On the first day of the siege of Sélestat, Benoît de Coulon sensed that something was wrong.
Benoît de Coulon simply didn't believe that militiamen could hold out in such a brutal battle, much less inflict such devastating losses on his elite troops.
The first two battalions committed to the battle were both made up of elite veterans, yet they had been all but wiped out as organized units during the siege of Sélestat.
Such staggering losses had never occurred before. Benoît de Coulon hadn't underestimated the enemy, and his soldiers certainly wouldn't have treated their lives as a joke.
In fact, his guess was basically right. This mercenary force had been sent there by Franz specifically for this purpose.
Their specialty was urban warfare, and most of their equipment had been specially designed for fighting in cities.
At this time, Alsace's population was predominantly German, while the number of French people was so small as to be negligible.
Lorraine was different. Although its population was still mostly German-speaking, most German speakers were concentrated in the Mosel region, and the closer one got to France, the more sparsely they were scattered.
Before World War I, Germany's conscription offices put the total population of Alsace-Lorraine at 1.87 million, of whom 1.69 million were German-speaking.
But in reality, what Germany called Alsace-Lorraine meant Alsace and the northeastern part of Lorraine, which made up roughly a third of the province's area.
This also explained how Lamoricière's troops had managed to reach the outskirts of Metz without anyone noticing. It was precisely for this reason that he was willing to carry out Bellevue's utterly mad plan.
Once they took Metz, half the plan would be complete. All that remained was to capture Strasbourg, then hold the Rhine defensive line and wait for the German