Speaking of which, the Kingdom of Sardinia was also a member of the anti-French alliance, but after the war began, they really did not seriously fight the French army. Basically, apart from the fact that their navy once followed the butts of the British and Spaniards in the blockade of France, they were responsible for the fight of mouth cannons and soy sauce. And their navy, after discovering that it could not deal with the French clippers at all, also secretly joined the lucrative cause of smuggling supplies to France.

Because they had never really competed with the French on the battlefield, the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia actually did not have much confidence in how strong its combat strength was, or how weak it was. We cannot say that the Italians are ignorant of the ways of warfare that have changed dramatically - they are also equipped with new "little melons", and they also know the "skirmish advantage" that small melons bring. Moreover, in their own military exercises, they have also verified the various benefits of skirmishing tactics. But these things, after all, have not been verified on the battlefield.

The skirmishers of the Kingdom of Sardinia also performed poorly in the exercises, and although procrastination and laziness were repeated in the exercises, on the whole, the skirmishers did not perform worse than the privates. Not even worse than the skirmishers of the Austrians.

In general, the Austrians, out of jealousy, always liked to unjustifiably belittle the combat effectiveness of the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia. But they also said: "The Sardinian skirmishers, it seems to be good." ”

The generals of the Kingdom of Sardinia, on the other hand, filtered out the "looks" of the sights, so they were quite satisfied with their mastery of the new tactics. So they made this judgment very modestly: "Our skirmishers may still be a little bit behind the skirmishers of the French who are recognized as the strongest, but they should also be the best in Europe." ”

The 50,000-strong army of the Kingdom of Sardinia was gradually concentrated, and General Colli became the commander-in-chief of this army. Although General Colley had always believed that he should wait until the Austrian Allies were in place before launching a general attack on the French, the Austrians were slow to move. (Marshal Bolieu thought that the army of Italy as a whole was not elite enough - the elite of Austria was in Belgium and Poland, and as for the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia, Marshal Beaulieu thought that it was not as good as the non-elite of Austria - so it was better to take the defensive first and wait for reinforcements) plus the pressure from the king and the nobles was too great, so General Colli decided to fight a small battle first and fool around.

So General Colley sent a detachment of cavalry to attack one of the French strongholds in the estate of the Marquis de Corny. Then the cavalry returned safely to the barracks, and reported that they had regained lost territory, and had killed five or six Frenchmen, as well as dozens of Italian scum who had followed the French, and had brought back the heads of several Italian scum to prove that they were not lying.

Although General Colli was a little skeptical about the result, he did need victory to relieve his pressure at this time. It's just that this victory is a little too small, and only five or six French guys were killed, which is inevitably too little.

So General Koli had the cavalry captain called over and asked him personally about the course of the battle, and after some conversation, the whole battle became clearer:

This cavalry, less than a hundred men, encountered about a thousand French troops and more than two thousand men who shamelessly defected to the French near the Andun manor, which belonged to the Marquis of Coney. The cavalry of the Kingdom of Sardinia immediately drew their sabers, shouted "For God and the King", and launched a heroic and fearless white-knuckle charge against these invaders and scum.

The French were in disarray and scattered, while the cavalry of the Kingdom of Sardinia pursued the victory, hacking to death countless invaders and traitors. He won a glorious victory comparable to the Battle of Mongiza (in which the famous King Baldwin IV, the Leper King, defeated Saladin's army of 20,000 with hundreds of cavalry) and successfully regained the manor.

General Colli reported the news to the king and informed the nobles who had been forced to abandon their estates and flee to the city. So the whole city of Turin was filled with jubilation.

Almost at the same time, Napoleon also received such a report:

Our troops found a force of Sardinian cavalry of about 100 men in the stronghold of Andun Manor and opened fire on them. After our troops opened fire, those cavalry quickly retreated.

Such a report attracted the attention of Napoleon, for it was the first time they had encountered a Sardinian cavalry in formation.

"Looks like the Sardinians are about to take it easy, right?" With this in mind, Napoleon decided to begin to shrink his forces in preparation for a possible great battle.

The next day, Napoleon received another report from the stronghold, along with several Italians.

It turned out that the Marquis of Coney, knowing that his manor had been recovered, was anxious to find out how much he had lost, so he sent his nephew back with a group of servants overnight to see, and then everyone, including his nephew, Viscount Tordo, became prisoners of the French.

Napoleon handed the viscount over to the "Revolutionary Court", but released the retinue he had brought with him.

General Colley had to come out to defend himself, claiming that his cavalry had indeed won and recaptured the estate, only when his cavalry returned, the French returned. Therefore, he can't be blamed for this matter, it's just that the Marquis is too anxious.

Although General Colley could force himself to defend himself, the incident made it impossible for him to delay any longer.

At the same time, General Koli also felt that his side should still be able to fight a dozen. There are only 30,000 or 40,000 people on the opposite side, but there are 50,000 people on my side; And because of the obstruction of the Alps, the French on the opposite side did not have any decent cannons, while on their own side, there were hundreds of cannons; There was also a lack of cavalry on the opposite side, and there were several times more cavalry on their own side. Looking at it this way, the advantage on my side is still very large, and I can fight a battle.

On January 14, 1796, the main forces of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Napoleon's Fifth Army took up positions at Cuneo in preparation for a decisive battle.

General Colley knew that his side's greatest advantage was artillery, and he decided to make the most of it. Therefore, the Sardinian army lined up more than a hundred cannons in front of the position. Then General Kohli sent his own skirmishers.

This tactic was a routine that General Colley had practiced many times during the exercise, and he felt that his army had been able to use it quite skillfully. First use the artillery shotgun to hit the opponent's skirmishers to support their own skirmishers, and then rely on the "little melons" of the skirmishers and the solid shells of the artillery to open a gap in the opponent's formation, and then throw in the cavalry to solve the battle.

During the exercise, this set worked quite well and won General Kohli a lot of praise. General Colley hopes that this set of tactics that he has carefully studied will also win him higher honors on the real battlefield.

The skirmishers of the Sardinian army began to advance, and General Colli saw through his binoculars that the skirmishers of the French army on the opposite side also began to advance.

"Artillery ready! Suppress enemy skirmishers with shotguns. "General Kohli gave such an order in order.

However, the cannon had not yet fired, because the enemy was still far out of range at this time.

The Sardinian skirmishers continued on for a short distance and then stopped. They can't advance too fast so that when they come into range of the enemy skirmishers, the enemy skirmishers are not yet within the shotgun range of the artillery behind them. One of their main roles was to keep the enemy's proud stragglers out of a distance that could threaten them, and to give the artillery a chance to destroy them.

Unexpectedly, the French skirmishers on the opposite side stopped at a distance of almost three hundred yards from them.

"The French can see our arrangement." General Colley explained to the Marquis of Hungrycony, who was watching the battle, "They knew that if they continued on, they would be attacked by our artillery. Of course, if they could keep close, I believe that the brave French army would have been able to endure the shelling. But our skirmishers stopped them so that they would be wiped out by our cannons in vain, so they hesitated now. ”

The Marquis of Coney had come here to urge General Colly's forces to rescue his nephew, his brother's only legitimate heir. He frowned and looked at the French skirmishers who had stopped, and then said, "What if they stop like this and don't go forward?" ”

"It's simple, if the mountain doesn't come, buy it, buy it, and go to the mountain. We can move part of the artillery forward, so that ......"

As General Colli said this, he saw puffs of blue smoke rising from the French skirmishers.

"Shoot at such a distance? What can they get? General Colley was taken aback.

However, something even more surprising happened, as the Sardinian skirmishers fell quite a bit as the French skirmishers fired.

"General, what is this?" Marquis Coney asked in astonishment. He also knew that at such a long distance, it was impossible to have such a hit rate.

"Perhaps...... Maybe they used rifled shotguns! General Colley said.

In this era, too, only rifled shotguns could shoot at such a long distance. However, rifled shotguns are very difficult to reload, and it takes four or five minutes to complete a single reload. If the stragglers of the French army used this weapon, it meant that for a considerable period of time they could no longer shoot. As long as the Sardinian skirmishers press up quickly, they will be able to fire at them at a very close distance and get a better exchange ratio.

Thinking of this, General Colli immediately ordered the stragglers to attack quickly. But just as he had given the order to the herald, and before the herald could even mount his horse, the Frenchman on the opposite side fired another round of fire. Then the Sardinian stragglers fell again.

"This ...... How is this possible? General Colley was stunned at first, and then furious. Obviously, it is impossible for a rifled gun to shoot so quickly, and it must be a smoothbore gun that can shoot like this. And it was impossible for a smoothbore gun to get such a hit at such a distance, and now his skirmishers fell so much. There can only be one explanation for all this, and that is - those damn cowards are running away from the fight, they are playing dead!

This inference was confirmed by the third round of fire from the French skirmishers, who had fallen more than half of the Sardinian skirmishers after this round of firing - even a volley fired from a distance of thirty yards would not have had such an effect! And General Colley saw with his own eyes that there was a damn guy who was standing and looking around, and after everyone had fallen for several seconds, he suddenly seemed to wake up, exaggeratedly threw the gun in his hand, covered his chest with both hands, squatted down slowly, and then lay down on the ground.

"Damn it! These damn guys! After this battle, I must hang them on the gallows to dry! In the face of these guys who don't even pretend to be dead, General Colley has already escaped his anger, and he deeply feels the darkness and sadness of this world.

And then it really wasn't just angry, it was sad. Before the French could continue shooting, more skirmishers fell, and in the blink of an eye, more than a thousand skirmishers carefully trained by the Kingdom of Sardinia suddenly disappeared from the battlefield.

This change shocked General Colli, but made Napoleon smile. Napoleon, of course, knew that his skirmishers had indeed hit the Sardinian skirmishers opposite; But Napoleon was equally certain that his skirmishers could never have killed so many Sardinian skirmishers. So he quickly came to the same conclusion as General Colley on the other side: those shameless guys were playing dead and fleeing the battlefield.

However, this was not the first time that Napoleon had seen such a situation. When he was still on the Belgian side, and with Di Mourier, he had seen the Austrians' poor imitation of the French skirmishers. The Austrians also sent a large number of skirmishers, as a result of which the skirmishers disappeared from the battlefield almost inexplicably without firing a shot. Speaking of which, these Italians only started to play like this after being shot three times, which can be regarded as very brave.

Now that the enemy skirmishers had been routed, the French skirmishers naturally began to rapidly approach forward.

"Don't be afraid, it's just a small technical setback, don't be afraid." General Koli encouraged himself in his heart, "At least, we still have superior artillery, and if they dare to come forward again, we will bombard them with artillery!" ”

The French skirmishers advanced rapidly to a distance of only about three hundred yards from the Sardinian artillery, and they could go a few dozen paces further before they could come into range of the artillery. But at this time, they stopped and raised their guns......

"This ...... How is this possible! How can there be a weapon with such a long range and such a fast rate of fire! General Pauly was completely stunned, and now that he was closer, he could clearly see the blood flowing from the bodies of the soldiers who had fallen next to the cannon - it was not a fake, the enemy could indeed fire with such precision and speed at such a distance.

The gunners, who were lucky not to be killed in the first round of fire from the French skirmishers, did not have the courage to continue to hold their posts in the face of the hail of bullets, and they threw down their cannons and ran, or simply found a place to lie down and pretend to be dead.

"Cavalry! The cavalry rushed forward and knocked the enemy skirmishers back! General Koli shouted.

The Sardinian army had more cavalry, and the Austrians, in presenting their experience with the French army, made a point of suggesting that a large number of light cavalry was the way to restrain the French skirmishers. (Hussars are relatively cheap and can run faster - no armor can stop rifle bullets anyway - and relatively afford to die)

So the last straw of the Sardinians came in.