Chapter 203: , The decision of Archduke Karl

After Napoleon forced Brunswick's army to surrender, he led his army to the next target, which is now stationed in the Austrian army led by Archduke Karl in Longwy.
In this war, Austria's first goal has always been to Italy. So Austria's main forces have also been thrown into the Italian battlefield. Even after the Russian-Prussian coalition was frustrated in Italy, the Russians betrayed the alliance and withdrew from the war, the Austrians still placed their main force in Italy. Especially after getting the main force of the Italian army led by Napoleon and returning to France and going north to resist Britain, the Austrians immediately devoted most of their energy to Italy.
Although the Russians are gone, most of the French are gone, right? The rest are some Italian servants and so on. It should be easy to fight, right? Although the Austrians did not gain much advantage in the battle with the army of the Northern Italian Republic. However, the Austrians believe that it is because the Italians are pretending to be French.
Since then, the performance of the Italian army has also made the Austrians more and more convinced that what they met before was indeed French in Italian clothes.
Because France has used almost all of its military production capacity to support the northern battlefield. In the Italian battlefield, the northern Italian army can almost only rely on inventory support. But Joseph's style of play is good in everything, but the material consumption is too large. It is said that when Napoleon was boring to comment on ancient and modern military strategists, someone asked how to evaluate his brother Joseph. Napoleon said: "Where can Joseph fight? He can only fight money!"
So the Italians fought a few beautiful battles at first, but then, as the inventory dried up, the Italians' combat effectiveness began to plummet. Soon it fell to the point where it was not much different from the Austrians, and began to gradually be overwhelmed by the more abundant Austrians.
So after seeing the hope of regaining Northern Italy, the Austrians naturally had to invest more in Northern Italy. Therefore, His Majesty the Emperor wrote Duke Carl back, leaving all the letters requesting additional supplies not to be sent, and then sent all the weapons and personnel supplies to Italy. If it weren't for considering that the change of coaches would be a humiliation to Duke John, the emperor would almost want to stop Duke Karl and embezzle him to Italy.
In this way, the army in the hands of Grand Duke Carl is not elite and lacks supplies, so the combat effectiveness is naturally a pit. Archduke Karl himself knew the situation of the army, so in the previous battle, he would not go where he had to carry the line desperately. He just led the army to follow the British and Prussians to grab some territory and take advantage.
When the British-Prussian coalition forces were blocked under the city of Verdun, they also made a request to Duke Carl for reinforcements. But Archduke Karl was keenly aware of the unknown breath from Marshal Brunswick’s letter, so he found out a lot of reasons to delay, and then when Napoleon had sent a letter to Marshal Brunswick to persuade him to surrender. At that time, Grand Duke Karl arrived at Longwei.
Although the movement of Archduke Carl's large forces was slow, his scout cavalry was lost very far, and he even sent people to the area of ​​Verdun to stare. So not long after Napoleon wiped out the main force of the British and Prussian forces at Verdun, Archduke Karl learned the news.
Now Grand Duke Carl knew that after the defeat of Marshal Brunswick's coalition forces, the army in his hand must have become Napoleon's thorny eye. Because if he does not destroy his army, whether Napoleon plans to go to Hanover or to Austria next, his army will be in a position that threatens his flank.
Archduke Karl is now facing a choice, is to retreat immediately, withdraw from Longwy, all the way to Kaiserslautern, give Napoleon the way to Hanover and Berlin, and come to a "dervish priest who does not die." . Or retreat to Luxembourg and use Luxembourg's easy-to-defend and difficult-to-attack terrain to delay Napoleon and win the response of all parties in the Allied countries, or at least the time for peace negotiations.
"After the Battle of Verdun, the French have won this war. The only suspense now is how the war will end. If the French successfully won Hanover or even defeated Prussia, then Austria would really It’s very dangerous. At that time, even if we negotiate with the French, we will not get any good terms. Therefore, even if it is to negotiate, we must be the first country to reach a peace agreement with the French. And to do so. At this point, we must have an exchange condition that allows the French to quickly reach peace with us." Grand Duke Karl said to General Nostitz, "In order to obtain such conditions, I plan to retreat to Luxembourg immediately. Yes. So, what do you think?"
Luxembourg is on the main road from France to the German states, and its position is important. In addition, the terrain is complex, easy to defend and difficult to attack, so it has been a battleground for military strategists since ancient times. In a small area, in different periods, there were a large number of fortresses built, so that it is called "the country of a thousand fortresses" and "the northern Gibraltar".
Before this, France once controlled this area, but because of a series of failures of the Northern Army, the Luxembourg area was abandoned by the French army. The British and Prussian army temporarily ignored it, and as a result, this treasure land temporarily fell into the hands of the Austrians who led the team to paddling the field.
Occupying Luxembourg, forcing the French to use more favorable terms in exchange for Austria’s withdrawal from the war, this is actually the fact that the Archduke Karl took the main force of the army and rushed to the vicinity of Villon after discovering an unknown atmosphere in the letter from the Marshal of Brunswick. s reason.
Archduke Karl had just opened up his army in Luxembourg, and General Blücher arrived here with hundreds of cavalry. From General Blücher, Archduke Karl has learned more about what happened in Verdun. He kept General Blücher for a few more days to learn more about the new French defense techniques.
But Blücher could not stay here for too long, so he left several of his subordinate officers to Archduke Karl, and then hurried away.
Three days after Blücher left, French cavalry began to appear near Luxembourg. In the afternoon of that day, the vanguard of the French army arrived in Luxembourg under the leadership of Davout.
At this time, Napoleon's army had reached 120,000. This includes the original more than 60,000 elite of the Italian Legion, more than 40,000 French soldiers who have experienced the test of war in Verdun, and more than 10,000 German mercenaries that the British have not had time to use. They all surrendered with the coalition forces. Napoleon considered that many places are still short of manpower, especially people who are very knowledgeable about the terrain and customs of the German region. Just asked their leader Balboa if he would accept his employment to pay the ransom for their freedom.
Balboa was keenly aware that this would be a chance for himself to climb up and gain access to the real upper class, so he immediately agreed. So these mercenaries, who were almost put on a one-off use, turned their heads and became Napoleon's subordinates.
Of course, Napoleon didn't think these mercenaries could be useful on the battlefield. He didn't think he would have the demand for a one-off army like the British. These mercenaries were basically broken up and used for such purposes as leading the way. By the way, let them receive a little teaching of revolutionary thought in the French army.
"If we want to truly gain a foothold in the German region, then the agrarian revolution policy we have implemented in Italy must be implemented." This is one of Joseph's nagging explanations when Napoleon left Verdun. Napoleon felt that these German-speaking mercenaries could be of great use at that time.
Napoleon originally thought that Archduke Karl would give way to Kaiserslautern. If this is the case, Napoleon only intends to leave a partial division in Luxembourg, and the main force of the army will go towards Prussia. Taking advantage of the fact that Prussia had just suffered a big defeat, it was too late to recover.
Who knew that Grand Duke Carl had such a strong head, he just brought the army to Luxembourg and made trouble for him.
Napoleon was full of confidence in defeating Archduke Karl. He had more troops, more advanced equipment, higher morale and higher training level. Grand Duke Karl has only about 60,000 in his hands, and he is mainly recruited, not even cavalry. The equipment is also relatively backward-at least half of their rifles are old-fashioned muskets. In addition, the number of cannons is also very insufficient~EbookFREE.me~ Under such a comparison of power, Napoleon felt that even if Duke Karl occupies the difficult terrain of Luxembourg, he could defeat him head-on.
It’s just that, after all, Luxembourg’s terrain is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack. Even Napoleon must admit that it will take a lot of time to take Luxembourg from the hands of Grand Duke Karl. What's more, Napoleon is now also facing logistical problems.
This question is mainly to blame Joseph the coward! On the battlefield of Verdun, Joseph unnecessarily spent too much weapons and ammunition, making Napoleon's current ammunition inadequate. The tough battle is an extraordinarily ammunition-consuming combat method. The ammunition in Napoleon's hand was no problem to support the field, but if used for continuous tackling, I am afraid it would be somewhat insufficient.
Of course, in France, military factories are also working overtime, and more weapons and ammunition are constantly being produced, but today, even in France, the production of weapons has obviously not kept up with the demand for war. We have to wait for these things to be produced before they are delivered, I'm afraid Prussia will have already mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops.
Just when Napoleon was worried about this, someone came to tell him that the Austrians had sent messengers.
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