Chapter 712 - Guangzhou's Defenses
The expeditionary force halted at the Bogue. Past these straits, three or four days of continuous sailing would bring them to Guangzhou's outskirts—but Chen Haiyang was in no hurry to appear beneath the city walls. According to the established strategy, his primary mission was to "display military might" and "pacify." The display of might had been fully accomplished; now the emphasis shifted to pacification. The residents of Guangzhou and the Pearl River banks needed sufficient time to absorb and spread word of the Bogue's fall.
The expeditionary fleet began organizing numerous small units, each comprising roughly a hundred men. Armed with light artillery and staffed with civil affairs and surveying personnel, these units would board sampans and long-dragons to penetrate deep into the villages and market towns scattered along the densely networked inland waterways and tributaries of the Pearl River. They would collect "Reasonable Burden," post proclamations, and generate as much attention as possible. Simultaneously, they would deliver harsh punishment to any village that attempted resistance.
Since there were insufficient marines, Shi Zhiqi, who was in charge of this operation, drew sailors to reinforce the units. A considerable portion of the navy's enlisted sailors were former pirates who not only knew the Pearl River waterways intimately but were experts at precisely this sort of work. Back in the day, they too had followed various "bosses" in small boats deep into the inland waterways, raiding and kidnapping as they went.
News of the Bogue's fall reached Guangzhou that same day. The entire city was shaken. The Guangzhou Prefect rushed to see Li Fengjie, asking whether the city gates should be immediately closed.
Li Fengjie was stunned. He had not expected the Bogue to fall so quickly. With the Bogue lost, the crop-heads could arrive at Guangzhou in merely two or three days. At the thought of crop-heads attacking Guangzhou, his face went pale.
"Don't close the gates yet—that would shake public confidence!" Li Fengjie steadied himself. "You, together with Nanhai and Panyu Counties, station more men at each gate and intensify inspections to prevent crop-heads from infiltrating the city!"
"Yes, Your Excellency—I'll see to it immediately!"
Li Fengjie's only armed force was his own Governor's Standard troops. But the Standard had suffered heavy losses in the Chengmai campaign. The thousand men he had dispatched had either died in battle, been captured at Chengmai, or remained besieged at Qiongshan—not a single one had returned thus far. The Standard now had fewer than seven hundred men fit for combat. Fortunately, these constituted the unit's elite. Li Fengjie had long cultivated their loyalty with generous treatment; in critical moments, they were a force he could rely upon.
Li Fengjie was not particularly worried about defending Guangzhou itself. The city possessed not only strong defenses but an enormous population. When necessary, a mass conscription of able-bodied men could put a hundred thousand militia atop the walls within moments. Besides the Standard, Guangzhou also had the forces of Coastal Defense Regional Commander Xu Tingfa, various scattered units, and guard garrisons stationed in and around the city. Though these garrisons had deteriorated over the years, they could still muster a thousand or so men for combat. The Guangzhou Guard's Tatar-descent soldiers were quite famous throughout the Ming—frequently called up to fight against Miao and Yao rebels.
Combined, these forces totaled three to four thousand—sufficient as the core garrison for Guangzhou's defense. But as Guangdong's Provincial Governor, Li Fengjie had to consider more than Guangzhou alone. He bore responsibility for the counties and villages along the Pearl River. If the crop-heads slaughtered and plundered too brutally, even impeachment by censors would prove unbearable.
Li Fengjie summoned the city's officials and advisors to discuss countermeasures. The general consensus was to proceed on two fronts: strengthening Guangzhou's own defenses while enhancing the self-defense capabilities of villages and towns along the river.
Originally, when Liu Xiang had been operating at the Pearl River Estuary, Guangdong authorities had already been vigorously implementing the baojia mutual-responsibility system throughout the Pearl Delta, encouraging local gentry to organize and train militia for self-defense. Every county had established a public bureau with the county magistrate serving as General Militia Commander and respected, willing local gentry serving as Deputy Commanders. Villages and towns that organized militia could borrow cannons from the government; they were also permitted to cast their own. Watchtowers and palisades were built at road and river junctions, equipped with brass gongs for transmitting alerts. Multiple villages were organized into mutual-defense associations. When one village found itself in trouble, neighboring villages were obligated to dispatch militia to assist. As for funding, each village bore its own costs: some came from gentry donations, others from levies on all villagers. Several counties simply added a surcharge to land taxes to cover county-wide militia expenses.
This system had been implemented since early the previous year and was already showing results. Most officials believed the crop-heads, unfamiliar with local terrain, would not dare penetrate the various inland tributaries. The Pearl River villages had always been the most diligent in fortifying and training. And Xu Tingfa's naval forces remained largely intact. The crop-heads would not be too rampant.
He Chengzong proposed: defend the river rather than the city. The crop-heads possessed powerful ships and guns but few soldiers; they dared not venture far from their vessels. There was no need to worry about a land attack on Guangzhou. As long as government forces conducted layered defense along the Pearl River, coordinating with militia, they could gradually wear down the crop-heads' edge—ultimately forcing the enemy to withdraw from the river.
From the Bogue to Guangzhou, the Pearl River offered many defensible chokepoints. Among them, Wuchong was most critical. He Chengzong proposed concentrating most forces there, urgently constructing sandbag batteries, and gathering as many cannons, sampans, and long-dragons as possible.
"Wuchong commands the vital junction of the Provincial River. With our troops holding here, we can advance to assist river defenses everywhere, or fall back to secure the provincial capital. It is the absolute priority."
He Chengzong enthusiastically promoted his "Wuchong-determines-victory" theory. Most officials and advisors agreed. But Xu Tingfa, who had witnessed the crop-heads' devastating firepower firsthand, opposed the plan.
"Guangzhou's defenses must be strengthened urgently." After retreating from the Bogue, Xu Tingfa was temporarily stationed at Huangpu. His core forces remained largely intact—indeed, his main strength had always been the navy, and the navy had lost only some vessels awaiting repair in the Bogue battle. The warships and crews had all withdrawn safely. He dispatched men along the river to rally stragglers. Soldiers who had fled from the Bogue Garrison and elsewhere gradually returned over the following days, giving him nearly two thousand men again.
"The riverside villages can at most protect themselves—they cannot stop the crop-heads from advancing upriver to Guangzhou. As for Wuchong, gentlemen, how do you judge it compares to the Bogue?"
The Bogue fortifications had been under construction since the Wanli reign and substantially renovated and reinforced over the past year. Whether in structural solidity or number of guns, they could not possibly be matched by hastily improvised batteries at Wuchong.
Yet even those fortifications, defended by two thousand soldiers, had collapsed in less than a day of combat. The psychological shock for Xu Tingfa was enormous. He saw clearly: given the government troops' current quality and weaponry, they were simply no match for the Australians' powerful ships and guns.
Therefore, Xu Tingfa's recommendation was to defend Guangzhou directly. Concentrate the bulk of available forces within the city itself. Build additional batteries on Yuexiu Hill. Simultaneously station heavy forces at Dongsheng Temple to the east and Fenghuang Ridge to the west.
As for other chokepoints along the Provincial River—Liede, Pazhou, Qinzhou, and the rest—whether to fortify them was irrelevant. Hastily built batteries could not possibly withstand enemy bombardment; they would only increase casualties.
Only Guangzhou city itself, with its deep moats and high walls, fortifications refined over a century, and countless militia for support, might be able to hold out under crop-head assault.
"So you would simply let the crop-head warships sail straight up to our Yangcheng walls?" Li Xijue said disapprovingly. He was attending as the Governor-General's yamen representative—Wang Zunde was, after all, the supreme military commander of both provinces, with all Two-Guangs military officials under his jurisdiction. Li Fengjie might push the Governor-General aside for peace negotiations, but pushing him aside for military matters was utterly impossible.
Li Xijue had witnessed the crop-heads' firepower. He could somewhat understand Xu Tingfa's reluctance to fight. But understanding came with contempt—he considered Xu Tingfa a coward unwilling to fight to the death.
Yet his tone could not be too forceful. First, when fleeing from the Bogue Garrison days earlier, he himself had been among the first to escape, clinging to his horse's neck. Second, Xu Tingfa's Guangzhou Coastal Defense Regional Command was now the only decent fighting force in the Guangzhou area—he could not afford to antagonize the man.
Xu Tingfa proposed that rather than building useless sandbag batteries everywhere—positions that would crumble under crop-head fire—they should select narrow, heavily silted stretches of the Provincial River leading to Guangzhou and sink timbers and stones to block the channel. Simultaneously, they should deploy log booms and iron chains across the water.
"The crop-head vessels have mostly been refitted with heavy armaments. They draw deep water. If we block the channel, the enemy ships will fear running aground or hitting obstacles and won't dare penetrate deep into the Provincial River."
But Li Fengjie rejected this proposal. First, he did not want crop-head ships appearing beneath the provincial capital's walls—word reaching the capital would give his rivals ammunition. Second, he suspected Xu Tingfa's claims about the crop-heads' "powerful ships and guns" were exaggerated. Whenever generals lost battles, they always portrayed the enemy as twelve kinds of terrifying—much of it fabrication. Li Fengjie had been a provincial official for many years; such tricks could not fool him. He dismissed Xu Tingfa's proposal as typical military "fear of battle" and paid it no mind.
The Governor's yamen conference ultimately decided to strengthen inland-river defenses while vigorously training militia to "boost morale." For this purpose, a General Militia Bureau would be specially established in Guangzhou, inviting enthusiastic and capable local gentry to handle militia affairs. Additionally, all prefectures and counties in the Pearl Delta received orders to establish county militia bureaus and implement the baojia system immediately.
Xu Tingfa would garrison Wuchong, this chokepoint for entering Guangzhou's inland waterways. Work would immediately begin on emergency construction of sandbag batteries at Wuchong, mounting eighteen Red Barbarian cannons. Following Xu Tingfa's recommendation, at Wuchong, Liede, and Ersha Tail, several old boats filled with sand and stone would be sunk to block the channel. Laborers would also be hired to drive wooden pilings into the river at narrow points. As for the long iron chains to block the river, none could be found locally; men were dispatched to Foshan to forge them day and night.
Twelve hundred troops would garrison Wuchong. All forty of Xu Tingfa's naval vessels would concentrate near Wuchong, ready to reinforce on command. Meanwhile, emergency construction of sandbag batteries with Red Barbarian cannons would proceed at Qinzhou, Pazhou, Liede, Ersha Tail, Dahuangjiao, and other key Provincial River positions.
Note: The locations listed in this chapter are all Pearl River chokepoints. All had batteries constructed during the Qing dynasty.
(End of Chapter)