At dusk, in the large reeds adjacent to the river, French soldiers in blue shirts and red trousers are silently watching the villages and fields ahead. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info The village was full of smoke and gunfire, and in the middle of the fields, the black and crushed procession was advancing along the winding road towards the heart of France.

Suppressing the anger in their chests, these French soldiers with rifles waited silently for the enemy to approach. I saw a battalion of German infantry marching in a five-way column, strutting forward, and at the rear of the road, as far as the eye could see, there was a dense mass of troops—an infantry column led by an officer on horseback, an artillery convoy, a transport convoy, and a cavalry unit—and nearly a division of men and horses marching in an orderly manner.

"The primary objective is the enemy infantry...... Rifle ruler 400 meters...... Aim! ”

The French officer's whispered command was quickly passed backwards, and the soldiers raised their rifles, still silent in the reeds.

Seeing the enemy approaching step by step, the French commander had a hideous look on his face, and he gritted his teeth and ordered: "Fire!" ”

There was gunfire in the reeds.

The German troops were immediately panicked, and the well-trained German soldiers, dazed by the sudden bullets, left the road to find cover, the horses struggled, jumped on their front legs with harnesses, the car overturned, and the road was littered with corpses, hundreds.

Almost exhausted of ammunition, the French troops in the reeds retreated voluntarily, and as soon as they left, large groups of German troops swarmed in, but they were empty-handed and had nothing to gain, except for a single bullet casing.

Such rearguard sniper battles were staged on the Western Front every hour of the day, and on this day, the fighting spirit of the French rearguard troops was particularly high

Because it's September 2nd, "Color Day". On this day 44 years ago, the French Emperor Napoleon III signed the instrument of surrender in Sedan, which the French regarded as a great shame and had been using it as a warning for decades, and the Germans took this date into the annals of honor - they were proud to be able to step on the corpses of the French to achieve German unity.

After a month of fierce fighting, the war on the Western Front had completely deviated from the assumption of the German Schlieffen Plan. The Germans failed to annihilate the main French forces along the Maas River, but launched an all-out attack with both wings and a steady advance in the middle. On the right flank, the German Luke's corps swept across the northern coast of France and, together with the Below corps, marched mightily along the long white roads of northern France toward Paris; On the left flank, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany and Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria crossed the Maas with their respective legions, and after pulling out the nail of Verdun, they could march unhindered to Paris; In the center, the armies of Hausen and Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg, were held back by Sedan and Mauborg, and had to rely on friendly forces to break the stalemate, while along the Sambre they were able to regain the lost face by defeating the French, thus being able to march forward with the friendly forces.

Ostensibly, nearly two million German troops were unstoppable in eastern France, but the French army's resistance was slowing their march more and more slowly. After crushing defeats at Belgium, Lorraine, Alsace, and the Maas River, the French generals reluctantly admitted that their offensive tactics were weak against artillery and machine guns. They continued to retreat with their soldiers, surrendering the fields, rivers, villages and towns of their homeland to the barbaric Germans, and subjecting their companions to the ravages of the German army. Whenever the troops stopped to stop the enemy, the soldiers, even though they were exhausted, were still full of enthusiasm. They began to dig trenches, digging them deep enough to stand in them and shoot; They concealed their 75-mm rapid-fire field guns and waited until the Germans approached before attacking them with heavy artillery fire; They carried out sniper operations in battalion and company units, and the soldiers were ambushed on the side of the road, specifically attacking the German marching columns, and they hit and run, leaving the Germans at a loss.

Thanks to the efforts of the rearguard, the main French forces that had retreated from the Maas front line were given a respite, and they regrouped on the Somme River in the northeast of Paris and the Marne River valley in the southeast to form defensive positions as the ultimate line of defense for the defense of Paris.

From the lessons of the fall of the fortresses of Liège and Namur, the French realized that a simple battery fortress was not enough to withstand the heavy siege artillery of the Germans, and that it had to be defended with field fortifications. Some of the fortresses were immediately strengthened, but the most important fortress in eastern France, Verdun, no longer had such an opportunity.

On 1 September, the 9th Corps of the Hausen Corps arrived in Gus, a small town north of Verdun, and cut off the railway line north of Verdun to Sedan. By this point, the fortress of Verdun had fallen under German encirclement, and only a few small roads were accessible in the hilly terrain to the northwest, and after 24 hours, even this last retreat had been cut off by the Germans.

Although the French officers and soldiers of the Verdun fortress were alone, they refused to accept the persuasion of the Germans to surrender. On 2 September, Crown Prince Wilhelm's army launched a series of onslaught on the last two batteries of the Verdun defenders, and the German soldiers fought bravely with the support of artillery fire, but the gods of fate did not favor the Germans on this day. The casualties of several main divisions of the 5th Army Corps amounted to more than 30,000 men, and the most elite combat units were lost.

At the critical moment of the battle, the French soldiers used pistols, bayonets and crowbars to engage the Germans who invaded the fort, and blocked part of the passage in the fort with explosives, holding the last two batteries.

Crown Prince Wilhelm, who wanted to behave well in front of the Kaiser, was furious about the defeat of the attack. To commemorate the crucial victory 44 years ago, Kaiser Wilhelm II will be on the front line for the first time, and if the 5th Army can take the fortress of Verdun at this time, it will surely be praised by the Kaiser, and Crown Prince Wilhelm will gain unprecedented prestige in the eyes of the people.

The fortress of Verdun was not captured, and the commemoration at Sedan continued as scheduled. Before dusk, a depressed Crown Prince Wilhelm and his brother Prince Joachim set out from Verdun and drove three hours to the city of Sedan more than 100 kilometers away. Kaiser Wilhelm II arrived early, and in the afternoon he inspected the Saxon forces under the command of General Hausen - just a few days earlier, the "barbarians" had defeated the main force of the French 5th Army in a landslide and tsunami-like offensive, and had taken Sedang in one fell swoop, making Sedang a celebration day for the Germans.

Natsuki followed Crown Prince William to this grand dinner. Thankfully, the French army hastily evacuated Sedan and did not have time to clear the walls, let alone fight a fierce street battle with the Saxon army in Hausen, so that the German emperor, who had a good face, had the opportunity to make a big show in the best mansion of Sedan. In addition to the three corps commanders Luke, Ruprecht, and Heringen, who were unable to arrive because the defense area was too far away, Bülo, Albrecht, and many princes and nobles who fought with the army were invited to attend, and the liaison officers and military observers sent by Austria-Hungary to the Western Front also appeared at the banquet.

At the banquet, General Hausen, who had recently won two great victories and personally led his army to conquer Sedang, was undoubtedly the most energetic. He sometimes described the scene of the French army's awkward retreat, and sometimes lamented the hardships of the march. The general who commanded the Saxon army did not regard simplicity and poverty as a good character, as the Prussians did, and he felt that a comfortable stay every night was more important than anything else, but when he entered France, he was never able to do so. It was either a messy room, or a peasant's house that smelled of a strange smell, and his Saxon soldiers marched on enemy territory for days, and the weather was hot, and they had to fight from time to time. Supplies were always out of reach, bread and meat were scarce, the troops had to live on local livestock, and horses were fodder—nevertheless Hausen managed to march an average of twenty-three kilometres a day—the most basic requirement of the Schlieffen plan for the speed of German advance. According to the original schedule, the Luke's regiment on the far right marched thirty kilometers a day, or even more, and when forced to march, it amounted to forty kilometers a day.

Luke was able to do this because he only allowed the soldiers to stay along the road, and did not let them disperse to camp on both sides of the road. In this way, it was possible to run an extra six or seven kilometers in a day, but because the German transport lines were long and the troops were advancing far beyond the end of the railway line where military supplies were transported, food was often not available. The horses had to go out into the fields to eat the unripe crops. The soldiers marched all day and ate only raw carrots and cabbage. They were hot and tired, and their feet ached as much as their enemies. They were getting more and more hungry, but they still marched according to their schedule.

Hausen was troubled by the difficult conditions of the march, with Crown Prince Wilhelm troubled by the stubbornness of the fortress of Verdun, and several other corps commanders of the German army also having difficult problems. General von Büell's 2nd Army Corps was in the middle of the right flank front, and according to the initial deployment of the German General Staff, he was responsible for coordinating the three corps on the right flank, but the two friendly forces were both focused on their respective goals, and always ignored Bilow's "requests". As a result, a disturbing gap gradually appeared between the three corps, which could be a danger of thwarting the German offensive on the right flank once the French reorganized their forces and launched a counterattack.

Taking advantage of the Kaiser's personal visit to the front, several corps commanders lost no time in expounding their ideas in order to gain the support of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, which seemed to be a shortcut, but Wilhelm II, who was not familiar with military affairs and was happy to hand over military command to the General Staff, would probably make the Chief of the General Staff Moltke the Younger mad if he wanted to implement it.

On the other hand, the defeat of the Sarmspur, the fall of Maubeuges, the crumbling of Verdun, the precariousness of the Aisne, the French high command was already in a state of flux. They searched the map for every force they could mobilize, sending them to the northern coast to fend off Luke's legions, to Amiens and Saint-Quentin to fend off the attacks of Büloh and Hausen, to the Aisne to contain the forces of Crown Prince Wilhelm and Crown Prince Rupprecht, all in need of reinforcements. The colonial forces had been mobilized, but they needed train-to-ship, ship-to-train, and thousands of kilometers to reach the front, and it took time, precious time.

On that day, the British decided to continue sending an army expeditionary force to France, and informed the French Government and the French High Command that within a week two army divisions and two marines would arrive in Le Havre by boat, and then go to the front as soon as possible according to the French arrangements for rail transport. Together with the British Expeditionary Force units that had arrived in France and had already been put into battle, the British troops in France had not yet reached the six divisions agreed upon by the two sides before the war, but it was undoubtedly a significant decision for the beleaguered France and the United Kingdom, which was also suffering.

(End of chapter)