The next day, the Traisen River remained a bloody slaughterhouse.
Archduke Karl sent in even his most elite Royal Moravian Legion, yet they only barely managed to set foot on the eastern bank.
Before they could establish a bridgehead, the pontoon bridge they had just erected was destroyed by precise French Artillery fire. Immediately afterward, dense cannon fire engulfed those several thousand soldiers in an instant.
By dusk, the docks of Saint Pölten were clogged with countless Austrian corpses, while a nauseating stench of blood filled the city. Yet on the third day of the battle, both banks of the Traisen River fell into an eerie silence.
In the previous suicidal attacks, Austrian casualties had already neared one-third of their forces.
Werneck worked until after ten before he barely managed to scrape together enough troops from units whose organization remained relatively intact to launch another attack. Yet what Archduke Karl had not expected was that the French seemed to have exhausted their shells during the fierce battles of the previous two days. At this point, only a handful of cannons still kept firing sporadically.
That glimmer of hope made him commit every reserve force to the battlefield without hesitation.
Baron Werneck's legion was the first to gain a foothold on the eastern bank, and with an exceptionally valiant charge, forced the French line back two or three kilometers. The Bajachaza Legion, Branovacki Legion, and Count Coburg's Hussar regiment then successfully crossed that damned river as well. Vienna lay before them; at a normal marching pace, they could reach it in two days.
Hope seemed to have sprouted anew in the hearts of every Austrian soldier...
On high ground several kilometers to the east, covered in dense woods, Surt finished reading the report just delivered by Hot Air Balloon and handed