Sunday, September 27, 1914, fine. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoIn the early afternoon, a flight formation of seven Zeppelins appeared in the sky over Paris. As a result of the repeated air raids by German bombers in recent days, the defense forces in the French capital initially took some air defense measures, sounding fire alarm bells and church bells at the same time, and repeatedly urging people to leave the crowded apartments, houses, and churches and evacuate to pre-designated shelters such as parks, canals, and river beaches in the surrounding areas. The rapid-fire guns and cannons, which had been temporarily converted into anti-aircraft weapons, scrambled to fire, and before the bombs of the German airships fell, the whole city of Paris was already bustling like a pot of boiling soup.

The imposing German air fleet apparently expected the French to throw in anti-aircraft weapons of a larger caliber than machine guns and machine guns, and all the airships flew at altitudes of more than five thousand meters, which far exceeded the effective anti-aircraft range of the French guns. Shells with time-delay fuses continued to fire in the air, but failed to shoot down even a single German airship.

When the French artillery was almost tossed, the Zeppelin group began to drop bombs. It was just over two hundred kilometers from the airship base in western Germany to Paris, and it was a good day, and each airship was loaded with as many bombs as possible. The hits of high-altitude bombardments were astonishingly large, and the bombs dropped on the Place de la Concorde might have landed at the Palais de Pombo on the other side of the Seine, but these German airships themselves were terrible psychological bombs, and the impact of large bombs weighing three or four hundred kilograms from an altitude of five or six thousand kilograms was no less powerful than the bombardment of the main guns of a dreadnought, and the whole of Paris trembled in this explosion of astonishing energy. I saw that one building after another collapsed, countless glass windows shattered in an instant, and the spiritual defense line of the soldiers and civilians of Paris was dealt an unprecedented blow......

As the Battle of the Marne came to an end, hundreds of thousands of German troops converged on Paris along various roads, and German planes and airships began to frequently intrude into the airspace of Paris, reconnoitring the deployment of French troops, attacking French baggage vehicles, and repeatedly confronting Allied fighters who took to the skies. While the huge Zeppelin formation was bombing Paris, several inconspicuous Albatros B combat reconnaissance planes flew at low altitude over the French line of Damartin-Pontoise-Lesieland-Grand Voissy. In the face of machine gun and machine-gun fire from the French infantry, the German pilots calmly and skillfully piloted the planes, and shuttled flexibly and freely over the French positions. In recent days, they have found that the French front is dusty, countless soldiers and civilians are working as industriously as ants, and in front of the original trench position, a wide and deep trench is gradually taking shape.

The trench used for defense has existed since ancient times, it can resist the impact of cavalry, block the invasion of infantry, some trenches are dug around the city, some cross the battlefield, sharp nails can be inserted, water can be divested and instilled, it can be called easy to operate, versatile defensive weapon. German pilots always reported to their superiors the battlefield situation they had detected at the first time, but conventional military reconnaissance could not gain insight into all enemy deployments. Before the Battle of the Marne was over, the French top brass issued an unusual order to the naval fleet. In compliance with this directive, French naval officers and sailors dismantled 1,200 M1877 five-barrel rapid-fire guns, 2,000 QF1 Maxim guns, and 500 other small-caliber rapid-fire guns from surface ships and coastal defense forts.

A common feature of these rapid-fire weapons produced in different eras is the use of 37 mm caliber Hatch Chase shells, which can penetrate thin steel plates or cause lethal damage to unarmored targets, and these rotary tube guns and machine guns have been widely used by the navies of Britain, France and other countries since the late 19th century, and are equipped on surface ships to resist torpedo boat attacks. Previously, army units were rarely equipped only because army generals felt that the weapon was too fast and lethal to be used against enemy infantry - and the cost of Hatch Chase shells was much more expensive than ordinary machine-gun bullets.

Within a few days of the Anglo-French withdrawal from the Marne front to Paris, hundreds of naval rapid-fire guns arrived in Paris from southern France and were deployed to various strongholds of the Greater Paris Line, where trenches and machine guns became the hope of the French army to resist the German offensive. The French troops stationed in Meaux were given 36 QF1s, this automatic weapon designed by Maxim used the same principle of short recoil with a barrel as the Maxim machine gun, with a rate of fire of 400 rounds per minute and a maximum range of 4000 meters, but in the Meaux defense line, before the Maxim machine guns in the hands of the French soldiers could play a role, their positions were destroyed by the German army's devastating shelling, and almost all the machine guns were lost in the forward positions, As a result, the retreating troops were left without any weapons against the German tank units.

The news of the fall of Meaux was still being talked about by the German people, and the German 5th Army Corps and the Marine Corps, which were attacking Paris, were successively tasting the strength of the new French defensive combination. The advance troops of the former stormed the French line at Villeparisi, just over 20 kilometers from Paris, - the French dug trenches three or four meters wide and two meters deep in front of the positions, laid barbed wire fences behind the trenches, and deployed small-caliber rapid-fire guns in the forward trenches, and the naval tanks that launched the charge were either destroyed or wounded or blocked by the trenches, and the German lancers' horses were able to jump over such trenches, but could not pass through the barbed wire and the interception of enemy bullets. Without the support of chariots and cavalry, it was difficult for infantry alone to break through such a line.

Crown Prince Wilhelm's troops had a terrifying number of field artillery and heavy artillery units to cope with the operation, but the German 1st Marine Division, which had fought all the way from Amiens to Paris, did not have such resources. The 3rd Marine Brigade fought fiercely for two days, and with great difficulty, broke through the Merlu Line, which was held by six French infantry regiments and two artillery regiments, and lost more than 3,000 men in the battle. The naval infantry gritted their teeth and continued to advance, and they were again stubbornly resisted by the French at the Oise, a tributary of the Seine, and had to stop and wait for reinforcements. At this time, the end of the Battle of the Marne liberated a large number of German Army units from the stalemate of the Marne, and the undefeated units of the Kluke Corps - the 9th Cavalry Division, the 14th Infantry Division, the 40th Infantry Division and the heavy artillery group of the regiment - were ordered to rush to the northern front. The cavalry infantry units arrived in Arras by train, where they rested to replenish their reserves and armament, and then took the train to Amiens, where the heavy artillery group was transported directly by rail. By this time, the thirty or forty kilometers of railway line from Amiens to Beauvais had been opened, and the rest of the journey required soldiers to march on foot, and artillery transportation had reverted to the traditional means of animal towing and vehicle pulling.

By September 28, the German army and navy had assembled 18,000 soldiers, 143 field guns, and 16 combat vehicles on the banks of the Oise. Encouraged by the long-cherished desire to storm Paris, the German officers and men, who were emaciated and weary from the continuous battle march, regained their spirits and resolutely launched an attack on the French positions, and soon took the French positions on the north bank of the Oise. By this time, the French had blown up all the bridges over the river on their own, and then relied on the fortifications built on the south bank of the river to resist the German attack - the German troops crossing the river were subjected to heavy French machine artillery fire, and 7 of the 12 naval tanks engaged in the battle were lost, and the surviving crew of the tanks mentioned in their reports that their tanks were pierced through the frontal armor when they were two to three hundred meters away from the French positions, so that some of the crew members of the vehicles were killed and wounded on the spot.

When he learned of the failure of the attack, Natsuki had just followed the command of the 1st Marine Division to Merry, which was only about ten kilometers from the battlefield, and earlier in the day, he received a letter from Crown Prince William, in which his brother mentioned the nail that the 5th Army had encountered in Villeparisi. The staff officers of Crown Prince Wilhelm carefully studied the aerial reconnaissance report, and they found that the French were far from being able to build such fortifications on the entire front defending Paris, so they postponed the frontal attack on the French positions of the Villeparissi, and sent two infantry divisions to move north, looking for the weak positions of the French defense to break through, and at the same time, the German artillery group, which had almost razed the city of Meoc, also advanced to the Villeparissi, waiting for enough ammunition supplies to arrive, It was possible to once again use the devastating artillery fire to split a passage in the French line.

Natsuki was not very surprised that the French suddenly understood the essence of trench warfare under the pressure of life and death, and he did not have to worry that this classic defensive method would drag the war into the abyss of attrition, because the Friedrich shipyard's tank factory was producing naval tanks day and night, and a large number of personnel with vehicle driving or artillery handling skills could go to the front with only a week of assault training. As long as the artillery, infantry, and chariot units were well coordinated, no amount of wide trenches could stop the German army from advancing into Paris.

"The officers and men are tired, why don't we wait patiently for a few days and gather all the equipment before attacking?" In his reply to Crown Prince William, Natsuki wrote that the equipment he was talking about was similar to the equipment used by the engineering troops to erect pontoon bridges, and the key issue was how to transport the equipment to the trenches through the battlefield covered by enemy gun fire.

In his reply to Crown Prince William, Natsuki calmly provided some technical and tactical strategies for crossing the trenches: artillery suppressed and extended fire with powerful artillery fire, and used smoke bombs to jam and cover, so that the infantry could provide full and effective support, naval tanks carried perforated steel plates designed and manufactured for beach landings, and engineers carried explosive equipment to advance with the tanks, as long as the gaps on both sides of the trench were blown up, and the perforated steel plates were laid, which could be used for the vehicles and infantry to pass through quickly, and then break through the French defense line in one fell swoop.

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