Great Qing Dynasty talker

Mid-March 1795.

In early spring, tender green has broken through the ground and the sun is shining on Paris.

The 50 intervention troops coming from all sides surrounded the city and launched an artillery bombardment with a density rarely seen in the history of war.

The sound of artillery fire was so intense that it was hard to breathe.

The soldiers could even see with their naked eyes many black spots hitting Paris.

A noble officer of the Allied Forces lamented with heartache:

"Paris, it's Paris."

The people around were collectively silent.

Yeah, no one wants to destroy Paris.

But~but~
……

In the past six months, the Frankish Kingdom has once again lost almost all of its territory and lost 55 brave soldiers on various battlefields.

Countless farms were burned and thousands of gentlemen who supported the Provisional Parliament were slaughtered.

The hatred escalates and escalates again.

All differences were put aside and all conflicts were ignored.

In Paris, regardless of rich or poor, gender, age or status, everyone was preparing for a bloody battle.

……

Behind the barricade.

Composer Delisle played the violin and sang the "Marseillaise".

"To arms, civilians."

"Endeavour! Endeavour!"

The young artillery brigadier general Napoleon joined in the singing from behind a cannon, even climbing up the barricades and raising his right arm:

“You’ll get your comeuppance in the end!

"You'll get your comeuppance in the end!"

"Frank has successors, young people are coming forward!"

……

The singing began at a barricade, spread along the street, and finally, the whole of Paris was singing the Marseillaise.

Amid the singing, 50 intervention troops rushed towards Paris from all directions, and they were greeted by ubiquitous bullets and fanatical Parisian citizens.

The battle had no warm-up and reached its peak from the very beginning.

There was fighting in every street, and every street was littered with corpses.

From morning to evening.

From evening to morning.

There is no distinction between the front and the rear, and no distinction between commanders and ordinary soldiers.

……

A Saxon nobleman's arms trembled and he spoke incoherently.

“Parisians are crazy~”

“They are crazy~”

The Allied Forces Headquarters has issued a final military order that Paris must be conquered within three days. If not, the 3 noble officers supervising the battle will be collectively stripped of their titles and fiefs.

Not a threat, but real.

This was an order issued jointly by Frederick William II, George III, Francis II and Carlos IV.

No one can disobey!
The coalition forces were like a tide, repeatedly attacking Paris.

Delisle, the composer of "La Marseillaise", died in front of a simple barricade. He was shot three times, his eyes were open, and his right hand was tightly holding the tricolor flag.
……

Paris became the graveyard of the Allied forces.

Bullets of hatred are being fired from every window and behind every door on the street.

The prosperity, fashion and civilization of the past are gone.

The coalition forces began to set fire and attack Paris.

A Junker nobleman brandished his sword and shouted: "Burn them!"

Before he could finish his words, a shell landed in front of him, shattering him into pieces.

No one could figure out where the enemy was, they just kept shooting mechanically.

Deserters will be executed immediately!

The supervision team has gone crazy.

……

Maybe even God couldn't stand it anymore.

After a flash of lightning, it started raining!

Big raindrops fell, as if trying to save this famous city and wake up the crazy humans.

In the heavy rain, the Paris Resistance broke through!
They easily broke through the layers of encirclement and passed by a large number of coalition forces.

The coalition forces just stared at this group of lunatics in a daze, neither firing a gun nor firing a cannon, just staring at them~
Evening~
The Allied forces finally hoisted their flag on the highest point in Paris.

But there was no cheering.

Everyone was dejected and quietly looked for a house to shelter from the rain.

The coalition forces won, but it seemed as if they did not win.

The Parisians lost, but it seemed like they won.

……

In any case, the Battle of Paris was finally over.

The Allied High Command breathed a sigh of relief and began to turn its attention to the Eastern Front.

Wu’s army launched an attack on the eastern front!

The elite Fifth Army acted as fast as lightning and wiped out four divisions of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Moldova region.

Afterwards, the dragoons and light cavalry corps of the 3rd Army joined forces to attack Warsaw.

A fierce battle broke out with the Prussian army 200 miles south of the Warsaw suburbs. In just half a day, more than 20000 of the Prussian troops, who were well-organized and strictly disciplined, were killed.

The 5 Rakshasa troops stopped collectively 50 miles away, not daring to move forward or rescue their friendly forces.

Wu Jun's artillery fire stunned everyone.

The Prussian army newspaper wrote:
The Wu army was equipped with extremely advanced breech-loading artillery and new artillery shells. Its firing frequency was three times that of ours and its power was five times that of ours.

……

Bad news continued to come from the Eastern Front: Chisinau, Katowice, Lodz, Warsaw, and Kaliningrad fell one after another.

The whole of Europe was shocked!
The royal families of various countries took out their most valuable treasures to reward the army and recruit new soldiers. They wished they could send all the men to the battlefield.

Countless new recruits lined up to march to the eastern front all day long.

A few hundred miles west of Warsaw is Poznan.

Prussia mobilized 50 elite infantry regiments and 6 artillery regiments, and the Russians dispatched 15 elite infantry regiments and 5 cavalry regiments to intercept the Wu Army Guards Corps in the wilderness.

There aren't many new recruits here.

Veterans account for more than 7%.

16 troops against 4 Wu troops.

Among these 4 Wu troops, there were only 15000 guards, and the rest were vassal troops.

……

The front width was 4 miles.

The two sides deployed their battle formations and fought in the most common combat method of the era.

The artillery is at the back and the infantry is at the front.

The artillery fired first, and the infantry moved later.

The Wu army had its vassal troops in the front, forming two horizontal rows, like a long, khaki line.

The cannons were deployed on the slopes of the hills.

The gun positions were dug into depressions and the distances between them were increased.

The ammunition trucks were on the reverse slope of the hill, and the middle distance was transported by manpower. People would rather die of exhaustion than be killed in a wave of explosions.

……

Both sides behaved like gentlemen and only started bombarding after they had deployed their troops.

One side fired solid bullets, while the other side fired shrapnel bullets.

The infantry of both sides stood still.
The cannons continued to roar, putting pressure on the opposing army.

This is a time to test military discipline. The infantry lines that cannot withstand the bombardment will be the first to collapse.

The lives of musketeers are worthless.

A picric acid-shrapnel bomb rolled into the Prussian infantry phalanx and knocked down one man.

The queue was as still as a mountain.

A Junker noble officer with an exquisite beard saw the shells still smoking and was about to shout.

The next second, the fuse burned out.

Boom~
Poisonous smoke billowed, flames were intense, and shrapnel flew everywhere.

Just one hit and he and half of his company were wiped out.

……

In contrast, the Wu army's vassal troops suffered much fewer casualties from the bombardment.

Even if it was hit by a solid bullet, only the thin two-layer linear array would be penetrated.

The casualties on both sides are not at the same level at all.

After a quarter of an hour of shelling, the Russians could no longer hold on.

"Attack~"

"Hula~" The gray Rakshasa soldiers raised their bayonets and launched a charge.

……

Wu Jun's 88-caliber field artillery began to extend, raise the firing angle, increase the charge, and bombard the Prussian artillery positions.

quickly,

Shrapnel and flames enveloped the Prussian artillery.

Yellow smoke billows.

The poisonous yellow smoke unique to picric acid explosives is like the call of death.

The Wu army's gunners cheered in unison, but their joy was overturned by sorrow. Just a few seconds later, one of their own artillery pieces exploded.

The gunner was torn into pieces and the barrel was blown several feet away.

Picric acid bombs are still dangerous~
……

The infantry on both sides began to line up and shoot.

The two sides kept firing at each other from a distance of more than 20 feet, and the air was filled with smoke.

The Guards Corps stood still and watched the vassal army bleed.

However, they provided mortar support.

The mortar, lifted by four gunners, was moved into position and fired shrapnel shells.

A round of test firing, the landing point was not ideal.

The second round was ideal.

The shrapnel shells do not explode immediately after they fall. Instead, the sparks burn slowly in the compressed gunpowder inside the wooden tube.

……

Seeing the shells falling, the surrounding Allied infantry immediately shouted in unison and fled backwards.

The officer is running too.
A few seconds later, the shrapnel exploded.

The coalition forces began to flee, three places, five places, and finally turned into a flight everywhere.

The Guards Corps stopped the bombardment and gave the order:

"Fix the bayonet and chase~"

……

The Fuso vassal soldiers aimed at the enemy's backs and emptied their guns. They threw down their muskets, drew their ancestral swords, and shouted in unison:

"Onboard~"

Everyone charges forward, blades sharp.

They don't like bayonets and insist on old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat.

If a sharp samurai sword is used against an armored soldier, it will be useless. But it can be used against an unarmored musketeer to great effect.

The coalition forces were probably not good at running, and the short Fuso vassal soldiers caught up with them and rushed into the enemy group, firing fiercely.

The knife flashed and blood splattered three feet away.

……

The defeat was like a landslide~
Even if the five cavalry regiments of the Rakshasa tried to provide cover, it was of no avail.

The line infantry of the Guards Corps was like a shark net, blocking their detour route.

There were also 75-caliber short-barreled infantry guns in place, bombarding the cavalry group.

It was another unsurprising defeat: the Prussians lost 31 regiments, the Russians 12.

The situation on the Eastern Front was terrible.

……

Only 1 month~
The nobles of Vienna began to pack up their belongings and flee.

There are many more barricades on the streets of Berlin.

St. Petersburg had three surprises in one day.

The Frankish Kingdom was able to take a breather, as the number of intervention troops on its territory was decreasing dramatically. However, the Thermidorians suffered a blow and left the stage in disgrace.

A group of military generals represented by Napoleon came onto the stage.

They retook Paris and then signed an armistice agreement with the G6.

One party promises never to support revolution in other countries.

One side promised to abandon hostility and withdraw all troops.

However, the Saxons and Iberians still occupied the important Frankish port of Toulon and refused to give up.

……

But at this moment, something very strange happened.

The Wu army suddenly began to withdraw its forces and retreat, burning villages and towns along the way, and military discipline began to deteriorate.

All the important towns that had been previously occupied were abandoned.

Everyone was stunned and puzzled.

Rumors began to spread that Emperor Wu was seriously ill and was about to die.
The news spread from Vienna and spread across Europe at the speed of wind. Although it could not be verified, it seemed to be true.

Because I really can't find any more convincing explanation.

The coalition forces sent a large number of reconnaissance cavalry and spies to try to obtain first-hand intelligence.

……

New Suez City on the Red Sea.

A brand new hexagonal bastion with three layers inside and outside, with maximum defense.

outside the city,

It is bustling with merchants.

The brick tea trade is in full swing.

There are fewer smugglers, not because of the strength of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, but because the Allied High Command chose to join if they couldn’t win.

Ever since the mutiny over tea in the recruits' camp, the Allied Forces Headquarters has revised its strategy: instead of doing it privately, it is better to do it publicly.

Don’t let middlemen take the difference.

Earl Jia accepted all offers and implemented the principle of free trade to the extreme, but he doubled the price!
We, the heavenly soldiers, swear to defend to the death the enemy's legitimate rights to drink tea on the battlefield.

……

Merchant ships from the Wu State came loaded with tea and arms, and left loaded with gold and silver.

Red Sea - Goa - Colombo - Yangon.

From Yangon, go upstream along the Irrawaddy River into Yunnan, then to Guizhou, and then take the water route again in Xiangxi to enter the Yangtze River.

Such a brand new business route has finally gained new vitality.

Behind this trade route, tea merchants from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui joined forces with their southwestern counterparts to stab the Port of Guangzhou in the back.

Brick tea does not take up volume and is light in weight, so it can be transported via the Yunnan-Guizhou land route, and the overall transportation cost will not increase.

Bypassing Guangzhou Port and skipping Malacca Strait directly.

Although there is no smoke of gunpowder in business competition, every move is bloody.

This move by Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui was ruthless. It directly won over the three brothers from Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan who were working hard to grow tea, and the two brothers from Huguang also applauded in support.

They can all benefit greatly from it.

Especially Yunnan~
……

Early April 1795.

It's spring again, the weather is warm, and it's a good time for humans to fight.

After 12 days of discussion and argument, the Allied Forces Headquarters finally reached a unanimous decision to pursue the retreating million-strong Wu army.

While Emperor Wu is about to pass away, interrupt the rise of Emperor Dong.

A scout risked his life to sneak across the Dnieper River and saw that the Wu army's central camp was heavily guarded and entry and exit were strictly controlled.

The coalition forces also captured several deserters from the vassal army, who all confessed that the Emperor Wu might be critically ill.
But no one saw it with their own eyes, and the evidence was only based on indirect intelligence.

……

Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Finally, the first batch of foreign reinforcements and arms arrived after the siege.

The Wu army's steam fleet in the lower reaches of the Dnieper River also suddenly took action. 45 crudely made steam warships captured Kherson, an important town at the estuary, and sailed into the Black Sea.

But no attack was launched on the Crimean Peninsula.

It simply completely cut off all material supplies between the peninsula and the outside world.

……

The fleet then sailed south and annihilated the Black Sea Squadron of the Habsburg Monarchy.

The outcome was not surprising.

Everyone can see the advantages of breech-loading shrapnel.

Arms dealers in Western European countries are also working intensively to imitate them, and the army can be equipped in as little as half a year and as long as a year.

At this time, the industrial gap between the East and the West was not that big.

Just moving forward in parallel.

Wu Jun's leading armament was only a breakthrough in design concept, not something that was out of reach.

Wu Jun's fleet of dozens of steam ships sailed south and finally arrived and anchored off the coast of Constantinople.

A few days later,
The military flag was lowered and the Ottoman flag was hung instead.

……

The intelligence transmitted to the Allied Forces Headquarters seemed to confirm a hypothesis: Wu's army was indeed preparing to retreat.

Everyone is excited.

The speed of the coalition forces' pursuit increased significantly, from 15 miles a day to 50 miles a day, and even 60 miles a day.

The most active ones are the Rakshasa army. (End of this chapter)