Nobody Has It Easy

Perhaps out of sheer spite toward Austria, the French had not kept their large-farm plan secret. Not long after the Paris Government made its decision, it released the news to the outside world.

This was understandable. At present, the rebel Eighth Division led by Huthier and the others had already swollen to a massive eighty thousand men, with the hundred-thousand mark clearly within reach.

Putting aside their combat strength for the moment, the French had already had a taste of their destructive power. Along the way, this ragtag force had done only two things: frantically expand its ranks and plunder estates.

Huthier and the others had fully embraced the principle of picking on the weak and fearing the strong. They avoided every French city that was heavily defended, choosing instead to strike at poorly defended villages and small towns.

Even though most of their soldiers wielded cold weapons, their advantage in sheer numbers still let them sweep all before them.

In fact, they often did not even need to attack. One look at the rebels' numbers was enough to make the garrisons along their route flee at the mere rumor of their approach.

It was not that no one resisted. The main problem was simply that the disparity in troop strength was too severe. There were too few French soldiers in small towns, while the Egyptians were unreliable.

Concentrating forces to defend major cities was the best choice. Generally speaking, as long as a city had more than a thousand French soldiers, the Eighth Division would not go looking for trouble.

There was no point in fighting to the bitter end; they had not come to conquer the realm. They only needed to run wild, while the rebel forces behind them handled the business of seizing territory.

With the Eighth