The Crescent of the Sultan

The Polish hussars easily tore through the Austrian infantry phalanx. Under the charge of three thousand heavy cavalry, the Austrian army's defense line seemed so thin.

The infantry were quickly trampled to a pulp, and the intimidation of the lance made it difficult for the Austrians to resist.

If Austria still retains pikemen, they can actually resist the hussars.

After all, Gustav II of Sweden has already demonstrated how to operate it.

But the pikemen had long been eliminated, and the fate of the Austrian army was already sealed.

At the same time, the artillery fire coverage effect of the Austrian artillery was not good.

The opponent's sprint speed was too fast, causing many artillery fire to miss. When they got closer, the artillery had to be restrained because of their own infantry.

Seeing his own infantry being annihilated by the Polish infantry who once again put away the white flag, Franz was heartbroken and bleeding. These were the elite light infantry of Habsburg.

Franz forced himself to calm down at this time. He had withdrawn a lot of infantry, and the losses that the opponent could cause had been reduced to the extreme.

Now it is about blocking the opponent's heavy cavalry to prevent the opponent from launching a second charge, and then waiting for an opportunity to annihilate the opponent.

No matter what happened, he would have to take these troops back to Krakow.

Franz believed that this time he was just caught off guard. After he returned to Krakow to rest and fight again, he was still sure to win the battle.

Alandar Mustafa Pasha failed to have a second chance to charge, and Franz failed to find a chance to kill the opponent. Both sides ended the battle with regrets.

In the Battle of Krakow, the Polish side had 50,000 participants and suffered up to 9,000 casualties, while the Austrian side had 40,000 participants and suffered 6,000 casualties.

But for Austria, this is nothing more than a failed battle, and at most it will cost them a greater price in the subsequent division of the spoils.

But for Poland, represented by Kosciuszko, this has already disrupted their strategic deployment.

According to the assumption, in this battle, the main force of the Austrian army should be defeated, making the opponent unable to send more troops here in a short period of time, so that Kosciuszko could withdraw his troops to support the Prussian direction.

But the current situation is that the Polish army successfully repelled the opponent, but it is still far from severely damaging or even wiping out the opponent's main force. This is destined to make Kosciuszko unable to support the Prussian direction.

The hero sighed towards the sky. The thick clouds above his head were just like Poland's situation at this time, making it difficult for Kosciuszko to let go.

The war situation was not only unfavorable for the Austrian direction, but also for the Russian direction.

At the beginning of the war, the Polish army was in an extremely passive and disadvantageous situation. First of all, Tsarist Russia was crushing Poland in terms of manpower and materials.

As for the Poles, due to years of wrangling and local antagonism against the central government, their pre-war preparations can be said to be quite poor.

Although the Polish Parliament temporarily recruited many veterans, many of them were militiamen or untrained recruits.

The worst thing is that the Polish army is in a state of reorganization at this time. The distribution of numbers, weapons, and ammunition has not yet been completed. There is a shortage of military factories, heavy weapons, and sufficient logistics supplies.

In addition, due to long-term penetration and the active betrayal of the Tagovica Leading Party, the Russian army has a good understanding of Poland's troop distribution and other strategic intelligence, while the Polish army has almost no knowledge of the Russian army's initial movements.

The Polish army could only defend according to Kosciuszko's deployment, but Kosciuszko was drawing on paper after all.

Fortunately, the commander-in-chief of the Russian side at this time was the famous Polish general Prince Joseph Poniatowski in the late eighteenth century, the nephew of the contemporary King Stanislaw II.

After a field trip, he made changes.

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The first battle was the Battle of Opsa. The Russian vanguard was crossing the Daugava River and preparing to attack the city of Brasław.

They encountered stiff resistance from the Lithuanian defenders in the nearby village of Opsa. The Russian army tried to surround the village, but the Lithuanian army succeeded in breaking through desperately.

Both sides lost about hundreds of soldiers, and then the Russian army occupied Braslov.

Subsequently, Minsk was occupied.

After that, Prince Joseph Poniatowski arranged for the Lithuanian commander Birak to lead the light cavalry regiment and the Tatar cavalry regiment to cover the retreat of the main force. They and the two dragoon regiments of the Russian vanguard started at Stopitz. Fighting.

The Tatar army was the first to collapse, and the troops fell into panic. Seeing that defeat was imminent, Bilak selected hundreds of elite cavalry to launch a desperate assault on the main force of the Russian army, and actually successfully blocked the Russian army's offensive momentum.

The morale of the Lithuanian army behind them was greatly boosted, and they followed their general to launch a counterattack. The Russian Dragoons were forced to the river bank, and many people fell into the water and drowned. However, the Russian follow-up troops arrived, and artillery fire forced Birak to stop the pursuit and retreat to Mirm, saving the Russian dragoons from annihilation.

The next day, the main force of the leading Russian army and the main force of the Lithuanian army started fighting in Mirm. At the beginning of this encounter, there were nearly 10,000 Lithuanian troops and only more than 5,000 Russian troops.

However, Lithuania coach Juditsky made a fatal mistake. He did not follow Prince Joseph Poniatowski's order and attack decisively while the Russian army was not yet firmly established. Instead, he held a lengthy two-hour military meeting. .

During this period his troops were heavily bombarded by Russian artillery, and the army composed of new recruits began to panic.

The Russian army used this precious breathing time to wait for reinforcements to arrive and repelled the harassment of several small Lithuanian troops.

Later that day, the Russian army had assembled nearly 10,000 men and tried to surround the Lithuanian army. Juditsky was forced to declare a breakout. Fortunately, the breakout was successful and the main Lithuanian force was saved and retreated. Both sides suffered minor losses.

Due to Juditsky's erroneous command, the Russian military's military operations in Lithuania went smoothly and they occupied Wilno without strong resistance. There, the Russian troops were warmly welcomed by the Tagovica traitors.

The Lithuanian army did not suffer too many losses in the overall war, but its continuous retreat gave the Russian army the upper hand.

Prince Joseph Poniatowski was so angry about this that he took away Juditsky's position as commander-in-chief and instead commanded the army himself.

On the Polish front, generally like the Lithuanian army, the Polish army avoided direct confrontation with the superior Russian army. The Russian general Morkov received Potemkin's command and prepared to attack Bologna, a town in southeastern Poland.

Poniatowski decided to block the attack on the hills outside the town.

The Battle of Zlenice breaks out.

At seven o'clock in the morning, the two sides engaged in an artillery battle. The Polish recruits almost collapsed under the bombing and Russian infantry attack.

Poniatowski stabilized the battle line and immediately led the infantry regiment to launch a counterattack. The Russian infantry was suppressed by more intense firepower and retreated with heavy losses.

Subsequently, Molkov sent a Cossack cavalry regiment to attack on the flank, but was blocked by Polish cavalry. The Russian cavalry offensive was destroyed and retreated.

Molkov invested more troops in the attack, but was defeated by Polish artillery fire and infantry counterattacks.

This made Potemkin very angry. He gave Morkov a death order, asking the other party to quickly capture Bologna and severely damage or annihilate the Polish army blocking the Russian army.

How dare Molkov neglect his superior's orders.

In the early morning of the next day, Molkov launched another attack.

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