In the lonely room, little Moltke looked at the message in his hand with a complicated expression, and after a long silence, thousands of thoughts had flashed through his mind.

According to the Schlieffen plan that the Germans were currently carrying out, Crook and his First Army were supposed to "sweep the strait": that is, to open a large encirclement in the outermost part of the French plain, encompassing all of Paris and capturing it in one fell swoop. If Paris is captured, there is a high probability that the French will to resist will collapse; The Germans could have counted on the end of the war against France as victors after that, thus establishing the hegemony of the European continent!

However, Crook's imminent turn, the strategy of blocking the retreat of the French Fifth Army from the east of Paris, was also a wise choice that could determine the victory in one fell swoop. It is important to know that the army is always the first element of war; And the reason why the French dared to fight Germany before the war was because they were able to mobilize an army in a short period of time that was not much inferior to Germany. The previous encirclement and annihilation battle of the Qing British Fifth Army at the foot of the Ardennes had already stretched the French forces; If the Fifth Army of France can be eaten in one fell swoop at present, then it will be almost impossible for the French army, which is at an absolute disadvantage in terms of strength, to continue to fight with Germany!

If Kaiser Wilhelm had seen this telegram, he would have vetoed Crook's proposal without hesitation; The Emperor was eager to recreate the glory of 42 years ago, and let the boots of German soldiers once again step onto the bluestone pavement of the Champs-Champs-Lières in Paris. Moltke's melancholy, however, gave him a peculiar sensitivity to the unfavorable variables on the battlefield: while the whole command was cheering excitedly for the German victory, he was the only one who noticed the anomaly of so few captured French troops. Arguably. This proposal of Crook. It is the strategy that Moltke is secretly longing for at the moment. According to German military doctrine. Only by crushing the enemy's mobile forces can one attack the barracks he has fortified; If the French Fifth Army is annihilated, Paris will also be a boiled duck at your fingertips!

However, Crook's action is undoubtedly risky. The reason why Schlieffen wanted to draw a large arc along the English Channel at the very end of the right flank was to avoid attacks on the German flank; This time, however, Crook was going to pass east of Paris, which would inevitably expose his right flank to the noses of the French defenders. After much deliberation, Moltke finally decided to adopt Crook's strategy.

Unlike the French system, where the commander-in-chief had to make decisions on everything, the German field commanders had considerable discretionary powers. A German general. The ideological and theoretical education he received, as well as the training in tactical operations and military exercises, were all aimed at enabling him to arrive at correct solutions to any particular military problem. As an old man who had participated in the Franco-Prussian War, the 67-year-old Crook was undoubtedly a trusted veteran in the German army, otherwise he would not have been able to sit on the throne of the commander of the First Army in the star-studded German Army. Since he presented this opinion to the High Command, it is only natural that the risks and contingencies that it will bring about will be taken into account. In addition, Crook's turn had the advantage of shortening the increasingly long front of the Germans after entering France. If Crook had advanced along the original route, the entire German front would have been stretched for another 80 to 100 km, which was obviously not conducive to a large-scale assault on the cluster.

That's it. The apprehension on Moltke's face faded, replaced by a look of certainty and determination. He handed the message back to Stein. "Send a telegram to Crook, the High Command has agreed to his proposal to turn around, and ordered him to start executing it early tomorrow morning." ”

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The moonlight is like water, and the evening breeze is light. In this quiet and peaceful night, little Moltke himself did not feel the slightest sleep. Somehow, the worries in his heart began to climb and rise again, accumulating little by little; It ended up choking him by the throat, leaving him with an almost nightmare suffocation.

Moltke had spent many sleepless nights in his worries since the war, but never had he felt so heavy and inexplicably melancholy in his heart as he did today. Even the unprecedented victory of the Russian Second Army on the Eastern Front could not dispel his worries in the slightest. He stared at the battle map in front of him, scrutinizing every link that might go wrong, as if trying to find out what was wrong; However, little Moltke soon reluctantly discovered that Schlieffen's plan, which had condensed the crystallization of countless staff officers' wisdom, had already been perfected, and how could he find out the clues in his haste?

"Tuk-tuk." Just as Moltke was feeling anxious and painful, there was another crisp knock on the door. Moltke was slightly irritable, and his voice was raised an octave: "Herman, why are you ......" However, when he raised his head to see the person, a pair of brown-gray eyes suddenly widened; It was none other than His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, the successor to this empire!

"Temple...... Your Highness? Aren't you in the headquarters of the Longwei front, how did you suddenly come to this Luxembourg City? Moltke was stunned, and his face was full of disbelief. Qingying smiled slightly and said, "Your Excellency Moltke, I am here to ask for food supplies for my soldiers. Beginning on 14 May, the Fifth Army had been fighting continuously for more than half a month, and the headquarters of our army, which had advanced nearly 100 kilometers, already showed signs of being in short supply. Although Longwei is the front line, it is only more than 20 kilometers away from Luxembourg, and it takes less than an hour to drive back and forth; So, I'll take it personally. ”

Xiao Moltke looked at the map when he heard this, and found that the situation was really as Qingying said, Luxembourg City was really close enough to Longwei; Qingying came to Luxembourg on the night when the fighting had subsided, and there was indeed no suspicion of dereliction of duty. He looked at the young man in front of him with some suspicion, and said, "Your Royal Highness, it seems that you don't need to make a trip to this trivial matter, right?" Even the Maas River bridgehead, at the forefront of the Fifth Army, was only seventy kilometers from the Imperial mainland, and the troops transporting grain and forage were enough to deliver the supplies in time. ”

Speaking of this, little Moltke showed a look of helplessness on his face, and said, "Your Highness, I can understand that you want to make enough merits in this battle; But I need to warn you that you can't ignore everything else for the sake of that. I have given you enough extra attention by transferring the train artillery unit and 100,000 rounds of shells. In contrast, the right flank of the Crook Army marched more than four times as long as your Fifth Army, and all the roads and bridges were destroyed by the Belgians and the French; But they were still moving at full speed toward Paris, and had not asked the High Command for help. ”

Qingying rolled her eyes and said, "Your Excellency Moltke, do you think I look like the kind of person who only cares about crazy hunting for medals and doesn't care about the situation of the war?" If this is the case, why should I take such a risk in the battle of the Ardennes in order to seek the encirclement and annihilation of the main French army? The reason why I came to Luxembourg this time is because I feel that behind the rapid advance we are currently making, there are some clues that could have serious consequences. ”

"Although the situation cannot be 100 per cent certain, we have every reason to believe that the French are not fleeing, but are making a planned retreat. This is evident in the number of captives we have captured. In addition to the fact that the Fifth Army captured almost 60,000 prisoners in Alvi, where were the prisoners elsewhere? The 3rd and 4th armies captured 20,000, and the rest of the world together was only 10,000 or 20,000. They will surely reappear somewhere and block the path of our army. Qingying said.

Little Moltke looked at Qingying with a surprised face, as if he had met him for the first time. After a while, he sighed softly and said, "Your Highness, it is really a blessing for my German Empire that you can think like this. I've been worrying about this for the past few days; However, His Majesty did not care about this, convinced that the French had been completely defeated! However, this situation is expected to change in a few days: I have approved Crook's proposal to turn southeast, and they are about to block the escape path of the French Fifth Army and cooperate with Bilow to annihilate it in one fell swoop. Moltke Jr. paused, and then spoke as if to convince himself: "Although doing so would expose the flanks to the defenders of Paris, I choose to trust Crook's judgment." ”

Sure enough, it came! Qingying's pupils shrank slightly. Historically, the French had intended to push further south to the Seine to establish positions; They launched a counteroffensive on the Marne precisely because Crook exposed his flank to the defenders of Paris, allowing Gallieni to seize this golden opportunity. At his loud call, Chauffy ordered the French to halt their retreat and launch a full-scale counteroffensive the next day, with the British Expeditionary Force under the command of Sir French also fully involved.

At this time, the German army had become the last of the strong crossbows. Although the Germans were far more logistically organized than the Russians, the Germans' right flank was so large and too far into the flank that they were in a similar situation to the Russian Second Army, which had been completely annihilated at the Battle of Tannenberg. Crook's department, which was short of food and poor in people, had no idea that the French would quietly assemble seven or eight divisions in Paris to storm their flanks, let alone that the French army would be able to turn around and carry out a desperate counterattack after more than ten consecutive days of defeat and retreat. After ten days of the Battle of the Marne, the exhausted Germans were repulsed, and Schlieffen's plan was a complete failure. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the reward of February 30 and zhouyu1976~~