Chapter 183: Defeat (Part 1)

Under the night sky, gunshots and clashes could be heard everywhere, with the scent of blood lingering in the air.
“Attack!”
As the commander of the Song Regiment, Chen Tiansong felt he had arrived at the perfect time. Regiments like his, hastily recruited by the Qing army, would be disbanded as soon as the war ended. Moreover, Tang Jingsong was no wise ruler—petty and more talkative than action-oriented. Following him would never lead to any real advancement.
But times had changed. He had managed to transition from the Qing army to the Black Flag Army. What began as a regiment of just 200 men had grown into a strong and formidable force, its firearms outnumbering those of any Qing regiment in northern Tonkin. All this filled Chen Tiansong with confidence. He no longer saw himself as a 40-year-old old man but as a vibrant young man with nothing impossible.
A day and night of rapid marching left his face covered in sweat, but he didn’t even have time to wipe it away. “Commander Liu ordered our Song Regiment to advance! Brothers, those below—follow me!”
His soldiers had also endured a day and night of hardship. They hadn’t even had dinner, only some dry rations while Chen Tiansong received orders. Half-starved yet full of fighting spirit, each soldier shouted, “Follow the regiment commander! Damn those French bastards!”
“Great!” Chen Tiansong grew proud. “Our regiment is now the most intact infantry unit in the Black Flag Army. In Danfeng, the remnants of the French forces are fighting against our comrades. We will be the deciding factor in victory!”
“Long live!”
The Song Regiment had fought many fierce battles, including last year’s glorious Battle of Shanxi. They knew well that in the Black Flag Army, the highest honor belonged to those units capable of fighting, and it was these same units that expanded fastest during wars.
Now, all units on the battlefield were in chaos, fighting desperately under the starlight. The Song Regiment, arriving from Taiyuan, was the most intact infantry unit in the entire Black Flag Army.
To strengthen their offensive, Liu Yu gathered all remaining troops under his command, including a half-artillery company, his guard company, and even a temporarily armed supply platoon. “The entire army—advance on Danfeng… no, on Hanoi!”
Chen Tiansong shouted loudly, “It doesn’t matter if our Song Regiment is wiped out. There are still four infantry regiments from Taiyuan. Even if we’re destroyed, they can still defeat the French!”
The entire infantry regiment vanished into the night sky, full of fighting spirit—no French force could withstand their attack.
From a high vantage point, Liu Yu watched the chaotic battlefield. Now, only a dozen guards armed with pistols remained by his side, along with advisors like Liu Suiyun. “Has Chen Tiansong launched the attack?”
“The Song Regiment has gone up!” Liu Suiyun was surprised by Liu Yu’s heavy investment. “If we exhaust all our troops, who will deal with the enemies in the north?”
“Then we’ll just exhaust them!” Liu Yu stared at the battlefield, where deafening shouts of battle echoed. The French were no pushovers either; they launched counterattacks from all directions.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!” Several stray bullets flew by not far away. Liu Yu said quietly, “If we can defeat the French, those mere demon hunters are nothing to me!”
“Our enemies will be ten times, a hundred times stronger than the Tartars, and a hundred times more cunning!”
Liu Yu’s voice carried a hint of confusion, “But we will surely win, right?”
“Yes, we will win!” replied a guard eagerly. “We will definitely win.”
……
“Boom… Boom…”
“Bang… Bang…”
“Thud… Thud…”
In the night sky, sounds couldn’t be used as a basis to judge the course of battle. Although so far, less than a thousand troops from the Black Flag Army had voluntarily joined the Danfeng position, and only seven or eight hundred still had fighting strength, in the eyes of Erminga and Bissel, the number of troops deployed by the Black Flag Army was three to four times that amount.
The deployment of the Songzi Battalion, however, created a completely different impression. When an enhanced battalion rushed into the battlefield, it was like a torrential wave.
The resistance from a few remnants of the French army only provoked an even greater reaction from this fierce force. The soldiers roared as they torn the defiant French troops to pieces, while some small units that charged in turned to attack the Songzi Battalion, making it even sharper like a cutting edge.
They kept charging until they reached the positions held by Bissel’s defense force before slowing down slightly, but soon resumed their attacks amid a hail of gunfire.
Bissel’s defense force had built high-quality fortifications, but he never expected enemies to launch attacks at night at such a great cost. The two sides engaged in close combat, with the sounds of fighting shaking the heavens.
They fought using French, Chinese, Algerian, Vietnamese, and many other languages. The French never expected so many enemies to surge in at once: “We need reinforcements… We need reinforcements!”
“The Black Flag bandits have long used their favored tactic: the human wave tactic. This barbaric Eastern warfare method often achieved great success on the Vietnamese battlefield due to our army’s limited firepower. For example, in the Shanxi campaign, we deployed less than ten thousand troops, while the Black Flag Army had over twenty infantry regiments (as proven by General Gubao’s battle report)…
I must clarify that our defeat at the Hanoi battlefield was not due to faulty command, but rather because the enemy had a huge numerical advantage. Any effort we made was suppressed by their vast human resources.
In that campaign, the Black Flag Army initially deployed around thirty infantry regiments, with a total force of about 120,000—ten times that of our army…
When our army was routed and joined forces with Bissel’s defense force, the Chinese once again used their favored human wave tactic. That night, about ten infantry regiments, totaling 30,000 enemies, launched a tidal attack. The enemy left countless corpses in front of their lines, but they used large numbers of Vietnamese people as cannon fodder to repeatedly assault our positions…”

My valiant French troops repelled the enemy’s attacks more than thirty times in a row. Just as I saw with my own eyes, the enemy left no less than seven thousand corpses on the battlefield (others who participated in this battle can confirm the accuracy of my observations). However, due to the enemy’s overwhelming numbers, especially after midnight, when an additional five infantry regiments of about twenty thousand men arrived from Taiyuan, our defenses were finally broken…
Ermingarde, 1884! Paris, “Explanations on Several Issues Concerning the Battle of Hanoi”