Chapter 98: Striking Where It Hurts Most

"Hahaha..." Zhang Heshang laughed heartily upon hearing this. "Did you hear that, you little rascals? The General has ordered us to attack immediately!"

"We heard you!"

Several platoon leaders and the five hundred soldiers—all former mounted bandits—roared in response.

Zhang Heshang drew his saber with a metallic clang and shouted fiercely: "Brothers, follow me!"

With that, he swung his saber forward and strode toward the mountain at a run. The five hundred soldiers clamored and followed him, charging toward the summit.

At the summit:

Bate gave the order, and the two hundred Khorchin guards stationed behind the wagon barricade began firing arrows.

However, the five hundred soldiers attacking the Khorchin imperial court were all former bandits, each possessing impressive martial skills. Zhang Heshang, who was in the lead, along with several of his platoon leaders, were particularly formidable; they swatted away the incoming Khorchin arrows with ease. Within moments, the two forces were less than fifty paces apart.

Only then did Bate remember the two mortars. He yelled, "Quick! Fire the cannons! Blast these Southern Ming savages to death!"

Two guards hurriedly took torches to ignite the fuses. The fuses caught instantly, sputtering with sparks as they burned into the barrels. A moment later, two thunderous roars erupted. Bate and his two hundred guards were so shaken by the immense sound that they saw stars, their ears ringing, unable to hear anything else.

Zhang Heshang, leading his men in a fierce charge up the mountain, was startled by the deafening blasts. He immediately recognized them as mortars!

Iron shells fired from mortars could bounce along the ground for miles. Anything they struck—be it arms, legs, or heads—would be shattered into pieces instantly. Having spent over a decade as a bandit, Zhang Heshang had been on the receiving end of Ming mortars many times; the sound was etched into his memory.

"Damn it, those are mortars!" Zhang Heshang bellowed, his voice hoarse. "Brothers, hurry and follow me! Take out the Mongols' mortars!"

The five hundred soldiers behind him responded with a roar, instantly accelerating their charge.

At the summit:

Bate stepped forward, slapped the two guards crouching by the mortars to the ground, and cursed fiercely: "Idiots! Can't you tilt the barrels lower? How are you supposed to hit the Southern Ming savages by firing into the sky? Hurry, find something to prop up the rear of the mortars so the barrels point downward!"

"And you lot," Bate turned to the dozens of guards nearby, "what are you staring at? Get over here and help!"

Dozens of guards rushed over, but unfortunately, before they could reposition the mortars, Zhang Heshang and his five hundred men reached the top. The two armies clashed, descending into a brutal hand-to-hand struggle.

Below the mountain, in front of the Khorchin cavalry formation:

Banktu and Sogar were also startled by the deafening blasts. Looking back, they saw the Ming troops had already surged up the slope and were locked in combat with the guards defending the imperial court.

"This is bad!" Banktu cried out. "The Ming troops are attacking the mountain at night!"

Sogar stomped his foot. "Father's guards only number two hundred; they certainly won't hold out for long."

"No, we cannot rest any longer," Banktu said decisively. "We must attack the Ming camp immediately. We must break through their camp before they take the imperial court!"

This time, Sogar said nothing more.

***

At the front of the Ming formation:

Wang Pu was also startled by the sudden cannon fire. He hadn't expected the Khorchins to possess cannons!

Fortunately, it seemed the Khorchins were poor gunners. The two shots had sounded terrifying but had achieved nothing; they hit neither the troops attacking the mountain nor the soldiers resting in the camp below.

"General!" Big Beard suddenly shouted. "The Khorchins are moving!"

"Hmm?"

Wang Pu pulled his gaze from the mountain and looked south toward the resting Khorchin troops.

By the light of the torches held by the Khorchins, Wang Pu saw that the men who had been sitting on the ground were back in their saddles. Amidst the long, mournful sound of a horn, a detachment of Khorchin cavalry split from the main force and began to slowly advance toward the Ming lines.

"Good grief!" Big Beard quickly judged the size of the cavalry unit based on his experience. "There are at least two thousand riders!"

A cold, grim smile appeared on the corner of Wang Pu's mouth.

The Khorchins were stagnant, relying on the outdated tactics of their ancestors. For hundreds of years, this was all they knew!

To put it bluntly, this Khorchin tactic was essentially a cavalry version of guerrilla warfare.

Thirteenth-century Mongol cavalry had a characteristic: they would never commit their full force to a decisive battle without absolute certainty of victory. They would send small groups of cavalry to harass the enemy incessantly. Only when the enemy showed signs of fatigue would the Mongol cavalry strike with their full strength.

Relying on these, at the time, cutting-edge cavalry guerrilla tactics, the Mongol cavalry achieved incredible success. The Western world's heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, clad in cumbersome armor from head to toe, were easily dismantled by the Mongols in this way.

But times were changing, and even the most advanced tactics eventually become obsolete.

The emergence of muskets and the three-stage volley fire technique turned the Mongol tactics into garbage. While primitive muskets might not have compared to refined bows and arrows, by the early seventeenth century, muskets had undergone constant improvement; their lethality and accuracy far exceeded bows, and the three-stage firing technique provided a revolutionary, continuous stream of fire.

Facing a musket corps equipped with new-style firearms, the Mongol cavalry's tactics became the most foolish form of "adding oil" (a tactic of feeding troops into a meat grinder). The small groups of cavalry sent out were quickly wiped out by the dense, continuous musket fire, failing to serve as a probe. The Mongols were then forced to send out another group to probe, only for them to be devoured as well...

In real history, there was a very famous example!

During the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China, at the Battle of Dagu Fort, over twenty thousand Khorchin cavalry were completely wiped out by six thousand musket-wielding soldiers of the Alliance because of these outdated tactics. In the end, Sengge Rinchen escaped back to Beijing with only seven riders.

In truth, one cannot entirely blame the Khorchins for clinging to their ancestors' tactics. Before they encountered the Eight-Nation Alliance's musket corps, they had never encountered an army capable of swallowing their probing parties whole! The tactics of an army are often like this: only after suffering a crushing defeat and being truly hurt will they attempt to change...

The Khorchin cavalry's "adding oil" tactic was undoubtedly beneficial to the Ming army.

Wang Pu had only one thousand musketeers. If the Khorchins had committed their entire force from three directions simultaneously from the start, those one thousand musketeers could not have covered the front. In that case, Wang Pu would have had to commit Scarface and Tang Sheng's units to the fray. In a cold-weapon melee, even if the Ming army eventually won, the casualties would have been heavy. But now, the Khorchins were only committing two thousand riders in a frontal assault, which played right into the musketeers' hands. The already exhausted Khorchin cavalry were nothing more than living targets for the Ming musketeers to practice their aim!

As for the Khorchin horse archery?

Forget it. In this pitch-black darkness, who could hit whom?

Horse archery differed from the volleys of infantry archers. Infantry volleys were area-of-effect attacks and were not limited by light, so they could be used at night. But Mongol horse archery could not; it was direct fire, a point-target attack. Without light, it had no lethality at all.

"Clang..."

Big Beard slowly drew his saber. In the night air, his voice boomed like thunder: "First Platoon, ready..."

The two hundred musketeers of the First Platoon moved quickly, setting up their firing formation behind the chevaux-de-frise. Two hundred new-style flintlock muskets were raised, their dark barrels aimed at the slowly approaching Khorchin cavalry.

As the distance closed, the Khorchin cavalry gradually began to accelerate. The faint sound of hooves quickly swelled into a thunderous roar. The Ming soldiers felt the ground beneath them beginning to tremble. The eyes of the two hundred musketeers were fixed squarely on Big Beard.

Under the night sky, Big Beard’s burly frame stood like a mountain, unmoving.

Amidst the deafening roar of hooves, the Khorchin cavalry finally closed within a hundred paces. At that moment, the charging Khorchin cavalry suddenly fell into disarray. The riders in the front row tumbled to the ground one after another, and the following riders, caught off guard, crashed violently into those in front. The entire charge formation became chaotic.

Under normal circumstances, the anti-cavalry pits dug by Tang Sheng's men might not have caused such a significant obstacle for the Khorchin cavalry. But the Khorchin cavalry had just undergone a long, exhausting journey of several hundred miles. Both men and horses were at their physical limits; the slightest unevenness in the ground was enough to cause their mounts to stumble.

In front of the Ming formation:

Big Beard swung his saber down fiercely and roared at the top of his lungs: "Fire!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

At Big Beard's order, a massive roar erupted from the Ming front. Two hundred muskets simultaneously spewed dazzling tongues of flame. The crimson light flashed and vanished, and miserable wails immediately rose from the Khorchin cavalry ranks...

A Khorchin rider in the middle of a charge was struck directly in the chest by a lead ball from a Ming musket. The searing hot lead tore through his leather armor, piercing his heart. The rider's sturdy body shuddered before he tumbled from his horse. The mount, having lost its master, let out a mournful neigh, veered off, and fled in panic.

Another Khorchin rider was flipped over by an anti-cavalry pit. He struggled to his feet, but before he could find his horse, a searing lead ball struck his skull, entering through the back of his head and exiting through his forehead. The poor man collapsed straight down, his eyes wide open, as if in disbelief at his own death.

In front of the Ming formation:

Big Beard was cold and stern, his saber rising and falling.

Row after row of Ming musketeers moved to the back of the chevaux-de-frise to form up and fire, mercilessly pouring volleys of lead into the chaotic Khorchin ranks. The already exhausted Khorchin cavalry fell into pools of blood under the rain-like density of the Ming musketeers' fire...

The first wave of the Khorchin cavalry's assault was easily repelled by the Ming musketeers.

The Khorchins left behind over a hundred corpses and eight hundred wounded soldiers in front of the Ming camp. When Tuolituo'a and Wuhulu fled back to their main camp with barely a thousand remnants, Banktu and Sogar could hardly believe their eyes. In less time than it takes to finish a meal, their two thousand cavalry had been reduced by half. How could this battle continue?

"Tuolituo'a!" Banktu glared at him viciously and asked sharply, "How did you fight this battle?"

"Young Prince, the horses are spent, and the Southern Ming savages dug many pits in front of their camp!" Tuolituo'a said miserably. "Also, their firepower is too dense. This subordinate has never seen such intense firepower; it was like rain. A frontal assault is impossible!"

"If the front doesn't work, use the flanks!" Banktu roared. "Listen well, both of you: take your men and attack from the left and right flanks immediately. If you can't break through this time, don't bother coming back!"

"Young Prince!" Wuhulu said wretchedly. "Even if the men can hold on, the horses truly cannot run anymore. Could we wait a while?"

"Wait, wait, wait! Can we afford to wait?" Sogar pointed toward the imperial court in the distance, where the sounds of battle were reaching a fever pitch, and roared with all his might, "Don't you see the imperial court is under a fierce Ming assault? We must break through the Ming camp and rescue the Great Khan before they take the court!"

Before Sogar could finish, Banktu shouted: "If the horses can't run, the men can at least walk, can't they?"