I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 904: Deterring Vienna

In the Bavarian army command post, Dernberg saw through the telescope that the French army, which had been fleeing, suddenly turned around and attacked his right wing like hungry wolves. His face suddenly turned black.

He tried to calm himself. He still had the advantage in terms of military strength. As long as he could keep his formation stable, he still had a chance to defeat the French.

He quickly issued a series of orders, asking the troops in the front to withdraw immediately, the central army to move forward to provide support, and at the same time push the reserve army to the right wing which was beginning to become chaotic.

As for the cavalry... we can only pretend that they don't exist.

However, Dernberg overlooked one thing, that is, although Moreau usually looked like a noble dandy, he was by no means an officer who relied solely on cleverness to fight.

On the contrary, Moreau knew that he had never attended military school, so he spent several times more energy than others to catch up on military theory. Coupled with his amazing military talent, his ability to command positional warfare ranked among the top three in Europe!

In a head-on confrontation, as long as he gains the slightest advantage, his opponent will have almost no chance of turning the tables.

As soon as the Bavarian army took action, Moreau understood Dernberg's idea and immediately made targeted adjustments.

After Ney's main army cut in from the enemy's right wing, it no longer implemented a counter-encirclement, but instead deployed on the flank and rear, attacking the Bavarian reserve army that had hurried to the rescue.

The French Royal Second Artillery Battalion began to bombard the junction between the enemy's center and left wing. The left wing of the Brazilian army, which had just received Dernberg's order and was about to move toward the center, immediately moved toward the shells. In a moment, hundreds of people were killed by grapeshot, and the formation became more chaotic than before.

The main force of the Pakistani army in the center was approaching the main battlefield step by step, but did not encounter a single French army along the way.

At the same time, Moreau's dragoon battalion had circled behind Dernberg, dismounted and formed a line array...

The Bavarian army's right wing and the arriving reserve army only held out for 40 minutes before being completely defeated.

Seeing that there seemed to be French troops everywhere on the battlefield and the situation was quickly out of his control, Dernberg began to panic.

He was about to instruct the herald to let the relatively intact central army withdraw to Ingolstadt when he suddenly heard intensive gunfire behind him.

The French dragoon battalion completed the outflanking.

Although they had only more than 800 people, Dernberg's reserve troops had already been sent out, and all the cavalry had been killed in the first wave of attack. At this time, there were only more than guards who could protect him.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, Dernberg was forced to surrender under the siege of French dragoons.

The entire battlefield was divided very finely by Moreau's troops. The Bavarian army could not even find a gap to retreat. Nearly 2 of the more than 3 soldiers were killed, and the rest were all captured.

It can be said that after this battle, there were no organized troops available in Bavaria.

As dinner time approached, Ney came to Moreau's headquarters with a smile on his face and raised his hat to signal him:

“Your tactical arrangements are simply perfect. I feel more relaxed than when I fought in North Africa before.

"Well, what's next?"

Moreau handed him a glass of wine: "To Munich."

"Munich," Ney raised his glass to him, "Yes, we can occupy it at any time."

Moro clinked his glass with his, but smiled and shook his head, "It's not 'we', it's you going to Munich."

"Ah? What about you?" "I'm going to Vienna again."

The next day.

As soon as the morning sun rose above the treetops, Ney led 3 soldiers across the Danube - using the pontoon bridge they had built earlier - and headed for Munich with great fanfare.

Moreau led 1 main forces and marched eastward again.

He knew very well that it was impossible to really capture Vienna with such a small force, but it was enough to make Francis II panic and mobilize the army, which in turn caused panic among the citizens of Vienna.

While the Austrian Auersperg Corps was on its way to encircle the French army, it heard the news that the Bavarian army had been completely wiped out.

He immediately cursed Dernberg as a waste and ordered a retreat to Vienna without hesitation.

A few days later, Moreau's army came to the town of Perge to revisit the old place, and Vienna, a hundred kilometers away, was indeed in chaos.

Troops from all over Austria, regardless of whether they were combat-capable or not, were transferred to the capital by Baron Thugut to strengthen the defense.

At first, the citizens in the city only heard that "more than ten thousand French troops were going to attack Vienna", and soon the rumor turned into "50,000 French troops had occupied the entire western Austria". Less than a week later, the number of French troops was rumored to have increased to as many as 100,000.

Those who could leave fled to the countryside for refuge, while those who could not leave began to hoard daily necessities in large quantities, and all the bakeries were sold out.

In less than a week, the price of bread in Vienna rose by 240%. There was widespread misery and soon there were incidents of people gathering to grab food.

However, Moreau only stationed the majority of his troops outside the town of Perg, and from time to time sent one or two companies to walk towards Vienna, find a place with people and fire a few shots to "keep the heat."

After half a month of struggle, 2 troops gathered in Vienna - half of them were local security forces from surrounding cities - but the French still did not attack.

Baron Thugut asked Auersperg to send someone to Linz for reconnaissance, only to find that the French army had already left for many days.

In fact, if Joseph ordered Moreau to attack Vienna at all costs, there was a high probability that the city could be captured.

But this is politically and diplomatically uneconomical.

Overly weakening Austria would only make Prussia the only dominant power in Germany, thus accelerating the process of German unification.

Unless France puts all its national strength into flattening the northern German countries as well.

That would be like going back to Napoleon's old ways, making France the enemy of the world and mired in war. The British would surely wake up from their dreams with laughter.

Before France had a powerful fleet that could rival Britain's and a national strength that could control all of Central and Western Europe, maintaining a balance of power between Prussia and Austria was the best strategy.

The main purpose of Joseph sending Moreau across the Rhine this time was to deter other German countries and let them see that if they dared to provoke France, even Austria might not be safe, and Bavaria would be beaten to the ground.

But at the same time, France had to show considerable "restraint" to let the German states know that France did not seek to destroy them. As long as they did not take the initiative to provoke France, then France would be a country that respected the existing order and a reliable trading partner.

On the other side, when Ney led his army slowly to the city of Munich, he received a secret order from the Crown Prince, asking him to deploy his troops outside the city but not to attack it.

At the same time, Count Ségur, assistant to the French Foreign Minister, came to the Munich Palace.

(End of this chapter)