm of bullets and shot.

Not a single Han Banner company fired at the enemies directly in front of their shield carts; instead, they rained their fire to the left-front and right-front, creating opportunities for the Mongol Banner companies' assault to break the formation.

This was an advantage unique to the attacking side.

The defender had to deploy defenses everywhere, but the attacker only needed to break a single point on the long battle line to tear open the defense and pour in like fish through a weir.

However, Ma Guangyuan, the Han Army Commander-in-Chief directing the Han Banners' line, realized that his side's casualties were not adding up.

They were attacking, and the enemy wagon formation was defending — casualties were unavoidable. But why were those Great Wind-Chaser Guns on the enemy war wagons targeting only the Han Banner companies?

The Mongol companies' cavalry were right behind the shield carts, their intent to close in for hand-to-hand combat and charge the wagon formation already abundantly clear.

Yet the enemy paid no mind whatsoever to the Mongol companies firing on foot from a dozen paces away, concentrating solely on using jingal heavy muskets to strike the Han Banner companies thirty to forty paces distant.

The jingals were slow to fire, but their shock effect was immense. A single shot could punch through several men; soldiers nearby dared not even raise their muskets before fleeing backward in terror.

But the situation gave Ma Guangyuan no time to think it through carefully. The Mongol companies bursting through the breaches quickly pinned down the Zongren Battalion men on the forward war wagons so hard they could not lift their heads; they abandoned their jingals and ducked behind the wagon boards.

With the frontal threat gone, one Mongol company after another launched its assault on the front, shoving war wagons, ramming shields, bursting through the battle line, raising blades and drawing bows, hacking left and right as they charged forward.

But once they burst through the line, their stupefaction was no less than that of their Bordered Blue Banner comrades on the right wing.

Before them stood small army formations, one after another. At the very front stood rows of men carrying Later Jin great recurve bows, clad in Later Jin Ming armor, wearing Later Jin helmets tied with red silk. Some did not even wear helmets, merely binding a circle of red silk around their shaven, bald pates.

At that very moment, the front of the Zongren Battalion's wagon formation opened.

The war wagons directly facing each Han Banner company were pulled backward by warhorses, leaving the gates wide open.

Then, with a howl of hooves, red-armored cavalrymen of the First Brigade Main Battalion — each holding high the Marshal's Mansion's crimson banner symbolizing the south — swept past the attacking Mongol companies and charged the shattered Han Banner companies on the front line.

The sight struck Ma Guangyuan with horror: "Report to the Sacred Khan at once — the enemy has not rested their troops; they are attacking too!"

?? Good afternoon!

? (End of Chapter)