The capture of this bridge was only the beginning, Adolf's battalion did not have time to rest, they needed to continue the attack, capture the villages near the bridge, and prevent the counterattack of the coalition forces.

The captain of the 171st Infantry Regiment, about fifteen kilometers north of Adolf, was not so easy, Adolf captured only a bridge over a small river, and what they needed to attack was the dangerous Meuse River in Belgium, as long as the Meuse River was breached, the gate of Brussels would be open to the Germans.

"I don't know how to get through this terrible fortress!" Rundstedt put down his binoculars and thought helplessly, he estimated that this fortress called Liège would become a great enemy in the way of the German army. According to intelligence, the fortress of Liège had more than 20,000 people from a division of Belgian defenders, and on the east side of the Meuse River, the Belgians built a fortress defense system with the city of Liège as the core. Thirty kilometers along the banks of the Meuse, 12 artillery batteries radially encircled around the city of Liège, forming a circular network of fire across the Meuse.

The fort was made of reinforced concrete cast in one piece, and was mostly built underground, with only the triangular top exposed. The turret was equipped with a total of 400 cannons and a large number of machine guns, and the turret was protected by steel plates, which could rotate 360 degrees. Under the forts, there were well-connected passages and basements for the storage of sufficient food, fresh water, ammunition, medicines, and power supplies.

"Did the Belgians build all their defenses here?" The German commander Emich said jokingly to the staff officer next to him, but his heart was by no means as relaxed as it seemed. Such a powerful fortress would certainly cost a lot of energy and casualties, and it would have been delayed for a long time, which would have had a significant impact on the advance of the German army. When he got the information about the fortress of Liège, Amy almost didn't go berserk, and he couldn't guarantee that he would capture the fortress in a short time without heavy artillery.

"General, the Belgians have destroyed the bridge over the Meuse, we need to hurry up and attack!"

"Well, it's better to let the 171st Regiment test it, maybe the Belgians will surrender under our attack!"

Rundstedt did not have as many fantasies as General Emich, and he kept his body as low as he could, and together with his company, approached the Meuse, with dozens of soldiers behind him preparing to erect a pontoon bridge. More than a thousand soldiers of the 171st Regiment gathered by the river like ants preparing to cross the river, and the engineers waded into the cold river under the cover of the soldiers, and the fortress in the distance was about to open its mouth like a giant beast.

"Pay attention to concealment, set up machine guns!" Rundstedt kept giving orders, and before the pontoon bridge was erected, they were like targets, waiting for the Belgians' bullets by the river without any cover.

The Belgian defenders did not live up to the Germans' fears, and the first shell burst out of the battery and landed more than fifty meters on the side of Rundstedt, sending several German soldiers into the sky.

"Hidden, hidden!" The officers shouted, but the soldiers found that there was no place to hide, and a dozen soldiers who had stepped onto the pontoon bridge were hit by machine-gun bullets and fell into the biting water, and in the blink of an eye the cold and wounds took their lives.

The first tentative German attack was easily repulsed, and the 171st Infantry Regiment fled back to the starting point with more than seventy corpses left behind. More than 200 German artillery pieces opened heavy fire on the fortress battery, but the artillery observers found through the scissor gun mirror that the fortress battery was almost undamaged, and still fired back.

"Captain, the battalion headquarters ordered to stop the attack and build fortifications in place." Rundstedt was somewhat surprised by the news brought by the heralds at the battalion headquarters, who had thought that he would continue to storm - he could not think of a better way to face the fortress but to fill it with human lives.

"What the hell is going on up there? It's not a good idea to stall here! Rundstedt told the deputy company commander that he knew that there were millions of British and French troops building fortifications in the Belgian rear, preparing to block the German army in Belgian territory, and that the whole attack would be in danger of failure if the fortress of Liège was extended for a long time.

An hour later, dozens of German fighters painted with iron crosses appeared over the battlefield, hovering over the battlefield without the slightest appearance of assisting in the attack - even an attack would not help. Could it be that there is some secret weapon on it?

But the behemoth that slowly floats in the sky can help, this is the giant airship of the German airship brigade. After China used airships in actual combat and achieved good results, various countries accelerated the progress of airship research and development, and set up special airship bombing units one after another. The mature airship manufacturing technology from China gave the German airship a lead in Europe, and the five airships slowly approached the fortress of Liège, and the residents of Liège City, who thought they were very safe, stepped out of their homes to watch this shocking monster.

"Call the airfield in the rear and ask them to send planes to take out these airships!" The commander of the Belgian garrison, Colonel Liman, immediately said to the signal corps. His fortress did not have much anti-aircraft firepower, all the heavy fire was buried in strong fortifications, and there was no threat of aircraft when the fortress was built, so no anti-aircraft artillery positions were left, which means that the defenders could only rely on aircraft in the rear to drive away these behemoths.

There were no planes at the airfield to take off, and the Belgian fighters had long been depleted in the previous air battles, not to mention the fact that there were German fighter escorts around the airship.

When the bombs fell from the airship, the defenders contrasted with the Germans, the cheers of the German soldiers echoed everywhere, and the defenders and the inhabitants of Liège cried and sought refuge. The bombs dropped by these airships were larger, more charged, and more powerful than those carried by German bombers, and the smoke and dust from the explosions obscured the sky and was blown by the wind to expose huge craters on the ground.

The airship looks mighty and the bombing is exhilarating, but the actual effect is very mediocre. Immediately after the bombardment of the airship, the German commander Emich ordered an attack, but the German soldiers who arrived at the Meuse River were again attacked by battery fire, and the fire density of the Belgian defenders did not decrease at all, and those batteries were not damaged at all.

It is possible for a bombshell to penetrate the heavy top armor of the turret, provided that it can hit, and the low hit rate of the airship is terrifying, and the number of bombs that the airship can carry is also speechless, and the bomb drop density is not enough to pose a threat to the turret.

The long-awaited secret weapon of the General Staff Headquarters was so unbearable that the airship designers who came to observe the effects of the bombing were embarrassed.

Schlieffen, who had pinned down Metz at the front line, received a telegram from Emich asking for help, and he smiled and handed the telegram to Wilhelm II, who was also in charge of the headquarters.

"My marshal, isn't Amyh's troubles worth paying attention to?" Wilhelm II had seen Schlieffen's plan, and he thought that the key to the German offensive was to bypass Belgium, like a heavy punch on the right side of the coalition army, and now it seems that the fortress of Liège successfully blocked the German fist, which should be very bad news!

"Your Majesty, it's really not good news, but the plan of the General Staff Headquarters is not exactly betting on the main forces of the right flank, and we have another hole card. As long as General Moltke Jr.'s corps successfully passes through the Ardennes Forest, the rear route of the coalition army can be cut off, so that the coalition army will be surrounded by our main force in Belgian territory, and we will have enough time to take the fort for the next day. ”

"Isn't there also the strength of two French armies on the other side of the Ardennes Forest? In the unlikely event that Moltke's army is blocked, our plans cannot be successfully implemented. ”

The commander-in-chief of the French army, Xia Fei, answered Wilhelm II's doubts with practical actions, and the information in his hand showed that the main forces of the Germans were in the direction of Belgium, and the forces in the German-French border area were very weak. Therefore, the Third Army, moving in the direction of the Ardennes Forest, was ordered to advance northward, increasing the strength of the coalition forces in the Belgian direction, and the Fourth Army was ordered to move closer to the German-French border, trying to concentrate the forces of the three armies to open the German defenses in Alsace and Lorraine. Concentrate the forces of three armies and a British expeditionary force in a decisive battle with the main German forces in the Belgian direction.

According to Xia Fei's estimate, when the French army broke through the German defenses on the German-French border, the German army in Belgium would collapse without a fight, and then victory would be within reach.

Miscalculations of troops and ignorance of the German armored forces became Xiafei's biggest flaws. Before the war, France received intelligence that the German Army had a total of 98 divisions, but in reality there were almost 20 more divisions. Intelligence indicated that Germany had created an armored corps, consisting of tanks and armored vehicles, but the French believed that such a purely armored unit would be a target for infantry in the absence of infantry.

The backwardness of technology led to the backwardness of tactics, and the French believed that tanks, which were slow and weak in firepower, could be used as a tool to break through enemy barbed wire and trenches, but could not be used for group combat. A long-distance march will paralyze all vulnerable tanks on the road, and high-intensity combat will quickly deplete the tank's ammunition, eventually turning it into a toothless tiger. In Britain and France, where the infantry tradition is serious, tanks can only become auxiliary forces for infantry, and tanks are used to cover infantry attacks.

In fact, this idea was also strong within the German army, and the Panzer forces were still very weak within the German army, and the Germans were more convinced that their infantry would bring victory to them - and the glory of Prussia was created by the infantry. When Moltke Jr., who was deeply influenced by the Chinese armored forces, created the armored forces, without Schlieffen's support, the current two armored corps would never have been possible.

In addition, the secret cooperation between Walter and Germany also made the German tank technology more advanced and more reliable, and within the army, most people still believed that in order to win, they had to rely on the elite performance of millions of German infantry on the right flank. (To be continued.) )