When the two sides collided again, the rebel soldiers noticed something strange. The Austrian soldiers charging at the very front were all burly men carrying guns without bayonets, and each had a large canister strapped to his back.
The rebel soldiers were baffled.
"Are those water guns? Are they going to spray us in the face?"
But when the two sides were only twenty or thirty meters apart, the Austrian soldiers opened fire first, instantly mowing down the entire front line of rebels.
Giovanni had expected this. He immediately shouted, "Don't just stand there! Charge! They're out of bullets!"
At that moment, Giovanni's student soldiers decided to lead the charge themselves. General Fabio also ordered his reserves forward. They knew perfectly well that if they could lift the men's morale, the tide of battle might yet turn.
But they were wrong. The Austrian soldiers still had bullets in their guns. The canisters on their backs weren't buckets of water—they were air tanks.
These were the Austrian Empire's signature troops: Air Riflemen. However, after the War of the Sixth Coalition, they had gradually been removed from the army's ranks due to their high cost and lack of impressive results, becoming the private guards of certain princes and nobles instead.
So even the rebels, who had once served Austria themselves, had never seen this kind of soldier. That was perfectly normal.
But thanks to Franz's efforts, the Air Riflemen had now been "resurrected."
"Tack! Tack! Tack!" The strange guns fired one shot after another.
A dozen soldiers armed with high-pressure air rifles opened fire together, pinning the rebels down so thoroughly that they couldn't even get close. With the ranks of Austrian soldiers looming behind them, the rebels at the very front collapsed in less than a minute. Some died where they