Fox of France

While wooing others to join the alliance, Joseph made the factory work overtime to produce weapons to provide to Joubert and the others, while constantly telling Napoleon the news.

According to the views of the two brothers, the French army equipped with Mini rifles is no longer able to resist the Austrian army. Even though the northern legion is far inferior to the Italian legion in terms of military pay, their morale is also inferior to that of the Italian legion. That is by no means something the Austrians can resist.

However, it is not a matter of a day or two for the Northern Legion and other equipment, changing equipment, and then forming combat effectiveness. Joseph, who has done a lot of staff work, can easily judge the preparation of the Northern Army just by looking at the status of the order. This can't be faked, even Joubert can't hide it from Joseph.

In this way, when Joubert will have the ability to launch an attack, Napoleon is also very clear.

Napoleon decided to cross the Alps again, approach Vienna, and force Austria to surrender when Joubert launched an attack to contain the Austrians.

But before that, he had to do one more thing, and that was to blackmail His Majesty the Pope.

If there is anyone who hates revolutionary France the most among the living people in this world, Pope Pius VI is definitely among the best. When the new regime required Catholic clergy to take an oath of allegiance to the government in 1791, Pius VI formally denounced the Clergy Civil Organization Act, blaming the revolutionary authorities. When the Anti-French League was established in 1793, Pius VI also played a big role in it.

And when Napoleon defeated the armies of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Austria in Italy, all the small and large countries on the Italian peninsula were trembling, afraid to sweat, and even came to bribe Napoleon. However, the iron-headed Pope Pius VI still remained hostile to the French Republic.

Napoleon also sent a note to the Papal States with the same content as he had sent to the Duchy of Parma and the Republic of Venice. But the Pope would not send someone to explain to a gangster like this. Not only did he not bribe Napoleon to buy peace, but he even ordered Napoleon to be expelled from the church, and Napoleon was expelled from the church.

To tell the truth, Napoleon didn't care if he broke his family and went out to teach or not. If you want to talk about breaking out of school, the whole of France is now out of school. But the Pope's reckless attitude made Napoleon very unhappy.

"Why would the Pope dare to jump around in front of me? I don't think he wants to go to Avignon to recuperate? He doesn't even look at how many divisions he has?"

To say that the pope at this time is much stronger than the later pope. At that time, the territory directly under the Holy See was not just the palm-sized Vatican, but the entire Papal State of Rome. At that time, the pope's subordinates were by no means only a hundred Swiss guards, but actually had a small army.

But this army, compared to Napoleon's army, is really not worth mentioning. As soon as Napoleon gave an order, the army began to gather quickly. The soldiers were full of righteous indignation denouncing the Pope's crimes, cursing him for falling into the fire pit that Dante was said to have seen with his own eyes; at the same time, they were also discussing with smiles how much spoils they could gain from this expedition. So their morale increased even more.

"Take the Pope back to Avignon!"

Such shouts can be heard everywhere in the army. The soldiers were high-spirited and vowed to destroy the lair of the reactionaries and plant the revolutionary flag on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

After receiving the news that the French army was preparing to go south, the Papal State was in chaos. The priests ran back and forth holding the crucifix in their hands, encouraging people to fight bravely for the motherland and their faith. In the end, Pope Pius VI put together an army of more than 10,000 people to fight against the demons from France.

Pius VI blessed this army and predicted that they would be able to destroy the French devil under the blessing of God. But the Pope must have forgotten one thing, that is: Whenever there is a conflict between France and the Holy See, God will firmly stand on the side of France! You know, France is God's filial son; the Holy See, at best, is a gatekeeper to God's family. Otherwise, why are there two keys painted on the flag of the Papal State?

Sure enough, after hearing the news that the French army was approaching, the army organized by the Holy See immediately staged an uprising, announcing that they had long wanted to stand on the side of the revolution. So the French army went straight to the city of Rome without firing a single shot. The Pope had to flee Rome, and sent someone to submit to Napoleon.

If the Pope had succumbed to Napoleon earlier, Napoleon's appetite would not have been particularly large, at most two million francs (the Directorate has reformed the currency and replaced the livre with French francs.) The problem can be solved. But now, since the pope does not eat fine wine for toasting, the amount of fine wine is naturally different from that of toasting. After all, it costs money to use the army. And as long as the army is used, the money obtained must be recorded, and a share must be given to the French government.

So Napoleon opened his mouth like a lion. He faced the Pope's envoy and stretched out five fingers.

"Five million?" The envoy said in astonishment, "Your Excellency, is this too much?"

"Five million?" Jourdan said in astonishment, "Only five million? We have an army of one hundred thousand here, and each soldier only costs fifty francs on average? We traveled all the way from Paris. Come here, and you send us away for fifty francs? How dare you speak! Dreaming!"

Of course, the French army of the Italian Legion did not have 100,000 people. Even if the Italian servant army and even the army that had just "revolted" on the battlefield were counted, there were definitely not so many people.

"Then what the hell..."

"If it's less than 50 million, don't open your mouth! We'll get it ourselves!" Murat on the side also chimed in.

"But, where does the Holy See have so much money?"

"That's your business!"

"If you don't have money, valuable things are fine!"

"That is, paintings, sculptures, gold and silver products, and all kinds of holy objects, we can all accept them-but don't deceive us with fakes!"

Those French officers began to talk about how to help the envoy of the Papal State figure out how to get the 50 million francs. This is really a group of helpful people.

In the end, the Holy See finally reached a peace with Napoleon with 30 million francs in cash (all gold and silver coins of the same value), and a large number of artworks, and then the French army left the Papal State with satisfaction.

The soldiers will continue to send back to the country the temporarily inexhaustible military pay they get. Immediately there was a legend in their hometown that XX went out with General Napoleon for a round, and had enough money to buy a house, land and marry a wife.

Some soldiers who made enough money left the team and returned to their hometowns, but more soldiers who heard the news and were full of desire for victory, and more precisely for the spoils of victory, joined Napoleon's troops . When Napoleon had just crossed the Alps, his army was only about 40,000, but now, there are already 50,000 combat troops that can be used for expeditions.

According to the information provided in Joseph's letter, Napoleon judged that Joubert's offensive should start soon. He also started his own preparations.

In September 1796, in the bleak autumn wind, Napoleon's army left Lombardy and began to attack Vienna, the capital of Austria.

In the Battle of Castillen, after Napoleon defeated the 40,000 Austrian army head-on in less than half a day with 20,000 troops and less than 2,000 casualties, Austria sent his most outstanding general, Archduke Karl, from The Rhine front moved to Lombardy to guard against a possible invasion.

After the Archduke Karl learned about Napoleon's army from the retreating officers and soldiers, he was so anxious that he could hardly sleep at night. No one dares to treat this information as nonsense anymore. But if the intelligence is true. However, Archduke Karl discovered that it meant that the French didn't need any more tactics when fighting him, and they had almost nothing to do when they hit him head-on.

"This really means that the French army is under ten thousand and invincible!" Archduke Karl thought so.

Since "war in the wild is absolutely impossible", the only option is to "stick to the infant city". Fortunately, marching from Lombardy to Vienna also had to cross the Alps. This also meant that Napoleon's army could not carry too many and heavy cannons. From this point of view, "Infant City Sticking to It" seems to be a good idea.

Of course, Grand Duke Karl couldn't do the method of defending the city by blocking the city gate with bricks. He knows that this is self-damage to the ability to fight back. Even if the enemy army bypasses such a city, there will be no serious consequences.

Archduke Karl set up some strongholds on the mountain road, but these strongholds could not stop Napoleon, because the mountains were steep, and the Austrians couldn't get the cannons to those places, and they couldn't put much supplies there, and they couldn't last long.

In addition, Napoleon has a guide who is familiar with the terrain. Those Italians who have benefited, and even the Austrians who are looking forward to "dividing the land is really busy", are willing to help Napoleon lead the way. The stragglers of the French army are strong, playing interspersed in this kind of terrain, can interspersed with the Austrian army. Therefore, these strongholds have a greater role in delaying the French army and gaining more preparation time for the Austrian army behind.

And on the way out of the mountain to Vienna, Austria tried its best to build a series of large and small bastions.

According to Grand Duke Karl's thinking, if Napoleon gnawed at one bastion after another, then Grand Duke Karl felt that Napoleon would definitely suffer. But if Napoleon dared to bypass these bastions, the cavalry relying on these bastions could continue to harass and even cut off Napoleon's logistics line.

Relying on the timing of Napoleon's fortune in Italy, Austria barely completed the bastion group, although these bastions were rushed out and the quality was poor. But with these things, Archduke Karl felt that he finally had the confidence to defeat Napoleon.