Fox of France

Since the persuasion was rejected, the only way left was to attack.

In theory, the safest attack method is to siege and consume. The terrain of this highland is dangerous, and the loss will definitely be not small if you attack hard, but this highland is not very big, so there will not be too many supplies in the highland. If it is surrounded, after a long time, the highland must be I can't stand it.

But there is a question that everyone has to consider, that is how much time they have. Napoleon's Italian Army is on its way, who knows when he will arrive. So, the British and Prussians couldn't afford to wait.

But this attack could not be launched immediately, because the French army also understood the meaning of high ground. The nearby French army is constantly launching counterattacks, trying to get in touch with the high ground. Therefore, the most urgent task for the coalition forces is not to immediately attack the high ground, but to consolidate their positions.

But consolidating one's position is not easy. The fields occupied by the coalition forces are all within the range of the artillery on the high ground, and the soil work is carried out, which is very vulnerable to the artillery on the high ground. In addition, the French army on the high ground is condescending, and you can see the various mobilizations of the defensive coalition forces below. Although there is no such thing as an announcement machine in this era, it is also possible to use semaphore and other means to transmit messages. This also makes the coalition defense must be extra careful.

So it took another whole day for the coalition forces to consolidate the siege of the high ground. Putting it on offense, it will have to wait until the next day.

"Napoleon has come?" Joseph, who was unharmed, asked the liaison officer sent by Napoleon, "Well...well, where is your general now?"

"Already at Saint-Meneuude," replied the coordinator.

"It's very close." Joseph said, "I guess tomorrow morning, the coalition forces will launch a general attack on Highland No. 1. It should be no problem to support Highland No. 1 for three days. Well, you take this letter back. Give it to Napoleon, and let him figure it out."

Joseph was talking about a letter, but it was really a gift package—a heavy file box. The courier, escorted by a troop of cavalry, returned to Saint-Meneuude and handed the box to Napoleon.

Napoleon opened the file box, which contained fortification maps of Fort Verdun one after another, as well as information about the various deployments of the coalition forces that Joseph had learned so far.

"What did Joseph say?" asked Napoleon.

"General Joseph Bonaparte said that now the Anglo-Prussian coalition forces have bitten the hook and are besieging Height No. 1. Height No. 1 can last at least three days. As for how to counterattack, he lets you decide for yourself."

Napoleon carefully read these defense maps carefully, and then he had his generals called over, preparing to have a meeting to discuss the next battle plan.

The generals came one after another. Napoleon, who came first, asked them to see Joseph's defense map by themselves. After a while, everyone arrived. Napoleon was not in a hurry, but let them continue to look at the map. It wasn't until everyone had finished watching that Napoleon said, "What do you think?"

"I think we're still a little early?" Davout said first.

"That's right, looking at this defense map, my scalp is numb." Augereau said, "I don't know what other people are doing. If it were me, I don't think I would have the courage to attack. This is completely It's just a steel tortoise shell with spikes, and..."

"And inside this steel tortoise shell, there are more than one layer of steel tortoise shells." Berthier said, "Now, General Joseph Bonaparte uses Heights No. 1 as bait to attract the enemy's siege. According to the instructions he gave According to the news, I think Height No. 1 can hold on for at least a week. If possible, I also hope to let them hold on for a few more days.”

"But we can't hide the news that we have quelled the Paris rebellion." Napoleon said, "otherwise, this guy will never show us these maps. Considering the speed of news transmission in Paris, we can wait at most Two days. Let's rest here for a whole day first, and then wait until the morning of the day after tomorrow. We will take advantage of the moon in the second half of the night to march, so that at noon, we should be able to reach the vicinity of Verdun. At this time, it should also be the enemy's siege of Heights No. 1 When the fight was the most intense. When we appeared suddenly, we would be able to completely defeat the British-Prussian coalition forces... The specific arrangement, Berthier, you can handle it..."

Just when Napoleon was about to give the Anglo-Prussian allied forces a slap in the face, the Anglo-Prussian allied forces also exerted their strength and prepared to seize the No. 1 highland in one fell swoop.

After spending a day consolidating the siege of Height No. 1, the Duke of Brunswick sent envoys to Height No. 1 again to persuade him to surrender. This time, on the basis of the previous conditions, he even added the condition that he could give Commander Firma and other officers a large amount of pensions.

However, persuasion failed. Captain Firma said: "We can hold on until you all die of old age."

So ten minutes after the coalition envoys left the high ground, the coalition launched an attack on the high ground.

In the previous offensive operations, the soldiers and low-level officers of the coalition forces had already believed that there was hell in the world, and after they launched the attack on Height No. 1, they confirmed one more point, that is: hell is really like As Dante described, it is divided into many layers.

On Highland No. 1, there was nothing new that they hadn't seen before. It was nothing more than mines, barbed wire, minie rifles, melons, cannons, flamethrowers, and broadsword mines. But the terrible thing is that the density of these things has greatly increased. Obviously, although the French army was slow to respond some time ago, they still knew that Height No. 1 had become the key target of the coalition forces' attack, and they also made a lot of efforts for this.

The terrain of the No. 1 highland also brought a lot of trouble to the attack. Highland No. 1 is not particularly high, but the terrain of the highland has undergone a special rest. All trees that would have obscured the view have been cut down. All protrusions that could provide shelter for the attacker were also leveled. The whole highland is bare on all sides, unobstructed and unobstructed.

And the barbed wire fence on the high ground is also denser, but more than 20 meters away, it is just a barbed wire fence. The denser barbed wire naturally also means that soldiers need to be exposed to enemy fire for a longer period of time. On Height No. 1, the French army deployed a large number of artillery.

Among these artillery, there are not only 12-pound or even 24-pound heavy artillery, but also 8-pound and 6-pound medium artillery. The French army built special bunkers for them. These artillery rely on the protection of the bunkers, and the use of shotguns can very effectively kill those coalition soldiers who are stopped by barbed wire.

Naturally, there are densely packed mines between the barbed wire. Judging from the attrition of the Prussian conscripts who launched the attack, the density of mines here is at least twice that of the minefields they encountered before.

Coupled with being condescending, the defenders could easily throw the melon fifty meters away, but the attacker would have to climb dozens of meters to throw the melon over. As for the "small melon launcher", it can throw the small melon nearly 100 meters here-this has reached the range of the cannon's shotgun.

Even if, with the blessing of God, someone survives these terrible things and can move forward, he will immediately encounter even more terrifying broadsword mines and flamethrowers.

Compared with these things, the supervisor team behind them immediately looked very gentle and lovely. After all, the supervisor team used rifles, and they had to reload each shot, and it took half a day before they could fire the second shot.

So the first batch of soldiers retreated quickly, and some soldiers even clashed with the supervising team. The two sides fired at each other, making it impossible to hand in hand.

The whole day's attack caused thousands of casualties, but apart from destroying some minefields and breaking some barbed wire fences, there was no progress.

That night, the coalition forces sent personnel carrying explosives to attack at night, trying to destroy the enemy's barbed wire fence at night. As a result, they were spotted by military dogs raised on the high ground as soon as they approached, and then stepped on landmines, and then there was another burst of chaos firefight. Then the French army on the periphery also launched a night attack, and everyone fought for a while until dawn.

After dawn, the coalition forces could finally see the results of their night attack. Some of the barbed wire fences on the high ground were damaged, but those brave French engineers were also rushing to repair the barbed wire fences in the gap between the coalition forces' attack.

The Allied artillery fired first at the engineers with solid shells. But these engineers remained unmoved and continued to work on repairing the barbed wire. Although occasionally some engineers were killed by cannonballs, the hit rate of solid shells on such targets was too low. As for pushing the cannon forward to use shotgun shells, it would be better to let the infantry rush up directly.

So the soldiers of the coalition army were forced to leave the trenches and rushed towards the French engineers, but they were immediately shot by French shrapnel, and they were knocked down a lot. And by the time they rushed to the position where they could fire at the French engineers against the French artillery fire, the despicable French had already called it a day and fled.

Since then, the offense has remained unchanged. The resistance of the French is as fierce as yesterday. It seems that yesterday's attack did not consume all the ammunition on the high ground. However, the coalition forces, who are short on time, have no other options—it has already reached this point, and the sunk cost is already too high. Can they still get out of the siege and go back? Besides, maybe one more day of high-intensity attacks could consume all the ammunition of the enemy army-it's worthless to mobilize troops anyway.

In this way, batch after batch of John and Fritz fell in front of the barbed wire fence on No. 1 Heights, and the time gradually reached noon.