The Crescent of the Sultan

Selim looked at the news from France and couldn't help but sigh.

I have to say that Napoleon's efficiency is indeed high, and Marseille is basically his now.

Taking advantage of the garrison of the army, Napoleon quickly eliminated the local administrative officials and installed his own people.

While Sudan was lamenting, great changes were also taking place in southern France.

In Toulon, Lapupo was defeated once.

But he was not defeated at Toulon. General Lapope was a very unique person.

In his opinion, Napoleon's persuasion was a sign of cowardice. In order to show his bravery, he ordered the army to advance at full speed towards Toulon.

It's just that after General O'Hara, the commander-in-chief of the coalition forces in Toulon, learned that this idiot Lapope dared to march alone with only a few thousand men, he immediately made a plan. He wanted to annihilate the opponent.

Considering the threat from the French army to the west, General O'Hara set out with only 4,000 British troops and 2,000 Piedmont troops without many men.

O'Hara, who had the upper hand, led 7,000 men (one thousand of them royalist troops) to ambush on the bank of the river before General Lapope had crossed the Leyjande River.

The specific situation is this. The French army was crossing the river, and then the rebels and coalition forces suddenly appeared and used artillery and muskets to eliminate batches of French troops who were halfway across the river.

This made General Lapope very angry. He ordered the French army to speed up across the river and defeat the French intervention forces on the other side.

Unfortunately, as soon as the French troops landed, they died in droves. In order to shock the French troops, the British troops stripped the captured French soldiers naked and cut their flesh off piece by piece.

It happened that this scene was seen by General Lapope, and it happened that his adjutant was killed next to him.

This general who claimed to be brave but was actually a coward was deeply shocked. He was just fighting a war, why was it so tragic?

In line with the principle that he could not bear to see his soldiers suffering, General Lapope mounted his horse and left, leaving the remaining four thousand French troops in place.

When everyone saw that the generals had run away, they slapped each other and raised their hands as soon as they threw away their guns. O'Hara immediately signaled the leader of the royalists who came with him to deal with these prisoners.

Not long after, O'Hara immediately led the people back to Toulon.

It's just that something unexpected happened in the middle.

"So, what's going on? How come there are so many of your French troops here?

Answer me, Louis-Matthew! "

O'Hara was shocked and angry. He came out to fight someone else's ambush, not to be ambushed himself.

You must know that the royalists are the local snakes here, otherwise he would not have been able to lead the coalition forces to take Toulon so easily, nor would he have been able to lead the coalition forces to defeat General Lapope's ambush.

But now he was being ambushed, which was hard for O'Hara to accept.

"Sorry, General, I haven't received any news of large-scale mobilization of French troops.

In this case, there's only one possibility, you know. "

“Fuck!

There are still more than 10,000 people in Toulon. This can be thrown away. I have been out for less than four days. "

General O'Hara cursed directly in a friendly Mandarin language.

Louis-Matthew said immediately.

"Your Majesty General, Toulon may not have been captured, it is more likely that it was besieged.

We must break out as soon as possible, otherwise we will not be able to return once Toulon falls.

After all, although your navy is powerful, it cannot reach the shore. "

O'Hara said with a cold face.

"Okay, I know.

Let's do this, you lead your people on both sides, and I will deploy the army in the middle and quickly pass the order. In two quarters of an hour, we will break through directly. "

Louis-Matthew didn't speak any more, but nodded and walked out of the tent. He was a little confused.

“It’s not easy to have my people on both sides.

How could Ohara suspect me? I obviously have no reason to betray him.

No matter what, we must help Napoleon win this place.

According to the agreement, Toulon will be ours. This is enough. With the help of this person, I can complete the Duke's mission and gain a foothold again. "

Louis-Matthew returned to the camp, wrote a secret letter and sent it to a man in black. Under the night, the direction of this man was exactly the French camp.

Not long after, fire and explosions came from the coalition camp. The violent explosions made the surrounding villagers tremble in fear.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the French army immediately launched a massive attack.

"Damn it, I knew that Louis Mathieu had a problem, and it was impossible for the other party to solve the fortifications outside Toulon so quickly."

Looking at the fire in the direction of the ammunition depot, O'Hara was extremely angry. He was already prepared to deal with Louis Mathieu, but the other party actually destroyed the ammunition depot.

O'Hara glanced with hatred, and then ordered his adjutant to command the army to retreat, while he himself left first with a few guards.

"Caught, caught."

Ney looked at O'Hara who was tied up like a rice dumpling in front of her and couldn't help but feel a little proud.

He was not the commander of the French army this time, but the commander of a small cavalry detachment. O'Hara happened to run into him when he was escaping, and he ended up like this.

If Emperor Sai saw this scene, he would definitely complain that this was the end of the world line. After all, in another time and space, Ohara was also captured alive.

Back at the Allied camp, Louis-Matthew's betrayal did not have the results he wanted, as the French troops treated all enemies in sight equally.

Several muskets were aimed at Louis Mathieu who was trying to explain. There was a burst of gunfire, and Louis Mathieu fell straight down. There was still confusion in his eyes, as if he didn't understand how the agreed-upon matter turned out like this.

A few days later, Napoleon chuckled after seeing the battle report.

"I still want Toulon, and you are worthy of it. Provence is an important area for Mediterranean trade. This is not a place for negotiation."

Napoleon immediately walked out of the camp and found his adjutant.

"Tell the troops to prepare for the attack."

In fact, Napoleon's tactics were not complicated. The core ideas of his military theory were fire suppression, frontal feint attack, and outflanking.

This ideological trend (bushi) is far-reaching, and its outstanding practitioners include but are not limited to Moltke, Schliemann, Manstein, Guderian, and Rommel.

In fact, the so-called blitzkrieg still used Napoleon's theory, except that the fire suppression was changed from artillery to dive bombers, and the detour mission was changed from cavalry to tanks.

During the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese also used this method in battles. They used heavy artillery to bombard the national army positions. Some people pretended to attack in front of the positions, and the main force went around to the side and rear of the positions to launch attacks.

There are many cases in history textbooks where hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops attacked positions guarded by hundreds of thousands of national troops, and the national army collapsed across the board, all of which were subject to this style of play.

Now, this style of play is about to take place.

After the general attack on Toulon officially began, the French army used 45 large-caliber artillery pieces to intensively bombard the Little Gibraltar Highlands. The bombardment lasted for two days and two nights.

In the early morning three days later, 6,000 French troops were divided into four columns. Under the command of Napoleon, they launched an attack from the north and south wings and attacked the heights of Little Gibraltar.

The first and second columns closely monitored the enemy's movements in Balaquye and Egiliyat;

The third column was the main force, commanded by Laborde, and focused on attacking Little Gibraltar;

The fourth column was a reserve force, commanded by Napoleon, ready to respond to emergencies at any time.

The battle did not go smoothly at the beginning. The enemy relied on the complex terrain and remaining fortifications to resist stubbornly and fought back fiercely, causing heavy casualties to the French army.

In addition, entire companies of French troops were lost in the darkness and confusion.

Despite this, the French were able to break through the enemy's first line of defense and capture Little Fort Gibraltar. However, when attacking the second line of defense, the French army encountered a fierce counterattack from the Little Gibraltar Battery.

At this critical moment, Napoleon sent people to bring General O'Hara to the front line. The coalition forces suddenly panicked. The previous rumors that the commander-in-chief had been captured had been confirmed.

The allied forces were defeated, and Napoleon let the reserves rush forward, and ordered Artillery Captain Mirron to lead a battalion to conduct a roundabout attack and unexpectedly attack Little Gibraltar from the back door of the bastion.

At about three o'clock in the morning, the battalion broke into the Little Gibraltar Fort, opening a gap for the follow-up troops, allowing the French army to capture the entire Little Gibraltar.

In the morning, the French army adjusted its deployment and launched another attack.

Perhaps because the commander-in-chief was captured, the resistance of the coalition forces was not fierce. After half an hour of fierce fighting, the French army regained Cape Ker.

In this battle, the French army suffered 5,000 casualties, while the anti-French coalition forces suffered 8,000 casualties.

But more importantly, it took the French army just over ten hours to achieve a key step in Napoleon's plan to regain Toulon: capture Little Gibraltar and Cape Ker.

After occupying Little Gibraltar and Cape Ker, the French army began to renovate the fortifications and quickly mobilized artillery to put the British fleet completely under the control of the French army's firepower. On the same day, they began to bombard the British fleet in the port of Toulon.

The British Admiral Duke Hood was forced to order the fleet to set sail and weigh anchor, and fled the port of Toulon that night despite the strong southeasterly wind.

The flight of the British fleet frightened Toulon's garrison and royalists.

On this dark night, royalists crowded into the docks, wailing loudly to British, Spanish and Naples ships, begging for help in escaping the city that was about to fall, and the coalition forces also lost their resistance. Confidence.

In the afternoon of the next day, the anti-French coalition held a military meeting and decided to abandon Toulon.

That night, the coalition forces withdrew from the Falon Fort and the Malbosc Fort, and abandoned some multi-faceted forts such as Rouge.

The French army immediately regained all the forts and positions outside Toulon.

That night, the vanguard of the French army broke into the city of Toulon, and Napoleon occupied it. Looking at the Mediterranean Sea, he couldn't help but think.

"I have basically succeeded, Sultan, what about you?"

Add it up to the three thousand words from the day before yesterday. Even if you make up for it yesterday, it will be better.