Chapter 757: Victory in the First Battle (Please give me double the monthly votes!)

Chapter 758: Victory in the First Battle (Please give me double monthly votes!)

The extremely unfair exchange of fire lasted for 6 rounds - to be precise, the French fired 6 rounds, while the other side fired only 4 rounds.

Coupled with the fierce bombardment of the French artillery, a large number of gaps soon appeared in the Austrian line formation.

I don't know who was the first to turn around and run away, which immediately attracted the surrounding Austrian soldiers to run with him. In just a few minutes, the rout spread to the entire infantry line.

Prince Coburg hurriedly ordered the second infantry line behind to take the lead, but what he didn't expect was that the French horizontal column immediately gathered into more than a dozen columns, passed through the fleeing Austrian soldiers, and rushed directly to the Austrian line formation behind.

The Austrian soldiers behind were not prepared at all. Until the French column had been deployed, many of them were still executing the previous order - moving forward to take over the defense line of the defeated soldiers. And more soldiers stopped and prepared to counterattack.

So, at this time, a crooked infantry line appeared in front of the French army.

The battle process was no surprise.

The neat Austrian infantry line could not withstand the fierce attack of the French Royal Corps, not to mention the messy formation.

In less than 20 minutes, the infantry line that Prince Coburg had just organized collapsed again.

Prince Coburg originally wanted to hold on until the elite troops led by Gruber withdrew - he gave Gruber a retreat order as soon as he found the French army - but he didn't expect that the French army was so fierce that he collapsed in an hour and a half.

A dozen guards put Prince Coburg on the horse without saying anything and covered him to retreat towards Brussels.

However, they had just run two or three kilometers when they saw chaos in front of them. It should be that Davidovich's Dutch Corps was also attacked.

Prince Coburg suddenly felt black in front of his eyes.

The French didn't know where to get so many troops, and Brussels might be in danger now.

He hurriedly ordered to turn southeast and run towards Leuven.

He had no idea that there were only four cavalry companies, or more than 450 people, attacking the Dutch Corps - this was all the cavalry that Joseph brought to the Southern Netherlands.

When Prince Coburg's main force was attacked, he immediately ordered the Dutch to move closer to him. The quality of the Dutch Corps was worse than that of the Austrian Army. After Davidovich urged to speed up the march, it soon broke into more than a dozen pieces.

When the French cavalry appeared, the Dutch immediately fell into panic. They did not organize defense at all and began to flee in all directions.

The fleeing soldiers spread the news that "the French launched a general attack" to more people.

In this way, Davidovich's vanguard of nearly 10,000 soldiers was driven around by four cavalry companies.

This also gave Prince Coburg the wrong information, making him mistakenly believe that the Dutch army following behind also encountered a large number of French troops, so he decided to flee to Leuven.

On the other side, Lefebvre finally breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the Austrian soldiers running around like headless flies, and at the same time he admired the decision of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

If he followed his plan to defend Wavre, even if it was very smooth, he should be fighting with the Austrian army that had completed its assembly.

He was confident that he could command 20,000 French troops to defeat the Austrian-Dutch coalition of more than 40,000, but if he engaged in a positional war, as long as Prince Coburg did not make mistakes, the battle would last at least a week or even longer.

At the moment, including the march, he defeated the Austrian-Dutch coalition in just half a day.

He immediately said to the herald: "Let Renault's regiment stay to pursue the defeated enemy, and the others will gather immediately and return to Wavre."

"Yes, General!"

Lefebvre knew that there were only less than 2,000 French troops in Wavre, and they were all exhausted soldiers, as well as 4,000 Wallonia police.

And Prince Coburg's vanguard might not return to help here, but continue to risk attacking Wavre.

So at the moment, the safest thing for Lefebvre to do was to lead his main force back to Wavre immediately. Although this might allow many Austrian troops to escape, it would at least block the Austrian army attacking Wavre and ensure Wavre's safety.

When Lefebvre's main force had gone less than 4 kilometers to the south, the scout cavalry suddenly reported to him that there were nearly 10,000 Austrian troops coming towards him...

Five hours later, Lefebvre finally defeated the 9,000 Austrian troops led by Gruber with great difficulty.

The reason why the battle lasted so long was that the Austrian army had a large number of cavalry, but Lefebvre had no cavalry.

Once Gruber fell into a disadvantage, he would use cavalry to harass from behind, which gave Lefebvre a headache.

It was not until the four cavalry companies attacking the Dutch Corps came to reinforce that the battle was finally ended.

This was also due to the contribution of the 1,000 Dutch cavalry under Gruber - if they had not suddenly fled and given up the flank of the Austrian cavalry, the battle would probably have continued until tomorrow.

Wavre.

In a room in the Chamber of Commerce's administrative building, Joseph was reading the military report sent by the Rhine Front, and raised his hand to signal Emman: "Please make me a cup of tea, thank you."

Csold and Emman looked at each other, then looked out the window anxiously, and bowed to Joseph and said: "Your Highness, perhaps you should go to Namur or Mons first, it will be safer there."

No wonder he was so anxious. At this time, there were only 300 Prince's guards and 2,000 soldiers who were too tired to fight because of the journey in Wavre.

If Lefebvre fails to defeat the main force of the Prince of Coburg, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will be in a very dangerous situation when the Austrian army moves south.

Joseph took the teacup from Emang's hand and smiled: "I have absolute confidence in my army."

It’s not like he had to play with the heartbeat.

For one thing, he knew that the level of the Austro-Dutch Allied Forces, especially the 20,000 Dutch troops, might not be able to defeat the 3,000 new French troops. He had made so many arrangements to confuse the Prince of Coburg that when Lefebvre launched a surprise attack, victory was basically a sure thing.

Secondly, he also scattered a lot of reconnaissance cavalry around Wavre. If the Austrian army really approached Wavre, he would have time to leave immediately. Anyway, there were no enemy troops in the southwest.

Just when Kesoud wanted to persuade him again, an officer excitedly opened the door and saluted Joseph: "Your Highness, General Lefebvre has won the victory.

"The general defeated the Austrian army south of the town of Uccle, and Josias led about 5,000 defeated troops to flee to Leuven.

“Vidovich’s Dutch regiment fled back to Brussels.

"General Lefebvre also defeated the Gruber Army on his way back to Wavre. He killed and captured more than 4,000 people in total..."

Joseph looked at the clock with some surprise. It was just half past five.

He originally thought that the battle would last at least until the day after tomorrow, but he didn't expect to win so quickly!