At the same time that the French defenders defending Paris stormed Crook's right flank, the French Fifth Army in the south also suddenly turned around and launched a thunderous counterattack against the German First Army, which had been chasing them all the way for more than ten days. The new commander Franche? Under the command of Despere, the French offensive on the southern front was no weaker than that of the Gallieri Division, which had been recuperating in Paris for a week, and a large number of red pants launched a hard-to-die confrontation with the German army in front under the cover of artillery fire.

On a frontline tens of kilometers long, German and French armies swarmed upwards and burst into fierce sparks near the Marne. The team was violently scattered, rushed away and separated, and then ravaged and killed again, and fought in a mess, fighting separately. One regiment stubbornly pushed forward, while friendly troops retreated under heavy fire, and the enemy either surrounded it on three sides and launched a fierce attack, or for some unknown reason did not take advantage of it. The horses' iron hooves entered the village and passed through the forest; The infantry walked across the fields, crossed the roads, crawled and hid in the river-lined areas, and pulled the trigger on the invading army. Roaring artillery fire destroyed farmhouse roads and blew up boulders and trees. The Maxim machine guns were either powerful and roaring, or they were countered by the French 75mm cannons, becoming a twisted pile of scrap metal.

On the afternoon of 4 June, the British Expeditionary Force under the command of Field Marshal French. An attack was also launched on Crook's headquarters. After repeated persuasion by Xia Fei and Gallieni, French finally relented; And when the French met the preconditions demanded by French, the British fulfilled their promise of a counteroffensive.

From the moment the British Expeditionary Force launched a counterattack, the opposing German troops clearly felt the pressure.

Similar to the shocking morale of the French counter-offensive, the British army's will to fight was unexpectedly high. But this is not because they also grasped the meaning of the French military philosophy of the "impulse of life". Rather, it was because they had fled fast enough and rested long enough in the rear. By this time, they had already regained their morale under the soothing of a sumptuous dinner, a hot bath, and a full sleep. After receiving the order to attack. They threw themselves into the battle against the Germans with high morale.

In terms of the quality of the army, the British Expeditionary Force also displayed a strength that surprised the German counterparts. This group of British soldiers had excellent marksmanship, plus the double-row magazine Lee in their hands? The Enfield rifle gives it excellent rifle firepower. In the previous battle on the Mons Canal, the British had fired a volley of their rifles with precision, making the attacking Germans think they were under machine-gun fire; This largely contributed to Crook's failure to take action that night, allowing the British to escape calmly during the night. Ten days later, Crook's troops met this force again.

Time. The German Crook was attacked on three sides: on the right was the city garrison that had charged out from the direction of Paris, on the southwest flank was the menacing British Expeditionary Force, which had been recuperating for a long time, and on the south was the French Fifth Army, which had suddenly turned back from defeat and charged. A day ago, it was a vigorous chaser, but now it has become a disadvantage of being beaten on the head, and the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse; The rapid changes in the situation on the battlefield are really unpredictable for insiders. In the field headquarters adjacent to the front line, Rao is Crook, under the warning of the German high command, no longer dismisses the news of the imminent French counteroffensive, but when it really comes, his heart is still full of shock and consternation.

"The French 'impulse' is about to disappear. But in an instant, it burned again. "The French soldier had the extraordinary quality of recovering with astonishing speed." The soldier's unyielding spirit is well known. It is estimated in every operational plan; But it has been retreated for 10 consecutive days. The fact that a tired, exhausted, and unscrupulous soldier could take up arms and charge into battle at the sound of a military trumpet is something we have never estimated, and this may not have been studied in our military science. Luckily, we had stopped moving forward the day before, avoiding the worst-case scenario of a complete collapse. ”

Crook should indeed be glad that he had stopped his march. The situation he was facing at the present was much better than that of the other plane: a full day's rest had greatly restored the physical strength of the German soldiers, exhausted by long marches, and enabled them to devote themselves to the battle against the French in a state far superior to that of history. The forces that the French are currently amassing in the Marne area are also somewhat smaller than the famous battle - because the Qing British Fifth Army annihilated a large number of French troops in the border battle, Xia Fei was forced to transfer part of the forces originally used to strengthen the front of the Marne to the center for defense. This largely offset the adverse effects of Moltke Jr.'s transfer of the two legions that had previously belonged to the Western Front to the Eastern Front.

And in terms of weapons and equipment, the German army also has a better historical firepower. Although their proud heavy artillery cluster has been left behind, they have an unrivaled absolute superiority in mortars and machine guns, and these two weapons are undoubtedly the magic weapons of trench defense operations! In addition, the Kirov airboats cruising the sky and the three-winged Gotha bombers flying across the sky were also important support for the German army in this plane to advance in the French battlefield. The former has a terrifying huge bomb load, and the huge power of a bombshell is enough to split the mountains and the ground, and the rolling air waves swing hundreds of meters away; And the four 50kg bombs dropped by the latter at one time during the bombing will always get a good result in this near-saturation attack!

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After a full day of fierce fighting, the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army made some breakthroughs on the Little Moran River, but each suffered heavy casualties. In particular, the British army, commanded by French.

Although the quality of the officers and men of this British army was outstanding, even better than that of the German army (it is a historical fact that the first British expeditionary force was a first-class elite), its fighting methods were the same as those of the French army half a month earlier, and it was still stuck in the era of the Franco-Prussian War. After a burst of heavy artillery bombardment, a large number of British soldiers lined up in a neat dense queue and strode towards the German positions with their heads held high, accompanied by the performance of military bands - this was obviously the rhythm of death in front of a large number of Germans armed with machine guns! And the reason why the British still lined up the infantry in this formation to carry out a large number of meaningless deaths was entirely due to their lack of battlefield experience.

In a series of previous battles, the dense attacking formation of the French suffered in front of the German machine guns. Whether it was the human tragedy of the attack on Alsace or the sinking of the sand and halberds in the border battle, tens of thousands of French soldiers lost their lives without any resistance. After paying the huge price of so many slaughtered people, the French finally learned from the bloody lesson and began to change the infantry formation of the attack to a skirmisher. While this is still a futile performance in the face of a well-established trench defense, it can greatly reduce the casualty rate of infantry in ordinary combat.

The British clearly did not have this awareness. Because they were able to retreat in the previous border battles, they did not pay the "tuition" like the French, and they had almost no knowledge of the power of machine guns, so they ran headlong into the bloody sickle of death. In the face of the British salute, the German soldiers showed no mercy: they skillfully set up their Maxim heavy machine guns and fired fiercely at the rows of British infantry.

With the squeak of the heavy machine guns, the British soldiers were swept down like wheat harvesters, and the heart-rending screams overwhelmed the stirring wind music played by the trumpet organ. In a short time, the front of the German positions had become a terrible hell of corpses and bloodshed. The British military band, which had been spared by the Germans according to the practice of previous engagements, was already colorless after fleeing back to their positions; They kept chanting words like "devil", and no matter how urged by the officers, they did not dare to set foot on the battlefield again. In that afternoon alone, they had suffered more than 2,000 casualties under German machine-gun slaughter, and when Field Marshal French learned of this casualty figure, he was so angry that he almost lost control of his emotions; Had it not been for the fact that the British had taken advantage of the heavy artillery and had some advances, he would have ordered the advance to be halted that night!

The sun is setting and the sky is full of stars. The battle that broke out on the Marne finally came to an end as night fell. Waves of Red Cross medics carrying stretchers and waving white flags are looking for survivors in the no-man's land in the middle of the battlefield; The medical staff of the two sides passed by peacefully, and from time to time they exchanged several wounded people from the other side who had been temporarily treated by themselves. The officers and soldiers who had been confirmed dead were carried to the pit for burial after their comrades helped collect the relics. Combined with the fact that the German machine gunners did not shoot at the British military band during the day, the war at this time did not completely become a hysterical madness, but preserved a trace of good nature. After that, however, the Western Front will also take on its pure meat grinder role......

Faced with this sudden change of situation, Crook did not panic in the slightest; After combining today's battles, he had chosen a breakthrough to change the situation - to defeat the Paris city defenses attacking his flank. (To be continued......)