Entrepreneurship in the Late Tang Dynasty

Chapter 198 A Full Meal
The sound of hooves thundered as hundreds of elite cavalrymen charged from the northwest corner of the battlefield toward Han Qiong's Bashandu unit.

After giving the warning, Han Qiong's furrowed brows never relaxed.

This was extremely unusual, because at this moment, the three hundred armored soldiers under Bashandu were all in perfect formation. Under such circumstances, even though a hundred cavalrymen had the momentum to shake the earth, few dared to charge into such a strong formation.

Thinking of this, Han Qiong instructed his bodyguard Han Derang to prepare himself and be ready to lead his twenty-two elite cavalrymen to ambush them from behind at any time.

The opposing cavalrymen were moving faster and faster. After passing two friendly phalanxes, they raised their lances horizontally and began their charge when they were 500 paces away from Bashandu.

At the forefront, the soldiers were veterans from three squads, all of whom had followed Zhao Huai'an since the Jinma Fortress era. With over a hundred riders charging towards them, everyone felt their hands and feet go cold, but these men still drew their bows and nocked their arrows at the command of their squad leaders.

In one breath, three arrows were fired in rapid succession.

Arrows rained down in tiers on the yellow earth ahead, forming a deathly curtain of arrows.

Those charging cavalrymen also held round shields, but they could only block some arrows aimed directly at their faces. At this moment, arrows rained down on them.

In just a short while, more than a hundred riders fell from their horses, and the original charging formation was thrown into chaos by the fallen warhorses.

The enemy cavalry charging from the opposite side were also frightened by this scene. These soldiers of the Righteous Army were still able to fire three arrows in an instant in the face of the cavalry charge.

At this moment, the archers who could no longer fire their longbows threw them behind them and placed them on the shoulders of the infantrymen in front of them, preparing to defend against the cavalry charge.

Just when these warriors thought the cavalry would charge at them, a horn sounded from the opposite side, and the already somewhat chaotic cavalry began to split off to the left and right, galloping to both sides.

Along the flanks of the army formation, the grass-clad cavalry wielding lances charged forward, revealing the archers behind them with bows drawn. Instantly, at a distance of fifty paces, these grass-clad cavalry fired volleys of arrows at the Bashandu army, which was in formation.

The arrows clanged as they struck the helmets and iron armor of the Bashandu warriors. At a distance of fifty paces, the arrows were powerful enough, but unfortunately, the bows in the hands of these grass-clad cavalrymen were weak and not enough to cause them much damage.

At the same time, when the Baoyidu soldiers in the formation realized that the expected attack had not come, they felt a sense of emptiness, and then the arrows from the other side came flying in.

But this also reminded them that most of these battle-hardened archers came from the mountains, and each of them was a seasoned hunter.

Anyone who has been a hunter knows that hunting requires a lot of patience, and once you spot your prey, you must be quick, accurate, and ruthless.

Therefore, at the moment the opposing cavalry halted and fired, these archers stood still and fired back at the enemy.

I'm betting that your arrows won't pierce my armor!
As they expected, the arrows of the opposing cavalry could not penetrate their iron armor, but their hard bows, each with a weight of two stones, carried arrows of immense force that pierced through the armor of the cavalry.

In just one exchange of fire, another five or six of the enemy's cavalrymen fell.

At this moment, the cavalry were utterly powerless against the heavily armored and well-formed infantry, whose morale and fighting spirit were high.

Charging is like hitting a brick wall, while guerrilla warfare makes you an easy target.

Soon, these cavalrymen abandoned their plan to continue firing and retreated from both sides of the army formation with a whoosh. However, one cavalrymen, perhaps blinded by the gunfire, actually retreated from the open space between Bashan and Jindao.

As a result, these cavalrymen were attacked again by Bashan and Jindao from both sides, leaving behind seven or eight more corpses, before they fled north in panic.

Thus, the hundred or so cavalrymen who had come with great momentum, having traveled a long distance, only managed to fire two volleys of arrows outside the army's formation and leave behind nearly thirty corpses before returning empty-handed.

Bashandu was also bewildered by the half-hearted actions of these bandit cavalrymen. Apart from booing the retreating bandits, he didn't even have the energy to cheer.

What's there to cheer about beating these people?
……

Beneath the banner proclaiming "Mending Heaven and Ensuring Peace," the general Cao Shixiong, his face ashen, glared at the retreating cavalry commander and roared:

"Useless! Who told you to retreat? I told you to charge, what are you doing with this hit-and-run tactics?"

This cavalry general, Cao Shixiong's brother-in-law, surnamed Lü, was the second son in his family. At this moment, he was crying and sobbing, saying aggrievedly:
“Commander, it’s not that the brothers don’t want to charge, you don’t know those righteous soldiers. They’re not human. How can cavalry charge right up to us and then just stand there? The brothers saw those guys in front shoot three arrows in one breath, and they knew that even if they charged in, they wouldn’t be able to break through the formation. That’s why we plan to harass them from the outside, just to keep these armored soldiers from resting and exhaust them to death.”

Enraged, Cao Shixiong shouted and kicked Lü Erlang aside, cursing:

"I'm exhausted! I'm so angry I could die! Are you out of your mind?! Do you think your cavalry's archers can compare to infantry archers? At this point, you should have retreated, then charged again, not attacking, but just charging every now and then—that's what harassment is all about! Understand? What you're doing is just giving them a target, you idiot!"

Upon hearing this, Lü Erlang picked up his helmet, turned around, and left.

This infuriated Cao Shixiong, who cursed loudly:
"Who let you leave!"

When Lu Erlang's stubborn temper flared up, he huffed and puffed and shouted:
"I'll lead my brothers and charge again!"

Cao Shixiong nodded. Although this fool was a bit simple-minded, his attitude towards work was good. Indeed, it was the family members who were reliable. Abilities could be cultivated over time.

After all, who is born a cavalry general? You learn by doing!

At this moment, Cao Shixiong had already forgotten that Lu Erlang had just lost the core elite cavalry of the Xiaosan Grass Army, and only felt that his brother-in-law's attitude was still good.

So Cao Shixiong softened his tone and snorted:
"Alright, enough of this nonsense. Stay here and learn how to play!"

Upon hearing this, Lü Erlang chuckled and looked at Zhang Yanshou in the crowd with awe.

It's one thing for a defeated general to be executed, but to be laughing and joking like this is quite another. He was just crying and sobbing a moment ago, and then he turned around and started laughing and joking. His shamelessness is just like that of Cao Shixiong. No wonder they're from the same family.

Zhang Yanshou had just been summoned to persuade his former comrades from the Silver Knife Capital to surrender, but before he could even reach the front, a battle had already broken out, so he happily returned.

This man was unaware that if he actually went to the front lines, he might lose his life at the hands of these lowly soldiers he looked down upon.

He looked down on Cao Shixiong and his brother-in-law Lü Erlang, and then he saw a troop of cavalry with flags coming from the southeast.

The troop of knights rushed to the banner and reported to Cao Shixiong:
"Piao Shuai, Huang Piao Shuai has already made his move."

Upon hearing this news, Cao Shixiong burst into laughter, then patted his brother-in-law, Lü Erlang:
"Erlang, you can't survive in this world by fighting and killing, you survive by using your brain! Got it?"

Lu Erlang was still confused, but Zhang Yanshou in the crowd was stunned.

He immediately understood how Cao Shixiong had fought this battle.

By provoking the enemy troops defending the city, they were sent out to fight in the open field. Then, the miscellaneous troops were used to hold back these elite enemy troops, and finally, the other two sides of the enemy army were ordered to attack the east and west city walls.

This tactic is brilliant! It truly demonstrates mastery of the art of war, employing deception and real action to keep the enemy guessing about their main attack direction.

Was his disheveled return from the city walls just an act?

Could this person actually be a military genius? What a cunning scoundrel!

At this moment, Zhang Yanshou looked at the arrogant bandit leader with a complicated expression, and for the first time, he had a different understanding of this rebel army.

Then, just as Zhang Yanshou had predicted, loud drum and horn sounds rang out from the open fields on the east and west sides.

The rebel army over there really took the opportunity to mobilize.

At this moment, Cao Shixiong, who was surrounded in the middle, saw that everything was going according to plan and could not contain his pride any longer, so he laughed loudly.

He put his hands on his hips and shouted to a burly, armored soldier below:
"Mi Chongwei, the enemy's ranks are exhausted, and with their rear attacked, their morale is bound to collapse. Immediately take my 800 elite armored men and capture the second enemy line!"

This salt smuggler general, with his distinctive Central Asian features, clasped his hands in response to the order. Then, with hurried steps, several armored soldiers, almost indistinguishable from Tang Dynasty elite troops, clad in iron armor, clashed against each other and charged towards the Bashan and Jindao armies.

Against the backdrop of hundreds of armored soldiers, Cao Shixiong raised his arm and roared to the entire army behind him:
"A sentence to clear one's name, and one's full stomach!"

This slogan was powerful enough to demoralize the soldiers, who were already low on morale due to the defeat of their cavalry. They raised their heads, their eyes bloodshot, and stared at the city of Yuanju ahead.

There is grain and rice brought by the Tang army inside the city. As long as the city is captured, they and their families can survive!

At that moment, everyone roared in unison:

"A sentence to clear one's name, and one's full stomach!"

The immense volume of sound completely overwhelmed the entire battlefield.

……

The sound waves reached Han Qiong and Li Jiyong at the front first, but the two were not afraid at all. Instead, they roared and shouted, and hundreds of people shouted their respective bugles.

Although there were only six hundred men, they were in no way inferior to the tens of thousands of shouting soldiers on the other side. They were truly the best warriors in the world.

The sounds from both sides reached the rear city gate. Liu Zhijun, who was beside Zhao Huai'an, could no longer hold back and lifted the iron mask, saying to Zhao Huai'an beside him:

"My lord, let's attack! The enemy general is quite capable; these cowardly soldiers have been inspired to fight to the death." Beside him, another armored cavalryman, Yao Xingzhong, also agreed to attack, arguing that a desperate army is invincible.

But Zhao Huai'an remained calm as he surveyed the battlefield ahead. Seeing that Ba Shan and Jin Dao were still full of vigor and fighting spirit, and noticing that the enemy's elite cavalry and armored soldiers had not yet joined the battle, he could only suppress his anxiety and said in a deep voice:

"Keep waiting!"

The armored cavalry took a deep breath and remained hidden in the doorway with Zhao Huai'an, ready to bare their fangs at any moment.

……

The cries from the northern battlefield rose higher and higher, finally reaching the eastern wall of the city.

Hearing this, some people couldn't help but look towards the city wall. They saw that the regimental commander Duan Zhongjian was still standing calmly below the city wall. They were taken aback and then continued to throw logs and rocks down towards the city.

In fact, the sound was already intermittent when it reached Duan Zhongjian, but Duan Zhongjian was too preoccupied to pay attention to what was happening to the north; all his thoughts were focused on the city below.

At this moment, tens of thousands of bandits roared and charged toward the city wall outside the city. Duan Zhongjian couldn't tell at all which of the people below were bandit warriors and which were civilians from Cao and Pu prefectures.

However, distinguishing these things is meaningless, because at this moment, they are all enemies of the Righteous Army.

Because there were no trenches or moats, these peasant soldiers easily surged to the city walls, wave after wave, like a tide.

Some clearly elite archers, in small groups of three or five, concealed themselves in the tide and kept shooting at the Shouzhou County soldiers who peeked out and threw stones.

Every now and then you could see some of the county soldiers in the middle falling off the city wall with a wail, and finally dying on the ground.

The east gate of Yuanju is the shortest of the four city walls, but it is still more than six meters high. The overall shape is trapezoidal, with layers of rammed earth, resembling metal.

On either side of the east city wall, there was a protruding horse-faced structure. At this moment, a dozen or so archers from the Baoyi Army accurately spotted the hidden Caojun archers below and then picked them off one by one.

These excellent archers all came from the mountains; some came from the mountains of western Sichuan, some from the mountains of southern Sichuan, and some from the mountains of Guangzhou.

Without exception, they were among the best archers in the tribe. At this moment, they were like fish in water on the battlefield. In their eyes, the grass soldiers below were not even as alert as a rabbit.

At this moment, arrows flew back and forth between the two sides, and countless wooden ladders were erected and leaned against the city wall. Among them were three cloud ladders, which were immediately placed on the city wall as soon as they were raised, at just the right distance.

Huang Balang, leading the vanguard of suicide soldiers, saw this scene and roared excitedly:
"Good! Who is this master craftsman? The distance is just right. Once I get back alive, I will definitely reward him!"

It's no wonder Huang Balang was so excited, because he himself was the one who was going to lead the men to charge up the city wall.

The perfect distance between the ladders meant that they only needed to rush to the top to reach the city, instead of standing hopelessly at the top of the ladders, unable to even reach the battlements.

That wouldn't be a siege; it would be like handing yourself up to the city walls to be attacked.

When the ladder was hung up, the soldiers of Shouzhou County on the city wall were also stunned, because in their experience, it was rare to be able to hang it on the city wall in one go, and it was just right.

So, the next moment they began to push the ladder with their iron rods, trying to overturn it.

However, the ladders are equipped with grappling hooks, and once they get stuck behind the battlements, it is virtually impossible to push them out; the only way is to use a crowbar to push them up.

Although they didn't know what the lever principle was, they still knew that as long as a few people stood on the ladder below, even if they had twice as many people on the upper floor, they still couldn't support the ladder.

Thus, once the three siege ladders were firmly secured to the battlements, three troop transport routes were formed.

Without any hesitation, Huang Balang, standing by the ladder, with a shield in his left hand and a horizontal sword in his right, roared and stepped onto it. Behind him, more than ten armored soldiers followed suit, desperately climbing upwards.

The shields held by these bandits were specially made, consisting of two sides joined together to form a triangle. This made them easy for the bandit assassins to grip and also helped to deflect the force of the stones.

Normal shields are all one side, held by soldiers. If a stone hits a soldier, the entire force will hit the shield, and the soldiers behind cannot withstand it.

This triangular shield, constructed by piecing together stones, has only a raised front and sloping sides. Even if a stone hits the shield from above, it will immediately roll to the side along the sloping sides, effectively dissipating the force.

At this moment, these people held up specially made shields to block the falling stones from above. Although there were constant banging sounds, these grass army suicide soldiers still stood on the ladder and continued to rush upwards.

The other two ladders were just like this one. The selected first-strike suicide soldiers were also unafraid of the arrows and falling rocks on the city wall. They climbed the ladders, pushed against their comrades in front of them, and roared as they charged towards the city wall.

These rebel troops formed a strong contrast with the rebel troops outside the North Gate.

The core elite troops, composed of Huang clan members, guests, and vassals, displayed a strong fighting spirit from the very beginning of the battle. Without much encouragement, they charged headlong towards the city wall.

The soldiers of Shouzhou County on the city wall and the reinforcements of the Baoyi Army faced far more than just this crisis.

Right under their noses, the Caozhou rebels actually built dozens of covered wagons and pushed them all the way to the base of the city wall. Then, the core veterans of the rebels chased a group of refugees from the periphery into the wagons and began to dig at the base of the city wall with various tools.

They didn't need to dig through the base of the wall, because the wall was too high. They only needed to dig about half of it, and the unsupported wall would collapse on its own.

At the foot of the city, these Caozhou bandits immediately divided their tasks, which put immense pressure on the defenders on the city walls.

It was at this moment that Duan Zhongjian emerged from beneath the city wall and began to give loud commands:
"Pour the golden juice!"

In the middle section of the city wall, there were about a dozen soldiers wearing face masks. In the middle of them was a large iron pot, in which stinking excrement was being boiled. Because it had been boiling for too long, it had become sticky.

This place is unfit for anyone to stand in. Even the soldiers cooking the broth next to it have already changed shifts three times.

At this moment, the suffering soldiers breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing the regimental commander's order, and then without hesitation began to pour the molten gold downwards with long ladles.

Below, the agonizing screams echoed endlessly, but the vassal soldiers showed no mercy; all they wanted was to empty the pot of excrement as quickly as possible.

They had almost lost their sense of taste, their eyes were always filled with tears, and they emptied the pot of excrement almost entirely by feeling.

At this point, there was no sound from below.

The soldiers attached to the city walls couldn't smell it, but the soldiers from Shou County on both sides of the city wall vomited immediately after smelling the odor rising from below.

What did it smell like? The excrement smelled like cooked meat, a complex combination that made one think that hell couldn't be any worse.

The scalding hot liquid completely crushed the peasant army under the covered wagons at the foot of the city wall. These people were either burned by the boiling hot liquid or driven away by the stench.

Humans can never rely on instinct to withstand chemical attacks.

Having dealt with the rats digging at the base of the wall, Duan Zhongjian gave another order:
"Throw torches at those three cloud chariots!"

With their leader now in control, the county soldiers lit torches and hurled them at the three siege ladders.

Some torches missed their mark, and some bounced off the ladder, but a few still landed in the carriage below.

The torches, already coated with pine resin, burst into flames upon contact with the wood.

In a short while, the three ladders burst into flames, and black smoke shot straight into the sky.

The flames were closing in on the soldiers on the cloud chariot. Some of them couldn't stand the black smoke and tried to retreat in panic, but they were then set ablaze and tragically crashed to the ground.

At the very front, Huang Balang, who was almost at the top of the city wall, saw the cloud chariot on fire and roared:

"Jump! Jump!"

In the face of life and death, the armored soldiers on the siege ladder instinctively obeyed the order and jumped down from the ladder.

Then came a series of wails as heavily armored soldiers plummeted from three or four meters into the air to the ground. Some were lucky to survive, suffering broken legs and paralysis, while many more simply fell to their deaths.

Upon seeing that the ladder below was empty, Huang Balang, who was at the front, gritted his teeth, grabbed the ladder, and slid down into the flames below.

Before a breath had passed, Huang Balang had already rolled out of the fire and extinguished the flames on his body with mud.

Then he carried a soldier with only a broken leg and ran back to the rear.

On the city wall, Duan Zhongjian, who had already drawn his longbow, aimed for a while and found that the body of the armored soldier was completely blocked by the armored soldier he was carrying.

After cursing "cunning," Duan Zhongjian put down his longbow, only to be greeted by enthusiastic cheers from his brothers on the city wall!

Below, the Caozhou army, which had just been riding high, abandoned its siege equipment and hastily fled back.

But Duan Zhongjian's brows did not relax, because the second wave of bandits was about to arrive.

(End of this chapter)