The Majestic Decisive Battle That Opens a New Era (2)
The front formed by the two nations' combined hosts of two hundred and eighty thousand stretched long and even from east to west. And yet, though both sides' commanders had chosen this ground with painstaking care for a single, crushing blow, the vast earth still bore the traces of long human habitation, and a host of features lay before them.
Wherever one looked, the field on which the two armies faced each other was a broad plain of rolling grassland. But even across that sealike, even horizon, sudden irregularities of ground rose here and there.
Low ridges and hills. Marshes that barely swallowed a man's ankle. Sparse thickets whose meager green could scarcely cool the sweat and heat from a soldier's brow. Pasture fences punched through by the years. Tiny hamlets the refugees had already fled. Crooked dead shrubs and abandoned farmhouses.
And what both sides' commanders and staff prized above all was that salient rising from the green earth spread before their eyes.
"The vanguard Third Battalion will seize that farmstead and hold it as a strongpoint."
"The Fourth and Fifth Battalions, our neighboring units, will move at once to support the vanguard Fifth Regiment. The First and Second Battalions are to be committed to them immediately — they are our highest-priority available assets. You will therefore secure the ridge and wait below it."
"The regimental artillery company will deploy every gun it can bring to bear along the fence line on the left, and do it quickly. You must be in position in time to give our neighboring units fire support when they need it. Close-range fire support is essential if we are to break the enemy's ranks."
Orders and councils of war generally ran in that vein. Behind the ranks of soldiers who had already finished their preparations, lips cracking dry beneath a sun that grew hotter by the minute, the colonels and battalion commanders, the company and platoon officers, dressed their lines with care and waited for the staff messengers. The moment those long-awaited riders arrived and handed over the written orders, the units moved.
"Advance at once along the lane. Our battalion's objective is that farmhouse with the collapsed roof."
"Shall I give First Company the job of clearing the way?"
"Scouts? Don't be ridiculous. We can see every move they make and they can see ours. No point wasting time. Battalion — advance!"
The orders the messenger delivered were carried out at once. On a battlefield whose features were already fixed, unnecessary maneuvers and wasted effort were simply discarded. The battalion commander drew the saber at his hip, set it against his shoulder, and stepped forward — and with a roar of Manse! the entire battalion surged like a wave of blue. It was the Republic that rose first.
"The Korean army is moving!"
"Two regiments observed to the southeast!"
"Movement on their right as well — one regiment!"
"Enemy movement spotted at the outposts!"
The tense reports of the sentries who had been watching all this reached Qing headquarters in an instant. Nie Zhichao, the acting commander and the real power in the Beiyang Army, paused a moment, then gave his orders.
"Send three Liaodong battalions forward as a counterstroke. Commit one additional battalion to the east to block the enemy's expected advance and buy time. Instruct them to open fire the instant the enemy reaches the boundary line — and if the fighting should degenerate into a melee so fierce that neither side can even count its dead, they are to take cover immediately at the foot of the hill and call for support from the flanks."
"Understood!"
Having dispatched a pair of messengers toward the battalions already standing ready, Nie Zhichao turned to the other staff officers of the headquarters and impressed the point upon them as well.
"The abandoned farmsteads and ruined villages that sit in the center of both armies, the fenced hill and the thickets that run from it — those are the most vital strongpoints. On ground that offers no proper cover, whichever side takes those places into its operational control will decide the course of the fighting in the center. Soldiers tire quickly in battle. The mere existence of a place to rest, even for a moment, and of cover to shelter behind, will decide the outcome of every small melee."
"Yes, General."
"The marshes and mires that open in patches behind the thickets matter as well. That is the most dangerous stretch of ground behind the hill. If we lose the hill to their assault, or if they take this high ground from us and we fall back, that ground will seize us by the ankles. Therefore, if the flanks cannot support us and the reserves are insufficient, it is better to die fighting on the hill than to retreat."
Moving hundreds of wooden horse tokens across a hastily drawn, crude tactical map as he issued his orders, Nie Zhichao turned to explain a portion of the plan even to Zhang Zhidong, who had been crumpled off to one side like a discarded sack.
"Your Excellency — as Liaodong Defense Commissioner, I would ask that you take one Beiyang Army regiment, the instructor company, and the reorganized Shengjing garrison, and support the right wing."
At Nie Zhichao's words, Zhang Zhidong drew himself up straight beside him, traced a finger down the position he had been assigned on the map, and answered.
"From this very position, you mean?"
"Yes. If you look, the Korean army's present movements imply two things, broadly speaking. First, they mean to put their weight in the center and drive us farther back. Second, the flanking forces that have already set out from Fushun and Panjin will arrive at the opportune moment and catch our army in a vise. They will either offer us terms at the instant our will to fight is at its weakest, or they will end this war with the most violent offensive they can mount to that same purpose."
The difficulties the Qing command had to weigh could, in truth, be reduced to two. Either they would settle the issue in a contest of strength with the Korean center that had burst from the city streets, before the enemy's supporting armies arrived — or they would be encircled by the entire Korean host once it came up, and forced to hunker down like a tortoise in a grinding, bloody struggle of attrition that would bleed both sides white.
"Therefore we must continually provoke outpost fights and small-scale clashes, enough to take some of the edge off that overconfident enemy vanguard."
Only then could they sow chaos before the enemy's spearhead found the gaps in their own ranks.
"The heads assembled here alone number two hundred and eighty thousand. Add the refugees and deserters and the rest, and this is a still more chaotic stretch of earth."
Both armies, after all, could command a front stretching for tens of kilometers only through traditional specialist personnel and a handful of limited telegraph lines. However brilliant Korea's commanders and their foreign advisers might be, it was a certainty that they would find it exceedingly difficult, in so short a time, to drive operations down to the battalion and company level and control every careful movement.
"But the same is true of our own army. That is why, before the battle begins in earnest, we have already impressed the highest-priority strongpoints and the key features of the field upon our front-line commanders and officers."
"The guns are in battery. Precious little, but we have the minimum firepower needed to introduce a few variables with a modest dagger."
"You have done well, General."
So Nie Zhichao explained, and Nie Shicheng, who had only just finished reorganizing the remnant artillery that had barely survived, joined them.
"We cannot be driven any farther back from Xuyan."
The main battlefield was northern Shenyang, near the city itself, among abandoned farmsteads and a scattering of suburban villages — but the Qing high command, which had pulled its headquarters and supply depots still farther north to Xuyan for safety, found even this simple, straightforward Korean advance tactically oppressive.
"The farther we are pushed north from Shenyang, the more our fighting strength and available assets will fall away in real time against our inadequate supply capacity, and drinking water and rations will grow exponentially scarcer."
"Starvation, then."
"That is why the enemy keeps pressing us north without rest."
Those were the replies of Nie Shicheng and Zhang Zhidong, respectively. They nodded in agreement, and at the same time they recognized the grave predicament of the senior commanders with whom even communication had already grown difficult.
"And if we destroy ourselves in the empty north, our army of a hundred thousand, having lost its assembly point, will vanish like so much dust. What the enemy is after is the true annihilation of our Liaodong army."
Nie Zhichao's fist crashed down on the table, and under his gaze dozens of wooden horses and the square tokens that marked the positions leapt into the air and scattered as if they had exploded.
"There is one front, but we will divide this battlefield into three. It is simple. The center, and the left and right wings. The center is the main body — it will take the Korean army's fire upon itself and absorb every last bit of it. We are the bait. We are the anvil."
And the sacrifice would be enormous. The entire elite of the Beiyang Army — every division and every regiment — would have to be committed to the center.
He shoved every wooden horse that represented the Beiyang Army into the center, then spoke again to Zhang Zhidong.
"The detached force I have assigned to Your Excellency the Commissioner is the hammer."
"The hammer?"
"With the modest fire support General Nie has put in order, Your Excellency must break the Korean allied reinforcements advancing from Fushun. While the center and the elite Beiyang regiments endure the enemy's shell and rifle fire with their own bodies, you must defeat the enemy that has marched from the Fushun direction, push onto the high ground, and take it."
Zhang Zhidong, who had been listening with narrowed eyes as Nie Zhichao moved the pieces across the tactical map, suddenly brightened.
"So you wish us to seize the high ground and, through the opening that creates, strike the French supporting batteries."
"Exactly that. If we are to win — no, if we are even to hold — we must first neutralize the most powerful fire the enemy possesses. We have no batteries that can answer theirs, so we need a bold stroke, however unreasonable it may be."
"And that swift, audacious resolve is precisely what I possess. I understand well enough what you intend, General."
And so the Qing army, sketching the rough framework of the operation, gradually gave concrete shape to the decisive battle on the plain.
Some thirty minutes after both sides had committed themselves to battle, the first clash erupted.
"Enemy!"
At a soldier's cry, a Second Lieutenant who had not yet shed the look of a Confucian scholar hastily thrust out his sword and shouted.
"First Company, Second Platoon, forward! Lead rank — halt!"
"Front rank, fix bayonets! Second rank, take aim!"
At the officer's command, the senior Non-Commissioned Officer, the Bugyo, and the drill instructors hurried up and down the platoon's left and right files, driving the men into place. In answer, the first ranks of the platoons and companies dropped to a kneeling fire position with bayonets fixed, while the ranks behind them stood, stocks to their shoulders, and took aim at the Qing columns advancing in silence beneath the Yellow Dragon banners.
"Take aim!"
"Bugyo, don't fire yet! Hold!"
"Prepare to fire! Finger on the trigger only!"
"Aim! Aim!"
The shouts and nagging of the officers and Non-Commissioned Officers beat without pause against the soldiers' ears, and a hot wind stung the napes of their necks. It was a season that should have produced nothing but irritation — humid and hot rather than cold — and yet the men in the lead, who had at last come face to face with the enemy, felt their whole bodies tremble.
"Take aim!"
The Second Lieutenant, who was unmistakably a pale scholar, hoisted a saber that looked too heavy for his thin arm high into the sky. The blue-edged blade caught the sun and flashed in every direction, and here and there a soldier lost his concentration.
"Hold... hold... hold..."
Until not long ago — no, until only a year ago — he had been nothing more than an idle Korean gentleman whose name was merely entered on the rolls of the Alliance Party, the Dongmaenghoe, the local people's assemblies, and the village reform offices. He had done what everyone else was doing: joined the central power that had spread like a fashion, and followed the current of the times.
But the leadership of the Dongmaenghoe, which had seized power through the spirit of the age called the Three Principles of the People, through a revolution that had shaken heaven and earth, was nothing like the rulers who had come before.
They had given even men like him — mere underlings, mere opportunists — official posts from time to time, had lifted them up, had dressed their hasty leap onto the current of the age as the loyal service of men who had made a "decision to save the nation" for the "young Tongnyeong," and in the end they had put a sword in his hand.
In other words: stand at the very front and set an example for others, in proportion to the honor the nation and the court have shown you — a thoroughly Neo-Confucian attitude.
Those stray thoughts lasted barely ten seconds. In that brief instant the Qing bastards were already upon him, almost in his face, and the Second Lieutenant shuddered — then drove his saber down like a thunderbolt and roared.
"F-fire!!!"
"Open fire!"
Crack! Crack-crack-crack-crack!
A roar like beans bursting in a pan, and a great cloud of black-powder smoke came boiling into their faces.
"Ngh!"
And the Second Lieutenant who had given the order squeezed his eyes shut. Pain would lash through his whole body at any moment. He had given the order to fire from the very front of the leading rank — now it was his turn. The enemy's bullets would punch straight through him.
...
He had the illusion that the screams had come before the gunshots — but it was his own side that had fired first. So the Second Lieutenant, who had been holding his breath with his eyes shut, opened them again. No distant reports, no muzzle flashes, had answered from the other side.
The movements of the Non-Commissioned Officers and soldiers rushing back and forth before his eyes came slowly into focus. The men were mechanically tearing open cartridge packets and ramming them into their rifles, while a Non-Commissioned Officer, cocking an American six-shooter by feel without even looking, was blasting away at the front.
"Reload!"
"Move it, move it, you slugs!"
"Platoon leader, next order!"
Startled back to his senses by a Bugyo's prodding, the Second Lieutenant stared through the thinning fog at the Qing soldiers lying fallen, and his mouth fell open.
He bit his tongue at the sight — astonishing and terrible at once — and hurried to give the order. They had fired first. They had the advantage.
"Ugh — after another volley, commence independent fire!"
"Volley, then independent fire!"
The Non-Commissioned Officers and Bugyo who took his order hammered the ranks again, driving the soldiers on, and the same thunderous crash as before burst out toward the front.
Before the pale scholar Second Lieutenant's eyes, the red flesh that had burst from the crowns of the fallen Qing soldiers like split watermelons shimmered and swam.
In the flowing blood, the battle had only just begun.