Chapter 913: Impact
Compared with the wails of misery in the French camp, the Allied forces were in an entirely different state.
A meteor shower in the sky, a rapid series of rat-a-tat-tats on the ground... The exact results had yet to be tallied, but the French corpses carpeting the ground already said more than enough.
The Allied officers and soldiers who had witnessed it all with their own eyes now had only two words in their minds—"massacre."
Whether in the aerial battle overhead or the attack-and-defense fighting on the ground, it had been a one-sided massacre of the French army by the Austrian army.
The Allied officers and soldiers, whose morale had originally been scattered and unstable and who had grown lost about the war's prospects, now looked utterly transformed.
Allied Headquarters
General Adrian said eagerly, "Marshal, the French army suffered grievous losses in the daytime battle. Tonight certainly won't be peaceful for them. This is the perfect time for us to strike back."
From a military standpoint, that judgment was not wrong. The severe casualties had already dealt a crushing blow to French morale.
In particular, those casualties had been caused by misjudgments at the top and command errors, leaving the rank-and-file soldiers seething with complaints against their superiors.
"No!"
Archduke Albrecht rejected the proposal decisively.
"Now is not the time for a counterattack. Only the French troops committed to today's offensive suffered grievous losses. Oudinot still has at least five divisions that did not participate in the battle.
"We have too few mobile forces on hand. The newly reorganized troops are still resting and refitting, with hardly any combat strength at all.
"The troops that fought during the day are already exhausted. We have no more than six infantry divisions available for an offensive, including three