Chapter 1149: Who Can Last Longer
Therefore, Britain had to exert every effort to prevent France from occupying Egypt.
Historically, once Britain learned of Napoleon's landing in Egypt, they immediately dispatched Nelson with a fleet. In the Battle of the Nile at Abukir Bay, they destroyed eleven French ships of the line and killed the commander, Brueys, effectively cutting off Napoleon's retreat.
Now, the British fleet possessed forty-five steam warships. Although the supply of steam engines was falling short—reaching only sixty percent of the navy's original production plan—this number was still sufficient to cover the main battleships and protect them from harassment by the sixty French steam warships.
This gave the British Mediterranean Fleet, with its superior number of third-rate battleships and above, the strength to re-enter the Mediterranean once again.
Subsequently, as long as they could sever the supply lines of the French forces landing in Egypt, the French would be forced to abandon the region.
Britain might even be able to extend its own influence into that territory in the process.
Of course, compared to Egypt, Gibraltar was the empire's most vital strategic core. The first priority was to ensure the resupply work there was completed.
Pix tucked away the Admiralty's orders with some agitation as the Victory began to slow beneath his feet.
He stepped onto the deck and, even without his telescope, could see thick smoke billowing around the fortress of Gibraltar.
Scarcely ten minutes later, French shells began raining down on the landing beach.
This was the handiwork of the 32-pounder howitzers.
These long-barreled heavy guns had a range of up to 2.5 kilometers when fired at high angles. By moving the French artillery to the northwest side of the Gibraltar peninsula, they could threaten the ships anchored in the harbor.
As the great guns of the Gibraltar fortress began to return fire, a thousand British soldiers steeled themselves and charged toward the Coalition artillery positions.
They were greeted by volleys of rifled musket fire from the surrounding Skirmisher Swarms.
However, due to the threat from the fortress guns, the French soldiers were spread very thin. The artillery pieces had to be moved back periodically to avoid being reached by a lucky charge of British cavalry.
The Auguste Pattern 1790 Chasseur Rifles inflicted massive casualties on the British troops who dared to rush forward.
In less than twenty minutes, the British had left behind two or three hundred corpses and retreated in panic.
The French heavy guns immediately pushed forward again, continuing to fire based on coordinates reported by their hot-air balloons.
Colonel Curtis was forced to order a second wave to storm the Coalition lines once more.
Then came more rifle volleys, more bodies covering the ground, another retreat, and another group of men sent into the meat grinder...
Finally, Colonel Curtis heard the long-awaited bugle call from behind him. It was the signal that the transport supplies had all been moved to the reverse slope of the fortress.
He did not delay for a single second and immediately ordered a retreat.
In this short span of just over an hour, he had lost more than 800 soldiers.
However, the resupply operation had delivered approximately four months' worth of food and ammunition to the Gibraltar fortress. They could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Once the British soldiers withdrew, the French and Spanish artillery also pulled back, positioning themselves just outside the range of the fortress guns to begin shelling the town of Gibraltar. Over 8,000 British civilians lived there, including the families of the fortress garrison, merchants, and fishermen. These people had been specifically settled there by the British government to solidify their rule over Gibraltar.
Indeed, Joseph knew very well that a forced assault on the Gibraltar fortress was essentially impossible.
Twenty years ago, during the American War of Independence, the French-Spanish Coalition had taken advantage of Britain being tied down to gather tens of thousands of troops and fifty ships of the line to besiege Gibraltar. French designers had even constructed ten floating batteries, encased in 1.8 meters of oak armor and mounted with heavy guns, to bombard the fortress at close range.
Despite fighting for over three years, they had failed to capture the fortress held by only 5,000 British troops. Instead, the Coalition suffered over 5,000 deaths.
So, from the very beginning, Joseph's strategy was to use Gibraltar to pin down and exhaust Britain.
He would absolutely not allow his soldiers to conduct a frontal assault.
There was also no need for expensive maritime floating batteries. Those things had been set ablaze by the British using red-hot shot; six of the ten had been burned and sunk, with almost zero tactical success.
Now, dragging out the remaining four floating batteries was merely to draw the attention of the British Navy—to keep an eye on those batteries, the British would have to keep at least four ships of the line drifting at sea at all times.
The true primary strike force was stationed entirely on land.
Seventy 32-pounder howitzers didn't actually cost much... well, mainly because the expenses were paid by the Spanish, so there was no need to feel stingy.
Guided by hot-air balloons, these guns could accurately drop shells into the heart of the fortress. They used explosive shells ignited by fuses.
Although the explosive power of black powder was quite pitiful, after a dozen or so rounds, they were bound to take out at least one British soldier.
Did the British dare to huddle entirely inside the fortress to dodge the shells?
If they did, Joseph would simply order Spanish suicide squads to launch a storming operation.
Based on a rate of 100,000 shells fired per year, all the defenders would be worn down within seven or eight months.
Of course, the British would continuously send transport ships to replenish their numbers.
This gave the French army more opportunities to attack the supply convoys—not many, just killing four or five hundred men at a time was enough to make it profitable.
Combined with the destruction of the town of Gibraltar, the residents would have to move into the fortress to eat, which only increased the British supply burden.
Regardless, Joseph was in no hurry to take Gibraltar. The French and Spanish troops fired from a distance, sustaining almost no casualties. While the fortress guns could technically reach the Coalition cannons, the probability of scoring a direct hit on a single gun at a distance of over two kilometers was no different from winning a grand lottery jackpot.
They would simply keep consuming each other's resources to see who would break first.
One had to remember that the British Army only had sixty to seventy thousand soldiers in total. Keeping ten thousand men tied down at Gibraltar meant diverting fifteen percent of their mobile forces.
On Pix's end, receiving the report that the resupply was complete allowed him to let out a long breath.
He didn't dare waste time resting. At dawn the next morning, he ordered the fleet to rush toward Egypt, hoping only to intercept the French landing fleet there and make back all the losses from the previous day.
However, as the massive British Mediterranean Fleet neared Malta, a British merchant ship sailing from the Port of Alexandria reported to Pix that the French army had already withdrawn from Egypt four days ago. The Mamluks had been defeated, and the Ottoman Sultan had regained control over the region.
Shells using circular wooden sabot bases and fuse ignitions had actually appeared decades earlier.
However, because only black powder existed in this era, the explosive power was very limited—usually only enough to kill enemies within a two or three-meter radius. Furthermore, once a shell exploded, it could no longer continue to roll, meaning its killing potential was often inferior to that of a solid shot.
This led to the fact that until the time of the American Civil War, the armies of various nations still preferred to use solid cannonballs—a single ricocheting shot rolling sixty meters could sometimes crush a dozen people.
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