Fox of France

On August 29, the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces surrounded Verdun, the gate of Paris. On the morning of September 2, the Royal Party launched a rebellion in Verdun and killed the commander of the city defense. Verdun surrendered to the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces, and the gate of Paris was opened.

Verdun fell because of the rebellion, which was completely beyond the expectations of the French. In the French plan, Verdun, which is difficult to defend and difficult to attack, should serve as an indestructible anvil, while the French army will become a heavy hammer. They cooperate with each other and smash the enemy army to pieces. However, the anvil of Verdun was easily captured by traitors inside. This made all the French extremely angry, and at the same time very fearful—because everyone was worried that there would be traitors of the great motherland around them, who were planning to betray the motherland at any time.

The National Assembly reacted quickly, and now their first important task is to suppress counter-revolutionaries. Danton, the recently wanted criminal, Minister of Justice of the new government, presided over the extermination of the traitors of the fatherland. He delivered his famous speech "Brave, Brave, Courageous!" in the National Assembly that afternoon. ", and began to lead the work of suppressing counter-revolutionaries in Paris.

A large number of nobles, as well as those who were related to the nobles, or who were suspected of sympathizing with the king and the nobles, were "preventively" imprisoned without any investigation and trial.

If you just do this, it's not too much. After the Pearl Harbor incident broke out in later generations, the Lighthouse Country also imprisoned the Nigerian nationals in concentration camps regardless of the situation.

Amid the fear and anger, the policy adopted for this "preventive" arrest is naturally "suspect only if possible" and "rather arrest a thousand by mistake than let one go." The prisons of Paris were rapidly filling, and the "traitor" suspects kept coming.

At this time, a rumor appeared. According to this rumor, the royalists will launch a rebellion, rush into the prison, rescue those "traitors", and join hands with the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces that are close at hand to suppress the revolution in Paris. The Austrians have said that they will wash the streets of Paris with blood in revenge for their insult to the King.

The people of Paris quickly armed themselves to deal with the royalist rebellion. But at this time, the royalists were either arrested and imprisoned, or escaped from Paris. Where is the capital of the rebellion? However, a sudden incident made the whole situation out of control.

Because a prison is full. So the National Guard is going to send all the "suspects" here to another prison that still has space. In order to make room for the next batch of "suspects". When they left the prison, they were seen by some citizens. The nervous citizens mistakenly thought that they were royalists, and now they robbed the prison and were about to rescue those "traitors", so they shouted loudly. Then Paris citizens with various weapons surrounded them.

The National Self-Defense Forces were not willing to clash with the citizens for these damned "traitors", so they left those "traitors" and ran away.

Naturally, the citizens could not catch up with the National Guards, but they at least stopped the "traitors" who "tried to escape". In anger and excitement, the citizens killed all these "traitors" who "wanted to escape". Others yelled: "Why are these traitors locked up? They all deserve to die!"

So the crowd moved on to the other prisons, rushed into the prisons, and killed everyone else in the prisons—whether he was a "traitor" or not, as long as he was in prison.

The queen's best friend, Princess de Rambala, was also killed by angry citizens, her head was chopped off, stuck on a spear, and paraded outside the tower where the king and queen were imprisoned. People shouted to the tower: "You will be like this one day!"

Some members of the Brisso faction proposed to Minister of Justice Danton that order should be restored and such massacres should not be allowed to continue. But while Danton did not refute or even endorse the idea that order should be restored, he did not actually take any action.

"We cannot stand against the people," Danton later explained.

However, many members of the Brissot faction believe that Danton is deliberately indulging such behavior in order to tie all the people in Paris to the chariot against the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces. And with this method, after eliminating the hidden dangers at once, Paris can devote more power to the battle with the foreign intervention forces.

Indeed, just after this crazy massacre, the government quickly mobilized another 20,000 volunteers within two days to support the frontline operations.

On Napoleon's suggestion, General Dumouriez placed his army near the Valmy heights in St. Meneut. This place is not on the avenue from Verdun to Paris. But if the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces dare to rush directly to Paris, then Di Mouriez's army can easily cut off the coalition forces' retreat from here.

Napoleon estimated that because of the continuous rain, the logistics of the coalition must have been very tense. Once the back road is cut off, it will definitely collapse quickly. Therefore, they would never dare to advance to Paris until the threat of Valmy's French army was eliminated.

"Our army has courage, but lacks training, and it is difficult to carry out complex offensive operations, but it is relatively easier to rely on terrain defense." Joseph also expressed support for his younger brother's plan, "In most cases, the defense is It is a more powerful way of fighting than attacking. If the enemy attacks us actively, then we can definitely defeat them in the defensive battle."

Things were going as Napoleon judged. Before eliminating their threat to the rear, the Duke of Brunswick did not dare to lead his troops straight to Paris. But he also knew that the longer the stalemate lasted, the better it would be for France. Because the French army is getting bigger and better trained every minute, every second.

Therefore, the Duke of Brunswick decided to concentrate his strength first and defeat Dimouriez's army before advancing towards Paris.

On September 17, the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces began to approach Valmy. At first, the Duke of Brunswick hoped to force the French army to retreat by threatening the French army's logistics channel Vitry Avenue. But before that, the revolutionary government had collected a large amount of grain and fodder through price fixing and transported it to Di Mouriez's army. So at least for a long period of time, Dimouriez was not worried about his food road being cut off. On the contrary, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces' own food roads have become precarious under the constant attacks of the French volunteers.

This situation also forced the Duke of Brunswick to violate military principles and launch a storm towards the pre-set positions of a larger number of enemy troops.

Most of the French army are volunteers. These volunteers are not well trained, and they can't even get out of a decent formation on the battlefield. So they can only go into battle as skirmishers. But their high morale and combat prowess make them particularly useful as skirmishers.

Generally speaking, in this era, the reason why skirmish formations are not the main body is because such formations are vulnerable to cuirassiers. Cuirassiers, in theory, can easily defeat them and kill them cleanly in pursuit.

But in the outpost, the performance of these volunteer stragglers exceeded the expectations of the Austrians and Prussians. When they found that the French army did not form a strict formation, and there were not too many cavalry (because there were many nobles in the cavalry, they were relatively unreliable, and those mud legs of the Volunteer Army could not be played well now. Such technical work, so there are not too many cavalry in the French army at this time), the Duke of Brunswick naturally sent his own cavalry without hesitation. He thought that his cavalry could easily disperse and eliminate these mobs in blue uniforms (in their minds, these people are not an army at all), but when the attack started, he was surprised to find that the French Although the soldiers could not form a tight hollow phalanx specially used to deal with the cavalry, when they faced the cavalry, they bravely greeted the cavalry and fired at the cavalry instead of turning around and fleeing normally.

The hit rate of these guns was not high, but they still caused some losses to the Prussian cavalry. However, the cavalry rushed up quickly. Under normal circumstances, the enemy should throw down their weapons, turn around and run away, and then they would easily catch up with them and take their heads. But those guys didn't retreat, but held their bayonets and charged against the cavalry.

A war horse can easily knock an infantry to the ground, but such an impact is not without damage to the war horse. Especially when the man was still holding a rifle with a bayonet attached. The cavalry certainly had the upper hand in such hand-to-hand combat, and they cut down all the blue mobs. However, their own losses are not small. Although it takes four or five blue thugs to die before a cavalryman dies in battle, such an exchange ratio still makes the Duke of Brunswick feel extremely distressed.

You know, how much did the French spend to recruit those blue thugs? And these cavalry cost much more. In such an exchange, Prussia naturally has an advantage in terms of the number of people; but in terms of cost comparison, Prussia has suffered a lot. Not to mention cavalry, even war horses are far more valuable than those blue thugs!

However, the Duke of Brunswick still believes that the well-trained infantry on his side (at least compared to the "volunteers" in France) will definitely be able to destroy the defense lines of those French thugs.

After repelling the French stragglers, the artillery of the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces began to fire violently at the French positions. After a brief and violent shelling, the infantry lines of the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces began to press towards the French positions.

Standing behind a trench, Napoleon looked at the approaching Prussian-Austrian coalition forces, curled his lips and said, "They rushed up after only firing a few shots. It seems that there is indeed a big problem with their logistical supplies."