Fox of France

But the British are not comparable to those colonial barbarians after all. The British in this era are still quite full of martial arts, even the British Army. Although over the years, in the security war in Ireland, they have been made one head and two big, and their morale is much lower than normal, but it is not that there will be any problems if they are frightened by so few shells. It's just that the rich people ran away first, which is really sad. But sadly, the British defense did not have any obvious problems.

So, the rest, of course, is to chew slowly. At least, until the orders of the Turks and Russians are fulfilled.

The French Advisory Group and the leaders of the Independent Army held a military conference together. They gathered the military intelligence they had learned over the past few days, and studied the offensive plan together.

According to the plan, the Irish Independence Army will first operate through the tunnels, approach the main position of the British army, and use the night to destroy the barbed wire and minefields of the British army.

As for offensive operations, they are mainly short assaults. The artillery of the French army will provide them with short and violent artillery fire preparations, while the heavy artillery of the French army will be responsible for anti-battery operations under the command of hot air balloons.

"The defense of the British is quite solid. After all, the British have been operating this line of defense for many years. Therefore, we must overcome impatience and don't imagine that we can quickly break through the defense. We can only do it a little bit, like peeling an onion Like the skin, it goes deeper layer by layer. Any impetuous behavior will only cause huge and unnecessary losses to ourselves..." General Soult, the French commander-in-chief, spoke first, because the last war ended Too soon, and the peace that followed was too long, so Soult is still a general, not a marshal.

But Napoleon appreciated his talents very much. He told others more than once that if Soulte had followed him when he was in Italy, he must be a marshal now.

"He's one of the best tacticians in Europe, better than quite a few guys who've gotten the rank of field marshal. I think he'll be a field marshal if there's another war where the army is used."

Before going to the battlefield this time, General Soult had been serving as the principal of the St. Cyr Military Academy, and many generals in the Irish Independence Army were his students. So Sirte's words are still quite effective.

So according to Soult's command, the Irish began to approach the British positions with tunnel operations. Tunnels are difficult to attack with ordinary weapons, but the British have a lot of grenade launchers, as well as further enlarged grenade launchers-mortars.

In a sense, the grenadier made by the French can be regarded as an artifact of guerrilla warfare. Naturally, this thing also provided a lot to the Irish Independence Army. Then in battle, it was naturally impossible for such a widely equipped weapon not to be captured by the British. After the British seized this thing, they used it, and then found: "Well, it's really easy to use, very powerful, the French thing is good! We also want it!"

Then Britain began to equip its own army with knockoff grenades, and even these shameless British guys sold this thing to other countries at a low price. As a result, the French had to take the initiative to lower the price in order to keep their market share. However, the benefits brought by this weapon were significantly lower than expected. So, don't teach the British a lesson, okay?

In addition to imitating the grenadier, the British also enlarged it on the basis of it, and then there was a mortar.

The ballistics of mortars and grenades are very curved, and they can be shot directly into the trenches to kill the enemies in the trenches. So when the Irish tunnels began to approach the British defensive positions, the British mortars and grenades rained down on them, causing considerable damage to the Irish who were digging.

Of course, the Irish are not without grenades and mortars, and the French army a little behind them has more of these things. At this time, it was natural to call back cracklingly. After a burst of gunfire, everyone was injured. In general, the Irish lost more in terms of numbers; even the British lost more in terms of weapons, especially broken grenades and mortars. The reason for this is also simple. The British were the first to do it, and they controlled the commanding heights, so they could provide better target indication, so their shooting efficiency was naturally higher, so the Irish were naturally more dead.

As for why the British lost more grenades and mortars, that's normal, because the propellants used are different. The French have begun to widely use nitrocellulose-based propellants, although such propellants are Neither power nor performance was good enough by the standards of future generations. But compared with the brown powder that is still widely used by the British army, I don't know how strong it is.

Because they have the upper hand in propellant technology, the range of the French grenadiers and mortars is obviously farther than that of the British knockoffs. When the position of the black smoke from the mortars began to counterattack, the British found that their mortars and grenades could not reach the target. Therefore, it is naturally the British who have lost more in this regard.

Under the cover of the French, the Irish continued to dig despite the casualties, and pushed the tunnel to the vicinity of the minefield.

At night, the Irish crawled out of the tunnels and tried to clear the mines. As for the British, they mounted the searchlight on a human-powered rail car. Turn it on from time to time, sweep the minefield with a beam of light, then turn off the light immediately, and move to avoid possible bullets and shells. And if their light beams just illuminated the Irish who came out to clear the mines, the bullets of the British army would hit them with a snap.

In such a confrontation, the Franco-Irish coalition forces spent three nights and basically completed the clearing of the first minefield. In front of them was the first barbed wire fence of the British.

At this time, news of France declaring war on Britain and the results of the North Atlantic naval battle had also reached North America. This news came at the right time, because at this time the United States had just suffered another loss on the northern battlefield. General Arthur Wellesley's army defeated the US Army again near New York State, and the troops were approaching. Down in New York City.

In the United States, before that, some people have said that peace should be restored as soon as possible. Of course, these people's claims were immediately refuted by the angry American people, especially the southerners who were burned by the British along the coastline one after another, and even released the idea of ​​"using patriots and warriors" to deal with those people. Beauty traitor, so that after "making them shut their disgusting mouths forever", these people shut up for the time being. But after a series of failures since then, the voice has started to emerge again. Even the president was shaken to a certain extent. But as soon as the news was confirmed, the whole situation changed immediately.