War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Carlist headquarters in the Pyrenees.

Although the British Royal Navy escorted the French fleet to Texas as recently as 1836, the British attitude towards Spain was still tough.

Britain secretly transported supplies and weapons to the Carlos faction from the sea. Palmerston was a representative of the hardliners and advocated a severe blow to Queen Regent Christina in northern Spain.

The peace advocates in Britain also suggested using war to promote peace, but they did not recommend a head-on conflict with the French because Britain still needed French support on the Near East issue. There was a bottom line: Spain could not fall to France's side.

As a former British Army Lieutenant General, John George Woodford once accompanied the Iron Duke Wellington to fight Napoleon in Spain. He liked this land very much because it had brought him countless glory and victory.

At the same time, he was also very familiar with the tactics of the French and Spanish, and he formulated a plan.

Woodford accepted the rank of lieutenant general awarded by Carlos, and he decided to attack Lieutenant General Pierre's French Corps first.

In order to lure the main force of the Spanish government troops away, he sent two small troops out of the encirclement, burning, killing and looting all the way to the Bilbao area, destroying roads and bridges along the way, and spreading rumors that Bilbao was in danger.

At the same time, a second small force was used to set up an ambush on the road to harass the Spanish reinforcements in the rear.

As soon as they heard the news that Bilbao was besieged, Espartero and Count Sabir immediately believed it, because according to their estimation, the Carlists' food supply had reached the limit, and they would definitely die.

I just didn't expect that the other party would go to Bilbao to seek death. Now the task assigned to them by the Queen Regent to preserve their strength could not be completed.

Their expedition almost emptied Bilbao. There was no army or food in the city, but there were tens of thousands of angry and hungry people. If these people all joined the Carlists, then the whole of Spain would be in turmoil again. .

The news of the Carlist siege of Bilbao made Lieutenant General Pierre breathe a sigh of relief. He decided to open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Now he could finally relax and let the Spaniards bite the dogs and just watch the show. , not only do we not have to fight, but we can also complete the tasks assigned by the cabinet.

Count Sabir led the cavalry vanguard to return for reinforcements, but was ambushed on the road. Count Sabir fell off his horse and was seriously injured.

Once a commander is lost on the battlefield, it will be a heavy blow even to the regular army, let alone a miscellaneous army like the Spanish government army.

Count Sabir's vanguard troops fought independently and in chaos, and some even surrendered to the Carlist guerrillas.

This defeat soon became known as a disastrous defeat. After receiving the news, Espartero actually decided to take precautions step by step to prevent another sneak attack by the Carlists.

Among the intelligence Espartero received, the information obtained was contradictory, fragmented, and difficult to distinguish between true and false.

Some say there are 10,000 Carlists, some say there are 20,000 Carlists, and there is even information that the local militia has joined the Carlists. The Carlists have gathered a hundred thousand troops. This war is Carlist trap.

After Count Sabir's troops were dispersed, Espartero's army in the rear stood still, and some people had evil thoughts.

These defeated soldiers lied that they were Carlist rebels, burned, killed, and looted along the way, and even burned down the city in order to destroy evidence.

For a time, the whole of northern Spain was full of smoke, and Carlist troops were everywhere. Of course, as you can imagine, not only the defeated soldiers, but also nearby bandits, bandits, and armed big landowners also joined in.

Respectable gentlemen naturally don't want to rob the rabbits in their own village. After all, the rabbits don't eat the grass beside the nest, but the village next door is none of his business.

The snowflake-like battle report was thrown on Espartero's desk, which made him even more unable to believe what he was seeing, but Bilbao had to save it.

Ever since, a farce of 50,000 troops moving forward 500 meters every day began.

Madrid, Royal Palace.

Queen Regent Christina looked at the secret message in her hand and a pile of battle reports on the table. She felt that she had been deceived by Marotto.

But she quietly handed over the secret message to the liberal Prime Minister Otter Toure to show her trust in him.

After Otedur received the letter, he cursed Marotto as a conspirator and said that the Carlists would not die well. He was willing to go to the front line to personally supervise the battle.

What the Queen Regent wants is Otedur's words. She is ready to send Otedur and his supporters to the front line. Spain does not need a prime minister, but it needs cannon fodder.

French army camp in the Pyrenees.

After several months of sit-in war, the French army had long become numb, not only unresponsive to the sounds in the mountains.

Lieutenant General Woodford personally led his men to surround Lieutenant General Pierre's camp. This time the Carlists were mobilized in full force, with a total of nearly 30,000 troops.

But what Woodford didn't expect was that the French had no defense at all and allowed him to complete the encirclement so easily.

The battle lasted all night. Although the French army was unprepared and the commander was drunk, the combat effectiveness of the two sides was obviously not of the same level.

The French army actually broke into pieces, and under the command of several colonels, they highlighted Woodford's encirclement.

This made Woodford very angry. The French army in front of him was not an elite army at all, but this group of Spaniards was not an army at all. Thirty thousand against ten thousand, it was a sneak attack at night. As a result, more than 3,000 people were lost. The French army only More than 2,000 people were lost, but the French army lost almost all supplies and heavy weapons, as well as their commanders.

When Lieutenant General Pierre woke up and saw Woodford, he thought he had returned to the Napoleonic War, and that was the first thing he said.

"you're old."

This sentence made Old Woodford burst into tears. He invited Lieutenant General Pierre to have another drink to sober up.

Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.

Franz looked at the "biscuits" served by Thalia and said.

"This isn't a cookie, it's a cake!"

"It's obviously biscuits!" Thalia said.

"Is this a palace practice? This is too extravagant!" Franz said.

"No, all pastry shops do it this way! That's why I asked you if it could be made into noodles or macaroni, and you actually said I'm Italian!"

Thalia was very dissatisfied. During this period, Italian civilization had declined, and the Italians were second-class citizens of the Austrian Empire. This made Thalia very unhappy.

In fact, biscuits in the modern sense should have been invented in the 1850s. Biscuits at this time were a luxurious pastry in Vienna. The almonds and chocolate on them alone discouraged many poor people.

Franz had no choice but to do it himself, made some dough, threw it into the oven, and it was baked in a short time.

Facing the black paste in front of her, Talia was a little hard to accept, but she picked one up and tasted it and felt it was pretty good.

"It's fluffy and crispy, and tastes delicious, but a little dry." Thalia commented.

"Cookies! Of course!"

Although this biscuit cannot be used as pastry, it can still be used as rations for the poor.