I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 1250 The Art of Interweaving

1799 2 Month 5 Day.

Beside a forest in eastern Hesse-Kassel.

Surte raised the long branch in his hand, squinted at it for a moment, nodded in satisfaction, and then began to tie a rope to the thinner end of the branch.

A handcrafted fishing rod quickly took shape.

As he began installing the fishhooks, his staff officer jogged up from the side and stood at attention, saying, "General, the Prussian army arrived this morning on the western outskirts of Kolbach."

"Okay, I understand." Suer nodded and swung the fishing rod to test the feel.

Sitting to his right, Lieutenant Colonel Rana, who had been forced to fish, threw down his worm pot and stood up excitedly: "General, let's launch the attack immediately!"

Surte smiled and stopped him: "No, our task today is fishing."

Lana panicked: "If we delay any longer, the Prussians will occupy Kassel!"

Karbach is less than 40 kilometers from Kassel. If nearly 5 Prussian troops were stationed in this important town, they would find it very difficult to defeat this enemy force.

Soult glanced at him and said calmly, "You must trust General Augero."

"what?"

Soult breathed a sigh of relief and said patiently, "You should still remember that our strategic objective was to cover the breakthrough of the Augero Legion from the Coburg area."

"The more we try to make the coalition ignore them, the more we need to show that we are the main direction of the attack."

"Yes, right now, we who are rushing to Anhalt are the biggest threat to the enemy."

Rana slowly sat down and picked up the worm bag: "So, if we launch an attack on the Brunswick Legion, it will expose our intention to only stop them."

Surte nodded: "After that, the Allied forces will likely reassess our main offensive direction and take notice of General Augero."

He adjusted his fishing rod and cast it towards the stream in front of him: "Please rest assured, the Duke of Brunswick will not remain hidden in Kassel forever, but will intercept us as quickly as possible."

"We just need to wait along the way."

Lana then thought of something else and asked, "If that's the case, why didn't you have General Lefebvre come and join us before? I mean, that would have made us look more like the main attack force."

Soult smiled and said, "In the Duke of Brunswick's view, the Lefebvre Legion is just holding him back for us."

Rana immediately understood. How could the "main offensive force" be without covering troops?

Soult continued, "Of course, I'm also worried that the Duke of Brunswick might flee after being ambushed."

Currently, the "dawdling" Lefebvre Legion is located to the southwest of the Prussian army, pretending to be trying to entangle the Duke of Brunswick but unable to find him.

In fact, he followed Soult's instructions and always kept himself positioned to the southwest of the Prussian army.

……

Southwestern Saxony.

The town of Pegnitz, 38 kilometers south of Bayreuth.

Ney frowned as he listened to the staff officer's intelligence report, then turned to Moro and said, "It seems the enemy has identified our target. In that case, we have no choice but to detour through the Weden area."

Victor immediately objected: "That's too risky. If the Allied forces suddenly move south, we'll be trapped on the west side of Shumawa Mountain."

"I think it would be better to turn southeast and pretend to attack Austria from Passau. Wermze will definitely follow closely."

Moro smiled and shook his head: "Our mission is to hold back the main force of the entire coalition, not just one Wilmze Legion."

Victor said with a serious expression, "General, are you really planning to go through Weiden? The terrain there is just too..." Morrow shook his head again, "Of course not."

Before Victor could even catch his breath, he heard the commander-in-chief continue, "We're heading straight to Bayreuth."

The officers around him immediately turned to look at him in surprise.

They were indeed confident that they could defeat the 8-strong army of the Wilmzee Legion.

Although the Morro Legion only had 65,000 soldiers, they had already established a psychological advantage over the Austrian army through a series of previous battles, and they dared to fight even 100,000 enemy troops.

However, defeating 8 enemy troops would take several days. If Wilmze had chosen to huddle in a defensive posture from the beginning, it might have even lasted for half a month.

Meanwhile, the main coalition force is located in Bamberg, just over 50 kilometers away, and can arrive in Bayreuth to reinforce them in just two days.

Seeing that no one spoke, Moro pointed to the map and smiled, "How many enemy troops do you think Bayreuth has?"

“At least 8,” Lieutenant Colonel Nansutti replied without hesitation. This number had been confirmed multiple times by the hussars.

“No.” Moro immediately shook his head. “There are 40,000, 25,000, and 15,000 enemy troops there.”

Yes, the Allied forces' Bayreuth Line was over 18 kilometers wide, which was the only way to effectively block the Morrow Legion.

Along such a long battlefront, there will inevitably be gaps between the various legions.

The three numbers Moro mentioned refer to the main force of Wilmzee, as well as the forces of the Kree Legion and the Blacksingen Legion under his command.

There is a distance of 4 to 5 kilometers between the three.

For a large-scale military operation involving tens of thousands of troops, this is practically equivalent to fighting shoulder to shoulder.

But in Moro's view, this was wide enough.

After the Venetian raids, his understanding of flanking maneuvers was absolutely top-notch among all French generals.

Moro tapped the enemy positions marked on the map with his finger: "If you were Wilmzer, which legion would you think is least likely to be attacked?"

Victor pondered, "It should be the Kree Legion."

The Kree Legion is positioned between the main force of the Wilmzee Legion and the Hesingen Legion—attacking here would easily result in an unfavorable situation where the Austrian forces on both flanks would launch an inside pincer attack.

“That’s right,” Moro nodded. “So we chose to break through from here.”

……

10 a.m. the next day.

Prince Heisingen, commander of the left wing of the Villemzee Legion, received a report from the cavalry that six or seven thousand French troops were passing by from a few kilometers to the east.

Prince Hesingen looked at his advisor beside him: "The French are planning to bypass our defenses from Weiden."

"Yes, General, but they shouldn't be their main force."

“Perhaps it’s the vanguard corps.” Prince Hesingen thought for a moment and then instructed, “First, notify General Wilmzee. Move two regiments toward East Weden. If they encounter the French, try to delay them as much as possible.”

"Yes, General."

Half an hour later, two divisions of the Moro Legion passed through the narrow gaps on either side of the Kree Legion at an extremely fast speed.

To maintain concealment, they did not even beat the war drums along the way, and kept the flags as low as possible, relying entirely on the soldiers' marching experience to maintain the formation.

At the most dangerous moment, they were only about two kilometers away from the Austrian troops beside them.

(End of this chapter)