Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 529 Clash (Part 1)

On July 14, 1642, the air around Lake Chapala was filled with the mixed smells of gunpowder and blood.

The clamor of battle had subsided, replaced by the suppressed groans of the wounded and the ominous cawing of crows circling low overhead.

The azure lake remained tranquil, reflecting the drifting clouds in the sky, creating a stark contrast with the desolate scene on the lakeside fields.

Dozens of corpses dressed in Spanish military uniforms or militia attire lay twisted in various positions on the lush green grass, their deep red blood quickly congealing into a dark brown on the dry soil.

Some warhorses, now without their masters, snorted uneasily and wandered the battlefield, their saddles stained with blood.

A short but intense battle has just come to an end here.

Several medics from the New China Army and Native American laborers were busy treating their wounded and collecting the bodies of fallen soldiers.

About 130 Spanish prisoners, under the guard of Xinhua soldiers, walked in a loose line, dejected, toward the city of Guadalajara in the northwest.

Many of them bore wounds, their uniforms were torn, and their faces showed a mixture of fear, humiliation, and exhaustion.

The number of Xinhua Army soldiers escorting them was small, but they were vigilant, with bayonets fixed to their flintlock muskets, which gleamed coldly in the afternoon sun.

They kept urging the prisoners to quicken their pace, creating a tense and hurried atmosphere.

Because everyone knows that Spain's main force is approaching from the southeast.

According to the latest report from the scout cavalry, the enemy's main force is less than 15 kilometers away from this place. At their marching speed, they can reach this lakeside where the battle has just ended in half a day at most.

If it were cavalry, they could probably arrive in just over an hour.

"Hurry up! What are you dawdling for! Do you want your main force to come and collect your corpses?" Mao Falu kicked a Spanish soldier who was walking a little slower and shouted angrily.

His cheeks were blackened by gunpowder smoke, and there was a bloody scratch on his forehead from a fall during the battle. His dark blue military uniform was covered with mud and dark red bloodstains.

The commander ordered that these prisoners be brought back to the city as soon as possible, as a larger battle was about to begin, and they could not be allowed to be tied up by the main Spanish forces behind them.

"What are you yelling about?" Squad leader Luo Daikui said in a muffled voice, "They can't understand you anyway, it's a waste of your breath!"

"Should we stab them?" Mao Fallu held up his musket and brandished the bayonet.

"Yes, this method will definitely work," Luo Daikui affirmed, a cold smile creeping onto his lips.

“Squad leader…” Mao Falu looked at him in surprise, “The officer didn’t say anything about… killing prisoners!”

"Who said we were going to kill prisoners?" Luo Daikui glared at him. "Some prisoners are disobedient and deliberately defy orders. Are we not allowed to use force? You're usually quite clever, how come you're so stupid at this crucial moment!"

Upon hearing this, Mao Faluo glanced at the Spanish prisoner he had kicked to the ground, who staggered for a long time without getting up, seemingly deliberately delaying the retreat.

Immediately, gritting his teeth, he picked up the bayonet and stabbed him.

"what!"

With a scream, the Spanish prisoner, clutching his bayonet, fell into a pool of blood.

"Anyone who dares to dawdle will suffer the same fate!" Mao Falu drew his bayonet and shouted fiercely at the prisoner-of-war.

Although he knew that most of these Spaniards did not understand Chinese, his fierce expression and dripping bayonet were enough to convey a clear message.

Immediately, the prisoners quickened their pace, and fear was evident on their faces.

Several prisoners with minor injuries even took the initiative to help their companions who had difficulty moving, afraid of falling behind.

Oh God, the Chinese are indeed exceptionally ruthless!

"Hey, you're actually serious!" Luo Daikui stared wide-eyed at Mao Falu, who had a fierce look on his face.

"Didn't you say that!" Mao Faluo said irritably, wiping the blood off his bayonet with a strip of cloth torn from the corpse.

"Hmm, you really are a good, obedient soldier." Luo Daikui grinned. "If you weren't so greedy, you would be even more perfect."

Upon hearing this, Mao Faluo's lips twitched, he snorted coldly, and continued to urge the prisoners to move forward quickly while holding his musket.

After the Spanish manor was breached, the jewelry he had secretly kept was eventually discovered by Luo Daikui. Although Luo Daikui did not report him, he was afraid of military discipline and eventually handed it over voluntarily.

The thought of those few sparkling gems being "gone" made Mao Falu feel extremely distressed.

Although he didn't know anything about appraisal, it looked quite valuable, worth at least several hundred silver dollars, enough to cover his military pay for seven or eight years.

With this money, after being discharged from the military in two years, I can build a big house, buy dozens of livestock, marry a beautiful wife, have a bunch of children, and live a leisurely and comfortable life.

But everything is gone.

Of course, after the war, the army would assess the merits of the battle and give the soldiers a large amount of battlefield allowance and subsidies, which was about half a year's salary.

But... can that compare to those gems?
However, during this period, soldiers were generally not allowed to keep the spoils of war when they obtained them. Even the Qing Eight Banners, whose "main business" was looting, prohibited their soldiers from hiding the spoils.

If any private possession was discovered, the Qing generals and officers of various ranks, such as Jiale Ejen and Gushan Ejen, would be punished according to military law, including being whipped, having their property confiscated, or even being beheaded.

This is a prerequisite for military allocation, thereby avoiding internal conflicts caused by hoarding.

However, Mao Fallu firmly believed that there must be brothers in the army hiding the seized property, but they were so secretive that they were not discovered.

Damn it, they'll make a fortune when they get back to their homeland.

On a small hill by the lake not far away, several men who looked like military officers were gathered together.

Lieutenant Colonel Lu Pingqiu, the forward commander of the Xinhua Expeditionary Force, held up a monocular telescope and gazed intently at the dust-covered horizon in the southeast.

After a long pause, he put down his binoculars, his brows furrowed tightly.

"Ha, the Spanish main force has finally moved. This commotion shows they're really desperate." He spat and said to Sun Sheng, the operations staff officer beside him. Sun Sheng was a meticulous young man, holding a leather-bound notebook and a charcoal pencil, quickly recording the battlefield situation and estimated spoils.

"Sir, in this battle, we killed approximately 58 enemy soldiers, wounded 64, and captured 137. We also seized over 260 matchlock muskets, 31 horses, and a quantity of gunpowder, bullets, and spears. Our army suffered 9 dead and 22 wounded." Sun Sheng reported quickly. "I believe the Spanish cavalry will inevitably accelerate their advance, and we should not linger here. The Spanish forces number at least 5,000, and if we are entangled with their cavalry, it will be extremely disadvantageous for us."

Lu Pingqiu nodded, his gaze sweeping over the ravaged battlefield before looking at the departing prisoner column.

"Yes, destroy anything you can't take with you, and leave all the seriously wounded Spanish soldiers behind. We're withdrawing immediately. Mo's orders are clear: knock out the Spanish vanguard, give them a taste of their power, and then immediately retreat into our shell, letting the Spaniards come crashing into our impenetrable defenses with their rage!"

The "tortoise shell" and "impregnable fortress" he mentioned naturally refer to Guadalajara City, which had been under its control for more than two months.

"Speaking of which, what were those Spaniards thinking a couple of months ago?" Li Cheng, the battalion commander of the First Mixed Battalion, said with a smile. "They were just throwing their lives away, daring to run into our guns in groups of three or five hundred? Did they really think we were those natives who only knew how to throw stones?"

Upon hearing this, Lu Pingqiu also revealed a mocking sneer: "Hmph, they're used to being arrogant and conceited. They thought that after we broke through Guadalajara, we would grab a few loot and immediately flee back to the coast, but they didn't expect that we would occupy Guadalajara and sweep across the surrounding areas. It wasn't until we devoured nearly a thousand people that they finally realized that we came here to conquer cities and territories, not to fight guerrilla warfare like we did ten years ago."

Upon hearing this, everyone couldn't help but smile knowingly.

Since the Xinhua Army captured Guadalajara two months ago (May 1), it has spent more than half a month sweeping through the surrounding villages and estates, confiscating all the grain, livestock, fodder and other supplies, in an attempt to carry out a reverse scorched-earth policy against the Spanish.

Subsequently, they continuously sent out scouts in all directions to explore the geography, draw maps, and investigate the movements of the Spanish.

According to the estimates of the General Staff of the Xinhua Army Expeditionary Force, the Spanish would take at least half a month to react after learning of the fall of Guadalcanal and to assemble a large army to attack.

Therefore, they stationed themselves in Guacheng, repaired and reinforced the city's defenses, and stood ready to await the enemy's arrival.

To the surprise of Xinhua Army, the Spanish were even more "sluggish" than they had anticipated.

Throughout May, no organized Spanish troops came to Guadalcanal's aid; only a few scouts peered out from the city's outskirts.

It wasn't until June 7th, when the Xinhua Army had expanded its sweep to a radius of 6 kilometers around Gua City, that a Spanish colonial army from León slowly arrived.

However, to the surprise of the Xinhua Army, the attacking Spanish force numbered only a little over 600, and more than 70% of the soldiers were militiamen and Indians.

For a time, this made the Xinhua Army somewhat suspicious, worrying that the Spanish might be feigning weakness, deliberately using this small force to attract their attention, and then gathering more troops in other directions to take the opportunity to encircle and kill them from behind.

However, after the Xinhua Army sent out more than a dozen scouts to search the surrounding area carefully, they found no Spanish "main force" or any other small groups of troops.

Therefore, while being cautious, the Xinhua Army left 1,500 men in Guacheng to guard its main camp, and mobilized more than 2,000 mobile troops, along with more than 1,000 Indian "Free Army" soldiers armed by the Xinhua Army to actively confront this Spanish force from León.

Unsurprisingly, the Xinhua Army, with its overwhelming numerical superiority, easily defeated the Spanish army, killing, wounding, and capturing over two hundred, while the rest fled back to León in disarray.

In the following two weeks, the Spanish sent several teams, ranging from five hundred to eight hundred men, from Corretamo, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, San Luis, and other places, like suicide missions. These teams were of mixed origin, poorly equipped, and demoralized.

After easily defeating several such enemy forces, even the rank-and-file soldiers began to underestimate them, privately discussing that the Spanish colonial army was nothing special.

However, some suspicious advisors had many bad thoughts, wondering if this was a Spanish tactic to wear down or lure the enemy.

The problem is, even if there are some scheming plots, why would someone so "sincerely" offer their head for a kill?

Moreover, the reports brought back by numerous scouts indicated that there were no signs of large-scale Spanish military activity within a radius of more than 20 kilometers.

After repeated deductions and elimination of countless possibilities, the Xinhua Expeditionary Force Staff could only come to one conclusion: they had...overthought things.

This move by the Spanish may not have been a military strategy at all, but rather a true reflection of the inefficiency of the Spanish colonial system and their underestimation of their enemy.

The provincial governors and municipal officials in various places initially underestimated the true strength of the new Chinese army that suddenly attacked from the sea. They believed that the enemy had penetrated deep into the interior of Mexico and that the number of troops and their fighting will were very limited. So they tried to solve this "trouble" on their own, but were defeated one by one by the new Chinese army.

It wasn't until they lost more than 1,200 men that they finally realized the seriousness of the problem and, under the organization of the theater commander sent by the governorate, began to seriously assemble their forces in Irapuato, a city 150 kilometers southeast of Guadalcanal.

Meanwhile, the Xinhua Army was not idle either. It broke its troops into small teams and, with the assistance of the Native American "Free Army," continued to expand the scope of its sweeps, destroying the local economy and people's livelihoods, driving away Spanish residents, and artificially creating large areas of no man's land.

Large quantities of grain, livestock, and property were confiscated and continuously concentrated in Guadalajara.

Meanwhile, the large number of conscripted Native American laborers and "liberated" indentured slaves began to transport the countless supplies, especially precious metals, captured to the rear base in the Banderas Valley.

On July 8, scouts who had been closely monitoring the direction of Iraplatz brought back crucial intelligence: the Spanish army had finally set out!

The force numbered over five thousand men, including a cavalry unit of eight hundred men, and even dragged more than ten heavy cannons. They marched in a mighty force straight toward the city of Guadalajara.

Upon receiving the report, Commander-in-Chief Mo Tianhai immediately ordered all troops stationed outside the city to withdraw to Guacheng. The entire army was put on standby, fortifying the city's defenses, stockpiling ammunition, and preparing for a real tough battle.

On July 10, scouts brought another urgent report: the vanguard of the main Spanish force, a mixed force of about three hundred cavalry and musketeers, had reached the shores of Lake Chapala, and due to their rapid advance, they had fallen a full ten kilometers behind the main force.

Mo Tianhai immediately ordered Lu Pingqiu to lead six infantry companies, two militia squadrons, and some Native American "Free Army" troops, totaling 1,200 men, to launch a rapid attack on the isolated Spanish vanguard.

The entire battle was swift and decisive. The Xinhua Army used the terrain to conceal their approach to the enemy and launched a sudden attack. After a volley of gunfire, they launched a full-scale bayonet charge, quickly surrounding and killing the unsuspecting Spanish vanguard on the lakeshore.

After less than half an hour of fierce fighting, the enemy force was almost completely annihilated, with only a few dozen riders managing to break through and escape.

After hastily cleaning up the battlefield, the Xinhua Army ordered the hundreds of Indian "Free Army" soldiers accompanying them to remain by the lake, using the favorable terrain as cover to harass and slow down the advance of the main Spanish army.

Lu Pingqiu, Li Cheng, and other officers walked down the slope, mounted their horses, and took one last look around the land that had just witnessed the fighting.

Several crows had already landed on a corpse, cawing annoyingly.

A lake breeze blew by, slightly dispersing the stench of blood, but bringing with it a sense of impending storm.

"Go!" Lu Pingqiu pulled on the reins, and the warhorse reared up, galloping towards the city of Guadalajara.

The officers and guards followed closely behind, their horses' hooves kicking up dust as they trod across the blood-stained grass.

On the southeastern horizon, dust and smoke grew closer, and the sounds of a large army marching and distant bugle calls could be faintly heard.

The Spanish team's main force is rapidly closing in.
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(End of this chapter)