Solovyov in Tsarist Russia 1796

Chapter 436 013 A battle of flesh and blood (III) French and Russian sharks taken the bait

Napoleon's judgment was correct. This night attack was to lure the French army near Eylau to take the bait. And it was too late to stop it now.

So, he considered taking advantage of Augereau's attack to ask Davout and Ney to split up their forces and Soult to support them on the main road in the southwest.

"Since the Russians have made a move now, we will attack them and seize their supplies."

"Your Majesty, in this situation, I can't help but think that this is like Hohenlinden."

"Langeron came here but didn't leave. Obviously, someone wanted to fight a battle, and even inevitably fought with us here. Although his position is very methodical, there is also a problem, that is, we are not the Austrian army. Our soldiers can complete this combat mission, they can overcome difficulties, win, and meet in the city of Eylau."

It is good that Napoleon has this confidence, but Augereau's counterattack against the Russian army is now difficult to withdraw.

In this night attack, Bagovut's main task was to cover the artillery to reach the position. After the three groups of cavalry artillery continued to bombard for a while, when the French side wanted to pursue them, they abandoned the mortars they brought with them on the position, and light infantry and line infantry alternately covered them.

And the group of mortars and two 6-pound guns that had been firing all the time did not stop firing during the entire battle.

This was also to contain Augereau, so that he could not focus on the direction of the Russian night attack troops' retreat, and to cause him to misjudge at night.

Augereau did give him a chance. After being distracted, he did not go all out to pursue Bagowut and Yermolov, but adopted a strategy of dividing his troops to fight the enemy.

However, at night, the Russian army could not see his movements clearly. Solovyov saw that the 4th Chasseur Regiment under Bagowut returned smoothly, and Yermolov's artillery also returned.

"How is it?"

"I can only say that the French counterattack was quite fast. If I were hungry, I would not be able to run so fast and keep chasing."

With Yermolov's body size, if he didn't eat, he obviously couldn't maintain the consumption.

"Okay, obviously we have to lure the French into the trap. If Augereau comes after us, we can let the artillery of Essen entertain them again here."

At this time, Bagowut did lead his infantry regiment to fight and retreat, still to lure Augereau into the trap.

Soloviev himself felt that when fighting, this kind of calculating approach can only work in special circumstances.

The French army's current attack is a response to the Russian attack, but there is also a serious problem.

That is, the French soldiers are more proactive. Soloviev initially only lured the enemy and disrupted the French deployment by letting Augereau take the bait. Then he launched a battle in the confrontation and consumption, controlled the rhythm, and started the battle when it was advantageous to his side.

But the French soldiers were staring at the moment because of the lack of supplies. Under the command of the regiment commanders, they did not wait for the orders of the division commander and the army commander at all. After chasing Bagowut, they directly attacked Essen's position.

The reason is, of course, that they have tasted a little sweetness.

When Solovyov asked Bagowut to lead a brigade to cover Yermolov's artillery, there was this problem. He always asked the soldiers to take rations with them and eat before the battle.

This habit came from some Roman military battles mentioned in Frontinus's book. It was also to ensure the combat effectiveness of the soldiers. It was always good to have something to eat.

Even on the bodies of the dead Russian soldiers, the French soldiers searched for unopened glass cans. For the sake of these stuttering French soldiers, they would attack desperately.

Even if the result of eating canned fruit at this time was not good, it might be a stomachache.

"That's great, Misha, you see, the French are coming for my position!"

"Then we have no choice but to fight back, disrupt the situation, and make Napoleon's troops unable to concentrate their use, but instead fill in one by one to "burn firewood". This is the most beneficial for us."

Baron Essen also agreed that in this kind of melee, even the communication between the regiments and battalions in the army often faces the problem of inconsistent pace.

What's more, Napoleon has to mobilize his corps in four directions, even after the watch.

When his messenger arrived at Augereau's temporary headquarters, it was too late.

The two divisions of the Seventh Army had launched an attack on Baron Essen's troops, and the offensive was very fierce.

Fortunately, the Russian artillery's counterattack was very timely. Baron Essen's artillery was scattered on the positions of three brigades and dealt a resolute blow to the French army that was attacking in front of them.

The effect seems to be quite good. Since the Russian night attack force was not Baron Essen's force, but part of the 6th Division brought by Bagvoort, the French army chased too fast in the counterattack, and ended up being tricked.

This blatant "strategy" is like Zhang Fei's strategy, with a 100% chance of being tricked. Those who were tricked may feel ashamed.

However, because the artillery group was deployed in a dispersed manner, this only caused some losses to Augereau's frontline troops, but it was still bearable.

If the artillery was deployed in a concentrated manner, it would be a blessing to be able to severely damage one or two French regiments in a sudden fire.

As for this wave of counterattack, after Augereau was hit hard, he still had time to organize a counterattack.

The French army is more efficient than the Russian army in this regard, and the French army has always had a tradition of staff work. Even when the Scottish in the French army went back to counterattack London, their marching speed was much faster than the dumbfounded lobster soldiers.

On the Russian side, although it has gone through several rounds of staff reforms and has picked up the staff tradition, the chief of staff himself has high quality and is often dragged down by the command structure.

If Solovyov had not used optical communication during the day, there would probably be trouble.

He quickly passed the message to Langgeron from the position in Essen, and this problem arose.

Usually, when Solovyov and the staff trained by Sukhteren in the staff department are there, the operation efficiency is not bad.

Today, half of these people went to Baron Essen's defense zone with Solovyov, and some problems occurred.

In the Russian army, there is always this kind of traditional joke of bureaucracy, which can be seen to be very abstract.

Napoleon changed his deployment at night, and wanted to meet Solovyov's night attack, and then launch an attack on the Russian positions from several directions.

This made the Russian staff flustered.

Although Napoleon still followed the order and designated Davout, who received the order last, to launch the attack first, and then Ney and Augereau joined the battlefield. As for Soult, he had to launch the attack when the attention of the Russian army was attracted.

In this way, he was going to play a lever in the war to attract the attention of the Russian army to the east.

Langgeron was in the headquarters, watching the staff work of these young officers, and he also felt a headache.

The Russian military academy has only recently begun to recruit staff students in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which is completely backward. The General Staff is a very advanced head, but when it is running down, it often faces these strange problems.

But Solovyov went to Baron Essen's position to command the night attack, and he had to wait until the afternoon to come back. After all, Augereau had started to organize the attack again after the setback and launched a series of attacks on the 8th Division's position.

Yes, literally, even when the French army was hungry, they were still so high in morale.

I just don't know why the Emperor's opening remarks today actually added a strange word like slava France.

Some French people with big brains are still imagining.

Fortunately, Solovyov didn't know, otherwise he would have thought that Napoleon who came here today was played by a comedian.

Although Clavier is also a comedian, he is French.

The comedian Soloviev mentioned had the Sumy Hussar Regiment, the Kharkov Dragoon Regiment, the Mariupol Hussar Regiment, and the Kiev Grenadiers Regiment in his area.

The above numbers existed in 1807, but they had long disappeared when he came. As for a bunch of strange things, they were somewhat similar to the Azov Lancers Regiment, which was not in the sequence of the East Prussian Corps.

In the movie, Rzhevsky fought against Napoleon. He knew that there was a Rzhevsky in the Pavlograd Regiment who liked to call people brothers.

The actor played the policeman Mikhail Soloviev and his own father in another TV series.

This kind of thing couldn't be more chaotic.

Langelon now felt that something was wrong with the French attack, so he quickly sent a signal to Baron Essen through the communications officer.

Solovyov was able to receive this signal on the battlefield filled with smoke. It was also his good habit to keep an observation post and watch the direction of the headquarters.

"What, the headquarters is in danger, hurry back?"

"It seems that you have to go back, Misha, leave the command here to me. Most of Bagowut and Yermolov's people have withdrawn, and the rest depends on us."

"Okay. Baron, I wish you good luck."

But when Solovyov left, he was not very confident in the direction of Baron Essen. After all, behind Augereau was probably the location of Napoleon's headquarters, and there were Murat's cavalry and guards.

At this time, the guards were divided into infantry command and cavalry command. Murat's best friend and childhood friend Marshal Bessières was the cavalry commander, and the infantry of the Imperial Guard, that is, the group of "complainers", officially known as the Old Guards, was commanded by Lefebvre.

If Napoleon's old guard tour group was attracted from this direction by mistake, Baron Essen would be under great pressure.

So, he and Bao Hong rushed to Yermolov who was retreating.

"Yermolov, don't send your cavalry artillery back to the 7th Division, go directly to the position of the Pavlovsk Regiment next to the reserve artillery group."

"What's the situation?"

"In this direction of our night attack, there may be stronger enemies, such as Bonaparte's Guards!"

"Well, this always requires some methods, but where can you transfer infantry to cover me? Those grenadiers are very precious!"

Yermolov, the fat man, had a quick brain reaction and immediately pointed out the problem with Solovyov's iron bucket formation.

"Bagovut should be placed on another route. How about transferring the 20th Chasseur Regiment?"

"Of course this is good!"

Although it was a little worse, a battle-hardened Chasseur Regiment was better than a bunch of new recruits.

After launching the attack, Napoleon also found something wrong.

His attack method did attract the attention of the Russian army and caused chaos on the battlefield, but the defense areas of every regiment and battalion of the Russian army were reinforced with hot water and ice, and even the ground nearby was not very friendly to the heavy cavalry series of cuirassiers and dragoons.

When the troops under Augereau reported, he keenly noticed this detail.

"Soloviev's little tricks are endless. Although we haven't fought Suvorov, we can still feel some of them from his 'disciples'."

"Not entirely, Your Majesty."

"Gruchy, your dragoons should not move in the direction of Augereau, but move to Ney."

Napoleon didn't think of what Grouchy meant at first. He just wanted to change the deployment and transfer all the heavy cavalry under Murat to the direction of Ney, or concentrate and attack after the French army drove the Russian army to Eylau.

"Your Majesty, but you mentioned Suvorov, he always took the initiative to attack, not to defend like this."

After listening to this, Napoleon also understood.

At this time, Solovyov wore a monocle instead of a single-handled glasses.

As soon as he returned to Langgeron's headquarters, this look would attract onlookers.

Indeed, monocles are no problem 50 years later, and they are almost becoming the business card of old Junkers.

But for a young Russian general, this kind of look, this kind of thing embedded in the eye socket is still a relatively new thing.

"Michel, what's the matter with you?"

"Aha, Count, I just thought of a question. The French offensive is so fierce now. The defensive strategy we should adopt is to deploy troops in brigades to support any area that may be attacked, but it will cause chaos. Only the combined grenadiers and reserve regiments drawn from various divisions will join the battle at this time."

Soloviev may not have learned the skills of attack from his teacher, but he has been trying to improve his defense system.

Napoleon will probably find out soon that he wants to use a sharp spear to attack this solid shield. Both sides are afraid that they will not have a good harvest on the streets of Eylau.