Defense Invincible (3)

If it were just a rope net, it wouldn't have held them off for long. Not to mention climbing over it, ropes are easy to cut with a knife. But when Ivan and his men got closer, they realized it wasn't a rope net at all, but barbed wire.

What's even more infuriating is that these barbed wire fences aren't made of ordinary wire, but of barbed wire with many barbs wrapped around them. If you try to climb over them, you'll most likely get caught on these barbs, and cutting the wire is really not easy. At least, it's impossible in the short term.

Under normal circumstances, even with bare hands, it wouldn't be particularly difficult to break these barbed wires by slowly twisting and bending them. However, this was on the battlefield, and the barbed wire was only about 100 meters away from the French Army trenches. At this distance, it would be difficult for the Russian soldiers to hit Louis's head, which was peeking out from behind the trenches, but it would be easy for Louis to hit Ivan, who was standing unprotected in front of the barbed wire.

So the Ivans, blocked by the barbed wire, were shot down in rows by the French Army. Some brave Ivans tried to cross the barbed wire, but their uniforms got caught on the barbs, they paused for a moment, and were then shot dead; others brave Ivans tried to exchange fire with Louis and his Louis through the barbed wire, but naturally they were also shot down.

The France barbed wire did not completely block the way forward; it was segmented and even angled relative to the French Army trenches. If the Russo-Austrian forces had reconnaissance balloons that could have observed from a higher altitude, they would have seen that the barbed wire basically formed a funnel shape, except that the bottom of the funnel was also blocked by barbed wire without any gaps.

These shapes were intentional, of course, designed to naturally draw the attacking soldiers to this location!

When the soldiers in front are blocked by barbed wire, the soldiers behind will instinctively try to go around the obstacle. They will then run diagonally forward along the direction of the barbed wire, and they will unconsciously gather at the bottom of the funnel. Once the personnel are densely packed, the effectiveness of the defending side's firepower against them will greatly increase.

But even if a few individuals see through the trap, on the battlefield, he cannot stop the instinctive actions of most people, and it is entirely possible that they will be overlooked and then trapped at the bottom of the funnel.

At this moment, in the French Army trenches, some of the tan camouflage netting used for disguise was lifted at the bottom of those funnels, revealing the dark muzzles of cannons half-buried in the ground, with only the barrels protruding from the surface. Then, with a roar from the cannons, thousands upon thousands of shrapnel shells rained down on Ivan and his men, who were huddled together at the mouth of the funnels.

Although there were no machine guns yet, this kind of shotgun fire was almost as effective as a machine gun at close range. Soon, piles of corpses accumulated in these locations.

Every army has a limit to its tolerance for casualties, and the brave Ivans were no exception. In many cases, a desperate predicament can be even more damaging to the morale of soldiers than casualties themselves.

So Ivan and his men quickly broke down before this seemingly flimsy barbed wire. Some frantically pounded the wire with their rifle butts, only to be shot dead by Louis; others turned and ran, yelling, only to accidentally step on a "Harpagon's Potato," drop their guns, and writhe on the ground, clutching their legs and howling in pain.

Ivan's men retreated quickly, even faster than they had advanced. During their retreat, they stepped on numerous landmines, leaving behind many wounded soldiers.

Suvorov remained standing in his position, expressionless, watching the Russian army's advance and retreat. He didn't speak until the soldiers began to withdraw, at which point he said to Bagration, "Peter, take your cavalry and provide support. Every single person who returns now is a treasure."

Bagration then led a troop of cavalry to meet them.

"The Russia did a good job covering their retreat." Napoleon put down his binoculars and said to Murat, who looked eager to join the fray, "Alright, Murat, your soldiers can rest now."

"General, let's give chase," Murat said. "It's just a squad of Russia cavalry. We can wipe them out along with them."

"You saw the battle over there in Suchet just now," Napoleon said, glancing at Murat. "What do you think the exchange ratio was between him and the enemy? If you're confident you can achieve that same exchange ratio now, I'll agree to your attack. Are you confident?"

So Murat fell silent.

Bagration led his cavalry to cover the retreating Russian army as they returned to their camp, but many wounded soldiers were left behind on the battlefield, groaning in pain.

Bagration frowned, then ordered another officer beside him to escort the defeated soldiers back, while he himself led a troop of cavalry toward the wounded.

Bagration dismounted beside a wounded soldier who was lying there clutching his foot and groaning.

"Brother, what's wrong? Can you still stand up?" Bagration asked.

"My feet, my feet..." the wounded soldier just kept shouting.

Bagration looked around, and a bullet whizzed past him not far away.

Bagration bent down, picked up the wounded soldier, placed him on the saddle, and then led the horse to another wounded soldier.

"General, should we concentrate fire?" a soldier asked Suchet.

"No." Suchet shook his head. "Tell everyone not to fire. Let our men go out into the minefield, gather the wounded, and send them there."

Then the gunfire on the French Army positions ceased. A group of the French Army carrying stretchers, but without weapons, emerged from the France trenches, unlocked the barbed wire, carefully entered the minefield, and then lifted the wounded one by one onto the stretchers. They then carried the wounded out along a strange, winding route.

Bagration had just helped the second wounded soldier onto his horse when his guards alerted him, "General, a group of France are coming out."

Bagration looked up and saw a group of the French Army soldiers carrying stretchers, on which were wounded Russian soldiers groaning in pain.

The French Army carrying the wounded approached Bagration and his men, with the captain at the head shouting, "You're already in a minefield! Don't move, or you'll easily get hurt!"

Bagration understood French; in fact, few Russia nobles were fluent in French. In Europe at that time, a nobleman who couldn't speak French was considered a country bumpkin. In Saint Petersburg, it was fashionable for nobles to speak French instead of Russian when conversing.

"General, they..." the guard asked.

"It's alright, they don't seem to have any ill intentions," Bagration said.

Soon the French Army arrived. The France placed the wounded soldiers, stretchers on the ground. The captain in charge saluted Bagration and said, "General, these are your wounded. I am now ordered to hand them over to you."

Bagration returned the greeting, saying, "Thank you."

The French Army captain seemed unwilling to say anything more. After speaking, he turned and quickly left with his men.

"General, should we...?" a guard said.

Bagration understood the guard's meaning: capture the captain and perhaps extract a lot of information from him. While scout cavalry sometimes had the opportunity to capture enemy cavalrymen alive in engagements, the chances of capturing a captain were far less. And a captain certainly knew much more than an ordinary soldier.

Bagration frowned and shook his head. "Don't let people think we Russia are all barbarians."

After saying this, Bagration looked down at the wounded soldiers, sighed, and ordered, "Carry them back."

Back at the camp, Bagration spent time talking with the old marshal and the retreating soldiers to learn about the France defenses.

After understanding the various situations, Suvorov summoned the generals again to discuss how to deal with the problem.

This time, everyone had a much better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the French Army defenses, but this understanding did not give them more confidence; on the contrary, it made them even more frustrated.

"I've never seen such a cunning defense," a Russian officer said. "The France and Turkey are completely different. We can overcome the landmines and the grapeshot from the artillery. But that barbed wire is something we really need to figure out quickly."

"Do we have any way to quickly break through the barbed wire?" someone else asked.

"How about using explosives?"

"We can give it a try. Let's get some wire first, make a model, and then give it a shot."

"Also, it's not good to just let their landmines explode like this."

"I've heard that this is how the Britain deal with landmines in Ireland, and it's very effective..." an Austria officer suddenly said.

"How did the Britain do it?" Everyone immediately became interested.

"The Britain sent some Ireland ahead to step on the landmines," the Austria replied.

"Wouldn't that turn them into Tatar barbarians?" a Russia couldn't help but ask.

"Exactly, wouldn't that turn us into barbarians?"

"The Britain were all barbarians."

Russia were always seen as barbarians in Europe, Russia caused them considerable resentment. Now that they had the opportunity to mock others as barbarians, almost all Russia would seize the chance. However, since the goal was to ridicule the Britain as barbarians, the plan to capture some Italy to trigger landmines was naturally abandoned.

However, the idea of herding sheep to step on landmines, inspired by this, made everyone think it was worth a try.