Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

Delrisen naturally got it wrong. The Guard Corps sent to intercept only consisted of 14,000 men, and they had been avoiding villages all along, so nobody noticed them at all.

Even if the Prussians had detected something anomalous, by the time it would have been reported to him, the Guard Corps would have already been upon them.

When Joseph learned that there was a large-scale movement in the Prussian Army, he knew they were definitely heading towards Ratibor. It could be said that, with the rapid marching speed of the Guard Corps, the ambush was almost guaranteed to be successful.

This is the advantage of encirclement tactics—you know the enemy's reinforcements must take a certain path, so you can launch targeted attacks on the reinforcing troops.

Soon, a straight white line of infantry appeared in the Prussian soldiers' line of sight, accompanied by the orderly sound of military drums, it slowly advanced towards them.

Seeing that only about seventy percent of his own soldiers were formed up, Delrisen had no choice but to order them to engage the enemy immediately.

Fortunately, the hussars who had been responsible for scouting reported that the French Army probably numbered only over 10,000 men. His own Fein Corps, along with two grenadier battalions, had a strength close to 9,000. Even though their formation was not complete, delaying for two hours should still be achievable.

Once his main force completed forming up, they would be able to counterattack against the French with superior numbers. After all, there were over 17,000 soldiers at his back!

The drumming of the French Army grew ever closer. In front of the Prussian defensive line, Lieutenant Olif of the Prussian Royal Jager Battalion was crouching behind a clump of withered grass, his eyes tightly fixed on a flag in the distance that bore the emblem of a "Dolphin with a Sword". If he remembered correctly, that seemed to be from the French Royal Guard Second Corps.

He estimated the distance between the two sides and ordered the soldiers around him to hold steady, then slowly raised the Potsdam M1741 model Jager gun in his hands.

This gun was an improvement over the M1741 flintlock gun, with its most notable feature being the rifling inside the barrel, which allowed the bullet to spin, resulting in a straight trajectory.

During an era where hitting a target 30 meters away with a smoothbore gun was entirely up to faith, this was an extremely advanced weapon. However, due to its very high cost and the laborious process of loading, it was only issued to a small number of elite riflemen.

And Olif was one of them.

He quickly chose his target—a drummer who seemed to be the closest, about eighteen or nineteen years old and quite tall.

Killing this fellow would definitely severely damage the morale of the French behind him.

He licked his lips and squinted as he aimed at the young drummer.

At a distance of about 80 paces, Olif felt the side breeze and determined it wouldn't much affect the bullet's trajectory, then decisively pulled the trigger.

Although this distance was a bit far, he had absolute confidence in his marksmanship.

With a loud "bang", the strap hanging the drum around the drummer's chest broke, and the drummer, as if struck by a hammer in the face, fell backwards.

Lieutenant Olif whistled proudly, stood up, and pulled out the ramrod to poke at the ashes in the gun barrel. Then he poured a little gunpowder into the firing chamber, closed the cover, stood the gun up straight, poured in more gunpowder, tamped it down, and then inserted the bullet.

Following that, he pulled out a mallet from behind himself and started hammering on the ramrod with force. This was a persistent problem with rifled guns; since the bullet was slightly larger than the muzzle, he had to hammer the bullet down.

However, after just a couple of hits, he caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye of the drummer he had just hit struggling to stand up!

"Oh, God!" Olif's eyes widened in disbelief, "What happened?!"

He was certain that he had hit the man's chest dead on—the broken drum strap was proof.

Yet at that moment, there wasn't a single drop of blood on the drummer's chest—blood would have been highly visible on the Frenchman's white uniform. The drummer had even bent down to fix the strap, pulled out a spare drumstick, and hurried to catch up with the infantry line, resuming his drumming.

Olif looked at the gun in confusion, bit his teeth and hammered the bullet all the way down, and then raised his gun to aim once again.

This time, the drummer was blocked by an officer beside him, so he simply took aim at that French Lieutenant.

The muzzle of the M1741 spewed flames, and the officer also staggered and fell to the side, but not even three seconds later, he stood up again with the help of several soldiers.

"This, this is impossible..."

Lieutenant Olif retreated a few steps in a daze, giving up the chance he still had to fire and turned to run away.

The Prussian Jager around him began shooting one after another, but except for one who accidentally shot an opposing soldier in the neck, all the others got back up after being hit—the standard at that time for riflemen was to aim at the enemy's torso as it was a larger target.

The Prussian Infantry watched in astonishment as the Jager retreated in panic to their rear as if they had seen ghosts.

However, they soon learned the reason for this, as they too encountered the same situation.

When the French infantry line advanced to within 50 paces of them, the officers ordered a volley. Find your next read on My Virtual Library Empire

With a crackling blast, the black gunpowder smoke obscured the battlefield, and nearly a hundred French soldiers fell to the ground.

But soon, through the smoke, Prussian Soldiers could vaguely see that most of the French who were shot were propping themselves up with their guns and standing again.

The Prussians looked at each other in disbelief; the enemy clearly wasn't wearing breastplates or anything of the kind, but the bullets just couldn't kill them.

Chaos began to emerge on the already disordered Prussian lines as some soldiers even forgot to reload and started to pray with crossed fingers.

Dawu watched his orderly officer grit his teeth and get up, also finding it hard to believe. Although the General Staff had repeatedly said that the "bulletproof inserts" could withstand gunshots, he never really trusted these thin things.

The orderly officer pressed his abdomen and pulled out the insert there, then lifted his clothes.

Dawu immediately noticed a large area of dark bruising on his stomach, but clearly, the bullet had been stopped on the outside. He then looked at the insert on the ground, which had spiderweb-like cracks with a bulbous protrusion on the back.

The drumbeat beside him suddenly quickened, and years of training led Dawu to reflexively turn and order his soldiers:

"Halt advance.

"Prepare——

"...

"Fire!"

Thousands of caplock guns almost simultaneously spewed flames, and the Prussian lines instantly had a multitude of gaps.

For a moment, many Prussian Soldiers turned to look at their comrades who were hit, as if waiting for them to stand up as well.

However, other than blood and wails, no miracles occurred.

The Guard Corps quickly launched a second volley.

This time, apart from those two Prussian Grenadier battalions, the rest of the soldiers began to turn and flee in terror.

The elite Prussian Guard Infantry had collapsed after the enemy's second volley!

Anyone facing an enemy that couldn't be killed, while being slaughtered in large numbers themselves, would find it hard to maintain the courage to continue fighting.