Episode 150 Krafte War – Overwhelmed (2)
After reaching the riverside, the Krafte army began building a bridge across the riverside at an incredible speed using the prefabricated pontoon bridges they had brought with them.
Louis Dakiten saw this and raised his staff to the sky, and in an instant dark clouds gathered and-
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa this??
When Lewis concentrated his magic power and swung his staff down, a thunderous sound and scorching lightning shattered the bridge that was being created.
“Oh oh oh oh-!”
The revolutionary army cheered at the sight of a natural disaster being brought about by magic, but the Krafte army only paused, as if a little surprised, and soon began building another bridge.
“Damn, don’t they have any fear?”
Peter de Casel sighed at the sight.
“Lieutenant Dakiten. “I keep building my leg…”
“Huh, huh, huh, just a moment…”
Despite Sergeant Durand’s words, Lewis was catching his breath, sweat pouring down like rain.
In fact, the only thing that is capable of destroying the floating bridges being installed is Lewis’s magic, but no matter how hard the young wizard tries, a number of floating bridges are being built at a rapid rate that he simply cannot destroy.
While Louis was having a hard time and enemy howitzers and skirmishers were trampling our troops’ positions, Damien from the rear did not just sit by and watch.
“Send out all the artillery and fire! hurry!”
“ancient!”
At the command of the messenger sent by Giselle Darby, the artillery unit hiding in the trench urgently pulled out the towed artillery and began preparing for artillery fire.
“Yeongcha Yeongcha-!”
“Ugh, it’s so heavy!”
However, even with the use of horses to move the cannon, the weight of the cannon was not easy, so it took quite a while to just take it out.
“Prepare to fire! hurry!”
“Huh, heo, the bombardment-!”
“Aaaah!”
As soon as the cannons were pulled out and ready for bombardment, shells fired directly from the Krafte army began raining down.
Even so, the artillerymen, who were exhausted from having to struggle to pull out the cannons from the trenches, were exposed to the fire net of the Krafte artillery, which boasted an incredible accuracy rate, and suffered huge losses even before they could properly fire a few times.
Damien de Mirbeau, who received the news, pulled out his hair.
“Bloody hell! “That damned great king was determined and waiting!”
There is no way those who fire highly accurate artillery fire with howitzers would not be able to handle direct fire artillery.
Instead of firing direct fire at the trench line and missing the target, they were waiting for this side to mobilize artillery to respond to the bombardment.
If the artillery had been deployed in advance, we could have responded to some extent, but hiding it in the trenches in preparation for a situation where the enemy would bring more direct fire artillery, like in the war with the Empire, had the opposite effect.
However, they said there would be no harm during the day, so how could they expect that they would march at night and attack at dawn!
Meanwhile, the number of floating bridges is increasing exponentially –
“Your Excellency the Count! If this continues, we will allow the enemy to cross the river!”
Damien broke into a cold sweat when he heard Giselle Davy’s pale, exhausted cry.
Was it a failure to try to recycle a strategy that had already been fun against the Empire?
At this point, this didn’t come here by accident.
They expected that Damien de Mirbeau would have a defensive posture relying on the ‘Mirbeau Line’, and they prepared and attacked precisely to destroy it.
“How many hours has it been since we requested reinforcements?”
“…2 hours have passed. dismissal.”
Even if they received a message from Lorraine’s main force or Franche-Comté’s second line and prepared to march, the battle would have already reached its end by the time they arrived.
No, what about the end?
The opponent is the elite of Crafte, where the main force has gathered. How long can you last against that?
By the time reinforcements arrive, his army will have already been completely defeated.
Damien swallowed dry saliva and opened his mouth.
“Moo, step back.”
“yes?”
“If the enemy crosses the river and begins to engage, you will be swept out as you try to get out of the trench! Order the entire army to retreat! “Give up Alsace and retreat to the second line!”
“Are you okay, Your Excellency?”
Giselle Darby rarely showed concern for his well-being, so Damien screamed, his face contorted as if he was about to cry.
“What are you going to do! “We can’t all die here!”
I had no choice but to grab the Marquis de Lafayette by his pants and beg for mercy!
* * *
Nancy, the capital of Lorraine.
Revolutionary Army Headquarters.
I was reading the report quite dejected.
6 hours.
This is the time it took for Damien de Mirbeau to be beaten and then defeated, and for the Krafte army to cross the Rhine River at surprising speed and secure all of Alsace.
“under.”
Southern Army, Central Army, Northern Army.
It was all a trick.
Or maybe they mistakenly thought that it was just a name given to them to roughly differentiate them, but that we would interpret it in our own way and attack them from different directions.
Krafte’s entire army of 200,000 troops rushed into Alsace, trampling and crushing Damien de Mirbeau’s ‘Mirbo Line’.
Not even a single soldier came to Lorraine, the direction we expected to attack.
I do not believe that our generals who anticipated the offensive into Lorraine were incompetent. In the first place, this is a natural expectation when viewed from military science or strategic common sense.
From a strategic point of view, pouring all of your troops into Alsace would be a very poor plan.
Since future attack routes are extremely limited, it becomes easy to predict, and even if you are defeated, you must immediately lose all occupied territory and retreat.
The blow would be enormous as a large army of 200,000 would have to cross the river and retreat.
But that’s only when looking at stability from a strategic perspective.
Now I think I know what Charles II is thinking.
The author does not even think he will lose in the first place, so there is no need to consider strategic stability.
If you just march forward, destroying everything with overwhelming force, then everything else is of no concern.
-When confronting the Great King, don’t consider the future or strategy. With that in mind, the moment you fight while preparing your next hand, you will break in front of him, so think of every moment as your last and pour everything you have into resisting.
Only now did I fully understand the meaning of Archduke Leopold’s words.
They are truly an army that has sacrificed everything for tactical superiority that has raised operational excellence and military elite to the limit.
Reserve unit? What’s next?
Is there something like that in their heads?
But in the end, they caught us off guard.
Alsace, which we expected to hold out along the Rhine River for quite some time, collapsed in an instant, and the defense lines of Metz fortress and Lorraine Verdun, which we had thoroughly prepared in anticipation of an attack from the north, were useless.
Now we must confront that Krafte with a completely new defense plan.
Meanwhile, the morale of the revolutionary army was greatly shaken thanks to the fact that Damien, who was praised as the ‘master of defense’ and ‘the protector of Dilus’ and was in fact treated as the second-in-command of the revolutionary army, was shattered from the beginning.
Feeling tired, I raised my hand and wiped the area around my eyes.
I’ve never felt like a wall like this when fighting Archduke Leopold or even when fighting Paimon.
“Your Excellency the Marquis…”
I sighed lightly and commanded at the sound of Desai’s worried voice.
“I order all units to assemble.”
In the end, what the great king wants is to fight a truly majestic battle with me, even if it means intentionally narrowing the next advance route.
Damien de Mirbeau begged and begged for mercy, saying that he had no choice but to save the soldiers, but whether it was for his own safety or to actually save the soldiers, his judgment was not bad.
If by any chance the army led by Damien had been completely pulverized by the Krafte army, the difference in power would have widened in an instant.
“Fortunately, Count Mirbeau has kept the army safe, so it is worth fighting.”
Although we are not comparable to the Krafte army, we are also quite elite.
The Revolutionary Guard and Cuirassier are the brave men who fought against the drones in Iberica, and in terms of military strength, we are far superior to them.
The army of the Iberian Brotherhood, which should have entered Francia by now, will also arrive soon.
“Now that this has come to an end, let’s give it a try. Let’s see how great that Krafte-kun is.”
* * *
Mittelburg, the capital of the Kingdom of Krafte.
Krafte’s government building was deserted as the Maharaja dragged away all military officials.
Even in Krafte’s political circles, the majority was held by military officials, to the extent that there was a saying that it was not the country that owned the army, but the army that owned the country.
In that empty government building, Chancellor Justin von Wittenfeld, who oversees most of the country on behalf of the absent Maharaja, quietly narrowed his brows.
As expected, Charles II is the great king he serves.
In Alsace, they achieved victory by overwhelmingly pushing back the ‘master of defense’ that the revolutionary army was proud of.
It is a bit unfortunate that the opponent was quick to judge and retreated before inflicting as much damage as expected, but the enemy’s morale must have been quite shaken by the defeat of a general with a high reputation from the beginning.
The war situation is very smooth.
But Bittenfeld was feeling uneasy.
Christine D’Aquitaine, the Black Witch of Aquitaine.
Although he is nominally the owner of the Aquitaine upper class, a member of the National Assembly, and an admiral, he is a dark figure who has been working secretly behind the scenes in Franzia and is in charge of all kinds of political operations and information warfare.
That’s not to say I looked down on it.
But since this was information warfare in a war, he was just confident that he had the advantage.
In reality, almost all of their operations were blocked, and Wittenfeld was on the verge of capturing the ‘head’ who controlled the information warfare in Krafte with the information extracted from the captured Aquitaine agents.
However, at that exact moment, almost all operations against the Krafte army were halted.
It was very neat, as if he had predicted the consequences of doing more here.
Wittenfeld pushed up his glasses with his hand.
It is wise to understand the situation you are in and get out of the way before you suffer too much damage.
Bittenfeld even felt like praising the black witch for being able to judge her own situation so objectively as a manager of an information organization.
But on the other hand, I don’t understand how that can happen.
2 years 2 years.
A spy war that lasted for a period guaranteed by the King.
In the meantime, Bittenfeld has achieved some success.
The bombing of the capital armory, which encouraged factional conflict within the massively recruited revolutionary army and announced the start of the war, is a huge practical damage.
What has the Black Witch of Aquitaine done so far?
They may have been able to plant spies and obtain information to some extent, but at least they were unable to succeed in even a plausible operation.
But after being unilaterally manipulated for two years, he decided that if he dug any further, he would suffer harm, so he pulled out cleanly?
The Krafte army is even advancing into Franzia’s homeland right now?
“This might be…”
Bittenfeld opened and closed his mouth softly.
He is reluctant to say it out loud.
Could it be that he didn’t play with the black witch, but rather the black witch played with him?
* * *
And at that time, Lumière, the capital of Francia.
Christine Daquiten was looking at the map of the Central Continent with a cold face.
“Your Excellency the Count has confirmed the return of all agents operating in Krafte.”
“okay. Good job, Lina. “Give them paid vacation.”
Even though they were driven out because they committed something worthy of being driven to such a place, they are nevertheless capable of surviving until now while carrying out operations in Krafte.
The warning would have been sufficient, so the value of recycling is abundant.
“all right. “Your Excellency the Count.”
After her personal maid and right-hand man who managed the intelligence organization left, Christine tapped the words on the map with her hand.
Almost all military operations against the Krafte army failed.
The greatest achievement in Krafte is filtering out competent agents who know how to sense a crisis and avoid it, and gathering the information they bring.
Still, they did their job brilliantly.
They continued their work with so much sacrifice that they made the Prime Minister believe that Christine was working hard to infiltrate and destroy the Krafte army.
The number of operatives that were initially infiltrated exceeded hundreds. The money it takes to train operatives is not a trivial amount, so they have no choice but to think that way.
However –
in a country where the military runs the country in the first place, there is a wide gap between the money that is squeezed out of the budget and invested in the intelligence organization and the money that can be invested by the managers at the top, who control and shake up the French economy that is more than twice that size.
The difference that arose from there only tied up the chancellor of Krafte and left Christine enough room to carry out other operations.
furthermore.
Christine twitched the corner of her mouth.
Since they are an organization that was originally designed to support the military, if they can gain an upper hand over the Aquitaine agents, the opposite is also true.
Seeds have been sufficiently sown and preparations are complete.
Now all that’s left is.
Christine reached out and swept Lauren off the map, where Pierre was.
Just once.
If only we could show just one proof that there could be a chance of victory in the war against Krafte.
It is also possible to corner that seemingly invincible Krafte.
She’s done everything she can, so all that’s left is to wait and trust that Pierre will do it.
…as always.
