Nanyang Storm 1864

Chapter 189 Bloody Battle in the City

"What... How dare these Frankies be so cruel and insane? They are truly despicable. They repeatedly slaughter innocent people without asking any questions. This is challenging my bottom line."

Zheng Guohui punched down angrily, making the teacups on the table ping-pong. A celadon teacup fell over, rolled to the edge of the table, and shattered.

Seeing the Marshal suddenly get angry, everyone around him fell silent and dared not say a word.

The one kneeling on the ground to report was the detective secret agent Wang Haigou. He had managed to sneak out in disguise, took a secluded path to the dock, and after many twists and turns, he finally met the Marshal himself.

He brought bad news.

Since yesterday evening
The two Spanish sailing ships that escaped in a panic brought the bad news that they were being invaded on a large scale, and there were strange flags with Chinese characters on the invading fleet.

Although I don't know them, I can't be sure which Eastern force the invading army belongs to.

However, the Spanish governor still issued a massacre order. While forcibly conscripting a large number of indigenous men into the army, he also raised the butcher knife against the Chinese expatriates in the old city of Manila and carried out organized killings.

This was done to prevent these overseas Chinese from acting as accomplices of the invading army and to eliminate potential risks in advance.

till now

Thousands of Chinese men and women have been killed. These Franks are so cruel that they even spared no effort on the elderly, children and women of the Chinese community.

在整个大马尼拉地区，华人侨民约占15~18%的比例，在总计220万~230万人口中，大概在35~38万人左右。

The Chinese expatriates mainly engage in business and small businesses, and most of them live in towns, including Manila, Cavite, Quezon, Angeles, Cabanatuan and other towns, and have always lived a low-key and humble life.

The Spanish colonists imposed four times the tax on Chinese expatriates, and they were also a key ethnic group to be guarded against.

At the first sign of trouble, they would wield their butcher knives and kill without asking any questions.

Marshal Zheng Guohui walked back and forth in the hall with his hands behind his back, looking sullen. Then he stopped, raised his head, and a dangerous and fierce look flashed in his eyes. He gave a low commanding voice:

"Laonian, listen to my orders..."

"I am here, respectfully accepting your orders, Marshal." Zhou Laonian, deputy commander of the 1st Expeditionary Division, responded respectfully with a fist salute.

Zheng Guohui commanded word by word;

"I order you to lead the entire 'Xin' Regiment, 'Yin' Regiment, and 'Chen' Regiment to immediately march towards Manila and participate in the full-scale attack on the city.

It's 5:10 now, act now.

It is imperative to control all urban areas except Intramuros Manila before 12 o'clock at night.

Anyone who resists will be killed without mercy.

Our Great Chu army will not accept the surrender of foreigners or white people. All males, regardless of age, will be killed without mercy, and their heads will be thrown into the royal city of Manila.

Anyone who dares to touch our ethnic Chinese will bear the boundless wrath of the Great Chu Army, and we will not hesitate to slaughter them until there is a mountain of blood and a sea of ​​bones."

"We will obey the commander's orders and kill him until there are mountains of blood and seas of corpses, even if there are piles of bones."

When this murderous order was conveyed, all the officers present were silent and followed the deputy division commander, Major General Zhou Laonian, and responded loudly.

The officers then quickly left, mounted their horses and headed to their respective armies to convey the order to attack.

The original landing operation plan adopted a steady progress approach.

Of the more than 1.8 troops that landed at the dock, only two vanguard regiments under the First Expeditionary Division were involved in the initial attack, plus the artillery company and sword and shield soldiers that participated in the battle, totaling about troops.

The troops were divided into two groups and were launching a fierce attack on Manila. Intensive gunfire rang out one after another and the battle was in full swing.

The remaining 1.2-odd troops, minus the personal guard regiment of more than a thousand people, are centered around the "Xin" regiment of the First Expeditionary Division, the "Yin" regiment of the Third Division, and the "Chen" regiment.

As a reserve force, they are resting at the dock and can be deployed in offensive operations at any time.

Upon hearing that the Frankish devils were brazenly wielding their butcher knives against Chinese expatriates, Marshal Zheng Guohui was extremely furious and simply deployed all his troops and launched a full-scale attack on Manila.

What reserve forces are needed?
The officers and soldiers of the Great Chu Army were all furious, and this evil anger was directed towards Manila. Those Frankies were facing a catastrophe.

The troops resting at the dock quickly gathered together and ran towards Manila City 6.5 kilometers away with murderous intent. The full-scale offensive battle soon began.

In Manila
The white militia and indigenous vassal soldiers, who had been struggling to hold on, were now using barricades and sturdy houses to fight a desperate battle with the attacking army.

Unexpectedly, the Chu army that arrived in large numbers later added two artillery battalions with a total of 90 field artillery pieces, launching fierce bombardments in multiple directions.

The fierce artillery fire tore through the barricades and destroyed the sturdy houses. The musketeers of the Chu army who followed up defeated the resistance with dense volleys of gunfire and quickly rushed into the city.

The dense sound of gunfire came one after another. The Chu army rushed into the city from more than ten directions, forcing tens of thousands of indigenous vassal troops and two or three thousand white militiamen to retreat again and again, leaving behind countless corpses along the way.

Just as they retreated to the next block, the murderous Chu army attacked fiercely.

They advanced in neat infantry formations and, encountering any resistance, immediately responded with dense volleys of gunfire, inflicting heavy damage.

They entered the city around 6 o'clock and launched a full-scale attack.

A total of 1.8 Chu troops attacked fiercely and killed enemies all the way. It took them more than two hours to basically control all the blocks in Manila and killed thousands of enemies.

The only place left was the fortified city of Manila.

The white militias fled in a panic, and the lucky survivors fled into the Royal City of Manila, with a total number of less than a thousand.

The white soldiers guarding the Manila Royal City refused to let the indigenous soldiers who fled with them enter.

They were hit by dense volleys of fire from the city walls, and suffered many casualties. They soon dispersed and fled for their lives.

According to the Governor's strict orders

The total number of white militiamen who remained in the city and fought reached more than 3,000. After fighting desperately for half a day, less than 1,000 of them were able to successfully escape into the Royal City of Manila.

The rest were either annihilated or trapped in a certain block, exposed to heavy artillery and volley fire, and their time was short.

These white colonists showed no mercy to their vassal indigenous armies.

Seeing that the native soldiers were of no value, they were simply abandoned like worn-out shoes and were not allowed to enter the Royal City of Manila to escape the war.

In Intramuros, Manila

It brought together more than 1.82 white descendants of Spain, including about men and women who were able to take up swords and fight.

some of

There were about 370 white officers and soldiers and about 4200 young and strong white militiamen, who were the backbone of the resistance against the massive attack.

The rest were either white-haired old men, boys between 10 and 15 years old, or some young and strong women who could help with logistical matters such as loading bullets, delivering guns, transporting gunpowder and artillery shells, carrying the wounded, or cooking during battle.

Night falls
The sound of gunfire in Manila has become much less frequent, and gunshots and screams can be heard sporadically from all over the city. These are the Chinese musketeers clearing out the remaining enemies and searching house by house for the hiding white militiamen.

As soon as they were caught, they would be taken to the street corner and chopped to pieces.

Naturally, there were horse-drawn carriages to collect and transport corpses. Mule-drawn carts cleared the corpses from the streets, lifted them onto the carriages, and transported them to small boats at the dock outside the city, where they were then dumped out to sea.

The severed heads were placed separately on a carriage and transported to a nearby neighborhood.

There were several tall catapults standing there, and bloody human heads were densely packed there. They were all white men with hideous faces, and they were collected and placed here.

"When you're ready, let's get started."

After several catapults were built, they were operated by some Chinese militiamen and began to throw the bloody heads out, landing within the Royal City of Manila.

At the beginning

The white militiamen guarding the city thought that what was thrown were stone bullets, and they shouted the alarm of "enemy attack" at the top of their lungs. This made the officers defending this section of the city wall nervous, and they hurriedly led reinforcements to the scene.

However, the officers soon discovered something was wrong. These black stone bullets seemed to be too weak.

After the lanterns were lit up, the white militiamen and officers in the city all changed color, retreated in terror, and muttered, "Oh, God, these Orientals are devils from hell!"

When the white women saw this, they were so frightened that they turned pale and fainted.

After the landing of the Great Chu Army, the mystery that had been bothering the Governor was finally solved. It was indeed the Jinghai King force from Mindanao, an Oriental rebel force.

At first, Governor Major General Pedro de Manuel Carvajal was complacent about his decision to prevent the massacre of Chinese expatriates.

When he saw the black human heads flying in the night sky, he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave, and his hands and feet were shaking with anger.

A feeling of fear quickly spread around here.

"Damn barbarians! Backward and ignorant, this is totally unacceptable. This is a blasphemy against warriors. Oh my God, where did this devil come from?"

Governor Major General Pedro de Manuel Carvajal was almost mad with rage. He had never imagined that the ignorant and backward Orientals would dare to resist so fiercely. It was completely beyond his cognition.

in his eyes

Both the indigenous people and the Chinese were ignorant and inferior races who could only accept the colonial rule of the white people and be killed and tortured at will without resistance, otherwise they would suffer severe and bloody revenge.

The actions of these invading Eastern armies repeatedly broke the bottom line of his cognition.

"Cannons, push our cannons over here. I want to tear these Orientals to pieces with artillery fire. They are so hateful." The Governor had a hysterical attack, his face was hideous and terrifying.

The white militiamen who received the order quickly pushed in five 9-pound field guns and began to concentrate their fire on the dark streets outside.

"Boom boom boom..."

The continuous sound of artillery exploded, piercing the restless and bloody night, adding a sense of unease to the war-torn city.

The artillery counterattack in the Royal City of Manila quickly attracted the attention of the besieging Chinese army.

They pushed in more than a dozen cannons from several streets, aimed them at the direction of Manila Royal City, and opened fire fiercely.

Bursts of rumbling artillery fire rang out, and a continuous artillery bombardment began.

Until more than an hour later

Around 11 o'clock in the evening, the dark artillery bombardment between the two sides gradually subsided, bringing some peace to the war-torn city.

The strong smell of blood and gunpowder smoke was the main color of the city of Manila in early September.

Both sides of the war tried their best to cause greater damage. The city of Manila groaned in pain during the war, and the corpses and blood everywhere made the fierce battle even more cruel.

(End of this chapter)