Solovyov in Tsarist Russia 1796.

When the French Rochambeau Division was defeated, the Lagrange and Gerard Divisions that came to support were also on the way. After taking over Rochambeau's remnants, they began to move closer to the main force.

MacDonald only knew that Rochambeau had been attacked, but he did not care. Instead, he saw that the Prussian army was in a state of disarray and prepared to continue the pursuit.

In Blücher's headquarters, the Allied generals now all had sullen faces when they held meetings.

Polozkin, who was transferred from Danzig to replace Langgeron and was the commander of the 8th Army that Solovyov replaced, was very confused about the current situation.

After all, Blücher only knew how to lead his troops forward. Even on the first day of the operation, he got separated from Gneisenau, and the delivery of orders was affected.

Can such a Prussian army still fight as an ally?
He had some doubts, but as a general who was "rehired" after retirement, he had less contact with the Prussians in recent years.

As for his communication with Saken, he no longer needed to avoid people and just talked about the current dire situation.

".But what can we do now? At least General Blücher is still willing to continue fighting. He still has the determination as the commander-in-chief, but the Prussian army..."

Gneisenau was able to stay in office this time because there was no staff officer in the Prussian army who could take over. As the representative at the Allied Headquarters, Scharnhorst had to coordinate the relationship with Kleist's army and the Austrian army. It was also very hard for him, and he couldn't make it here in time.

"What can we do? Fortunately, those who ran away were militiamen. The regular army just had a lot of soldiers who fell behind. Although those old soldiers were afraid of the French, they would still shoot at the enemy on the battlefield."

These were all Sakken could say to comfort him, and Polozkin could only shake his head.

"May God bless you, those stupid Frenchmen, in the absence of Bonaparte, will not care about the bad conditions now. By the way, how is Solovyov?"

"Ah, it's been raining heavily these days, and the communication from his end is not as fast as it is on sunny days. You know, in bad weather, these optical communications are not very useful. As for the messenger coming here, he is probably still on the other side of the river to cover the flank. The journey is not easy, and now the river is flooded."

As for Blücher, although he had a bad temper, he was still able to listen to the ridicule of the current state of the Prussian army.

This is the good thing about him. Except for his occasional drinking problem, he would never hesitate to give orders directly assigned by the Chief of Staff.

He was also paying attention to Solovyov's situation.

At least the correspondence between Gneisenau and Clausewitz was maintained at least once every two days.

Now is probably the time to act. According to the reconnaissance of the cavalry ahead, the French have crossed the Katzbach River and are continuing their pursuit.

"August, it's going to rain these days, the river will probably swell, right?"

"Sir, that is true. When we crossed the river, the water level had risen by one foot."

"French ruler. You young people really like to use French weights and measures."

In fact, Gneisenau was not young anymore, but the old cavalryman Blücher was too old, even to him Kutuzov looked like a young man.

"This will also make it easier to understand the situation. Karl's letter said that the young count prefers to use a newer measurement method."

"Michael is my son's generation, so he's even younger. Whatever they want to do is their business. Also, should we attack now?"

Although he mentioned military action and started by "discussing" it with Gneisenau, he had actually made up his mind.

It’s just that because of the poor performance of the Prussian army in the previous few days, the generals on the Prussian side in the headquarters were a little embarrassed.

Blücher did this to help his chief of staff, at least to establish his position as chief of staff in the corps. Although he was not the commander, planning and execution could not be done without him, so he still had to have some authority.

"It's time to attack. If the river continues to rise, the French will slow down their crossing speed. This is our chance to launch an attack."

After listening, Blücher also nodded in agreement.

Considering that Sacken was of German descent and that there were quite a few German officers in the Russian army, he stood up and announced the order he was going to give: "We should launch a counterattack tomorrow morning. The water level is still rising. The French are crossing the river to chase us without even forming a formation. They really look down on us."

Speaking of which, Blücher was a little annoyed because MacDonald was chasing him.

Napoleon learned of Saint-Cyr's urgent report three days ago and led his core forces back to Dresden.

If Napoleon had chased him, he would probably have chosen to run away.

If it was MacDonald, Blücher would still have a fight with him.

Moreover, although there were many deserters after crossing the Katzbach River, the Prussian regular army and some early armed militias still maintained a relatively complete organization.

If they continue to run away, the number of deserters among these troops will probably increase.

So Blücher made up his mind to launch a counterattack here.

After hearing Blücher's opinions and Gneisenau's plan, the Russian generals also believed that they should fight now.

After all, the French army was only crossing the river one after another at this time, and half of its troops were about to cross. This might be a good opportunity for the coalition forces to attack.

If the entire French army crossed the river, even if their retreat might be cut off, it would probably not be so easy to deal with.

At this time, it can be considered as attacking the enemy halfway across the river, so there will naturally be no problem in fighting.

Moreover, when the Prussians fought wars, they often fought without declaration, without observing martial ethics, and engaged in secret bribery.

Before the armistice ended, they also quietly moved in front of the neutral zone, and were actually about to violate the armistice agreement.

If you do it once, there will definitely be a second time.

What Prussia did in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War will probably be repeated in the future.

When engaging in regular combat, there will be even less psychological pressure.

Perhaps McDonald underestimated the enemy at this time and did not arrange many guard troops.

Although there were light cavalry outposts in front, their numbers were always limited. In fact, by the war of 1813, the French battlefield perception had declined significantly. When the number of troops increased, the infantry maintained a larger scale, but the cavalry was always limited in number.

Even Napoleon, the Roman strategist, probably learned from Caesar's wisdom of using German auxiliary cavalry. Many of his troops were cavalry from Germany and Poland. He also wanted to put those recruits who were not good enough to join the regular cavalry into the infantry.

Some troops even have "Naval Artillery Regiments", which means that the French Navy now has to go ashore - there is also a Guards Naval Infantry that can be used in the Guards, and this special type of troops can be seen in the game.

The French were overdrawing their manpower in order to win the war.

But now it seems that the soldiers are performing well, the middle and lower-level officers also want to fight, and the lower-level generals want to make progress so much that many of them want to become division-level generals, and some generals even want to get their own marshal's baton.

However, the marshals who came to the main battlefield of Germany, except for the reckless man Ney, every one of them became Napoleon's nightmare as soon as they started fighting in the wild.

Moreover, on the day when the Battle of Katzbach broke out, Napoleon was in Dresden to deal with the main force of the Allied forces, and he was focused on that area.

He could not imagine that MacDonald would dare to cross the river and set up his troops on the other side of the Katzbach River.

He is not going to attack on this front now. What Napoleon wants to do now is mainly to destroy the Bohemian Army.

The goal of defeating a main Allied corps remained unchanged, but the target was changed from the Silesian Corps, which was already very close, to the real main force of the Allied forces that threatened Dresden.

When Gneisenau reached the heights and surveyed the enemy, he was also struck by how unguarded the French seemed to be.

He recalled the time when he had been with Clausewitz and had read to him about Bagration and Solovyov at the Battle of the Trebia.

This will inevitably make him laugh.

"Sir, what's going on?"

"Nothing. This MacDonald doesn't seem to be very good at fighting along a river, no matter if they are attacking from the other side of the river or have already crossed the river to take action. If they defend themselves at this time and don't cross the Katzbach River, we will have no way to deal with them. On the contrary..."

According to the report just received this morning, the Army of the Aude defeated the French Rochambeau Division in the heavy rain. However, due to the bad weather, it failed to achieve the original goal of annihilating the enemy and attacking the reinforcements, and only managed to defeat a French division.

If MacDonald was on the other side at this time, he would probably leave some men to guard here and go back to deal with Solovyov.

No matter how smart and capable that young man was, he could only choose to retreat and move closer to the Northern Legion.

But MacDonald's presence here is still quite beneficial to the coalition forces.

"This message should be delivered to the commander-in-chief. Our friendly forces' consecutive victories are probably a good sign."

Although they are not superstitious, soldiers always believe that consecutive victories or fighting a battle on the anniversary of a previous battle can always bring good luck.

But Gneisenau probably could not have imagined that MacDonald's scattered columns would actually launch an attack?

While he was still planning his counterattack, the Prussian light cavalry at the outpost had already received the latest news.

Blücher was surprised because the Allied forces had just decided in the morning to launch a counterattack at 10:30 to attack one side of the French army.

For this reason, Gneisenau and Sacken went to look at the French deployment separately. They never expected that the opponent would attack at this time?

Blücher, the old cavalryman, was so reckless that he was a little crazy. He would not push his troops forward when his army was not ready in columns or columns.

Even after the river water rose sharply, there was good news for the coalition forces. That is, part of the pontoon bridges behind the French army and the positions arranged at the shallow ferry after crossing the river were affected. At least two pontoon bridges were broken, and many French troops did not come over from the other side at all.

This is a great opportunity, and we should launch a counterattack at this time.

Moreover, Blücher saw the weapons in the hands of both sides. Because of the humid environment, the rifles could only be used as firewood sticks if they did not have bayonets.

The Prussian troops here were, after all, the new Prussian infantry regiments that Scharnhorst had trained before the war, and there were quite a few veterans among them.

Although the Prussian army's hand-to-hand combat capability has always been poor, having been attacked countless times by the Russian army that excels in hand-to-hand combat and the French army that excels in assault, they are now concentrated on one side and still have an advantage over the French army in front of them, so naturally they have to fight.

Moreover, the Russian troops behind them were not too far away after they regrouped.

Solovyov's troops were also supporting them on the other side of the river. It was even rumored that they lost no more than 300 men when they defeated Rochambeau.
Blücher himself was very warlike. Even if he met Napoleon, if he had an advantage in military strength, he would probably have a good fight with him.

Sacken's action was even earlier than Blücher's. After returning to the Russian garrison near Liegnitz, he took the lead in launching an attack on the French flank.

This also attracted MacDonald's attention. On this side of the River Ness, the Allied forces were also moving quickly.

Both sides were now engaged in hand-to-hand combat, causing the scattered French troops to suffer greatly.

MacDonald did not expect that the coalition forces would counterattack at this time while he was still in the process of "pursuit".

The French army was at the confluence of the Neisse River and the Katzbach River at this time. Blücher's idea was to drive the French army from here to the other side.

Given the conditions of these two rivers, it is not impossible to swim across, but now they are flooded.

Even though the Nile River flows as slowly as it does, accidents can still happen while crossing the river.

What’s more, in the current situation, due to continuous rainfall, what about the two rivers upstream where flood peaks are passing?
But the French were also holding on at the front line. They were unwilling to be driven back to the other side by their own "defeated enemies".

It was only because MacDonald was not vigilant enough when crossing the river, and there was always great chaos in the organization of his troops, that the Allied forces had a great opportunity to counterattack.

When the Prussian soldiers charged with bayonets in hand, they were even more active and brave than when they stood still and shot, as if they were releasing their resentment for being chased by Napoleon in the past few days.

York's legion fought bravely and even drove the French troops in front of them to the river bank. They were only forced to stop because of the support of nearby French troops and the firing of a French artillery company that crossed the river on the shore.

The French will not sit still and wait for death. They will always fight back. (End of this chapter)