Chapter 185: The Capture of Wuyong

Thinking of his master, who would often blow his nose, flick the snot away with his hand, wipe it on his apron, and then continue chopping vegetables, Fu Ji felt like he was in a different world.

The poultry was butchered according to the standards of a meat processing plant, separated into different parts, refrigerated, and then processed into food for the troops. This approach was, first and foremost, hygienic. Secondly, it allowed for effective control over the quantity and nutritional content of the food supplied to each soldier. Simply chopping up ten chickens and ducks, bones and all, and cooking them would make it difficult to measure portions during distribution. It would also be impossible to ensure that every soldier received food of consistent quality, and the lack of oversight would encourage corruption. A soldier distributing food could easily give two chicken legs to someone based on personal relationships or preference, while giving only two chicken feet to others.

With portioned distribution, apart from slight differences in size, everything was identical. A chicken leg was a chicken leg. The number of chicken legs was supplied based on headcount, and any shortage would have to be compensated for by the quartermaster sergeant and the cooks—no ambiguity. This was the “quantitative management” that Wen Desi constantly advocated.

Portioned distribution maximized utilization. Not a single part of a bird sent to this processing center was wasted. Besides the meat and edible organs and blood, the inedible parts were dried and ground into feed and fertilizer. Even the feathers were not wasted; they were all packed and shipped back to Lingao. There, after disinfection, the down was stored for future use in making down jackets, while the lower-quality feathers were processed into feather meal for feed. Xun Suji was even researching with several chemistry experts to see if they could be used to make soy sauce.

Fu Ji quickly became a skilled worker. As he loaded box after box of butchered parts onto the carts heading for the flash-freezing cold storage, he couldn’t help but smack his lips. When would it be his turn to eat these good things?

The food at the kitchen processing center was much better than in the camp. All three meals consisted of brown rice, with a large pot of chicken or duck soup with cabbage—made from the cleaned carcasses. The flavor wasn’t bad. After dinner, even the worthless carcasses were collected, ground into bone meal, and supposedly used for fertilizer.

“The Australian masters must have come from poor families,” Fu Ji thought, a sense of closeness welling up in his heart.

The marines who had withdrawn to Humen rested and retrained for a few days. The Great Whale also made a few shaky voyages on the river. As a hint of autumn chill began to be felt on the river, Chen Haiyang finally received an order from Lingao:

“Negotiation attempts have failed. Proceed to anchor at Bai’e Tan immediately.”

“So we’re going to bombard Guangzhou after all. It seems it has come to this.” Chen Haiyang handed the telegram to his female confidential secretary. “Immediately summon a meeting of all detachment leaders and elders!”

The fleet set sail on November 1st. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but the autumn chill of the Little Ice Age was already palpable on the Pearl River. The soldiers had swapped their tropical uniforms for the thicker, long-sleeved spring-autumn naval uniforms. The five gunboat squadrons and the mortar boat squadron, escorted by a large swarm of sampans, long-dragons, and other small boats, headed upstream.

The Great Whale lumbered along at the rear of the fleet, its motley collection of equipment and the constant black smoke it belched making it a conspicuous sight. The people on both banks whispered that it was the Australians’ “monster.”

They had now established a preliminary “reputation” in the Pearl River Delta. The common people knew the Australians were disciplined and never harassed them. As long as one obeyed their orders, life and property were not threatened. One might even change one’s fate and find a better life. As the fleet sailed majestically upstream, a group of enterprising boat owners, in vessels of all sizes, followed behind, their boats laden with all sorts of food and fruit that might interest the Australians, ready to sell to the fleet at a moment’s notice. Many wealthy young men, idle in their daily lives, knew the Australians were not heroes who killed the rich to help the poor. They boldly hired boats to follow and watch the rare spectacle. The story of the Australians bombarding Humen had spread far and wide, embellished with each telling, and many wanted to witness the rare sight of a cannon battle with their own eyes. Everyone guessed that the Australians were heading for Wuyong, which had recently been packed with government troops, new forts, and many newly transported Hongyi cannons.

“There’s going to be a big fight this time,” commented the idlers who had hired boats, eating, drinking, and cuddling with women as they followed the fleet. They eagerly anticipated a spectacular and magnificent cannon battle.

Xu Tingfa, stationed at Wuyong, heard a soldier report that a lot of black smoke was visible on the river. He quickly donned his armor and went to the watchtower with his personal guards. In the distance, he saw dozens of columns of black smoke billowing into the sky. On the river were more than twenty large ships and countless small boats, densely packed, heading towards Wuyong along the Pearl River. The scene reminded him of Humen.

The defenses at Wuyong had been greatly strengthened in the month following the Battle of Humen. The government forces had densely packed the area with ten hastily constructed forts of earth, stone, or sandbags, mounting eighty-four Hongyi cannons and one hundred and sixty large breech-loading swivel guns. They had scrounged up nearly all the Hongyi cannons in Guangdong, even diverting those originally intended for Fujian, Shandong, and the capital.

Li Fengjie had deployed three thousand troops here, two thousand of whom were waterborne militia, so many that the positions were overflowing. There were also 24 naval warships, half of which were temporarily requisitioned salt and rice boats.

However, Xu Tingfa, in charge of the defense, did not believe he could hold Wuyong at all—unless the wooden stakes and iron chains in the river could stop the Kun thieves’ ships.

To boost the morale of the generals, who were said to be scared out of their wits, or rather, to prevent them from fleeing, Li Fengjie had originally intended to send the Guangzhou Military Intendant to Wuyong to supervise the battle. However, his station at Nantou in Dongguan was blockaded by the Kun thieves, and messengers could not get through. Li Fengjie had no choice but to send the Left Provincial Administration Commissioner, Chen Yingyuan, to Wuyong instead.

Upon arriving at Wuyong, Chen Yingyuan met with Xu Tingfa. He found the man to be passive and defeatist, with the attitude of a “surrenderist.” He simply kicked him aside and personally arranged the battle preparations.

Wuyong was the outer port of Huangpu, named after the Wuyong River. At the confluence of the Wuyong River and the Pearl River was a small island called Mayongwei. The main defensive position of the Wuyong forts was located on this island.

As the main position and the first line of defense, the fort on Mayongwei Island was relatively sturdy. Chen Yingyuan personally supervised the Nanhai and Panyu counties, conscripting a large number of laborers to build an earth-and-timber fort on the south side of Mayongwei. The thick, high walls had 44 embrasures, mounting 44 Hongyi cannons.

In the channel, besides three rows of wooden stakes to block the river, there was an iron chain stretched across, anchored by wooden rafts. A specially requisitioned sand junk, armed with 10 large swivel guns, was attached to the chain. The purpose of this ship was not only to stabilize the chain against the current but also to prevent the enemy from using fire ships to burn it—all the tactics Chen Yingyuan had read about for breaking a river chain involved fire, so he had prepared accordingly.

Because he had heard that the Kun thieves’ artillery was extremely powerful and had a long range, he ordered all the new gun positions to be pushed forward, some even built on the mudflats. He also learned from his generals and soldiers that the Kun thieves often used small boats to land troops and attack the forts from the rear, rendering the cannons useless. Therefore, he had bamboo spikes, caltrops, and cheval de frise widely deployed around each fort. Each fort was also reinforced with one hundred soldiers, ready to engage the landing Kun thieves in close combat. To protect the soldiers from the Kun thieves’ superior artillery, he ordered trenches to be dug along the riverbank for the soldiers to take cover. They were to wait for the Kun thieves to land, then leap out and engage them in hand-to-hand combat.

For some reason, Chen Yingyuan had inexplicable confidence in the hand-to-hand and close-quarters combat abilities of the government troops. Since the Kun thieves were so skilled with firearms, their close combat skills must be mediocre. They might even be routed at the sight of government troops charging with bayonets. His strategy was to keep his soldiers alive under the Kun thieves’ superior firepower—at least until the Kun thieves reached the trenches.

Xu Tingfa was very respectful to Chen Yingyuan, almost to the point of being obsequious. He did whatever Chen Yingyuan ordered. When asked for his opinion, he would respond with phrases like “I will follow Your Excellency’s lead,” “Your Excellency is brilliant,” or “This humble general has not read many books and is shallow in strategy.”

As a mere coastal defense captain, his status was incomparable to that of the Guangdong Left Provincial Administration Commissioner. Insisting on his own views would only be asking for trouble. However, he strongly disapproved of Chen’s arrangements. In his opinion, unless the forts were built with thick “solid stone,” these earthwork walls, facing only the river, were useless. Not only were the Kun thieves’ cannonballs unstoppable, but the large grenades launched from their “thunderclap boats” could land behind the walls and send the gunners flying. They would be lucky to survive, let alone fire back.

As for pushing the gun positions forward, it was even more absurd. If they moved forward, couldn’t the enemy just move back? Furthermore, with the positions pushed forward, the tide would erode the forts. Over time, the forts might collapse on their own before the Kun thieves even arrived.

As he was observing the enemy, he suddenly saw Chen Yingyuan, leading his personal guards, cross the pontoon bridge over the Wuyong River and onto Mayongwei Island. It seemed he was preparing to supervise the battle from the front line. Xu Tingfa dared not delay. He quickly descended the watchtower and followed with his own guards.

Chen Yingyuan, dressed in the robes of a third-rank official, wearing a black gauze cap and a cloak, with a sword at his waist, ascended to the highest point of the Mayongwei fort, surrounded by his guards, looking awe-inspiring.

“This is the gateway to Guangzhou, the key to the Ram City! Soldiers, today you must unite and exterminate this vile enemy!” Chen Yingyuan shouted in a high-pitched voice.

Xu Tingfa hurried forward and requested him to supervise the battle from the north bank.

“What are you saying, General?” Chen Yingyuan appeared impassioned. “I have come here under the orders of His Excellency the Governor to supervise the battle. The safety of the provincial capital is at stake. How could I, a humble scholar, harbor thoughts of fearing death?”

Xu Tingfa cursed inwardly. If this Left Commissioner foolishly got himself killed here, the responsibility would be immense. He immediately instructed one of his trusted men to coordinate with Chen Yingyuan’s personal guards. At the first sign of danger, they were to rush him across the bridge to safety. To this end, he had his own guards take control of the pontoon bridge.

On November 1, 1630, with the 13th Squadron escorting the survey ship Haitian as the vanguard, the task force arrived at the Wuyong forts, 30 kilometers from Guangzhou city.

The Haitian, escorted by gunboats, first approached Wuyong to measure the water depth. When the ship entered the range of the Wuyong forts’ cannons, Chen Yingyuan immediately ordered them to fire. A cloud of smoke erupted over Mayongwei Island as all the guns in the fort, regardless of their direction or range, opened fire. Cannonballs of all sizes, trailing smoke of varying heights and distances, flew haphazardly towards the Haitian. Most fell far from the ship, with only a few landing close to its side.

The Haitian immediately turned and left the firing range. It had obtained sufficient depth data and had also roughly determined the range and power of the island’s cannons.

A few minutes later, this information was relayed to each squadron by flag signal. Chen Haiyang ordered the 13th Squadron to lead the attack, approaching Mayongwei Island to begin bombardment.

The four cannon squadrons, using the old method, approached the fort in a column formation. Amidst the heavy fire from the fort, they closed to within five hundred meters and then turned.

Although the government’s Hongyi cannons had a maximum range of 1000 paces, because the forts were not built on open platforms but behind a thick earth-and-timber wall, the embrasures were very small and offered no room for adjusting elevation or traverse. They could only fire at a fixed angle. While the continuous firing was spectacular, very few cannonballs came close to the gunboats.

The 13th Squadron completed its turn under fire and began firing solid shot and incendiary rounds from five hundred meters. The following squadrons also turned and joined the bombardment.

One volley from the four squadrons riddled the entire fort on Mayongwei Island. In some places, the ramparts had collapsed. Most of the cannons were silenced. No matter how the officers shouted and tried to stop them, the soldiers began to flee. As for the waterborne militia brought to the island to defend the fort, they fled even faster. As temporary workers, their will to fight was weaker than that of the regular soldiers. The moment the cannons roared, they started to run.

The Fubo Army stuck to its old tactics. After the cannon-equipped warships had neutralized the threat of enemy counter-fire, the mortar boat squadron moved in to launch large-caliber shells. The mortar boats approached to within 400 meters of the shore and bombarded Mayongwei Island with 280mm mortars. The violent explosions engulfed the fort like a tide. After a few volleys, most of the Wuyong fort was destroyed, and the shore was deserted. Sampans and small motorboats, carrying marines, began to land on the southern beach of the island.

The government troops and waterborne militia, who had been hiding in the trenches and had suffered few casualties during the bombardment, suddenly leaped up and charged the marines with a roar. However, Chen Yingyuan’s belief in the superiority of Ming soldiers in hand-to-hand combat was unfounded. The victor in a bayonet fight always belongs to the army with better discipline and training. In a brief five-minute melee, about 50 men fell to the marines’ bayonets, while only 2 marines were killed by arrows and spears from the surprise attack.

With the southern shore of Mayongwei Island lost, the few remaining cannons on the fort were rendered useless. Only a few soldiers continued to resist from the trenches.

While the frontal attack was underway, another company, on sampans and small motorboats, advanced towards the north bank of the Pearl River. As this area could cover the flank of the Wuyong fort, Chen Yingyuan had hastily set up three sandbag forts and several hundred waterborne militia there a few days earlier.

Gunboats followed closely behind the landing force, ready to “cleanse” the government forts with artillery fire at any moment. The typewriters on the small motorboats were also ready to fire. Suddenly, a southeast wind picked up on the river, the waves swelled, and the water level rose sharply. The three forts, being too close to the shore, were instantly flooded. The gunpowder piled on them was completely soaked. The waterborne militia and gunners lost their last ounce of courage and scattered without firing a single shot.

Seeing the forts on the north bank fall, Xu Tingfa knew that if he didn’t flee, he would be trapped and killed. He immediately shouted, “Get His Excellency out of here, quickly!”

Chen Yingyuan’s personal guards swarmed him, put him on a horse without a word, and Xu Tingfa, leading his own guards, cleared a path through the chaotic troops and was the first to flee across the pontoon bridge to safety.

With the flank defenses broken, the Wuyong fort’s exposed rear could only rely on bamboo spikes, caltrops, and cheval de frise. The marine company brought two 12-pounder mountain howitzers ashore from the sampans and bombarded the Wuyong fort from behind. The small force still holding out on the island completely disintegrated.

The landing marines swarmed the island like a tide. The few hundred government troops on the island had already scattered, suffering heavy casualties from the combined fire of cannons, rifles, and bayonets. A portion of the soldiers and waterborne militia fought a retreating battle to the Wuyong River. The river was about ten meters wide and had a pontoon bridge connecting the island to the north bank. After Xu Tingfa and Chen Yingyuan had crossed, the several hundred soldiers guarding the bridge had scattered. The marines who had landed on the north bank quickly seized the bridgehead and fired a dense volley of bullets at the government troops and waterborne militia trying to flee across. The bridge was instantly covered with fallen men and horses, bodies piling up.

Facing enemies in front and behind, the government troops had nowhere to retreat. Caught in a pincer attack, they were completely annihilated, with 216 killed and 200 captured.

With the fall of Mayongwei Island, the entire defensive system of the Wuyong forts collapsed. The government troops and waterborne militia stationed at the various passes, forts, and warships disintegrated and fled without waiting for an attack. The marines occupied the forts and camps one by one as if in a peaceful takeover. A small detachment boarded the now-empty sand junk tied to the iron chain and dismantled the chain stretching across the Pearl River. This huge iron chain was clearly a valuable prize—it could yield several tons of iron when recycled.