Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Dutch army has been assembled and is about to go to the front, and the 80,000-strong army is almost all the home of the Netherlands. In order to reclaim Fleish, King Wilhelm II of the Netherlands felt it was worth a try.

In fact, he was gambling on the fortunes of the country and the character of the Habsburg family. Because at this time the Netherlands had less than 20,000 troops stationed, in fact, it was already an empty shell.

If the Austrian Empire had taken this opportunity to attack the Netherlands, Wilhelm II would have been exiled like his ancestors.

(During the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon once named his younger brother King of the Netherlands, known as "Ludwig II")

In fact, Wilhelm II was not a gambler, he just had a new lover who liked to always play two. This lady was a skilled gambler and always had Wilhelm II kill at the table.

Over time, the timid king was turned into a gambler. This time, when Wilhelm II was wavering, it was also the lover who did it for him.

Here's why:

"Britain is close at hand, but reinforcements are far away, while Austria is 840 kilometers from Holland, but their army has reached Luxembourg.

Britain promised us that we would do everything in our power to preserve our territorial integrity, but who was responsible for the incompleteness of Dutch territory at this time?

Austria wants to transfer the province of Limburg to Luxembourg, but you are still the titular monarch of Luxembourg, and Austria will return the Flemish region to you, and Austria will be willing to be a penal colony for local Catholics.

Do you want to let 100,000 Dutch soldiers die in vain and wait for the illusory reinforcements, or are you willing to retake the territory that really belongs to you at the cost of Limburg? ”

Wilhelm II received new news that the Austrians had captured Flemish and captured King Leopold I of Belgium, and had sent messengers to the palace urging him to take over the land as soon as possible.

This surprised and delighted Wilhelm II, who was glad that the Austrian side kept its promise and took Flemish without even the Dutch troops.

The Flemish region was the core of Belgian rule, and Brussels itself was a city built on a fortress.

However, the Austrians took the fortified city before their army could be assembled, not to mention the Walloon region, which was the only way to attack the province of Flement.

In less than a week, conquering the entire territory of Belgium is a bit scary.

This convinced him that the Austrians had mobilized and deployed before the war began. If he had rejected the Austrian offer, he would now have to either become a prisoner like Leopold I, or face a flanking attack from both directions.

"Let General Foran Gurlitt receive it." King William of the Netherlands ordered.

General Foran Gurlitt came to his senses from the shock, and his shock as an army general was far greater than the others.

"Is this Napoleon's rebirth?" General Foran Gurlitt couldn't believe the speed of Austria's advance, and on the other hand, he wondered who the Archduke of Albrecht was.

Although Archduke Albrecht was very famous in the Austrian Empire, he was not well-known in European military circles or aristocratic circles.

One is that he is too low-key, or unsociable.

Second, because of the issue of age, at that time, both military and political circles had to talk about seniority.

"Exchange the province of Limburg for Fleish."

In fact, the happiest person about this transaction was the abdicated Dutch King William I.

William I was known as the "Merchant King", but he was not only belittled, but also praised for his achievements in economic development.

However, William I was not satisfied with the title of merchant king, he wanted to completely unify the north and south (the south refers to the Austrian Netherlands and other regions) and become the real king of the Netherlands.

Unfortunately, Wilhelm I's commercial methods were counterproductive among the people, and at the same time, the malice from overseas did not want the Netherlands to complete the unification and become strong, and in the end he could only sit back and watch his country divide and abdicate.

When the news of the Dutch army's reconquest of Flemish reached the country, Wilhelm I locked himself in his room, and he took the bottle of gin from thirteen years ago from the cupboard and poured it on his head.

Thirteen years ago, France sent troops and Belgium became independent, and the scene of its own abdication was as if it happened yesterday.

Twelve months later, at the age of 71, former King Wilhelm I of the Netherlands boarded the merchant ship that had sailed the seas of his youth, and here he seemed to feel his own heart full of blood, the sea that made his heart surge, the world that fascinated him, and the greater Netherlands, his homeland that he did not hesitate to turn back.

"Man's dreams never end!"

On December 12, 1843, King William I of the Netherlands died.

Get back to business.

On the Franco-Belgian border, 20,000 French vanguard troops marched across the Franco-Belgian border, preparing to receive the Wallonia region in advance.

The French broke their agreement with the German Confederation because Louis Philippe wanted a more favorable situation, while Guizot wanted to leave room for negotiations with the British.

This, of course, required cutting off the rear route of the Austrians, who, according to their intelligence, were at this time marching towards the Flemish region.

If the French had occupied Wallonia at this time, France would have been invincible, either with the British or with the German Confederation.

Ignoring the warnings of the German Confederate volunteers, 20,000 French troops forced their way through the Franco-Belgian border, and made their way to the military town of Namur.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig, who had received the news that the Prussian vanguard had been routed, felt humiliated, and the Austrians in front were about to return victorious, but he was broken through the line by the French with 20,000 troops.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig was the famous "Prince of Cannonballs" in history, the first emperor of the German Empire, Wilhelm I, a hot-tempered emperor.

At this time, his army staff officer was Moltke Sr., a famous figure in military history.

Both of them felt that it was too shameless to be defeated by a mere 20,000 French troops, although this group of French troops came to cut off the rear route of the Austrian army, but the entire German Confederation had more than 100,000 troops here, and it was not difficult for Albrecht himself to defeat this French army of only 20,000 people.

In addition, the Dutch had already sent 100,000 troops (claimedly) to support the German Confederation, and if Namur was lost in this battle, let alone leading Germany in the future, it was impossible to be expelled from the German Confederation.

The armies of the German Confederation were not uniformly dispatched, and most of them were fragmented, making them vulnerable to the powerful French army.

This also gave the French general Jean Dourd an undeserved self-confidence, which, coupled with a lack of intelligence, led him to believe that there were only a few thousand German Confederate troops at most in Wallonia, and that as long as he captured Namur, he would be able to turn the tide of the war and become a real center.

I finished writing this chapter before, but I thought it was a bit too bland, and then I changed it, and now I feel a little too much.

Tomorrow I will organize my thoughts, and if I can think of it, I will update it as usual, and if I can't think of it, I will continue to pigeon.

Goo-goo-goo.

(End of chapter)