I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 707 Strategic Detour (Additional chapter for Alliance Leader Lin Jiaer)
Jaeger said palely: "Why are the Poles here?"

"I do not know either."

"Didn't you say that the Emperor's army beat the Poles badly?"

Yakov said absentmindedly: "It was Master Gumilov who said that..."

"But I think those Poles are terrible!"

In the city of Bryansk.

A captain saluted Kosciuszko and said, "General, the food supply in the city is very low."

The latter nodded and looked at Dabrovsky beside him: "It is obvious that the Russians are already prepared."

"The wheat we got from Trubchevsk can last for more than half a month," said the commander of the cavalry regiment, "enough for us to rush to the outskirts of Moscow."

Kosciuszko frowned and looked eastward: "You may have noticed that there are more and more Russian troops around us."

"That's true. But they always kept their distance from us. Apart from the occasional sneak attack, they had no intention of launching a large-scale attack."

"But this will slow us down," Kosciuszko sighed. "The further east we go, the more frequent these attacks will become.

"We are destined not to reach Moscow within half a month."

When marching, the army will form long and narrow columns, but this formation is completely unsuitable for combat.

Therefore, once attacked by the enemy, we must immediately change from marching formation to line formation for defense.

But the queue conversion of a large army is bound to take a lot of time.

Since the Russian army began to adopt the tactic of "delaying and avoiding battle", the marching speed of Kosciuszko's Corps has been reduced by about half.

Donbrovsky calculated silently and looked serious: "Yes, we can only reach Kaluga at most. It seems that we have to find the main force of the Russian army and have a decisive battle."

"No, that would just keep us stuck here."

"But our target is Moscow. Are we just going to sit there and wait for our plan to fail?"

Kosciuszko shook his head: "No, our target has never been Moscow."

"what did you say?"

"It was decided at the military meeting in Paris," Kosciuszko said. "His Royal Highness the Crown Prince had already considered that we might encounter this situation."

An infantry lieutenant colonel rode up to Kościuszko and saluted, saying, "General, the Russian troops in the city have been cleared out. What should we do next?"

"Take all the food and ammunition you can find."

Kosciuszko looked at the town hall building in the distance and ordered: "Burn down all municipal buildings, banks, warehouses, and workshops."

The essence of war is destruction, and it does not allow for any mercy.

Only by causing the greatest damage to the enemy can we better protect ourselves.

Especially since Russia had already brought great disaster to Poland, Kosciuszko would be ruthless towards them.

In fact, if the Polish army could not stay here for long, he would have wanted to burn down all the shops and mansions.

But setting a fire is not an easy task without prior preparation, so we can only destroy the most important things.

"Yes, General!"

After the lieutenant colonel left, Dombrowski couldn't wait to ask, "What is our real goal?"

In order to avoid leaking secrets, only Commander-in-Chief Kościuszko and several staff officers knew the specific plan for this mission deep into Russia. Kościuszko raised his hand and pointed to the south, saying calmly: "Crimea."

Yes, Joseph knew from the beginning that it would be almost impossible to threaten Moscow with less than 20,000 Polish troops.

If the Emperor Na, who was at the peak of his power at that time, wanted to achieve this, he would have to lead an army of hundreds of thousands.

Therefore, his target has always been Russia's "southern gate" - Crimea.

Without Crimea, Russia would lose control of the Black Sea and, consequently, would lose access to the vast Mediterranean trade.

As long as the national strength allowed, the czars of all generations would spare no effort to use military force here.

Catherine II also spent huge financial resources and lost tens of thousands of troops before she snatched this strategic location from the Ottomans.

In terms of importance to the empire, Crimea is not much less important than Moscow.

This is also the reason why half a century later in history, Russia lost to the British, French and Turkish coalition forces in the Crimean War and immediately fell into a decades-long trough.

Dabrovsky frowned: "We are now 500 miles away from Crimea, and we don't have enough food to support such a long journey.

"Besides, there is the Kursk Fortress in the middle. The plan you proposed is simply impossible to realize!"

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"If you think it's impossible, the enemy will never think of it," Kosciuszko said. "His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will help us solve the logistical supply problem. He promised me that.

"As for the Kursk Fortress, the Russians never expected that we would suddenly move south, so the defense there must have been relaxed.

"We can take it. We must take it!"

Dabrowski took a deep breath, nodded and smiled: "Well, since you want to go crazy, I will go crazy with you this time. For Poland!"

"For Poland!"

At dusk, the burning Bryansk turned into a torch on the plain, illuminating the way for the Polish soldiers moving south.

Kosciuszko looked back to the east and said with great regret: "The Russians reacted too quickly. Otherwise, according to the original plan, we would have had a chance to destroy Kaluga."

"Bryansk has already caused them heavy losses." Dombrovsky said, and then he remembered something and asked, "By the way, why didn't we go directly south from Mozyr, but instead went around here on the north bank of the Oka River first?"

Kosciuszko smiled and said, “That’s the beauty of this plan.

"I bet you that all the troops in Russia are now being mobilized towards Moscow.

“If we are lucky enough, even a large part of the Kursk garrison will be withdrawn.

"And if we go directly south, we will face the Russian army's encirclement, just like our current situation. We can't wait until then and then go north to Moscow, right?"

They both laughed.

It seemed that they were not going to die, but to attend a long-awaited feast.

The next day, Korezhevsky, who was responsible for encircling Kościuszko's army, suddenly lost track of the Polish army.

In the Russian army's temporary command post, Korezhevsky frowned and stared at the map, then suddenly slapped the map hard on the location of Moscow:

"No matter what methods they use, their ultimate goal must be Moscow."

He said to the herald: "Let Vasnetsov detach three regiments to defend Moscow. The other regiments will be concentrated in Kaluga, and we will try to intercept the Poles there.

"Also, send someone to urge the troops coming from Saratov to speed up their march."

"Yes, General!"

(End of this chapter)