1636- the China Venture

by Eric Flint

  After Xudong left the garden, Fang Kongzhao muttered to himself, “And this day started so pleasantly.…”

  Year of the Pig, Ninth Month (October 11–November 9, 1635)

  Day 1

  Tongcheng

  Under the guidance of their three local Chinese friends, the visitors’ cargo was conveyed to the city, and to a warehouse owned by the Fang family, by a stream of carts and beasts of burden that shuttled back and forth between the river dock and the Tongcheng east gate.

  Tongcheng, like most county-level cities, had four gates: the Black Turtle Gate in the north; the White Tiger Gate in the west, the Vermilion Bird Gate in the south, and the Azure Dragon Gate in the east. A tower, a three-story wooden pagoda with tiled roofs, stood above and behind each of the gates. This tower served as both the living quarters for the militiamen who manned the gate in shifts, and as an archery post.

  In size, Tongcheng was an average county capital for Nan-Zhili province, the walled area being a square having one-kilometer sides. If you were to divide each of the walls of Tongcheng into thirds, then each of the gates lay at one of the dividing points. Inside the city, the streets leading from the gates terminated two-thirds of the way into the city, thus defining a central block. Within this block were certain official buildings: the great Drum Tower, where the watches were sounded every two hours, and which had sentries on the top story; the yamen, the official quarters of the district magistrate; the temple of the City God; and the temple of Confucius.

  A westerner might think it logical to put the gates in the center of each wall, with north-south and east-west streets running through the city from gate to gate. However, as Fang Yizhi explained to his guests, such a design was spiritually dangerous since kuei, that is to say, ghosts and demons, were wont to travel in straight lines. The enlightened layout of Tongcheng trapped these kuei in the center of the city, where there were spiritually protective structures to dissipate them.

  Xudong and Fang Kongzhao’s other servants took the visitors’ belongings, even von Siegroth’s artillery, on to the main Fang residence in the city, while Fang Yizhi and his aunt led their guests to the central square.

  As they approached, they could hear a great hubbub. They turned a corner, and could see a considerable crowd of people gathered, shouting and gesturing.

  “What’s going on?” asked Eric Garlow. “Some sort of political demonstration?”

  Fang Yizhi halted the group, and cupped a hand around one ear, trying to make out what was being yelled.

  All of a sudden, he laughed. “Nothing so grim. Come, and you will see.”

  As they came closer, Eric Garlow could make out some of the cries.

  “Knock him down, Yellow Bald Head!”

  “Tear his leg off, Crab Claw!”

  “Ah,” said Eric. “Some kind of fight. Shaolin kung fu, perhaps?”

  “You’ll see,” said Yizhi.

  They pushed their way through the crowd, finding that they were gathered around a small clay bowl, perhaps a foot in diameter. Two male crickets were inside, separated by a barrier. Each of the crickets had a handler, who was tickling his precious champion’s back with some sort of bristle.

  As they waited for the crickets to be deemed sufficiently agitated to put on a good fight, Yizhi explained how they were prepared for their gladiatorial career.

  “You can see from the betting going on that these crickets are both from well-established fighting lines. They would have been fed a special secret diet—typically, certain kinds of fish, mosquitoes, lotus seeds, herbs, masticated chestnuts, rice, honey, red beans, goat liver, and maggots.”

  “Sounds yummy,” said Judith Leyster, making a face.

  “Each male is allowed to have a female in his cage for two hours each evening,” Yizhi added.

  “Do you think that’s adequate?” Liu Rushi asked Mike Song.

  “I think that no matter how I answer, I will get in trouble,” said Mike.

  The fight marshal lifted the divider. The crickets chirped at each other, and closed the distance, pushing each other with their mandibles. The one known as Yellow Bald Head gave a great shove and sent the other reeling an inch. Crab Claw was not sufficiently intimidated, but came roaring back and pushed Yellow Bald Head back in turn.

  After some further tussling, Yellow Bald Head retreated to the far side of the tub, and Crab Claw spread his wings in triumph. The match was over.

  “At least Crab Claw didn’t tear Yellow Bald Head’s leg off,” said Eric. “He can fight another day.”

  “In an arena this size, loss of limbs is rare,” Yizhi explained. “But in a village, the cricket pit might be just a small rice bowl, and the loser can’t run far enough to appease the victor. That’s when you see the most mayhem. The winner might even behead a loser who can’t flee.”

  “How long do these crickets live for?” asked Colonel von Siegroth.

  “This Crab Claw might live for another couple of weeks,” said Yizhi.

  “A short life, but a glorious one,” von Siegroth concluded.

  “When he dies, Crab Claw will be buried in a small silver coffin, in the hope that more good fighting crickets, observing that he received an honorable funeral, will be found near his grave and can be caught there. But even if that doesn’t work, his harem will have laid eggs, and they will hatch into new champions,” said Yizhi. “Or so the owner hopes.”

  Chapter 44

  Ninth Month, Day 2

  “Minister Fang, Minister Fang!”

  A bleary-eyed Fang Kongzhao threw on a robe and opened the door of his bedroom. He was surprised to find that the speaker was the private secretary of the district magistrate of Tongcheng, escorted by one of Kongzhao’s servants. “Why this racket so early in the morning?”

  “A bandit army has taken Luzhou!” The Luzhou he referred to was not the city in Sichuan, but rather corresponded to Hefei on the up-timer’s maps, the largest town in Anhui. It was sixty miles north-northeast of Tongcheng.

  “How do you know?” Kongzhao demanded.

  “Fleeing government troops. Some had exhausted their horses, and had sought to buy or commandeer a replacement here in Tongcheng.”

  Kongzhao caught the servant’s eye. “Escort the secretary to my office. And have Yizhi join us there.” Kongzhao paused. “Also invite his barbarian friends.”

  * * *

  “So how serious is this threat?” asked Eric. The district magistrate of Tongcheng, who was bedridden with a serious illness, had placed Fang Kongzhao in charge.

  “Quite serious,” said Kongzhao. “Tongcheng has defensive walls, and a water moat, but just a militia with minimal actual fighting experience. Luzhou had not only moated walls, but a government garrison. The bandit army certainly has cannon and, given time, could knock down our walls. And they may well have the numbers to storm them, I don’t know.”

  “We don’t know their intentions, either,” said Yizhi. “They could head east and strike against Nanjing. It is only eighty or ninety miles east of Luzhou.” He paused. “It may be just as well that I got the ladies out of Nanjing when I did.”

  “To assault Nanjing, they would need many boats,” said Kongzhao. “They certainly didn’t carry them over the mountains with them!”

  “But Luzhou is on Chaohu Lake, which connects by canals to the Yangtze, opposite Jiujiang and Wuhu. There are boats aplenty.”

  “Unless the government moved them in time. Some of the garrison troops might well have used them to escape the city. And if Luzhou now lacks boats, the logical place to get them would be Anqing. And if the bandits aren’t intending to attack Nanjing, Anqing would still be a very desirable target. It is wealthy for its size; it commands the gap between the Dabie and Huang Mountains, and it is a good place to build a bridge of pontoon boats in order to cross the Yangtze.”

  “Tongcheng is on the direct route from Luzhou to Anqing,” admitted Yizhi. “And Anqing has more shipping than Zongyang and Tongling.” Those were smaller ports, downriver
from Anqing. “But if boats are what they want, then even if they march on Anqing, why would they waste time besieging Tongcheng? It would just give the government more time to move boats out of Anqing, and Zongyang and Tongling to boot!”

  Kongzhao frowned. “They could come to Tongcheng for food or loot. And the bandits will not have a truly unified command. All it takes is one leader with a significant force, and perhaps a couple of cannon, eyeing Tongcheng, and our town is in danger.” He started rummaging through his papers. “I have a map of Tongcheng and the surrounding area. Let me get it out to show our visitors what our strategic situation is.”

  As he did so, Eric Garlow muttered to Mike Song, “Hope this district magistrate isn’t James Bowie at the Alamo. And Fang Kongzhao isn’t Colonel Travis.” Witnessing Mike’s look of incomprehension, he added, “I’ll explain later. It’s an American history reference.”

  At last, Kongzhao gave up. “It will be faster to draw a new one than to find it. Why can’t I find anything here? It’s because the servants keep moving things around, even though I had everything perfectly organized, that’s why!”

  He pulled out a blank sheet of paper and sketched out a map of Tongcheng. “As you see, it is a walled town of square shape, with four gates, one per wall, and a moat surrounding it. There are towers and bastions to reinforce the walls.”

  He spent perhaps another two minutes finishing the sketch and then straightened up. “I have drawn their positions, as you can see. There is hilly ground to the west, and a large south-running stream, the Tongmian River, to the east. Luzhou lies to the north and Anqing to the south.

  “My son says that you have powerful weapons with you. Could you elaborate, so I can think on how to best fit them into the town defenses?”

  Eric thought the man’s expectation that the mission would turn over their cannon to him was a bit presumptuous, but he didn’t raise any objection. There wasn’t much doubt, after all, that if bandits overran the town they’d massacre the visitors as readily as they would any of the townspeople.

  So, he simply motioned for Colonel von Siegroth to answer. “I have two volley guns, with twenty-five rifled barrels apiece. They take a three-man crew. My two gunners and I can get off seven volleys a minute, but since I’ll have to mix them with less experienced men, that will probably drop to three or four volleys.”

  “That’s an amazing rate of fire,” said Kongzhao. “But I imagine that our bullets wouldn’t fit your guns.”

  “They wouldn’t; we use what we call Minié balls. But I have a lot of them, because I was hoping to sell at least one volley gun and a respectable amount of ammunition to your Wuhan Military Commission.”

  “What is their effective range?”

  “We typically use the volley guns at a range of roughly two hundred and fifty yards against cavalry, perhaps somewhat less against infantry.”

  Kongzhao was using his fingers like an imaginary abacus. “They must be devastating in a field battle. At the rate of fire you claim, even one volley gun would deliver four volleys against a full charge; that’s seven hundred bullets. And here, even if they blasted holes in our wall, the cavalry would be slowed by the rubble and would endure additional volleys.”

  “True enough,” said von Siegroth. “The trouble is that since these volley guns are intended for field use, not city defense, their barrels don’t depress very far. They can depress a little, because on a battlefield they might be sited on a hill, but if they are high up on the battlement or a tower and the enemy gets close, they are useless. Which leads to the question, just how high are your walls?”

  “Three zhang,” said Kongzhao. That was ten meters, or thirty-three feet. “Not counting the outer parapet, which is six chi high, with three chi sills for the embrasures.” A chi was one-tenth of a zhang. “Of course, the gatehouses and the corner and observation towers are higher than the walls proper.”

  Colonel von Siegroth nodded. “To cover the ground close to the walls, we’ll probably want to site the volley guns on the walls proper rather than the towers, and even then some modifications may be desirable.

  “Then I have two regimental three-pounders and a ‘short’ twelve-pounder. They don’t have a lot of reach—three hundred yards for the three-pounder and maybe six hundred to twelve hundred yards for the bigger gun—but I do have both solid shot and shrapnel shells for them; again, I hoped to make a sale. The shrapnel shells have time fuses, like your fireworks, and shoot small projectiles in all directions. Firing solid shot, experienced men can get off eight rounds a minute from the three-pounders. They are on field carriages so they too have a problem with firing down at a steep angle from the walls.

  “Eric Garlow has a hunting rifle, and we have rifle grenades for it to fire off. They are somewhat like the shrapnel shells, but less powerful, and the rifles won’t send them as far. Mike Song has a shotgun, and Maarten Vries and I have muskets and musket grenades. All of us who came on the Rode Draak to China have pistols of one sort or another. That’s pretty much it.”

  He didn’t hesitate to make clear to Kongzhao the full defensive capability of the mission. Eric wouldn’t have, either. By now, it was quite clear that men like Kongzhao were officials of a highly civilized country—mandarins, not bandits. The Chinese hadn’t seized the weapons of the Portuguese artillery company which had helped in the defense of the northwestern territories against the Manchu. So why would they behave differently here?

  Von Siegroth leaned against the city wall. “Trouble is, we are short of gunners. We need two experienced men and perhaps four others for the twelve-pounder, and one experienced man and another man or two for the regimentals and the volley guns. I brought two gunners with me, so that’s three experienced men if I am on a crew. Eric Garlow, Mike Song and Maarten Vries have helped out with demonstrations, so they aren’t complete neophytes. We have to fill the rest of the crew slots with your people, and not only have they not seen these guns before, we may have communication problems.”

  Fang Kongzhao nodded. “I will ask around; perhaps a few residents have experience with artillery. Or, if not artillery, with fireworks. But come with me now. I will be sending out a patrol to find out more.”

  “Minister Fang, I don’t know how many physicians there are in Tongcheng, but we have one in our party: Doctor Bartsch. He can help in caring for those who are wounded in the defense of the city. There may also be illness if the siege is a long one.”

  “I thank you for your offer, and I will keep it in mind,” Kongzhao said. “We may have difficulty persuading the residents to accept care from a foreign physician, however. Have him treat your party, first, and if the residents like what they see, no doubt their attitudes will change.”

  “They may also be less picky once they are screaming in agony,” von Siegroth muttered to Eric under his breath.

  * * *

  The two Fangs, Eric, Mike and the colonel walked to the north gate. There, Fang Kongzhao gave last-minute instructions to a patrol that was riding out that gate. The patrol was being led by Sun Lin, who was an expert archer and horseman.

  “Remember,” said Kongzhao, “your goal is to bring back intelligence on the strength and location of the enemy, not to collect heads.”

  “You can count on me, Minister!” Sun Lin replied, his tone as carefree as if he were riding off to a lake to go fishing. “I expect to be collecting heads soon enough. Bye, Yizhi, eat my dust!” And with that he wheeled around and led his party northward.

  * * *

  The ancient military maxim was jianbi qingye: “strengthen the walls and clear the fields.” All day, people who lived in the nearby countryside streamed into the city, carrying what belongings they could. The militia searched and questioned them as they queued in front of the gates; Kongzhao was worried that the bandits might slip spies and saboteurs into the town. There were five guards on each gate at all times, and they were forbidden to carry axes, adzes, chisels, saws or hammers—that is, anything that could be used to disable or des
troy the gate. They were inspected by a militia officer three times during the day, and once at night.

  Within the city, Fang Kongzhao and his appointees commandeered horses, oxen, grain, water, lamp oil, cloth, wood, sinews, bricks, stones, and even roof tiles, which their minions piled up at strategic locations. The collection points for some items were marked by raised flags: green for cloth and wood suitable for construction use, red for fuel and portable stoves, yellow for food, white for weapons and stones, and black for water. When a particular point had a sufficient supply, its flag was taken down.

  Regulations required that there be a clear space twenty paces wide between the city wall and the nearest building, thus providing a ring road for the defenders. Naturally, in days of peace, this area was encroached upon, but now any stalls in the forbidden zone were ruthlessly knocked down.

  Since the uprising, the gentry had purchased weapons for the town armory, and these were taken out and distributed. There were wooden and iron caltrops, spears and halberds, swords and shields, javelins, bows and crossbows, and even catapults and ballistae. The latter, of course, had to be carried or hoisted up to the parapets. So, too, were the “thundersticks”: logs that could be dropped on an enemy and hoisted back up by a windlass. The gatehouses were also equipped with fire screens. These were matted straw or rush curtains attached by a pair of ropes to a long pole, angled as needed to fend off projectiles.

  Outside the city, work crews were busy. Any exposed wood surfaces were plastered with mud. The depth of the moat was checked and the moat was dredged out where that seemed desirable. Anything in the immediate vicinity of the town that might be useful to an attacker was taken inside or destroyed.

  As for the boats that the USE/SEAC party had arrived on, these were sailed back by their crews to Anqing, and presumably would be moved, together with other shipping, to the far side of the Yangtze.