Chapter 1618: Strong Soldiers and Fierce Generals

"I understand the regiment commander's intent... Commander, truth be told, as a man of the Liaodong Army, I too want our Liaodong Army to win great glory..." Huang Changguo sighed softly. "But Commander, do not forget — Marshal Zhao is also a man of our Liaodong Army! If we disgrace Marshal Zhao, how will he face the men of the other armies when the time comes? We must think of Marshal Zhao!"

"Advisor, you need not worry. Marshal Zhao told us to act as circumstances dictate — that means he has already left us a way out." Bi Su suddenly smiled strangely. "As Marshal Zhao's direct regiment, we must carefully grasp the Marshal's deeper meaning! Think about it: the ones ashore now are all men of our Liaodong Regiment. Could the Marshal's intent possibly be just to have us all stand here catching the sea breeze? Of course not!"

These words lit a spark in Huang Changguo's mind.

Indeed — Marshal Zhao could not openly favor us, but after all, he too came out of the Liaodong Army. How could he cast aside the bond with us old brothers? He must have already made plans for us in secret, only unwilling to say so openly.

With this realization, Huang Changguo was truly moved.

"Commander... what the Commander says is quite right. As men of the Liaodong Army, we absolutely cannot fall behind others — the enemy is massing right now, and whether for the sake of face or in practical terms, we should strike them a blow, keep them from seizing the initiative so smoothly..." He finally relented. "Very well then. If the Commander wishes to probe the enemy's defenses, I, your subordinate, am quite supportive."

Seeing that he had finally persuaded this advisor, Bi Su breathed a sigh of relief.

This advisor was one of Marshal Zhao's trusted men. If he could not be persuaded, acting on his own authority might bring consequences he could not escape afterward. Now, with the advisor's backing, many things would be far easier to do.

Though the advisor had only spoken of a "probe," once the door was opened, what that "probe" turned into was entirely up to him to control.

"Thank you, Advisor!" He waved toward Huang Changguo, then signaled for his dispatch officer to come over.

"Get those battalion commanders to assemble the troops at once — muster every officer and soldier who's already ashore! Tell them to rouse their spirits, we're going to hit those shogunate soldiers!" he roared at the dispatch officer. "Tell them: if their units aren't assembled by noon, I'll kick their heads into the sea!"

The dispatch officer immediately turned and went to relay the order to the officers. Before long, the entire encampment at Hakata Bay grew tense. Amid the officers' shouts, not only the men on guard duty but also the soldiers resting in tents and on the beach began to muster. Seen from above, streams of red began to converge, finally forming a red sea. This red sea blazed dazzlingly under the midday sun; though they numbered only a little over a thousand, they gave off an aura of irresistible, indomitable force.

Once his subordinate officers and men had assembled, Bi Su did not hesitate. He strode at once before the assembled troops and stood atop a rock, looking down upon them.

Though the midday sun was harsh, the whistling sea breeze blowing against him brought a fair measure of coolness.

"Men of the Liaodong Army, all of you listen up!" After clearing his throat, he shouted to the crowd. "We are the Great Han's strongest army. For years we have campaigned across Liaodong, trampling countless foes and winning our fame as invincible in battle. It is by that fame that we were chosen and brought here to keep fighting for His Majesty. So today is the day we show our mettle! As you all know, Marshal Zhao is the commander-in-chief, and he came from our Liaodong Army. And our Grand Marshal Chen? He has now been recalled to the capital by His Majesty. Grand Marshal Chen returning to the capital is certainly not to retire — he is to become Minister of the Army! Do you understand what Minister of the Army means?!"

His question stirred speculation and murmurs among the men. He immediately slammed the tip of his command saber hard against the ground. "All right, stop your wild guessing! I'll tell you — Minister of the Army is the highest, highest office in our army, the supreme chief of the entire Great Han Army! Now do you understand what kind of office this is?!"

This explanation drew a burst of cheers from below; nearly every man shouted.

Chen Sheng, Duke of Ji, had commanded troops in Liaodong since the final years of the Great Ming. He led with strict discipline yet cherished his soldiers, fought with ferocious courage, and was deeply loved by his men. Hearing that their Grand Marshal, upon returning to the capital, was actually to become the highest officer of the entire army, the soldiers naturally roared with joy.

"The Grand Marshal, as a Marshal of the Great Han, has rendered countless deeds of blood and toil. His Majesty appointing him Minister of the Army is fully deserved — and it is the glory of our Liaodong Army! And what of us? Can we disgrace the Grand Marshal? Can we fail to put on a show for the other friendly armies to see? Let me make it clear to you today: we are not only going to smash the shogunate — we are going to show the brilliance of our Liaodong Army! Do not disgrace Marshal Zhao! Do not disgrace our Grand Marshal Chen! With Marshal Zhao and Grand Marshal Chen above us, our Liaodong Army will forever be the number one army under heaven!"

"Number one under heaven! Number one under heaven!" His words quickly roused answering cheers from the officers and soldiers.

"Don't just shout it with your mouths!" Bi Su bellowed, cutting off their cheers. Then he drew his saber from its scabbard and pointed it far ahead toward that stretch of earthen wall. "Get up there — charge and smash them to pieces!"

"Yes, sir!" Officers and soldiers roared back as one.

At that very moment, behind the low wall, Kuroda Tadayuki, the daimyo of Fukuoka Domain, was also huddled with his close samurai. However, compared to the high-spirited Great Han army, their nerves were far more strained.

Kuroda Tadayuki had inherited his father's domain to become lord of Fukuoka. He had never before taken part in battle, only hearing his father and some old retainers in the domain mention old tales from the Warring States era. To him, war was merely a beautiful painted scroll, filled with all manner of heroic spirit and grand, tragic scenes.

He often lamented that he had not been born in the right age, that in this era of Tokugawa peace he had no outlet for his martial prowess, no way to gallop across the battlefields of the Warring States as his ancestors had.

When he received word from the shogunate's officials in Nagasaki ordering Fukuoka Domain to mobilize as quickly as possible and guard against a Great Han attack, he was beside himself with excitement, feeling that his courage and spirit had at last found their use. He summoned the domain's soldiers, distributed the old weapons from the storehouses to them, and in a very short time organized a large army for his domain. He personally led the troops to Hakata Bay to defend against a possible Great Han landing — had the Yuan army not landed here twice in the past, and been repelled both times?

He ignored all manner of unfavorable conditions. His confidence was overflowing; he was determined to seize this chance to display his personal talent.

Amid his waiting, the Great Han attack finally came.

Yet everything that happened utterly shattered all the beautiful imaginings he had once held.

The Great Han fleet truly came, sailing into Hakata Bay as if no one else existed. Every one of their warships seemed larger than any ship he had ever seen in his life. The cannons on these warships, in his eyes, were as numerous as the stars, and every single one made the cannons on his own battery look shabby by comparison.

Then, before his very eyes, those cannons opened fire almost simultaneously. The terrifying, orderly bombardment swept across with dreadful power, and in nearly an instant his courage vanished. Under the Great Han fleet's bombardment, Fukuoka Domain's little battery at Hakata Bay was quickly smashed to pieces, as if wrecked by the fiercest of storms.

Before he could even react, after this round of bombardment, the Great Han army immediately began its landing. By now, his earlier courage was gone; instead, he chose to hold his troops back — in truth, under the muzzles of the Great Han fleet, he had no way to send troops out to resist and block the Great Han landing anyway.

After the Great Han troops came ashore, their soldiers briefly moved beyond the covering fire of the ships' cannons, preparing to circle around and seize the battery. At that moment, a group of samurai came to him requesting permission to attack the Great Han forces.

These men were all resolved to die, and Kuroda Tadayuki, with a mind to test the waters, agreed.

He had originally thought that even if these men could not smash the landing force, they could at least inflict some casualties.

Yet how events unfolded once again defied his expectations.

A force of several hundred men was routed by a Great Han force far smaller in number — and they did it with such ease, as if meeting almost no resistance at all.

At that moment he finally understood: the excellence of the Great Han soldiers' weapons and the mastery of their tactics were absolutely beyond what his mere single domain could oppose.

From brimming confidence at the start to deep anxiety afterward took only a single day. And starting yesterday, he had become terrified, no longer willing to sally forth and engage the Great Han army in battle.

Together with his equally shaken domain troops, he hid behind the earthen wall they had hastily dug a few days earlier, motionless like a frightened hare. Yet in his heart he knew that these hurriedly built fortifications could offer them nothing more than an illusion of safety; before the edge of the Great Han army, they might not serve much purpose at all.

Since last night, the soldiers summoned from within the domain had continued to assemble here. He now had a force of roughly three thousand men — the maximum strength Fukuoka Domain could muster on such short notice.

But after comparing the equipment and fighting strength of the two sides, Kuroda Tadayuki wisely — or rather, timidly — abandoned any thought of attacking the not-yet-entrenched Great Han army under cover of night. He merely continued gathering his forces and hiding behind the low wall.

This approach also stirred discontent among the newly arrived samurai. Many came to him requesting permission to attack the Great Han troops under cover of darkness, but he and the samurai who had been here since the day before forcefully rejected every such request. Kuroda Tadayuki said the Great Han weapons were simply too devastating; if a night raid were discovered by them, it would result in heavy losses before the two armies, just as had happened to those samurai in the daytime.

The strategy he put forward was to dig in here and hold fast, relying on defense to wear down the Great Han army's strength while waiting for reinforcements from Nagasaki. To this end, he had already dispatched messengers several times, demanding that Nagasaki send reinforcements to Hakata Bay as quickly as possible — even now, due to the chaos in both places, he still did not know that the Great Han army had already shifted its main striking force toward Nagasaki.

Under his insistence, one night passed without combat between the two sides. Many thought it a pity they had not been able to raid the Great Han army, but once daylight came and word arrived that Nagasaki was under attack, there was no time to argue over that.

The messenger sent by the shogunate, besides reporting this news, also brought an order from Elder Naitō Shigeshige, demanding that they withdraw part of their forces from Hakata Bay to reinforce Nagasaki. After all, compared to Hakata Bay, Nagasaki was far more important.

Yet the Elder's order provoked fresh disputes here. Some felt they should obey — after all, defending Kyushu required everyone's full cooperation, and the longer they held out, the better they could await the reinforcements the shogunate would send from Honshu. Others, however, felt that if they withdrew troops from here, they risked leaving Hakata Bay completely wide open. If the Great Han army truly broke through the defenses here, then Fukuoka Domain would be utterly exposed to the Great Han army's iron hooves, and devastation would be hard to avoid.

Both sides' arguments had merit, so the dispute remained deadlocked, leaving Kuroda Tadayuki in a quandary once more. Finally, a trusted chief retainer privately laid out the stakes for him: "If the domain lord remains here alone to resist the Great Han army, success would of course be commendable, but defeat would bring great calamity upon him, and Fukuoka Domain's entire army would be annihilated and hard to restore. If he leads a force to Nagasaki, he can at least preserve the troops in hand, and joining the larger army there would also be safer. Even if Fukuoka Domain is ravaged by the Great Han army afterward, as long as he can endure, the shogunate after the war will surely take pity on the domain lord's loyalty and bestow favor upon him."

This counsel finally moved Kuroda Tadayuki. From his perspective, it was indeed the best choice. After hearing it, Kuroda Tadayuki at last made up his mind: he would take half the army to rush to Nagasaki's aid, and instruct the remaining subordinates to resist the Great Han army here with all their strength — as for what would happen to the people of Fukuoka Domain if they could not hold, he had no room to care about that now.

Just as Bi Su and Huang Changguo had settled their decision, Kuroda Tadayuki had also completed his own muster in the rear. Kuroda Tadayuki sat mounted on his horse, preparing to lead his subordinates to rendezvous in Kyushu.

However, just as they were about to march, the Great Han army launched its attack.

Boom—! Accompanied by a deafening roar, the very earth seemed to tremble.

That roar had been so terrifying before, but after last night's experience, Kuroda Tadayuki had grown somewhat accustomed to it and was no longer as soul-shaken as he had been yesterday. Yet he suddenly realized that the impact points of the shells were not within the range of yesterday's ships, but squarely on the defensive works his domain troops had thrown up in that short span of time.

The low earthen wall proved so fragile before the solid metal cannonballs hurtling in at high speed. Gaps were quickly blasted open, and under the continued hammering of subsequent shells, these gaps soon became large-scale collapses. The earthen wall they had frantically built now abruptly turned into flat ground.

The domain soldiers on the front line likewise suffered grievous losses under the bombardment. Flesh and severed limbs mixed with the mud, turning into an indescribable blur of dark-brown matter.

When he beheld once more the aftermath of such a heavy cannonade, Kuroda Tadayuki was so horrified he nearly fell from his horse. He trembled all over. Where now was the lofty spirit with which he had once secretly lamented being born in the wrong age? Only now did he discover what kind of life his fathers and grandfathers had truly experienced.

But he had neither the heart nor the leisure to reminisce now, for after the intense bombardment, the Great Han army swiftly launched its charge. From the Great Han army's forward positions came a deafening roar of battle cries, and then a sheet of fire swept toward him.

These cannons had been brought over by the transport ships during the night. To facilitate transport, the cannons and their carriages had been shipped and unloaded separately. In order to get them into action as quickly as possible, the artillerymen had worked almost the entire night without rest, making a tremendous effort to unload these cannons and lift them onto their carriages, then, before the night ended, push them up onto the original battery high ground and into position before the two armies — only the muzzles were now pointed in the opposite direction.

Bi Su had long intended to launch the attack early and had therefore been urging the artillery to hurry their preparations. Under his prodding, the artillery had at last completed their final preparations in the morning. The highly trained professional officers, using observation from the battery high ground, had adjusted the firing data and were now awaiting Bi Su's order.

Just as the troops had assembled and were ready to launch the attack, Bi Su immediately gave the order to commence the bombardment.

At his command, the Great Han army's cannons immediately began shelling the enemy's positions and encampment. Although not many cannons had been brought ashore yet, under the direction of these artillery officers with many years of service, the firepower was fully exploited, and countless shells began raining down mercilessly upon the enemy forces opposite them.

Then, the moment the bombardment ended, the artillery platform waved a flag down below to signal that the mission was complete, and by this time, the Great Han army's charge was also fully prepared.

As Bi Su swung his saber down heavily, the officers of every company likewise roared out the charge order to their soldiers.

What followed was a battle cry erupting from over a thousand soldiers almost simultaneously, and then a surging red flame swept toward the gaps in the earthen wall that had just been bombarded — overwhelming, blotting out the sky.

Because Commander Bi had previously instructed, "There is no need to overly maintain formation; speed up, break the enemy ruthlessly, then pursue them closely so they cannot regroup, and crush the enemy before you," these soldiers did not pay much attention to formation, merely keeping a certain distance from the few soldiers in their own squad to avoid becoming too scattered.

The garrison troops near the earthen wall and trenches had already suffered heavy losses under the Great Han army's sudden and fierce bombardment, and were already terrified out of their wits. When the Great Han army roared and launched their charge, they were even more panic-stricken. Some warriors who still had the will to fight leaped up, wanting to resist, but most of the remaining soldiers appeared deeply hesitant.