Early the next morning, the Russian-Austrian forces launched a tentative attack on the positions of the French army. First of all, of course, artillery bombardment, the purpose of which is generally to destroy various obstacles in front of enemy positions and inflict certain casualties on enemy personnel.

The shelling of the Russian-Austrian coalition is naturally the same. In front of the French position, there were a lot of wooden horses and the like that were used to hinder the movement of the cavalry, which were naturally the targets of shelling, and the small earthen walls that the French army had piled up in front of the trenches could also be bombarded with cannons, which might be able to cause certain losses to the French army.

Of course, this is just a fantasy on the side of the Russian-Austrian coalition. In fact, none of the French soldiers had yet entered the front-line positions.

When the Russian-Austrian forces began to prepare for artillery fire, there was actually no one in the first trench. Infantry will not enter the trenches at all until the enemy attacks.

General Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration watched the shelling in front of him, when suddenly, he was taken aback by a peculiar phenomenon - on the position of the French troops, a huge gray sphere rose, under which a basket-like thing was hanging.

"What's that? Alyosha, bring me the telescope. Bagration shouted.

Adjutant Alyosha handed him the binoculars. Bagration stretched out the telescope and looked over the gray sphere.

The ball looked like it was made of silk, and there was a hanging basket underneath, in which a machine was spewing flames upwards, and inside the hanging basket were two men in French uniforms, one of whom was looking this way with a telescope.

"Isn't that a hot air balloon?" A voice came from Bagration's side.

Bagration put down his binoculars and turned his head, wanting to come from behind, Marshal Suvorov said: "Marshal, you are here too?" ”

"Yes, Peter." "Remember the last time I told you about the idea of using hot air balloons for battlefield surveillance missions, it seems that the French have gone ahead of us again?" ”

Hot air balloons were first invented in 1783 by the Mongolfeld brothers in France. In November of that year, they also completed the world's first manned hot air balloon flight.

In fact, in the original history, Napoleon's army was equipped with hot air balloons, but Napoleon at that time was not very fond of this thing, and later simply removed it from service. The main reason why he did this was that the preparations for the take-off of the manned hot air balloon at that time were too complicated, and the completion rate was very low, and it was greatly restricted by the weather, which was inconvenient to use, but it took up a lot of space.

But this time, the hot air balloon used by the French army is a balloon optimized by the "military-industrial complex", equipped with a special fuel blowtorch, and a sphere made of silk coated with vulcanized rubber, which is relatively simple to maintain and use. In addition to the disadvantage of not being able to move freely, other problems have been solved to a certain extent. In addition, Joseph provided the balloonists with a slight improvement of the flag originally prepared for ships at sea, so that the balloon could provide almost real-time information, so, in this time and space, at least for now, Napoleon's opinion of this thing is not bad.

The French balloon surprised the Russian-Austrian coalition, but it was limited to that, after all, this is Europe, and such a thing may be able to pretend to be a ghost in some places, but in Europe, that is to make the Russian-Austrian guys exclaim: France's technology is really the first in Europe.

But exclamation is exclamation, and the fight still has to be fought. So after half a day of artillery preparation, the Russian army began to attack the French positions in a loose straggler formation.

"Louie, you see that the Russians are very quick learners, and you see, their stragglers really look like that. Well, at least it can be seen that the morale of the Russian army is quite high, a lot stronger than the Austrians. Looking at the approaching Russian army, Napoleon said to the officers standing beside him, "It should not be a problem for you to defend against their attacks, but I hope that you will expose less of some of our army's unknown tricks." But is there a problem that soldiers can't be killed or injured unnecessarily? ”

The officer who stood at Napoleon's side was Louis Gabriel Suchet, who, as in the original history, knew Napoleon very early, and in Toulon he fought under Napoleon. Later, he followed Napoleon to Italy. Unlike history, Napoleon did not go on an expedition to Egypt, so naturally there was no mistake of taking sides, which led to Napoleon's neglect for a long time thereafter. In this time, until now, Suchet was one of Napoleon's best friends.

"It should be fine." Su Xie replied simply, "I won't expose anything more here than the net in front of me." ”

"Okay, I'll leave it to you. I'll go over there and have a look. With that, Napoleon took a few men with him, left the section of the defense for which Suchet was responsible, and went to Murat's troops.

In the pre-arrangement, when Suche thwarted the Russian attack, if there was chaos when the Russian army retreated, Murat's cavalry could take the opportunity to launch a counterattack.

Napoleon was not at all worried about whether Suchet could block the enemy's attack, and Napoleon was not at all worried about Murat's performance after launching the attack, but Napoleon did not have much confidence in whether Murat could correctly judge whether and when to attack. Therefore, Napoleon felt that it would be better to go to Murat's side.

Shortly after Napoleon left Suche's position, the Russian skirmishers came within range of the French's rifles. The French soldiers had already entered the trenches and began to shoot at the approaching Russians.

There weren't many Ivan who fell to the ground at first, because at this distance, even with a Mini rifle, the hit rate was not much higher. But as they got closer to the French trenches, the French fired more and more hits, and more and more Ivan fell.

But the Ivan men were still firmly pressing. Such casualties were not enough to push back this army, which had always been victorious. Then they walked into the minefield of the French army.

The French army has now made a new technological progress in mines, which of course was despised by Napoleon as "full of the stench of Abagon" (the protagonist of Molière's comedy "The Miser", in France, his name is synonymous with the miser), because the biggest purpose of Joseph's improvement is to save money.

In order to save materials, the new mines were made much smaller. At one point, Joseph even tried to replace cast iron with glazed stoneware. It was only after the experiment proved that the cost savings were not enough for the loss in transportation. However, Joseph reduced the use of cast iron to one-third in one fell swoop.

Not only the use of cast iron has decreased, but the use of explosives has also been greatly reduced, with the improvement of explosives production technology, the fluctuation of the power of explosives is getting smaller and smaller, and now there are often only a few grams of explosives in each mine.

Joseph put it this way: "From the data we have in Ireland and Poland, the odds of a mine, even a mine with a large charge, on average, being able to blow up several enemy troops are negligible. Therefore, except for some special uses, it is a waste to make the power of mines too great. ”

Then Napoleon naturally retorted that the power of his mines was that not a single person could be killed. So "Abagon" replied: "Why did you blow it up?" Isn't it enough to blow up one of their feet? Anyway, it is impossible for such a wounded soldier to fight anymore. But their injuries are not certain to die, and the enemy army is not very good to give them a direct pleasure. You have to keep them, and you have to let other soldiers lose their morale when they see them. Well, Napoleon, you said last time that soldiers are not afraid to see the corpses of their comrades, and many times, that inspires them to fight for revenge; But it's okay not to let the soldiers see the wounded, that blow to morale is bigger than the corpse.

Of course, it's not impossible for the enemy to force them to give them a good time, but you must know the consequences of doing so. ”

"And what if the enemy is defeated and these wounded soldiers fall into our hands?"

"Stupid! Then we can magnanimously return the captives to them, but can they not want it? ”

So Napoleon was convinced, but privately he said to his generals: "Don't call this thing 'Bonaparte potato,' but 'Abagon' potato." Yes, it's full of Abagon's stench. ”

"The stench of Abagon" is "stench", but in this way, the cost of landmines has dropped a lot. It's almost half of what it used to be. If you take into account the reduction in weight and volume, the reduction in transportation costs, then the savings are even greater. And this is reflected on the battlefield, that is, the number and density of landmines have increased dramatically.

So the Ivan quickly stepped on the mines. With an explosion that was not much like the sound of a gunshot, an Ivan fell, clutching his bloody leg and wailing loudly, and the small power of the mine just now just exploded the sole of one of his feet.

Then another Ivan fell to the sound of an explosion, and then more Ivan fell to the sound of French fire, or the explosion of mines, and more wails rang out.

The wailing of comrades-in-arms is the best weapon to hit morale, and the movements of the Russian army began to seem a little sluggish. But they continued to move on, when something that looked like a rope net appeared in front of them.