The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 906 What is Tsarist Russia and Guan Tianpei?
The defeat at the Battle of Drencova essentially signaled that Louis Davout's army was no longer capable of achieving its strategic objectives.

It's quite simple. Even if Louis Davout, with only a little over ten thousand mediocre Italian cavalry left, took Belgrade, he would still be unable to clear the Danube River from Belgrade to Bucharest, and thus would still be unable to deploy troops and supplies to the lower Danube.

When Napoleon, who was in Transylvania, received Louis Davout's letter requesting aid, he immediately realized that his strategy had made a huge mistake.

Before attacking Maukundze, Napoleon and his staff believed that Transylvania was a crucial stronghold that Maukundze absolutely could not afford to abandon.

Mo Gongze's father, Mo Zirong, entered the Habsburg family almost as an adopted son-in-law. As a de facto 'dowry' for the adopted son-in-law, Mo Zirong received the title of Grand Duke of Transylvania in 1778.

For the next thirty-four years, the Mo family worked hard to develop the area, and Transylvania was of far greater significance to them than Hungary.

Indeed, after Napoleon's army captured Budapest, although the Hungarians below were unwilling to submit to France and did not cooperate on many things, they could still be pacified if forced to do so.

Transylvania was a completely different story. If a small contingent of French troops ventured deep into the Transylvanian plateau, they would almost certainly be ambushed by the locals. Reports of lone soldiers being attacked came in almost every day.

Many Transylvanians preferred to hide in the mountains and starve rather than cooperate with the French, and would rather kill their livestock than be taken by the French as a means of transportation.

Napoleon spent six months trying to find a single influential nobleman willing to cooperate with him.

This puzzled Napoleon greatly; he couldn't understand why Mo Gongze would be willing to give up this place.

Transylvania itself is a plateau, with enough space and geographical advantages to contend with the French army. The Maurice family had ruled here for more than 30 years, and the people were loyal to them. How could they give up so easily?

Now, Napoleon understood.

After he took control of the Transylvanian plateau, he was unable to mobilize any forces from there. Instead, he had to expend a great deal of effort to clear out the enemy and transport supplies to the plateau. The burden on the French army was more than twice as heavy as it was before the conquest of Transylvania.

“Ferdinand is waiting for us. He is waiting for us to enter the lower Danube River, hoping to destroy us with the help of the Seres Black Sea Fleet.”

This was his scheme, but we had no choice but to confront this most cunning enemy of the French Empire. Only by eliminating him could the empire truly belong to us forever.

This time, Napoleon refrained from any pretentious rhetoric and instead presented the most realistic outcome to his supporters.

Marshal Berthier and Marshal Udino had something to say, but they had to admit that Napoleon was right.

If he cannot defeat King Ferdinand of Hungary, he will forever remain a figurehead for Germans, and even for the Dutch in the Low Countries, in their resistance against France, constantly attracting those capable of opposing France.
The Kingdom of England and the Seres Empire also consistently had supporters on the European continent.

To preserve the French Empire and their titles of king, prince, and grand duke, they had to overthrow Ferdinand.

"Could we withdraw from the Transylvanian Plateau? Resupplying here is too difficult. Perhaps we could choose to launch a full-scale attack on Belgrade and then sail downstream," Marshal Berthier, Chief of the General Staff, suggested.

"No, giving up territory we've already gained without any threat would severely demoralize the army and greatly boost the morale of the Hungarians."

"What if Ferdinand returns with a vengeance and attacks the heart of Hungary from the plateau? How will we defend ourselves then?"

Marshal Berthier's words were immediately met with opposition from Marshal Soult.

Everyone thought it over and agreed. After all, ever since Ferdinand abandoned the heartland of Hungary, that is, the vast and wealthy territory centered on Budapest, the French had done things there that were utterly detestable.

Due to the immense depletion from constant warfare, it became impossible to allocate sufficient supplies from the mainland. As a result, after France occupied Hungary, it imposed heavy taxes there, almost three times the amount under King Ferdinand.

At the same time, a large number of French, Italians, and people from the Confederation of the Rhine also came here to settle.

They seized a large amount of land left behind by the Hungarian nobles after their retreat; almost all the marshals and lieutenant generals present here own estates here.

Claude Menaval, Napoleon's personal secretary and head of the secret police, owned eleven estates and had more than four thousand serfs.

If they were to withdraw from the Transylvanian plateau and allow Ferdinand I to return, the Hungarians would likely assume that France had lost to Ferdinand and would immediately rise up in response, even before Ferdinand could launch a counter-offensive from Transylvania.

Napoleon fell silent. After careful consideration, he concluded that the best way to avoid the current predicament was to treat the surrendered Hungarians well.

Even if Mogonze were the King of Hungary, it would be impossible for him to instigate the Hungarians living on the Transylvanian Plateau simply by staying there.

However, France's financial difficulties and the increasingly low moral standards of the nobles and soldiers made it impossible for Napoleon to appease the Hungarians. As a result, Maurice was withdrawn, but even more people missed him.

In order to deal with Mogonze and prevent him from accumulating strength on the plateau, Napoleon had no choice but to lead his army to the plateau, attempting to physically eliminate this last hope of the Hungarians.

But Mogongze continued to retreat, turning the Transylvanian plateau into a quagmire that trapped Napoleon.

After much deliberation, Napoleon had no good solution.

"Now that we've come this far, we can only persevere and keep going," Napoleon said through gritted teeth, before turning to Marshal Soult.

"Duke of Dalmatia, I need you, the Emperor of the Empire needs you, I will leave you 30,000 men to pacify this plateau!"

Duke of Dalmatia, Marshal Soult, felt a chill run down his spine. He was reluctant to accept this mission because Napoleon's firm commitment to continuing meant maintaining high pressure on Hungary.

No, it should be said that they transplanted the practices used in Spain and Portugal to the Transylvanian Plateau.

The reason for choosing Sirte was that he had already committed many massacres in Spain and Portugal.

"Yes, Your Majesty!" As a famous opportunist, Marshal Soult was unwilling to accept the mission, but he was even less willing to offend Napoleon in this matter.

Sure enough, upon hearing that Marshal Soult had accepted the task, Napoleon immediately announced the amount of grain and livestock he needed.

The only way to gather this amount of supplies on the Transylvanian plateau was to use weapons to collect them.

In early November 1812.

French troops captured the Château de Termachu fortress, located in the southern Carpathian Mountains.

More than 700 of the 1,100 officers and soldiers of the Xia Fan Central Guard who were defending the fortress were killed in battle, and the rest were able to evacuate under their cover.

But the sacrifices of these officers and soldiers were worthwhile.

With this fortress, which could only hold two thousand people, they withstood seven months of repeated attacks by fifty thousand French troops, buying ample time for Mogongze to further deploy resistance in the lower Danube region.

Capturing the Termachu fortress meant that Napoleon only needed about a month to level the mountain roads and then march directly south into the heart of what would later become Romania.

On July 10, Napoleon formally divided his forces at the ruins of Sibiu, with Soult leading 7 troops to remain in Transylvania to carry out the mopping-up operation.

Murat led 2,000 cuirassiers, 6,000 light cavalry, and 15,000 dragoons, a total of 23,000 cavalry, to Belgrade to support Louis Davout.

Napoleon led the main French army of 120,000 men, plus auxiliary troops and laborers, totaling 220,000, southward from the Transylvanian Plateau to attack Bucharest.

On July 25, Murat's 7 cavalrymen arrived on the outskirts of Belgrade and instantly turned the tide of the battle.

Louis Davout was already harassed badly by Li Xingtai due to a lack of cavalry, and lost more than 4,000 men in two months, with little progress made in digging trenches.

Even more seriously, his logistical supply routes were repeatedly harassed, and for every ton of supplies delivered, at least nearly a ton was burned by Li Xingtai.

If Murat doesn't arrive soon, Louis Davout will have to consider withdrawing his troops within six months at most.

South of Belgrade, on the banks of the West Morava River, Li Xingtai frowned as he held the intelligence sent by the Imperial Guards.

Joachim Murat was a marshal who was very good at commanding cavalry and was also an excellent hussar himself.

Among the 23,000 cavalrymen he brought was an independent brigade of French Imperial Guards cavalry, numbering about 4,000, commanded by Lieutenant General Marouaz, the deputy of Lassalle, who was known as the King of Hussars.

This Independent Guards Cavalry Brigade was not one of the many units later expanded by Napoleon that bore the Guards designation; rather, it was one of the old units from which Napoleon rose to power.

Although they were still a little behind Napoleon's most valuable 6,000 Old Guards and 6,500 Young Guards, they were only below these troops, belonging to the top elite of the French Empire.

Li Xingtai knew he couldn't fight head-on, since he only had four thousand cavalrymen, while the other side could easily field more than thirty thousand.

If they catch you making a mistake, the consequences will be very serious.

Therefore, Li Xingtai had no choice but to abandon his efforts to harass the French troops attacking the city, putting pressure on the Belgrade defenders. It was time to test Liu Guoqing.

Whether Liu Guoqing could hold out for at least four months against the all-out attack of over 100,000 French troops and drag the war back into winter would be the key to the success or failure of this battle.

In July of that same year, an even larger-scale battle unfolded at Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad).

Since the Russian army was unable to completely surround Tsaritsyn, Kutuzov devised a comprehensive defense plan. By this time, the Russian army had amassed approximately 350,000 troops around Tsaritsyn, so Kutuzov dispatched Prince Balagdion, who was typically used for rearguard and defense, to the main city of Tsaritsyn to hold the fort.

He himself led a large number of cavalry on mobile patrols.

Another general, Mikhail Barclay, served as a reserve force. Whenever the army in Tsaritsyn could not hold out, General Barclay would immediately select well-rested elite soldiers to enter the city and replace them.

This kind of battle, where a city is besieged but not completely destroyed, is the most difficult to fight because the defensive pressure on the enemy, especially the psychological pressure, is much less than if they were completely besieged, like in Belgrade where they held out to the death.

In order to break this situation, General Mo Gongling, commander of the central army, came up with many ideas.

Initially, he wanted to use steam gunboats to besiege the main city of Tsaritsyn, because the main city of Tsaritsyn was built on an island in the river.

However, they soon discovered that this wouldn't work, because the caliber of the city's defensive cannons and the coastal defense cannons in the forts on both sides of the river were much larger than the small cannons on the steamships. The steamships of Dayu were very vulnerable to their shelling and dared not sail at will.

Mogongling then attempted to cross the Volga River to storm the island and attack the city, but the results were still not significant.

Under the command of Balagdion, a general particularly skilled in defense, the Russian army filled in the moats outside the city by flooding them.

By the end of July, the entire area outside the main city wall of Chalijin was submerged in water, with ditches nearly a meter deep every ten meters or so, making it impossible to transport artillery.

The attacking army not only faced bombardment from Russian city defense artillery, but also harassment from the surrounding marshes, making it difficult to find a place to set up camp.

After trying various methods, Mo Gongling pondered deeply and finally decided to use the brute-force method.

That is to use the digging capabilities of steam excavators to capture all the Russian army bastions on both sides of the Volga River, and then set up artillery positions along the river.

The number of cannons of the Dayu army is four times that of the Russian army. If they can set up gun emplacements along the river, they will be able to block the river and prevent the Russian army's inland waterway warships from getting close. In this way, the Dayu steamships can go upstream further and blockade the main city of Chalijin.

After that, several nine-inch (11-inch-168-pound) cannons were unloaded from the Qin Zhongzhen and Qu Zhongmu ships of the Black Sea Fleet. No matter how strong the main city of Tsaritsyn was, it could not withstand the bombardment of such cannons.

Kutuzov could certainly see through Mogongling's plan, but he didn't really have any good way to get out of the predicament.

His only hope was that the fourteen bastions he had painstakingly built could hold out until the Yu army was exhausted from its campaign against Russia.

At the same time, Kutuzov took advantage of the large number of Cossack cavalry in the Russian army, not only using them to harass the area, but also having some Cossack cavalry run around the city of Astrakhan and cause widespread destruction.

This put immense pressure on the logistics of the expeditionary force to Russia, and Mo Gongze quickly deployed his cavalry as well.

Starting in early July, the cavalry of both sides engaged in thousands of small-scale battles, each involving dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of riders, along the 400-kilometer route from Xihai City to Chalijin.

By early September, with winter approaching, Da Yu hoped to capture all the bastions on both sides of the Volga River before the cold winter arrived, while Kutuzov hoped to hold out until winter and cause the Mogongling to fail.

This led to a larger-scale clash between the cavalry of both sides.

On September 11, 19,000 Russian cavalrymen stormed into the town of Raigorod, 30 kilometers east of Kirova. This town was a coal-filling point for the Da Yu steam engine on the Volga River, as well as a coal storage point and steam engine repair point.

After the defenders put up a fierce resistance for half a day, the 13th Cavalry Army, composed of 13,000 cavalrymen from the Left Yulin Guard of Dayu, Datong Town of Shanxi, Chahar of southern Mongolia, and Tumed, arrived, and the two sides engaged in a fierce battle outside the town.

This battle was extremely dangerous. Major General Semyon Lanskoy of the 21st Cossack Independent Cavalry Brigade, a fierce general of the Russian army, led two thousand Cossacks and once charged to the command post of the 13th Army, almost killing the veteran general Dong Jinfeng on the spot.

In the end, the 57-year-old veteran remained calm and collected, killing three Cossack cavalrymen with three shots from a distance of just over 20 meters.

Then, wielding a large, gleaming sword, he used his infantry to defeat the cavalry, cutting down a Cossack lieutenant colonel and his horse as he charged at him, thus avoiding becoming the first general of the Great Yu to die in battle.

However, the Cossacks' attack still achieved good results. Almost all of Dong Jinfeng's 160 personal guards were killed in battle, and the 13th Army's battle flag, bestowed upon him by Crown Prince Da Laosen when he was appointed general, was also cut down.

But the Russians fared even worse. Semyon Lanskoy, the Russian general who personally cut down the 13th Army's battle flag, was hacked to pieces on the spot by the 13th Army's cavalry who surrounded him, and his two thousand cavalrymen were almost completely wiped out.

By the time the battle ended at night, the Russian army had suffered 19,700 casualties and more than 8,000 prisoners, while the Yu army had also suffered more than 5,000 casualties. Both sides suffered heavy losses.

However, considering the disparity in troop strength between the two sides, with the Russian army having three times the size of the Russians, the 13th Cavalry Corps still suffered a defeat in this battle, with one corps almost being rendered combat ineffective.

But Dong Jinfeng is not one to give up easily, and this battle really spurred him on.

As the leader of the Anxi Han-centric faction, a ruthless man who even gave up his future as a Privy Councilor and Deputy Privy Councilor in order to promote the Han-centric ideology, how could he swallow such a bitter pill?

So, fifteen days later, on September 26, 1812...

With the consent of Crown Prince Da Laosen, Mo Gongling mobilized 26,000 cavalry from the Imperial Guards Right Shendian Guard, Left Longxiang Guard, Yangwei Army of the Beijing Garrison, Yansui Garrison of Shaanxi, Huai'an Garrison of Jiangsu, Jibei Garrison of Jilin, Jiafu Garrison of Asahi, Chahar of southern Mongolia, and Tushetu of northern Mongolia to launch a surprise attack on Dubovka, where the Russian army was stockpiling supplies.

Kutuzov hastily mobilized all available cavalry to intercept Dubovka, and the two sides engaged in one of the most brutal cavalry battles of the early 19th century.

The battle lasted from September 26 to October 1. On the sixth day, seeing that a large number of Russian infantry were beginning to return to reinforce, the Yu cavalry finally withdrew.

Of the 20,000 regular Russian cavalry and over 60,000 Cossacks in this battle, more than 10,000 were killed in action, and over 30,000 were rendered incapacitated.

Eleven senior officers, including Lieutenant General Ivanov Yermolov, the younger brother of General Alexei Yermolov, commander of the Russian Guards Cavalry Corps, and Lieutenant General Pavel Shuvalov, commander of the 4th Cuirassier Division, were killed in action.

On the Da Yu side, more than 5,000 cavalrymen were killed or wounded, including four generals, including Dong Jinfeng's eldest son and Lieutenant General Dong Shaoquan, commander of the Yangwei Army of the Capital Garrison.

Overall, the Yu cavalry achieved a victory, and it was not a Pyrrhic one. They inflicted heavy losses on the Russian army at the cost of 5,000 casualties, bringing the total number of casualties to over 40,000.

Although the majority of the casualties came from the Cossack militia, a Guards Cavalry Corps and a Cuirassier Division were also severely damaged, with a total of nearly 10,000 men.

This battle severely damaged the morale of the Russian army, making them no longer dare to launch large-scale cavalry battles. On many occasions, they could only watch as the Russian army captured the fortresses located on both sides of the Volga River.

Most importantly, this battle severely damaged the confidence of Russian commander-in-chief Kutuzov, making him increasingly pessimistic about the course of the war.

Although the Great Yu cavalry raid was well concealed, the mobilization of nearly 30,000 cavalry could not have been kept secret from everyone.

However, the Russian troops along the line were always a step behind in everything. Several units, knowing that a large number of cavalrymen had passed through their defense zone that night, still waited until dawn or even the afternoon to report it. Their absurd handling of the situation was astonishing.

This is due to the corruption and rigidity within the Russian army. Even now, all officers of the rank of major and above in the Russian army are still nobles. No matter how outstanding a commoner is, he can only reach the rank of captain or company commander.

In this situation, the nobles have a basic safety net and don't treat their subordinates as human beings at all. The lower-ranking officers and soldiers also lack initiative because they have no hope of promotion.

In contrast, in the Great Yu Dynasty, there were many officers who rose from humble beginnings, and even the sons of noble families had to start as common soldiers without going to military academies.

Even if you graduate from a military academy, you'll only be a second lieutenant, a private, and at most you'll get promoted a little faster than the average person.

From top to bottom, the people of Dayu, even if they didn't know why they were fighting, at least knew what benefits they could gain and what guarantees they could have after their bloody battle. Therefore, even setting aside their combat effectiveness, their initiative alone far surpassed that of the Russian army.

On the battlefield, many opportunities arise from such a sudden burst of initiative.

“Misha, Tsaritsyn is about to fall. I will ask His Majesty to allow you to evacuate first,” Kutuzov said, calling General Mikhail Barclay over.

“Our cavalry has collapsed. If it weren’t for the infantry from all over the country starting to converge, they would have collapsed long ago.”

General Mikhail Barclay nodded. The Third Roman army had never suffered nearly half its casualties without collapsing; in fact, many times the entire army would collapse if it suffered no more than 30% casualties.

The reason they were able to hold out this time was actually because Kutuzov was in command and there were infantry reinforcements, which prevented them from immediately collapsing.

"Marshal, what do you want me to do?" General Mikhail Barclay actually knew what Kutuzov wanted to do, so he immediately replied after asking the question.

"Is this really necessary? The losses are too great!"

Kutuzov's intention was naturally to do the same thing as Mogongze.

The policy of scorched earth was adopted, clearing out everything along the more than 1,000-kilometer stretch from Tsaritsyn to Moscow, and at least along the 50-kilometer stretch of the Volga River.

However, these places have always been the wealthiest regions of the Third Rome, and the price paid for this is exceptionally high.

General Mikhail Barclay even doubted whether His Majesty the Tsar had the courage to issue such an order.

"I will do my best to persuade His Majesty, and I hope you will as well, otherwise we will only be able to die fighting for the Third Rome."

Unable to win in frontal battles, and with its prized cavalry also failing, the Black Sea Fleet was completely annihilated.

Although Kutuzov was formidable, there was a generational gap between them, and he was just like Guan Tianpei at Humen, helpless.

(End of this chapter)