"Damn those useless armchair strategists!"
Though Lamoricière cursed them aloud, he knew full well that Benoît de Coulon was no useless fool.
Lamoricière had deliberately tossed Alsace, a tough nut to crack, to Benoît de Coulon. But the hardest nut in Alsace was not Sélestat—it was Strasbourg.
In Lamoricière's original plan, the two armies were supposed to drive straight in like a pair of sharp swords, heading directly for Strasbourg before surrounding it and drawing in the enemy reinforcements.
But Alsace had become an iron barrel, impossible to break into.
This was largely due to the region's narrow geography. The Rhine lay to the east, and the Vosges Mountains to the west.
To enter Alsace, the French Army had to pass through Sarrebourg in the northwest or Sélestat in the south. These two strategic strongholds were like fish bones wedged tight in the jaws of the French colossus, keeping them from closing.
Lamoricière immediately grasped how serious the situation was. If he could not stop the German Allied Forces from crossing the river, then the planned siege-and-relief strategy would turn into a full-scale battle.
How many troops would the furious German Allied Forces send? Three hundred thousand? Four hundred thousand? Or five hundred thousand?
In any case, his three corps, numbering fewer than 150,000 men, could never hold them off.
At that point, his future career would be the least of his worries. At his age, he might be dragged out to take the blame—and even end up like Oudinot and Grouchy.
The realization struck Lamoricière like a thunderbolt. He finally understood why Bellevue had put him in charge of the main assault, and why the attack had been launched ahead of schedule.
Beneath this windfall lay such sinister intentions—intentions so foul that they would sacrifice France's interests and the