Shortly after the first salvo passed, the ten cannons fired a second salvo. This salvo again caused dozens of casualties, and at the same time threw the Prussian army into disarray. Everyone knows that they can't stop here and get fired, but they don't know what to do. Some brave men, seeing that the position of the cannon was not too far away, wanted to rush over, but they stepped on the mines; Some of the cowardly ones ran to the back, dodged behind, and then stepped on the mines.

Under the chaos, it is obviously impossible to attack, and it is not easy to retreat in an orderly manner. can only run back in a hurry, which can be regarded as saving as many lives as possible. Of course, in the event of a retreat, they could not afford to retreat from the narrow areas that the British had taken so much time to demarcate, and as a result, naturally, they carried out another much more efficient demining operation by manual means than the British.

"General, the enemy has been knocked down, we have only fired a few shots, and the enemy has been knocked down, and we have almost no losses, this is really ......," said an officer of the Northern Legion, very excitedly to Joseph, who was standing by and watching the battle with a telescope.

Speaking of which, there were also quite a few officers in the Northern Army who knew Joseph. After all, the Bonaparte brothers had all worked in the Northern Army before, and had even saved many officers. Although the Bonaparte family and the Italian Legion later showed some signs of parting ways with the Northern Legion, the reputation of the two Bonaparte brothers in the Northern Legion was actually quite good.

"Who says we have nothing to lose? We've just lost a couple of soldiers. Joseph immediately corrected. Then he raised the telescope again, looked over there, sighed again, shook his head, and said, "Also, one of our breastworks is ruined, and in addition, there is a minefield, which is basically ruined...... In particular, there are some mines, which were also dug up by them - how can this be said to be no loss? ”

"General, among those mines, is there any technology that can be seen at a glance?" The officer asked.

"Of course there are, for example, to reduce the charge, to reduce the volume, to reduce the cost......" Joseph said bitterly.

After half a day, after destroying a shoddy breastwork and efficiently destroying a French minefield, the Anglo-Prussian forces returned to their starting positions.

It was undoubtedly a major setback, but it was nothing compared to the other two bad news they had received that night.

The first piece of bad news was that the Russian Tsar had made peace with the French. After a period of Italian stalemate, a peace agreement was reached between the specially authorized Russian consul in the Republic of Venice and the French consul, also specially authorized. Pursuant to this agreement. Russia and France made peace. In this agreement, France assured Russia that it would strictly control arms exports; Russia, on the other hand, agreed to buy a batch of weapons from France. At the same time, the two countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation in academic and cultural fields, as well as in many other fields.

"Damn the Russians! I knew they couldn't be trusted, and if they hadn't cheated us last time, we would have ...... long ago This time they us again! The Duke of Braunschweig was so angry that he was sweating.

"These Russians! Half a month ago, they just got a sum of money from us! Major George Cavendish also said angrily, "I have never seen such a brazen person!" ”

"At such a critical moment, when we were about to conquer Paris, the Tsar actually betrayed us, I really don't understand how his brain grows, doesn't he know that we will soon be victorious?" "Some say that he is not the biological son of Peter III. But judging from his actions, I'm afraid that no one will believe this nonsense anymore! ”

General Blucher also nodded and said, "That's right, he's that man's son, there's no doubt about it!" ”

At the most critical moment of the Seven Years' War, when Prussia was running out of oil and King Frederick was about to finish, Peter III suddenly turned against him, leading to the defeat of the French side and saving Prussia. And then because of this complete betrayal of Russian interests, he was overthrown by his wife Catherine in a coup d'état. And even the Prussians, who got cheap, admitted that Peter III's defection was not justified at all, and that they were completely insane.

"But in any case, the unrest is now on the side of the French." Major Cavendish looked very thoughtful.

And because although his military rank is not high, his status is not low, (there is a duke uncle), so everyone is very polite to him.

This news also meant that the French south was no longer a big threat, so they had to speed up and take Verdun and Paris before Napoleon arrived. Otherwise, the outcome of this war would really not be optimistic.

As for the second piece of bad news, the continuous rainy weather in southern France has come to an end. It has now been two days of fine weather. If this trend continues, the road conditions from the south of France to the north will improve rapidly, which means that Napoleon's march will become faster, and if the British and Prussians cannot take Verdun before Napoleon's arrival, it will be even less likely that the British and Prussians will take the fortress when Napoleon arrives with the Italian legions.

And if the fortress cannot be captured, then the war will continue even in the most ideal state. And considering the combat effectiveness of the French army, this most ideal state is only "ideal".

Because of this urgency, the British army, after consulting with the Prussian army, decided to launch a strong attack as soon as possible, at any cost, to take Verdun as soon as possible and occupy Paris.

So early the next morning, not only the Prussians, but even the British sent a large number of troops from several directions into the starting position, and put on a posture of launching a general attack at once.

Joseph, naturally, was also awakened by such a posture, and he hurried to the command headquarters and began to coordinate the defense of the entire fortress. Soon, what observation posts in all directions had observed was summed up with Joseph.

"Hell, what are these guys trying to do? In the matter of fighting a war, shouldn't we first make tentative attacks in various places, learn more or less about the configuration of the various defensive forces on the defending side, and then launch targeted and focused attacks? What are they doing? They don't know how to play tactics! Hearing this, Murat immediately spoke.

If Napoleon had been here, he would have laughed and said, "Ruo Archan, you actually talk about tactics too?" ”

But Napoleon is not here, and Joseph is not a vitriol on the surface. In addition, he didn't know much about Murat, so he analyzed it seriously:

"I think that the enemy is probably already aware of Russia's withdrawal from the war and the fact that the weather in the south is beginning to improve, and is worried about Napoleon...... Well, it was feared that the Italian corps would soon appear here, so they rushed to attack. As for the tentative attack, I guess they were still tentative today, but they were tentative in multiple positions at the same time – they had to save time in that way. Well, according to our previous calculations, they simply do not have the forces needed to launch a full-scale offensive from so many directions. This can only be a full-fledged temptation. ”

After explaining, Joseph lowered his head and stared at the map for a while, then raised his head and gave this order: "Well, we must save a hand for the defense in the back. Note that today artillery is not allowed to use guns over 12 pounds, other artillery is only allowed to use single guns in battle, 'shrapnel' is not allowed, 'broadsword' mines are not allowed to be detonated at the same time, flamethrowers are not allowed, and 'small melon launchers' are not allowed. Other directions should be resisted, area 1, area 7, area 12...... You can retreat a little, but you can't retreat through the second trench......"

Soon, the British and Prussian troops attacked from several directions. Although, as Joseph expected, the attack in so many directions was basically thunder and rain, and the pressure on the defender was relatively limited. However, because of Joseph's "not allowed", everyone seems to be still fighting lively.

After a day of fighting, the British, together with the Prussians, took stock of the results of today's offensive and found that, in general, the offensive was quite inefficient. However, the opponent also exposed a lot of problems:

First of all, the French army was clearly supported by more new weapons, but because they had previously lost too many heavy weapons in the northern theater, especially too much artillery, their artillery was clearly insufficient. In addition, they do not seem to have a particularly sufficient number of mines, so the density of mines in some areas is significantly lower than in others, and the results of demining indicate that the types of mines in these areas are more complex, with a number of old-fashioned mines in addition to the new "small charge mines" - a typical sign of the shortage of mines in the eyes of the British and Prussians.

Of course, these problems are likely to improve over time, because there are quite a few military-industrial enterprises near Paris, and their production capacity at this time should not be underestimated. Therefore, if you want to attack, you must attack as soon as possible, otherwise, this fortress will become stronger day by day.

The Duke of Braunschweig, together with General Blucher and some other British generals, carefully studied the points where the defensive forces were relatively weak, and there were two places where the defensive forces were supposed to be the most important, but which seemed to be insufficient, and even weaker than some of the less harmful places—these were obviously traps, and they must not be stepped in! Most of the remaining areas are more defensible on the terrain, so it's really possible that the forces here are relatively weak.

In the end, they chose two of these places that could be true, and they were the targets of the British and Prussian attacks tomorrow.