Chapter 1002: The Flames of War in Silesia
Three days later.
Under the warm morning light, the soldiers atop the ramparts of the Breslau fortress yawned, leaning against the stone battlements as they chatted about their harvests back home and the women they missed.
It wasn't that they were being negligent. With tens of thousands of troops stationed ahead and the natural barrier of the Oder River standing between them and the enemy, they believed no battle could possibly reach this place.
A corporal turned around, preparing to relieve himself over the side of the fortress, when he suddenly froze. He blinked, staring into the distance, and asked the soldier beside him, "Am I seeing things? Are those... cannons?"
The other soldiers chuckled as they walked over, but before they could even lean out to look, the ground beneath them shuddered violently. Two men were instantly knocked down by a spray of jagged stone splinters.
Only then did the delayed roar of the cannon fire reach their ears.
"Alarm! Enemy attack!"
The fortress commander peered through his telescope at the dense ranks of Austrian soldiers appearing to the east. His face turned ashen as he watched the constant flashes of muzzle flare from their artillery.
At least forty thousand Austrian troops were assaulting the fortress from the rear, while he had barely three thousand men under his command.
He hurriedly ordered the cannons that had been pointed toward the Oder River to be swiveled around to the east, while simultaneously dispatching several groups of messengers to seek reinforcements from the Prince of Hohenlohe.
Meanwhile, outside the city of Liegnitz.
The Prussian army's progress had been remarkably smooth. In less than two days, they had essentially cleared the enemy's defensive outposts on the outskirts of the city and were now preparing for an all-out assault on the walls.
The Prince of Hohenlohe watched as the Austrians continued to fall back in the distance. He turned to Scharnhorst, who stood beside him, and said with a confident smile, "I knew Archduke Charles would try to strike at our supply lines, but the Austrians have clearly underestimated our fortifications."
'If we have twenty thousand men garrisoned there,' he thought, 'I'd bet anything that no one could take that place.'
Following Prussia's decision to march on Liegnitz, he had ordered the reinforcement of the Breslau fortress. By now, it had been transformed into a ring of one large and three small star-shaped bastions.
With twenty thousand soldiers defending it, even if Archduke Charles committed his entire army, it would be impossible to breach.
Scharnhorst frowned slightly. "Your Highness, why would the enemy attempt something that is so clearly impossible?"
"A desperate gamble," the Prince of Hohenlohe replied dismissively. "He can only bet that we won't be able to march back in time to save Breslau. If he fails to seize it, he won't have a single chance of winning this war."
"Do you know why I've been instructing General Tauentzien's corps to maintain a slower marching pace?" the Prince continued.
"It was precisely so he could return to Breslau as quickly as possible if the need arose."
"But..."
Scharnhorst tried to interject, but the Prince of Hohenlohe cut him off. "Once we have secured Liegnitz, we will immediately head west across the Sudeten Mountains and launch an offensive against Prague."
"At that point, Charles will have no choice but to abandon Breslau and rush back to defend his own borders. Therefore, the fortress only needs to hold out for two weeks. There won't be any surprises."
Scharnhorst couldn't find any logical flaw in the Prince's reasoning. He bowed and went to join the staff officers to plan the troop deployments for the assault on Liegnitz.
At noon the following day.
The Prussian General Tauentzien looked through his telescope at the rushing waters of the Oder River. He was about to confirm the status of the ferry boats with his staff when he faintly heard the sound of gunfire and cannon blasts coming from the south.
He immediately knit his brows. "Send someone to see what's happening."
Before his hussars could even set out, a messenger arrived in a state of panic to report. "General! Our right flank is under surprise attack! There are at least ten thousand of them..."
Tauentzien's expression stiffened. "How is that possible?"
He quickly turned to his signal officer and barked, "Quickly! Order the cavalry battalion to delay the enemy!"
However, as his cavalry moved out, more than three thousand Austrian horsemen charged from the direction of the Oder River, instantly scattering his vanguard. The Prussian army was currently in a forced march formation and was completely unable to form defensive squares in time.
Following close behind the cavalry, Archduke Charles personally commanded over ten thousand infantrymen as they began a relentless pursuit of the broken Prussian forces.
Tauentzien remained in a daze, unable to process what was happening.
According to his intelligence, nearly half of the Austrian army should have been defending Liegnitz, while the remaining forty thousand were besieging Breslau.
Where on earth had these Austrians come from?
He never imagined that Archduke Charles had abandoned Liegnitz from the very beginning. The ten thousand men left in the city had spent the past few days aggressively posturing outside the walls to create the illusion of a massive garrison.
In reality, seventeen thousand Austrian soldiers had been lying in wait upstream on the Oder River. Yesterday afternoon, Charles had led several thousand elites from the Royal Moravian Regiment to quietly cross the river to the south and set up an ambush on the western bank.
Tauentzien's corps, caught entirely off guard, was decimated in short order.
The pursuit lasted until nightfall, only stopping when the Austrian hussars' horses were completely exhausted.
By then, the twenty thousand soldiers Tauentzien had brought with him no longer existed as a coherent fighting force.
On the banks of the Oder, Archduke Charles closed the battle report submitted by his staff. His face showed no sign of relief as he issued his orders. "Command the engineer battalion to have the pontoon bridges finished before dawn."
"Leave Ditmar's corps to continue pinning down the Breslau fortress. The main force will march for Hirschberg tomorrow."
Hirschberg was a vital city on the road from Liegnitz to the Sudeten Pass.
Although the Austrian army had secured a major victory, their total numbers were still slightly inferior to the enemy's.
If the Prince of Hohenlohe's army successfully crossed the Sudeten Mountains, there would be no force within Austria capable of stopping them. Forget Prague—even Vienna itself would be at risk.
Therefore, he had to intercept them near Hirschberg and find an opportunity to strike before the Prussians could pass through the mountains.
However, much to Archduke Charles's surprise, his meticulous plans wouldn't even be necessary.
When his forced march reached Schweidnitz, about forty kilometers from Hirschberg, he learned from officers retreating from Liegnitz that the main Prussian force was still resting inside the city.
The reality was that the Prince of Hohenlohe's campaign had been so easy that he believed the Austrian army had lost its ability to fight back. He had allowed his soldiers to spend three days plundering the city for riches, effectively stalling their own advance.
Relieved that the pressure to defend the Sudeten Pass had vanished, Archduke Charles let out a long breath. He summoned his staff and officers and began to organize his next moves with methodical precision.
On the other side, the Prince of Hohenlohe was thrown into a panic upon receiving news that Tauentzien's corps had been annihilated.
It was painfully clear that he had severely miscalculated the enemy's troop distribution.
Inside the Liegnitz town hall, he stared at the map with a heavy frown. After a full seven or eight minutes of silence, he finally let out an audible breath and looked toward Scharnhorst and the others.
"Although we have lost some of our forces, the objective of this campaign—capturing Liegnitz—has been achieved," he declared.
"In the grand scheme of things, we still hold the advantage."
"Moving forward, as long as we hold our ground in Liegnitz, Charles will be forced to launch a frontal assault against us here."
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