In the face of the calculations of the Black Eagle Army of the Hans Empire, Duke is actually very clear in his heart, but he has no choice now but to maintain this situation.

After all, now such a thousand musketeers can only have such a great deterrent power if they occupy the basis that the other party does not understand at all, and if firearms are popularized, this thousand musketeers will be as simple as cutting vegetables and melons in front of the cavalry.

So the only thing Duke can do now is to get as close as possible to the borders of the French Empire, where there is still a little lord army of the Duchy of Berry. For example, Teucer's 10,000 Maple Leaf Army, as well as some private armies in the knight's territory, should add up to 20,000 people, and these 20,000 people can be regarded as the last troops of the Principality of Berry, plus the defense of fortresses and other fortresses, in the case that the cavalry has little effect on the siege, it can basically hold the northern defense line.

This is the situation that Duke is facing at present, the breakthrough is not the most difficult, the most difficult is how to retreat to the French Empire after the breakthrough.

Tens of thousands of troops were moving rapidly on the steppe steppe, and in order to strive for faster speed, all the soldiers of the First Imperial Legion were required to remove their armor and put them on top of the storm carriage to speed up their march.

Because compared to the storm army, which trains every day for long-distance running, the endurance of long and rapid marches is too much worse. If the Storm Army can walk thirty or fifty kilometers a day in such a crisis situation, then it is difficult for these soldiers of the First Army of the French Empire to wear battle armor for twenty kilometers after a big battle.

However, the 20,000 cavalry of the Hans Imperial Army only need one day to catch up with Duke and them, and there is only one way to ensure survival, that is, to throw off the Hans Imperial Black Eagle Army behind as fast as possible, leaving enough time to deal with the Hans Imperial Army that is about to be brought.

Before they had trained the horses to adapt to the sound of explosions, the shooting of muskets was a great threat to the horses, and Duke was not very afraid of the 20,000 cavalry charging alone. What he was most afraid of was being blocked by the cavalry of the Hans Imperial Army, and then being surrounded by the Black Eagle Army, if so, it would be very difficult to break out again.

People have a process of adaptation, and I believe that after such a heavy casualty, the generals of the Black Hawk Army should probably be able to figure out some ways to deal with the Storm Musket. No matter how stupid they are, they know how to block with heavy shields as much as possible, once they overcome their psychological fears, the storm musket team of about 1,000 people really can't play a decisive role, and if they want to break the protection of heavy shields, it is estimated that they have to use such things as artillery.

After a day of frantic marching, the Storm Army has basically left the Black Hawk Army of the Hans Empire far behind, and the only one who will still appear in Duke's field of vision is the Black Hawk Cavalry before. After suffering such a big loss, Duke Blair of the Black Eagle Army has never given up tracking the Storm Army, and these Black Hawk cavalry are used for positioning.

As long as the war horse has enough rest and rotation time, no matter how strong the endurance of the person is, it still can't match the speed of the war horse, so it is basically impossible to get rid of the tracking of the Black Hawk Sentinel, and the only thing Duke can do is to assemble the Storm Sentinel, the Royal Knight, and the personal escort cavalry of the Marquis of Stilwell, and form a cavalry hunting team to take out these trailing Black Hawk Sentinels.

But even if this is the case, it is impossible to get rid of it completely, after all, the wounded plus weapons and equipment, the average carrying weight of each storm carriage is now close to a ton, even if it is a dry grassland in July, there will be deep rut marks on it, which is basically impossible to hide.

In this way, after two days of forced rapid marching, the soldiers of the Storm Army were fine, and many soldiers of the First Legion of the Empire began to be unable to bear such physical exertion, and many began to fall behind as they walked. Faced with this situation, how did Princess Gina give up on them, and could only continue to stuff people into the storm carriage.

Even Princess Gina herself had abandoned her horse and given up her mount to the wounded. With Princess Jina as an example, the high-level generals of the entire First Legion of the Empire are the same. Seeing this situation, Duke could only helplessly dismount and walk, after all, this kind of move to buy people's hearts, the First Legion of the Empire could do it, can't he do it himself?

It has to be said that in such a critical situation, the performance of the senior generals sharing weal and woe has brought great psychological comfort to ordinary soldiers. Many of the exhausted soldiers of the First Legion of the Empire have burst out with amazing potential at this time, and they are desperately trying to keep up with the pace of the Storm Army, and on the most exaggerated day, the entire legion walked more than forty kilometers, which may be regarded as a small march record of the French Empire.

It's just that many things can not be solved simply by willpower, and less than fifty kilometers away from the northern camp, behind Duke's storm army, a large number of cavalry troops finally appeared, at least more than 20,000 in terms of numbers.

According to the eight or nine thousand cavalry of the Black Eagle Army that were left before, plus the 20,000 cavalry reinforced by the Hans Imperial Army, that is to say, the entire Hans Imperial cavalry still has an astonishing number of close to 30,000.

Not to mention the disparity in numbers, just this four or five consecutive days of forced marching made the broken out corps in a state of extreme fatigue, not only the First Army of the Empire, but the entire Duke's Storm Army, because the carrying capacity of the storm carriage is limited, and most of the soldiers are marching in cuirasses.

The most important part of the Storm Armor is this one-piece cuirass, which weighs more than fifteen kilograms. After all, before there was no alloy smelting technology, if you wanted to get enough good protection ability, you had to start from the thickness of the plate armor, which is why the medieval armor was extremely heavy.

However, in comparison, the one-piece storm armor is already very good in terms of lightweight, and a single cuirass of more than 20 kilograms abounds, and it is difficult for ordinary knights and warriors to even put it on themselves, and they need the help of servants or retinues. Therefore, the rapid march with heavy equipment on their backs made the physical exertion of the storm army also very huge, and it was basically impossible to rely on heavy infantry heavy shields to resist the charge of cavalry, because they no longer had the physical strength to support the heavy shields.

More importantly, there are 10,000 heavy cavalry in the Hans Imperial Cavalry, which is a real heavy tank in this era, and no matter what infantry is fighting hard, there is no chance of victory.