1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 159 Siege! [Third update! Please subscribe! Please vote!]

As night fell, the artillery fire from the Taiping Army's positions outside the city ceased, preparing to launch another bombardment of Wuxuan City at dawn the next day.

Since the Battle of Sanlixu, Peng Gang has either personally directed the battle on the front lines or traveled between Wuxuan and Mengchong to contact allied forces.

The continuous travel had left Peng Gang feeling exhausted.

After inspecting the various camps, Peng Gang returned to his command tent and fell asleep fully clothed.

Not long after lying down, Peng Gang was awakened by a burst of loud gunfire.

Peng Gang instinctively jumped out of bed and ran out of the command tent.

"Where are you firing?!"

Could it be that the Qing army launched a night attack outside the city?
On second thought, it was impossible. The morale of the Qing army in Wuxuan City was low, the people's hearts were unstable, and they were too busy to take care of themselves. Where would they have the spare strength to go out of the city to launch a surprise attack on the Taiping army's camp?

"General, the sound of gunfire is coming from inside Wuxuan City!" reported the guard on duty at the command tent.

Unlike other military officers, Peng Gang was not fond of the title of military advisor.

He didn't really like his subordinates calling him "strategist"; he preferred the title "general."

Everyone in Zuo Jun knew about Peng Gang's preference, except that his students would address him as "Teacher" in private.

In other cases, the soldiers of the Left Army and the civilians of other battalions all addressed Peng Gang as General.

After regaining his senses, Peng Gang listened carefully and confirmed that the sound of gunfire was indeed coming from inside Wuxuan City.

There are only two situations in which guns and cannons are fired inside the city.

One type was infighting among Qing troops deployed differently within the city, such as the main force and the guest troops, or the Green Standard Army and the local militia.

Another possibility is that the Qing army massacred civilians in the city.

Considering Peng Gang and Zuo Jun's good reputation in Wuxuan, many Wuxuan residents are on the side of Peng Gang and Zuo Jun.

Peng Gang believes the latter is more likely.

Would Zhou Tianjue and Xiang Rong, those two old scoundrels, really attack the unarmed people of Wuxuan?

Thinking of this, Peng Gang's heart began to race.

The moral standards of the Qing army and Qing officials were extremely low.

Even the one touted as the most perfect person in history was an executioner whose hands were stained with the lives of tens of millions of innocent people.

Zhou Tianjue already had a bad reputation, so it's not surprising that he would do something outrageous.

"General! Someone has jumped over the city wall near the north gate!"

Lu Qin, who was on night patrol duty, rushed to Peng Gang's command tent and reported to Peng Gang that someone had jumped off the city wall.

Peng Gang fumbled for his telescope, raised it, and looked toward the north gate of Wuxuan City Wall. Sure enough, he saw several figures either lowered by ropes or, in their haste to be chased by the Qing army, leaping off the nearly two-zhang-high city wall.

When the Qing soldiers on the city wall saw people jumping off the wall, they were furious and raised their muskets to fire at the twenty or thirty dark figures jumping down.

Something big must have happened in Wuxuan City. Peng Gang put away his telescope, pointed to the Wuxuan city wall and said to Lu Qin, "Take a company and bring those who left the city to me. I want to question them myself."

"Please rest assured, General! We guarantee the mission will be accomplished!"

Lu Qin stood at attention and saluted Peng Gang. He immediately organized a company, carrying ladders, to go to the city wall near the North Gate to pick up the people.

The siege ladders were not used to scale the city walls, but to cross the moat.

Zuo Jun attacked Wuxuan once at the beginning of the year. It was the dry season then, and the Qing army was not prepared. The moat was not deep.

It's the rainy season now, and the Qing army is well-prepared; the moat is about to overflow.

Before Lu Qin set off, he went to the vicinity of the North Gate to pick up people. Peng Gang then ordered the drummers to beat the drums to signal all the battalions to assemble and await orders.

Feng Yunshan and Hu Yihuang were also awakened by the sounds of gunfire and drums in the city, and found Peng Gang near his command tent.

"Why are guns and cannons being fired again in Wuxuan City? Have the Qing demons started fighting amongst themselves?"

Hu Yihuang's first thought was the infighting and fighting among the Qing demons in Wuxuan City.

"With the Governor of Guangxi and the Commander-in-Chief of Hunan stationed in Wuxuan City, the Qing troops in the city are a mixed bag, including soldiers from other provinces, Green Standard Army militia, Han, Zhuang, and Yao people. But to say that they will fight each other is not an option." As Feng Yunshan analyzed, his brows suddenly furrowed.

"Could it be that Qing demons are massacring the people in the city?!"

Feng Yunshan knew that Peng Gang had fought in Wuxuan and that the wealthy families in Wuxuan had been publicly tried for distributing porridge to the common people. He believed that it was very likely that the Qing troops in the city could not suppress the people and directly killed them.

“That’s exactly what I was worried about,” Peng Gang said coldly, his face grim.

“I’ve left Zhou Tianjue and Xiang Rong a way out. If they refuse to take that way out and instead try to kill the people of Wuxuan, my guns and swords won’t be to be trifled with.”

Before long, Lu Qin's men brought the twenty-eight people who had jumped off the city wall to Peng Gang.

These 28 people were all militia members of the Wuxuan militia, including both new and veteran members.

They wept bitterly, clamoring to see Peng Gang.

"I am Peng Gang." Peng Gang walked up and asked, "What happened in the city? Why are the cannons firing incessantly?"

"It really is General Peng!" As they recognized Peng Gang's face by the torchlight, more than twenty militia members from Wuxuan knelt down before him, tears streaming down their faces.

"General Peng! Please save the people of Wuxuan City! The people in the city remember your kindness and are unwilling to help the government troops defend the city. The government... the government actually used the pretext of distributing porridge to gather the people in front of the county government and slaughter the people of Wuxuan!"

The government officials were usually brutal, so when the Taiping army besieged the city, they ordered porridge to be distributed. Naturally, many people noticed something was amiss.

However, after the Qing army entered Wuxuan, all supplies in the city were given priority to the Qing army.

How could Wuxuan, a tiny town, possibly supply the food, clothing, and other necessities of several thousand Qing soldiers?
In particular, these Qing troops were all visiting troops from other places, and they treated the locals even more brutally than the local soldiers.

Many people in Wuxuan City have been without food for many days and are on the verge of starvation.

Even knowing it was a trap, many starving people from Wuxuan still clung to their last hope and went to the county government office, where the aroma of porridge filled the air, to collect some to sustain their lives. "Zhou Tianjue and Xiang Rong, those two beasts! Pass on my order: attack the city immediately!"

Upon learning the details, Peng Gang ordered an attack on the city.

The Qing troops inside the city were busy massacring the people of Wuxuan, and now was the perfect time to attack the city.

Furthermore, there were many people from Wuxuan in Peng Gang's army.

They knew the people of Wuxuan were in trouble but did not offer them any help.

This will surely chill the hearts of the Wuxuan people who came up the mountain to follow him.

Once your heart has grown cold, it's not so easy to warm it up again.

Both morally and logically, he should have attacked Wuxuan County.

As long as he fought, even if he ultimately failed, he could give an explanation to the people who sacrificed their homes to relieve their suffering and followed him.

He showed them through his actions that he was a benevolent leader worthy of their emulation.

Upon receiving the order, all the battalions volunteered for battle, with Cheng Dashun's Provisional Seventh Battalion and Xiao Maoling's Provisional Eighth Battalion being the most enthusiastic.

The majority of the troops in these two temporary battalions were from Wuxuan.

After careful consideration, Peng Gang decided to send the Provisional 7th and Provisional 8th Battalions, who were the most eager to fight and more familiar with the situation in Wuxuan County, to attack Wuxuan County.

Siege warfare is not the same as field battles, and the Qing troops inside Wuxuan City were well prepared.

Peng Gang knew that the soldiers of the Provisional Seventh and Eighth Battalions were likely to meet with great danger on their journey. Before their departure, he gave all the soldiers of the Provisional Seventh and Eighth Battalions a bowl of farewell wine and personally saw them off.

After drinking the farewell wine, the two battalions of soldiers, now armed with shorter weapons, resolutely turned around and, without hesitation, carried sixty-eight crudely made siege ladders and a coffin filled with gunpowder, shouting to bolster their courage as they charged toward Wuxuan County.

The Taiping army besieged Wuxuan County for only one day.

Even if Peng Gang had the idea of ​​directly attacking the city, he did not have enough time to prepare siege equipment.

At present, Peng Gang could only provide the soldiers attacking the city with sixty-eight crudely made siege ladders and a coffin with gunpowder for blowing up the city gate.

Amidst the gunfire of the Qing army atop the North Gate.

More than 1,500 soldiers from the Provisional Seventh and Eighth Battalions braved the barrage of metal bullets and arrows from the Qing army defending the city, charging forward one after another, either swimming across or using ladders to break through the moat.

Sixty-eight crudely made wooden ladders were successively placed on the battlements. The soldiers of the Left Army, wearing wet clothes and with the back of their knives in their mouths, looked at the top of the city wall and climbed the ladders.

Although the Qing troops on the city wall were somewhat prepared, they did not expect that the Taiping army would launch a night attack on the city without having prepared all the siege equipment, and they were caught off guard.

While the Qing army hastily engaged in battle to defend the city, they also sent messengers to request reinforcements.

Suddenly, flames burst forth near the north gate of Wuxuan City, and the sounds of horns and drums resounded through the sky.

Arrows rained down from the city walls, dense as a swarm of locusts, interspersed with volleys of bullets from muskets.

Soldiers of the Left Army were constantly shot off the ladders, tumbling to the ground like kites with broken strings; but the soldiers behind them pressed on one after another, grabbing the blood-stained ladders and continuing to climb.

Some were knocked down from the ladder by spears, some were hit on the head by rolling logs halfway up the ladder and fell down screaming, while others stubbornly climbed up the battlements and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Qing soldiers defending the city, biting the enemy's arms with their teeth, slitting their throats with daggers, and using the corpses of the Qing soldiers as human shields to continue their advance.

Just as the two armies were locked in a fierce battle for control of the North Gate tower, a coffin filled with gunpowder had already been transported to the city gate.

With a deafening roar, the entire North Gate trembled violently.

The outer gate of the north gate, along with the drawbridge, was blown up.

The soldiers of the Left Army rushed into the blown-up North Gate, only to find that the gate had already been blocked by Qing troops with debris.

Helpless, the soldiers of the Left Army who had blown open the outer gate could only clear the debris from the north gate opening by hand.

The outer gate of the North Gate was blown up. Although the Left Army did not enter the city, the Qing troops near the North Gate were thrown into chaos by the loud noise.

Upon seeing this, Xiao Maoling, who had just climbed onto the city wall, led several soldiers of the Left Army who spoke with a Wuxuan accent and shouted at the top of their lungs: "It's bad! The North Gate has been blown open! The short-haired and long-haired rebels are entering the city! Brothers, run for your lives!"

The soldiers guarding the north gate were from Liuzhou and the Wuxuan militia.

The Wuxuan militia training goes without saying, except for the hundred or so landlords' sons who followed Li Mengqun.

The rest had long been utterly disappointed with the Qing court and were disloyal to it.

As for the Liuzhou soldiers, they had been fighting against rebellious chieftains for a long time and were quite powerful.

However, the Liuzhou troops lacked a veteran Green Standard Army general like Xiang Rong to lead them, and the Liuzhou troops had long been in arrears with food and pay, and their treatment was not as good as that of the Chu army that entered Guangxi.

Zhou Tianjue was harsh on his subordinates, demanding that they run hard without feeding them enough grass.

The fighting spirit of the Liuzhou soldiers was not as strong as that of the Chu army.

Xiang Rong's Chu army and Zhengan soldiers were either at other city gates, busy helping Zhou Tianjue slaughter the people of Wuxuan City, or sleeping. The Qing army's response was quite slow, and reinforcements were delayed.

The Liuzhou soldiers at the North Gate were already struggling to hold on.

After a deafening roar, the Liuzhou soldiers saw fearless soldiers of the Left Army climbing the city walls in the darkness, and heard shouts that the short-haired and long-haired rebels had broken through the gates.

Adopting a "better safe than sorry" attitude, they abandoned the north gate and fled into the city.

Having already established a foothold on the city wall, Xiao Maoling saw that the Qing troops around him were gradually dispersing, and dared not hesitate or slacken his efforts.

He led over a hundred soldiers straight to the inner gate of the North Gate.

However, the area around the inner gate was already blocked by sandbags and other debris piled up by the Qing army. To pull out the inner gate latch and open the inner gate, the mountain of debris piled up around the inner gate had to be cleared first.

Just then, Qing troops, having learned of the loss of the North Gate, poured in from all directions toward the North Gate, attempting to retake it and drive the soldiers of the Provisional Seventh and Provisional Eighth Battalions who had stormed into Wuxuan City out of the city.

The situation at the North Gate is extremely precarious.

(End of this chapter)