Fox of France

Early the next morning, the Russian-Austrian coalition launched a tentative attack just like the French position. First of all, it is naturally shelling. Generally speaking, the purpose of shelling is to destroy various obstacles in front of the enemy's position and cause certain damage to the enemy's personnel.

The same is naturally true of the shelling of the Russian-Austrian coalition forces. In front of the French army's positions, there are many wooden horses and other things used to hinder the cavalry's movement. They are naturally the targets of shelling. In addition, the small earthen walls piled up by the French army in front of the trench can also be bombarded with cannonballs. One click, maybe it can cause certain losses to the French army?

Of course, this is just a fantasy of the Russian-Austrian coalition forces. In fact, the French soldiers have not yet entered the front line.

When the Russian-Austrian coalition began preparations for artillery fire, there was actually no one in the first trench. Infantry did not enter the trenches at all until the enemy attacked.

General Peter Ivanovich Bagration was watching the shelling in front of him. Suddenly, he was startled by a strange phenomenon—a huge tower rose from the position of the French army. It was a gray sphere, and there was a basket-like thing hanging under the sphere.

"What is that? Alyosha, bring me the telescope," cried Bagration.

Adjutant Alyosha handed him the telescope. Bagration stretched out the binoculars and moved it closer to the gray sphere in front of his eyes.

The big ball looked like it was made of silk, and there was a hanging basket hanging below it. In the hanging basket, a machine was spewing flames upwards. There were two people in French army uniforms inside the hanging basket, one of them was He was looking over here with a binoculars.

"Isn't that a hot air balloon?" A voice came from Bagration's side.

Bagration put down the binoculars and turned his head. Marshal Suvorov, who was about to come from behind, said, "Marshal, are you here too?"

"Well, Peter." The old marshal said, "Do you still remember the last time I mentioned to you the idea of ​​using hot air balloons to perform battlefield surveillance missions? It seems that the French have come before us again."

Hot air balloons were first invented in 1783 by the Montgolfier brothers of France. In November of this year, they also completed the world's first manned hot air balloon flight.

In fact, in the original history, Napoleon's army had been equipped with hot air balloons, but Napoleon didn't like this thing very much at that time, and later he simply removed it from service. The main reason why he did this was that the preparations for take-off of manned hot air balloons at that time were too complicated, and the completion rate was very low. It was greatly restricted by the weather, and it was inconvenient to use, but it took up a lot of space. Great preparation.

But this time, the hot air balloon used by the French army is a balloon optimized by the "military-industrial complex". It is equipped with a special fuel blowtorch and a sphere made of silk coated with vulcanized rubber. It is relatively simple to maintain and use. In addition to the shortcomings of not being able to move freely, other problems have been solved to a certain extent. In addition, Joseph slightly improved the semaphore originally prepared for ships at sea and provided it to the balloon soldiers, so that the balloons can almost provide real-time information. Therefore, in this time and space, at least for now, Napoleon’s views on this thing are quite different. not bad.

The French balloon surprised the Russian-Austrian coalition forces, but it was limited to this. After all, this is Europe. Such a thing may be able to play tricks in some places, but in Europe, that is to let the Russian-Austrian coalition forces The guys exclaimed: France's technology is really the best in Europe.

But the exclamation is the exclamation, the fight is still going to be hit. So after half a day of artillery preparations, the Russian army began to attack the French positions in a loose formation of skirmishers.

"Louis, you see that the Russians are quick learners. Look, their skirmisher formations really look like that. Well, at least it can be seen that the morale of the Russian army is quite high, not much better than that of the Austrians. less." Looking at the approaching Russian army, Napoleon said to the officer standing beside him, "It shouldn't be a problem for you to prevent their attack, but I hope you can expose our army less. Some little-known tricks. But it can’t cause unnecessary casualties to soldiers, is there a problem?”

The officer standing beside Napoleon was Louis Gabriel Suchet. As in the original history, Suchet knew Napoleon very early. In Toulon, he fought under Napoleon's command. Later he followed Napoleon to Italy. The difference from history is that Napoleon did not go on an expedition to Egypt, so naturally Suchet did not make a mistake in standing in line, which led to being ignored by Napoleon for a long time afterwards. In this time and space, until now, Suchet is still one of Napoleon's good friends.

"It should be fine." Suchet simply replied, "Except for the net in front, I won't reveal anything more here."

"Okay, then I'll leave it to you. I'll go over there and have a look." After Napoleon finished speaking, he took a few people with him, left the defense section in charge of Suchet, and went to Murat's troops. up.

In the prior arrangement, after Suchet defeated the Russian army's attack, if there was chaos when the Russian army was retreating, Murat's cavalry could take the opportunity to launch a counterattack.

Napoleon was not worried at all about whether Suchet could block the enemy's attack, nor was he worried about Murat's performance after the attack, but whether Murat could correctly judge whether and when to attack, Napoleon did not have much confidence. Therefore, Napoleon felt that it would be better for him to go to Murat to have a look.

Not long after Napoleon left Suchet's position, Russian skirmishers came within range of the French rifles. The French soldiers had also entered the trenches and began to shoot at the approaching Russian troops.

At the beginning, not many Ivans were shot and fell to the ground, because at this distance, even the Mini rifle had a low hit rate. But as they got closer to the French trenches, the French army's shooting hit rate became higher and higher, and more and more Ivan fell.

But the Ivans still approached firmly. Such casualties are not enough to make this victorious army retreat. Then, they walked into the minefield of the French army.

The current landmines of the French army have also made new technological progress. Of course, this technological progress was despised by Napoleon as "full of the stench of Harpagon" (the protagonist of Molière's comedy "The Miser", in France, his The name is synonymous with miser), because the biggest purpose of Joseph's improvement is to save money.

To save material, the new mines are much smaller. Even Joseph tried at one point to replace cast iron with glazed stoneware. It was only done after the experiment proved that the cost saved by using this method was not enough for the loss during transportation. But Joseph still reduced the amount of cast iron used to one-third of the original.

Not only the use of cast iron has been reduced, but also the amount of explosives has been greatly reduced. With the improvement of explosive production technology, the fluctuation of the power of explosives has become smaller and smaller. Today, each landmine often contains only a few grams of explosives up.

Joseph’s statement on this is: “According to the data we obtained in Ireland and Poland, a landmine, even a mine with a large charge, on average, has a negligible chance of blowing up a few enemy troops. Yes. So except for some special purposes, making the power of the landmine too large is pure waste.”

Then Napoleon naturally retorted that his mines were so powerful that no one could be killed. So "Abagong" replied: "Why do you want to kill them? Isn't it enough to blow up one of their feet? Anyway, such wounded soldiers are impossible to fight again. But their wounds are not guaranteed to die. The army is not very good at giving them a good time directly. They have to be kept, and other soldiers have to see their morale. Well, Napoleon, you said last time that the soldiers are actually not afraid of seeing the dead bodies of their comrades , Many times, that will stimulate their fighting spirit for revenge; but it's best not to let the soldiers see the wounded soldiers, that will hit morale more than corpses.

Of course, it is not impossible for the enemy to force them to enjoy themselves, but you must know the consequences of doing so. "

"Then what if the enemy retreats and these wounded soldiers fall into our hands?"

"Stupid! Then we can return the captives to them magnanimously, so why don't they want it?"

So Napoleon was persuaded, but in private, he said to his generals: "Don't call this thing 'Bonaparte potato', you should call it 'Apagon potato'. Yes, on this thing, It's full of the stench of Abagon."

"Abagon's stench" belongs to "stink", but this way, the cost of landmines has dropped a lot. Almost reduced to one-half of the original. If you take into account the reduction in weight and volume and the reduction in transportation costs, the savings will be even greater. And this is reflected on the battlefield, that is, the number and density of landmines have increased significantly.

So the Ivans quickly stepped on the mines. With an explosion that sounded like a gunshot, one Ivan fell down, clutching his bloody legs and wailing loudly. The small-power mine just now exploded just right. He lost one of his feet.

Immediately after another Ivan fell to the sound of explosions, and then more Ivans fell to the sound of French shooting or mine explosions, and more wailing sounded.

The wailing of comrades-in-arms is the best weapon against morale, and the movements of the Russian army have begun to appear a little sluggish. But they were still moving forward. At this time, something that looked like a rope net appeared in front of them.