Chapter 596: Jiangxia Surrenders
The defenders of Binyang Gate had long lost their fighting spirit.

They can only eat one or two bowls of porridge a day now. The reason they are still defending the city is not because these soldiers are loyal to Zuo Liangyu and would rather die than surrender, but because many people are so hungry that their legs are weak and they can’t walk, and they would rather die on the city wall.

Before the Fifth Corps launched the general attack, the patrolling Qi soldiers and the defenders on the city walls shouted at each other. At first, the Ming army could still curse the Tartars and tell them to go back to Liaodong.

Later, they didn’t even have the energy to curse, and begged Qi Bing to give them some fried noodles and sugar.

The Qi soldiers asked the Ming army why they didn’t open the city and surrender. The hungry and dizzy Ming soldiers put their hands on their necks and said that if they surrendered, General Li would kill them and their families.

When there was no hope of breaking out and no reinforcements arrived, Ma Jinzhong also sent envoys secretly to the Fifth Corps position. The envoys asked Pu Gang to give them a way out and make way for them. They would immediately retreat to Nanjing or Hunan, and would not attack the Qi army again if they met on the battlefield in the future.

Pu Gang rejected the request, but he did not kill Ma Jinzhong’s envoy and let the envoy return to the city.

~~~
North of Jiangxia City.

The remaining Ming troops ran back and forth in Binyangmen City like headless flies. The servants of Li Cheng and Ma Jinzhong desperately drove them away with sticks and barely stopped the Ming army from fleeing.

“Why are you running? Generals Li and Ma are still here! Are you here to attend the funeral?”

The head servant raised his sword and blocked the hungry Ming army, shouting angrily:

“There were five thousand Tartars, and General Li killed over four thousand. I just counted them up there, and there are only a few hundred of them, all here to die. Hold on! There’s plenty of white bread and bone soup, as well as wine and women. Go! Hold on!”

The words of the head servant were interrupted several times by the divine fire crows whistling over the city wall. When he finished speaking, the remaining servants rushed forward. They were not going to defend the city, but to drive away the soldiers and civilians who had pale faces and unsteady gait.

At Binyang Gate, a group of soldiers carrying crude ladders quickly approached the city walls. They were all dressed in tattered clothes, resembling the refugees who had attacked the city walls at night a few days ago. The Ming soldiers on the city walls were unconcerned by this rabble; after all, refugees had attacked Binyang Gate at night at least three times before. They grinned at the “refugees” on the ladders, ready to chop them down once they scaled the city walls. It would be a shame to expose them now and get hit by stray bullets.

More than a hundred refugees quickly climbed to the top of the city wall. Without waiting for the Ming army to come and chop them down, they formed a small square formation, with spearmen, swordmen and shieldmen outside and musketeers hiding in the middle, shooting at the Ming army through the gaps between their comrades in front.

“Boom!”

After two rounds of volleys, dozens of Ming army corpses fell to the ground. A Ming army captain holding a shield and armor was directly pierced by a mini bullet, with his internal organs spilling all over the ground, and the terrifying big hole in his stomach could still be seen.

The Ming army rushing in the front fell down in unison, and the wounded soldiers who were not killed were immediately stabbed to death one by one by the spearmen who caught up from behind.

The remaining Ming troops finally realized that these killers in front of them were not ordinary refugees at all, but real soldiers.

When the untrained young men saw that the Qi army had already entered the city, they shouted at the top of their lungs:

“The Tartars have reached the city walls! The Tartars are coming… The Tartars have broken through!”

The last sentence “The Tartars have broken into the city” directly broke the defense of the Ming army soldiers who had been afraid of the Qi army for many years.

The defenders on the Binyang Gate city wall fled backwards, and some of those who moved slowly were directly killed by the front-line Qi troops.

Some frightened Ming soldiers climbed up the steps to the top of the city wall and desperately attacked the growing number of Qi troops with muskets and stones.

At this time, the sound of Qi army artillery fire outside the city became increasingly intense, and the shouts of killing rang out from outside the city. The head servant gave a signal, and without a word, the servants began to cut down the last Ming soldiers. Compared with the fierce suppression of the Qi army’s artillery fire, the Ming army’s resistance seemed weak and powerless. Their artillery was completely silenced at this time, because the gunpowder and sulfur stored in the city had been exhausted. The fire not long ago not only burned thousands of shi of grain, but also set off two gunpowder depots. It was said that the fire was set by Qi spies.

At five minutes past seven in the morning, twelve giant ladders arrived at the foot of Jiangxia City one after another. When the ladders approached the city wall, they were almost unstoppable. The Ming army on the top of Binyang Gate fell into despair. Their artillery became scrap metal, and the sporadic muskets had no killing effect on such large siege equipment. The lead bullets hitting the surface of the ladders were just tickling.

The weapons for defending the city, such as gold juice, ash bottles, and wolf-tooth hammers, that were originally prepared on the top of the city wall, are now useless because most of the defenders have already escaped.

A group of servants came up the steps of the city wall and hacked and killed the fleeing men until the blade of the sword in the hand of the chief servant was bent. Then he stopped. At this time, the top of the city wall was empty, with only some injured soldiers who could not move.

In the distance, a few Qi army sword and shield soldiers jumped onto the top of the city wall from the top of the ladder, and a few musketeers climbed directly up from the long ladder on the city wall.

“Drive them away! For every Tartar you kill, the master will reward you with twenty taels of silver!”

More than two hundred elite servants, armed with long swords and heavy axes, swept across the city wall like a black whirlwind. They were divided into groups of a dozen or so, surrounding the Qi army who had just climbed the city wall, and hacked and killed them indiscriminately like cutting vegetables and melons.

As more and more shield carts and ladder trucks arrived at the city wall, more and more soldiers climbed up the wall. When more than 200 servants tried to escape, they were quickly submerged in a black wave.

On the 27th, the remnants of Qin Jianxun’s Fourth Corps transferred from Shandong also joined the siege and attacked Jiangxia City from the east.

That night, Jiangxia City was captured.

The Fifth Corps was instantly in an uproar!
The soldiers, instructors and commanding officers of the two corps took off their hats, waved flags, pumped their fists, applauded and cheered.

The huge raging waves seemed to be about to turn into a tsunami, sweeping tens of thousands of soldiers into the sky.

The day after Jiangxia City fell, the defenders of Wuchang City fled without a fight.

On the morning of the 28th, news came that Ma Jinzhong and Li Cheng had been captured alive.

~~~~~
Xing Zhongyi brought Liu Yi out of the central army tent. The two of them rode in a carriage and walked along Binyang Gate towards the mansion where Ma Jinzhong and Li Cheng were imprisoned.

The city of Jiangxia was as if it had been washed clean by a rainstorm. The streets and alleys were clean, all the shops and food stores were closed, and the people looked like mummies dug out from the ancient tombs of Loulan, so thin and haggard that they were no longer human.

There were rows of coffins parked in front of the Jiangxia General’s Mansion. Many of the coffins had not been painted yet and were still the khaki color of the wood. Although the weather was not hot, Xing Zhongyi could already smell the faint stench of corpses.

“Did the Ming army restrain themselves?”

Liu Yi covered his nose and said, “Why should they care? The combat representatives brought people to move the coffin, and the coffin was temporarily made by the carpenter in the workshop.” After entering the general’s office, a guard came out to greet the instructor, and Li Cheng and Ma Jinzhong were locked up in the backyard.

Several people walked through the lobby together. The floor was a mess, with broken silver and antique calligraphy and paintings thrown around casually.

The pacification soldiers, straw raincoat guards and civil affairs officials were counting and making a list. Xing Zhongyi accidentally saw a landscape painting signed by Mi Fu, and it was thrown under the table.

A civil affairs officer came over and whispered something. Xing Zhongyi asked in surprise, “Haven’t you found the silver yet?”

The civil official nodded, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as tired as the soldiers who climbed the city wall.

“Come on, follow me to the backyard to meet these two loyal ministers of the Ming Dynasty.”

A group of people came to the backyard.

A group of guards, armed with long swords, surrounded the two generals. Li Cheng and Ma Jinzhong had been stripped of their armor and were curled up on the ground in their thin clothes, untied. Li Cheng was fat and fair-skinned, looking like a kind-hearted countryman, a kind-hearted elder.

Ma Jinzhong is a thin man and not very tall.

Seeing a high-ranking official coming in, Li Cheng immediately stood up and politely asked Xing Zhongyi to sit down.

Ma Jinzhong is a thin man and not very tall.

“sit.”

The guards brought two chairs. Li Cheng was about to sit down when the instructor said coldly:

“Li Cheng, during the Battle of Xuzhou, you were Zuo Liangyu’s deputy general. How many of us did you kill? Come on, chop him up right here!”

Two guards held down General Li without saying a word, while the other guard swung his goose-feather knife and struck him down.

Blood splattered all over Ma Jinzhong, and his body went limp and he slid off the chair.

Xing Zhongyi touched the bloodstains on his uniform and said to Ma Jinzhong with a smile, “General Ma, sit down and talk.”

The surrounding guards drew out their pistols, put their fingers on the triggers, and looked at the surrendered general with sharp eyes.

Xing Zhongyi stared at Ma Jinzhong and complimented him:
“The Nanzhili official report compares General Ma to Tian Dan and Zhang Xun. He held the isolated city and lived up to Zuo Liangyu. I admire him!”

Ma Jinzhong quickly said, “I am just a soldier. The commander-in-chief asked me to defend Jiangxia, so I will do so.”

“However,” Xing Zhongyi’s expression changed, “the Marshal Zuo, to whom you are loyal, has repeatedly been an enemy of our Great Qi. Last year in Xuzhou, he massacred over 10,000 of our people—”

Ma Jinzhong’s face showed panic.

Xing Zhongyi waved his hand and said, “I know. You had no involvement in the Xuzhou incident, which is why you’re still alive. Your commander-in-chief has fled to who knows where. The reinforcements he promised you never arrived, and you stubbornly resisted, leaving tens of thousands of people starving with you. Oh, and you didn’t starve.”

Xing Zhongyi’s expression suddenly became serious:
“You set fire outside Wusheng Gate and demolished people’s houses in Binyang, leaving countless people homeless. Did Marshal Zuo also ask you to do this?”

“Sinners have no choice but to do it. Sinners only know how to win the battle.” Ma Jinzhong replied.

Xing Zhongyi chuckled: “The reason I came here is to see your true heart. If you say that, I can only leave.”

“You’re probably thinking that while we hold out in Jiangxia, Marshal Zuo will set up ambushes outside, and then, with the help of our internal and external forces, we can wipe out our Fifth Corps in one fell swoop. Then, when it comes to the merits, you’ll still be the one who gets the most, right?”

“I, the sinner, absolutely do not have such intentions. I swear to heaven, if you think so, your entire family will die!”

“You don’t have to swear these vicious oaths. If they come true, innocent people will be implicated.” Xing Zhongyi stared at Ma Jinzhong, making Ma Jinzhong’s scalp tingle.

“The Emperor is merciful. As long as you sincerely repent and confess your sins, he will forgive you. I swear to heaven on this. Killing people in war is nothing, but causing tens of thousands of people to suffer and nearly causing cannibalism in Jiangxia is your fault!”

Ma Jinzhong’s psychological defenses completely collapsed.

“I’m guilty!”

“What crime?” Xing Zhongyi didn’t give him any time to think or breathe.

Li Cheng’s head had been tanned and placed in a box. The soldier brought the box to the instructor. Xing Zhongyi took a look at the head and spat:
“It would be too easy for you to die! Send it immediately to the Emperor’s Central Military Camp for His Majesty’s inspection.”

Ma Jinzhong’s tongue trembled, and he said quickly:
“I am guilty. I shouldn’t have been an enemy of Da Qi. I shouldn’t have worked for Zuo Liangyu! I shouldn’t have killed so many people.”

Xing Zhongyi’s face was gloomy and he said nothing.

“I have an eighty-year-old mother at home and a crying little daughter. If the Qi state can show mercy and allow me to save my life and return home to take care of my family, I will never again fight in wars and will only be a good citizen.”

At the end of his speech, Xing Zhongyi stood up, and Ma Jinzhong subconsciously stepped back.

The instructor patted Ma Jinzhong on the shoulder like a godfather and said kindly, “General Ma, I’m very pleased that you have reformed. You have been pardoned. Now, tell me, where is the hidden silver?”

Ma Jinzhong immediately knelt on the ground and said, “Sir, the three million silver taels are at the General’s Office, in…”

(End of this chapter)