Chapter 1244: Smoke of War Rises
Prince Heinrich said helplessly, "Your Majesty, the Coalition General Staff believes that if we disperse our forces to defend the southern part of our country, we will be unable to ensure absolute superiority against France, so we can only..."
The young King of Prussia's face suddenly flushed red. Waving his arms, he roared, "Manpower? Blücher's army was surrounded in Glarus because they were trying to help the Austrians reclaim Italy!
"The British promised me they would rescue them, but they only sent twenty thousand men to placate me!"
He sneered, "Hah, Picton was annihilated right after leaving Basel. Now they're trying to scheme against my Brandenburg Guards!"
Prince Heinrich remained silent for a long moment. Once the King had calmed slightly, he said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, but the French army could indeed threaten Potsdam."
William III froze like a wind-up doll whose spring had run out. After a moment, he nodded and said, "Yes, please order Marshal Möllendorf to assemble the troops."
Then he forcefully puffed out his chest. "Tell him, I will go to Weimar with him."
Prince Heinrich exclaimed in surprise, "Your Majesty, you don't need to..."
William III, however, gripped the saber on the table with extreme resolve. "I will fight the enemy alongside all my soldiers, just like my grandfather. A King of Prussia should never just sit in his palace!"
He had to achieve glorious victories on the battlefield, just like Frederick the Great in his time, to turn the tide for Prussia.
Furthermore, he had always looked down on his father, who had never seen battle. This time, he intended to prove to all of Europe that the warlike and capable King of Prussia had returned!
As Prussia was in a state of readiness for war, just two days later, William III and the veteran Marshal Möllendorf led their forces out of Berlin.
Concurrently, the Magdeburg Legion and the Frankfurt Legion also left their garrisons and hastened south.
...
The Duke of Brunswick gently tugged on the reins, looking back at the now blurry Deutz Fortress, feeling a persistent unease.
Though he had repeatedly confirmed before leaving that the main force of the French Third Army had departed from the west bank, and Prince of Hohenlohe's fifteen thousand troops should be sufficient to complete the defensive mission.
Even Nassau had provided thirteen hundred soldiers to reinforce the defenses. Yet, he still had a premonition that something would go wrong.
Perhaps he truly was getting old, having lost the sharp, keen spirit he once possessed. He shook his head and sighed, pondering that once this war ended, he would retire to Göttingen and enjoy his twilight years.
He tapped his mount's flank with his riding crop, then rode to the middle of the marching column and called out to the soldiers, "Our mission this time is to reach Kassel as quickly as possible. There, we can await news of the Coalition Forces attacking Strasbourg. So, everyone, put some effort into those legs!"
At the very same moment, Lefebvre, who was leading his troops through Meppen, was also loudly encouraging the new recruits who had recently arrived from Brussels:
"How far could you march in a day before? Fifteen kilometers? Oh, someone said twenty kilometers, I heard that, very impressive.
"But do you know the normal marching speed of the Old Guard?"
He pointed to a sergeant not far away. "Gaspard, you tell them."
"Yes, General. It's thirty kilometers."
"And forced march?"
"Thirty-eight to forty kilometers, General."
"Excellent!" Lefebvre waved to the new recruits again. "I know you all want to become true Guardsmen, don't you?"
A chorus of excited shouts immediately rose around them. "Yes!"
"Then start by marching," Lefebvre said. "Today we will cover thirty kilometers. The names of everyone who doesn't fall behind will be reported to me."
The new recruits cheered again, "Alright!"
"Thirty kilometers? That's nothing!"
"I want to join the Guards!"
Only the soldiers of Gaillard's Walloon Regional Army looked at these youngsters with a knowing, almost sympathetic gaze.
These former Walloon Police units had fought alongside the Guards Corps and well understood what thirty kilometers a day truly meant. Ah, it likely meant their legs would ache so much they'd feel like breaking after three days.
However, as the column passed Münster—exactly ninety kilometers from Meppen—the new recruits no longer occasionally shouted slogans like "For the homeland!" Nor did anyone sing. Yet, no one complained of aching legs, and their marching pace never slowed.
By noon the next day, a man dressed as a German farmer was brought before Lefebvre by French cavalry.
The man retrieved a confidential letter from his trouser leg and handed it to him, standing at attention. "General, General Soult has entered Hesse. He instructed me to inform you that enemy forces have been spotted near Winterberg."
Winterberg was on the western side of Hesse, less than seventy kilometers from Kassel.
Lefebvre finished reading the letter, cross-referencing it with his codebook, then called out to an orderly beside him, "Order the entire army to turn south immediately. Wait, the recruit camp should remain here..."
...
Central Switzerland.
Blücher had generally concluded that reinforcements would not arrive anytime soon.
He, of course, did not yet know that Picton's legion had been completely annihilated four days earlier.
He looked at the amount of provisions his staff officer had delivered that morning, feeling somewhat numb. Only eleven days of food remained; even at the lowest rations, it would be impossible to last more than half a month.
He frowned and sighed. Perhaps a risky frontal assault was their only option.
The cavalry still rode out in all directions as they did every day, foraging for food. In truth, the sparsely populated Glarus had long been scoured dozens of times by the Prussian army; at best, they could bring back some vegetables and potatoes—rations hidden by nearby Swiss farmers.
This time, however, by evening, all the cavalry returned to camp empty-handed.
Blücher knew there was no food left in Glarus.
He gritted his teeth and said to a staff officer beside him in a deep voice, "Gather all senior officers. We will launch a breakout tomorrow."
The following morning, nearly thirty thousand Prussian vanguard troops launched a fierce assault against the French forces to the west and south.
To Blücher's surprise, the attack proceeded unusually smoothly. The French merely fired a few symbolic shots before abandoning their positions.
Before noon, Tauentzien's legion had already broken through to ten kilometers west of Glarus and established a defensive line.
After riding out of the Glarus mountains, Blücher finally let out a long sigh of relief. He said to his staff officer, "It seems the reinforcements have tied up the main French forces."
The latter quickly asked, "General, what should we do next?"
"First, we must try to establish contact with the reinforcements," Blücher declared, shaking off his previous gloom. "We'll head to Zurich; perhaps we can still launch a pincer attack on the enemy."
Reinforcements could only come from Basel and St. Gallen, so heading north towards Zurich was undoubtedly the correct move. At the very least, they could acquire some supplies there.
That afternoon, as the main Prussian force finished assembling and prepared to advance northwest, they suddenly heard gunshots from ahead.
Although the firing was not particularly heavy, Blücher was still greatly alarmed, fearing that the French army intended to draw him out of Glarus and then ambush him there.
He hastily ordered them to establish defenses on the spot, with the rearguard remaining in Glarus, so that in the worst-case scenario, they could still retreat.
After several hours of this back-and-forth, the French attackers did not engage the Prussian forces, but instead quietly withdrew once more.
By then, it was completely dark. Blücher cursed irritably for a while, then ordered his soldiers to rest where they were and continue their march to Zurich the next day.
The next day, just as the Prussian army formed its marching column and before they even set off, gunshots once again rang out from the front.
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