Chapter 2080 - Before the Battle of Zhaoqing

The battery stood untouched—pristine, in fact. Work teams from the Enterprise Planning Institute were already marshaling prisoners to strip the cannons from their emplacements. The First Mixed Brigade had struck with small landing craft, an amphibious thrust launched before the fire-support gunboat Zhujiang could even arrive upriver. The Red-Barbarian guns commanding the gorge's flanks certainly posed danger to larger vessels threading through that narrow passage, their overlapping fields of fire a calculated threat—but scoring hits on swift, engine-driven landing craft dispersed across the broad river was another matter entirely. Twelve cannons, firing five or six volleys at remarkable cadence, their crossfire creating moments of genuine peril—yet ultimately, not a single round found its mark. Once the infantry made landfall and scaled the ridges, three disciplined volleys and a bayonet charge shattered the few hundred Ming soldiers guarding the position. The emplacement fell within minutes.

Though the engagement differed little from the Humen operation years earlier, the Elder officers of the First Mixed Brigade couldn't help but note certain improvements in Ming defensive thinking. The cannons themselves had been remounted—no longer the old Western ship-gun carriages, but a distinctive millstone-style rotating platform. Crude, certainly, lacking ball bearings and difficult to traverse, yet it spoke to adaptive thinking. The fortifications too showed evolution: gone were the towering stone ramparts with their poor sightlines and restricted firing arcs, replaced by open platforms commanding far wider fields of fire. Most telling of all, the Ming had stationed dedicated troops to defend the batteries—a lesson learned, however painfully, from past defeats.

In Longhua Temple's great hall, Zhu Mingxia bent over the sand-table model of Zhaoqing and its environs. The upcoming campaign required no elaborate tactical choreography—indeed, the unbroken mountain terrain rendered large-scale maneuver virtually impossible. The straightforward approach was also the only practical one: embark the entire force, force passage through the Three Gorges, and drive straight for Zhaoqing's prefectural seat.

Geography had always dictated the strategic calculus between the Two Guangs. Guangdong attacking westward faced an uphill struggle; Guangxi descending eastward enjoyed every advantage. The West River flowed from Guangxi toward Guangdong, offering armies from the west a highway downstream. Break through the Little Three Gorges chokepoint at Zhaoqing, and Guangxi forces could pour directly into Guangdong's heartland—the fertile Pearl River Delta. But for Guangdong armies pushing westward, the same river became an adversary. Fighting upstream without trackers hauling towlines made passage through the Little Three Gorges all but impossible.

For the Fubo Army, however, that ancient barrier meant nothing. Motor-driven vessels ascended the current as easily as if sailing on a lake, and the gorges ran deep enough to bring river gunboats directly beneath Zhaoqing's walls.

Intelligence reports painted a clear picture of the opposition. Zhaoqing's Ming garrison included a naval battalion—some 1,200 men with a fleet of just over a hundred vessels, mostly small hundred-ton craft suited to inland waters. Against the Fubo Army's river flotilla, they would be swept aside like chaff.

The real question, then: what methods would the Ming employ to check them? Zhu Mingxia understood Zhaoqing's strategic significance perfectly. For Ming forces in the Two Guangs, this was the critical strongpoint. Lose Zhaoqing, lose Guangdong. If Governor-General Xiong Wenchan intended to answer to the imperial court, he had to hold this city—failure would cost him not merely his official cap, but very likely his head.

He recalled the intelligence report Thorpe and Cummings had compiled after their staff tour the previous year, which specifically noted that Xiong's advisory staff included a legal secretary who had fought at Chengmai and subsequently been held prisoner by the Council of Elders. With such a man whispering in his ear, Xiong would scarcely be ignorant of the Fubo Army's capabilities and operational methods. Countermeasures were inevitable.

The prospect, Zhu Mingxia realized, pleased him.

If warfare remained this bloodless, this devoid of challenge, the army they had built with such care—trained with such rigor, equipped at such expense—would atrophy into little more than a constabulary force. The concern gnawed at him: without genuine battlefield stress, without high-intensity combat to test men and doctrine alike, soldiers grew complacent. Soft. Before long, they would lack the steel to handle real war.

As a commander, he welcomed the chance to fight hard battles—actual battles that would temper the troops like quenched steel, rather than these glorified parade-ground exercises they had been conducting.

Still, reality tempered enthusiasm. Zhaoqing's Ming garrison numbered only a few thousand at most. Xiong Wenchan lacked the time to redeploy the scattered anti-Yao garrison forces from Guangxi's interior or the Eastern and Western Mountains. His immediately available strength consisted of the 1,200-man Zhaoqing Naval Battalion, three or four hundred men of the Governor's Banner guard, and the Zhaoqing Guard garrison troops. This Guard nominally mustered over 3,300 banner soldiers, but they were dispersed across the prefecture's counties. Near the prefectural seat itself, only the garrison's Left Battalion at Caowan and Right Battalion villages at Yanqian could be readily assembled. These garrison banner soldiers were thoroughly decrepit, plagued by desertion. Mustering even one or two hundred combat-effective troops would exceed expectations.

"Brigade Commander, Third Battalion Commander Zhu Quanxing is here," announced a guard.

"Show him in."

Zhu Quanxing entered with crisp efficiency and snapped a salute. "Brigade Commander—"

Zhu Mingxia waved aside the formality.

"How are the men holding up?"

"Too many days aboard ship. Bodies went stiff. We took them ashore for drill, worked the kinks out. They're feeling much better."

"Any sick cases?"

"Twenty or so. Minor complaints, nothing serious."

"Good. The reconnaissance team returned an hour ago. They've confirmed no additional batteries inside Antelope Gorge."

Zhu Mingxia had harbored concerns about the narrowest section of the gorge—where the river pinched to barely 200 meters, well within effective range of Red-Barbarian cannon. Had the Ming erected batteries on both banks there, they could subject vessels to devastating enfilade fire.

Antelope Gorge averaged only 300 meters wide along most of its length, save for the broader stretches at either entrance. A battery at any of those constricted points could savage ships caught in the passage.

Yet according to the General Reconnaissance Bureau's assessment, aside from the batteries guarding both gorge mouths, no fortifications existed within Antelope Gorge proper. The terrain along the gorge was brutally steep—nothing but sheer cliffs and a narrow towpath. The sheer difficulty of manhandling heavy artillery up those slopes explained the Ming's decision to leave the interior unfortified.

Still, Zhu Mingxia had taken no chances, dispatching the brigade's reconnaissance company for independent verification.

"However," he continued, picking up a pointer to indicate positions on the sand-table, "our scouts discovered the enemy intends to employ fire-ships. They've assembled over a hundred small civilian vessels at the eastern mouth of Dading Gorge, all loaded with straw and tung oil."

Zhu Quanxing's expression tightened. Fire-ships presented a legitimate threat. The gorge was narrow, the current fierce—and most critically, the enemy's fire-ships would ride the current downstream while Fubo vessels labored upstream with degraded maneuverability. Intercepting and towing burning hulks clear would prove far more difficult than in open water.

"Nothing like our old Pearl River engagements," Zhu Quanxing observed. "Wide, placid water there. Here, the enemy holds the high ground upstream with that vicious current working for them..."

"Precisely why I've consulted with Pearl River Task Force Commander Meng De and adjusted the timeline. We're delaying the main assault by one day. Today, the fleet transits the gorge and eliminates those fire-ships."

"Can we afford the delay?" Zhu Quanxing frowned. "The operational plan allocates seven days for taking Zhaoqing. We've already consumed half that margin..."

"It should suffice. How long to transit Antelope Gorge? An hour at most. Then I'll give you four hours to reduce Zhaoqing. Brigade headquarters relocates into the city tomorrow evening."

"Easily done. Though if the Navy finishes by midday, I could have Zhaoqing secured before nightfall today."

"Even if you took it tonight, we couldn't relocate headquarters in darkness. Tomorrow morning is soon enough."

"Agreed." Zhu Quanxing nodded. "I'll return and prepare the battalion."

"Army Command has allocated us a siege artillery battery and a rocket battery. Both are attached to your battalion. Zhaoqing is a major prefectural seat—its defenses far exceed ordinary county towns. And it's Xiong Wenchan's operational center. Expect fiercer resistance."

"Let's forgo the rocket battery. One errant shot and we'll torch the entire city—then I'll be managing fire suppression and disaster relief instead of combat operations."

"Better to have the capability and not require it. Consider it a training opportunity. The troops need more experience coordinating infantry-artillery assaults."

(End of Chapter)