Sélestat.
Benoît de Coulon was bent on fighting a bloody, hard-hitting battle against the main force led by Franz amid the ruins.
Franz, however, did not want to kill too many Frenchmen, because he saw no point in it.
But this demand of Franz's left his staff officers at a loss. The German Allied Forces now held an overwhelming advantage, and they even had the residents of Sélestat inside the city as their accomplices. Wiping out the French Army was only a matter of time.
The staff officers had countless ways to drive the French to their deaths, but they were stumped over how to send them safely back to France.
The strength of the French Army inside Sélestat was unknown. Although they had sent up a large number of reconnaissance balloons, the buildings blocked their view, making it impossible to confirm the number of enemy troops.
As for the prisoners they had captured, their accounts varied so much that the information simply did not match, making it impossible to judge what was true.
This left the Austrian reconnaissance units deeply frustrated. They had never encountered such a bizarre situation: every French prisoner gave different information.
Most importantly, in their experience, these French prisoners were not lying.
In the end, the Allied intelligence department estimated that there were between forty and eighty thousand French troops inside Sélestat.
In fact, Benoît de Coulon himself no longer knew how many troops he had left, because the previous major battle had ended in defeat far too quickly.
On top of that, fighting inside the city had never let up. The French Army's units in Sélestat were now in utter disarray, which was why the French prisoners could not give a clear answer.
Franz had always believed that professionals should handle professional matters. Before