Chapter 204 Another Option

Chapter 205 Another option

France.

Southeastern Provence.

A well-organized and well-equipped legion entered the port of Toulon.

If you look carefully, you can find that the straight white military uniforms of these soldiers are slightly different - some of them have fleur-de-lis and dolphins embroidered on their collars, which are the special emblems of the French crown prince, while others have collars with Embroidered with the emblem of the Paris Police Academy.

Yes, this is the "Crown Prince's Guards Corps" preparing to go to Tunisia. They had left Paris and headed south half a month ago.

At that time, Joseph even gave up attending the grand event where the Standards Committee announced the measurement standards because he had to see them off. Although it is a pity, it is obvious that the North African strategy is the most important thing at the moment. He personally mobilized the legion before the war and sent it more than 20 kilometers, which greatly boosted the morale of the soldiers.

Outside Toulon Port, a captain leading the team looked at the soldiers who were a little tired from the sun, waved his hand and said loudly:

"Where's the lead singer?"

"Yes, sir! I'm here!" A short young soldier carrying an organ hurried over and saluted the officer with his hat.

The captain patted him on the shoulder and gestured towards the front of the team:

"Let's all sing a song."

"Glory and Victory, sir?"

"Okay, this is it. It's my favorite song too."

The lead singer ran to the front of the queue, played a few high notes on the organ to attract the soldiers' attention, gestured to the drummer, and then said loudly:

“Sing with me—

"The trumpets sound on the battlefield before dawn,

“The warriors are in neat formation.

"Determination and belief are written on the face,

"Glory and victory are our beliefs.

"Our loyalty will never waver,

“Dedicate your victory to His Majesty the King!

"Win the supreme honor with blood and fire..."

The song was solemn and powerful, and the soldiers sang along, and soon they were all in high spirits.

However, the tune was clearly the "La Marseillaise" that almost every French person was very familiar with. Joseph brought it to his regiment in advance, and it was indeed very popular among the soldiers. Therefore, Joseph simply designated it as a military song.

Of course, the tune was polished by Mrs. Garland, and the lyrics were rewritten by the great writer Beaumarchais. The content completely changed into a style of being loyal to His Majesty the King and pursuing merit and honor on the battlefield.

A large number of navy transport ships and escort warships have already been parked on the pier, swaying slightly with the waves.

The Navy took the 800,000 livres that Joseph "fooled" from the Americans. However, they only sent three warships to participate in this anti-piracy operation. Even more than half of the supplies were provided by the Dutch, which did not cost much at all. money. Probably the Navy itself felt a bit "sorry about the wages", so it responded very actively to the operational needs in North Africa.

As more than 4,000 officers and soldiers, as well as military supplies such as war horses and cannons, were boarded one after another, at 2:30 in the afternoon, ten transport ships pulled anchor and set sail, sailing straight towards Tunisia.

…

South-central Tunisia.

Chukri Valley on the border between Kairouan and Sfax.

Under a thick olive tree, a Tunisian Guards officer in an orange robe raised his hand and swatted to death a mosquito as big as a mung bean that was desperately sucking blood on his face.

He wiped off the blood on his palms and shouted calmly to the soldier beside him who was fanning:

"Harder, you lazy thing!"

"Yes, yes, sir." The soldier muttered and nodded, slapping the mosquito harder with his hand.

The officer looked down the valley for a while, but he only saw green grass and trees, and it seemed calm.

He turned to another officer with small eyes and said:

"How long are we going to stay in this damn place? I'm about to be sucked dry by mosquitoes!"

The small-eyed officer was playing with his boots and said without raising his head:

"Be patient, Gedik, this is an order directly issued by Cahir Palace to Master Koca."

Gadik glanced at the woods where he was hiding, frowned and muttered:

"Bey, who is staying in the palace, doesn't know what the situation is like on the front line."

Little Eyes waved his hand:

"I heard from Lord Koja that it was Madam Hafsa's idea."

"Her?" Gadik snorted coldly, "A woman actually talks too much about war. There are really no rules at all!"

"It is said that she was the first to discover this rebellion. So this time she said that Younes would come for a sneak attack, so Bey listened to her advice and asked Lord Koja to take precautions in advance."

"Lord, how can they believe a woman's word?"

Before Gadik finished speaking, he saw two scouts running towards him, waving vigorously and saying:

"Enemy situation! Our outpost was attacked, at least thousands of enemy troops!"

Gadik and his colleagues looked at each other and stood up suddenly, his eyes full of disbelief:

"How on earth did that woman guess it?!"

Of course Hafsa did not guess, but Joseph had someone tell her early in the morning that Younis would probably make a desperate attack on the Chukri Valley.

Because he asked Hafsa to reveal Younis's movements to Hamoud Ali in advance, so that the latter had enough time to deploy his army to deal with the rebellion.

At the same time, Joseph also knew that Yunis only had a small number of weapons and that the military funds would soon run out. Because he only had people allocate 2,000 flintlock rifles to Yunis, and the so-called 2 million livres of military funds were not given at all. It was not easy for Yunis to gather people with his own savings, and the military pay and food and grass in the future were all gone.

In this situation, Yunis could only gamble everything and take the opportunity to raid the garrison outside the Kairouan Fortress before it was fully prepared, and try to bypass the fortress and directly seize the wealthy city of Susa, so as to get supplies there.

Of course, if Yunis did not intend to do this, the French military adviser left by Joseph would also give him advice on the raid.

Joseph's Tunisian strategy from the beginning was to drive the wolf to devour the tiger, let Yunis and Hammoud Ali fight each other, and consume the manpower of the Tunisian Guard. And the trump card he left behind was the real goal.

In order to complete this plan, he initially planned to send spies to sneak into the Kasir Palace and pretend to be military experts to "offer advice" to Ali.

However, during the mission of the police intelligence department spies, they accidentally met a French businessman who provided high-end clothing to the Kasir Palace. With the introduction of this person, they met another very important person-Haji, the son of the former Bey of Tunisia, Muhammad ibn Hussan, and the nephew of Hamud Ali.

After Joseph contacted Haji through the police intelligence department, the two sides quickly determined the intention of cooperation. At the same time, Haji recommended someone who was more suitable to influence Hamud Ali-his favorite concubine Hafsa.

After that, Hafsa pretended to infer that there might be a rebellion in the south. After Ali sent troops, she "predicted" that the rebels were likely to raid Koca.

Joseph's goal was naturally not to let Ali quickly quell the rebellion, but to let Yunis suffer a heavy blow and show that he was about to be finished.

This would lead to the next plan.

As for Yunis, Joseph was not worried that he would be wiped out. As long as the warships parked off the coast of Sfax gave him the remaining weapons and some silver coins, he could be resurrected immediately and fight Ali's guards for another 300 rounds.

On the hillsides on both sides of the Qiukri Valley, Tunisian Guards officer Gadik hurriedly asked the herald to send a message and ordered the soldiers to prepare for battle.

Tunisia has a flat terrain, and almost the entire country is plains. The so-called valley is actually only three or four hundred meters high, but it is also an important pass to enter Kairouan.

Rum, an officer under Younis, looked relaxed and signaled his men to speed up.

Just now, he defeated the outpost of Koca almost effortlessly, which made him quite proud: the guards today are no longer the guards of more than 20 years ago. Thinking back to when he followed Younis Pasha to besiege the former Bey Haishan, his men were so brave and good at fighting. And those guards just now were obviously enjoying themselves in the city of Tunisia for a long time, and they were fat and big-eared, and they couldn't even run. It seemed that this battle should be easily won.

After he crossed the valley, looking at the endless plain in front of him, he immediately ordered his men to send a message to Yunis Pasha.

Soon, Yunis led the main force through the valley. At this time, Nizamiddin, who he sent to set up cannons on the high ground on the east side of the valley, suddenly had a fierce battle with the enemy.

Gadik was also quite surprised. When he saw Yunis's vanguard passing by and was about to raid the enemy's main force, a small group of enemy artillery suddenly climbed up the hillside.

He had no choice but to launch an attack in advance.

Yunis was an old hand at commanding troops. He immediately realized that something was wrong and ordered the main force to withdraw from the valley. At the same time, his daughter Rabia led people to search both sides of the valley.

Before he finished his arrangements, Gadik had already led nearly 6,000 guards to rush down from both sides of the valley.

The two sides immediately fought together, but Yunis was suddenly attacked and seemed very panicked. The hundreds of people who first entered the valley were slaughtered in less than half an hour.

At the same time, on the other side of the valley, the previously arrogant Rum tribe was besieged by the main force of the Guards led by Koca himself.

He had only 1,500 people on his side, and there was a narrow valley behind him. The battle lasted only more than 40 minutes, and Rum was shot through the chest by a stray bullet, and his men surrendered immediately.

Koca counted the size of the enemy army and soon realized that this was not Yunis's main force, so he immediately ordered to cross the valley to find the main force of the enemy.

Yunis looked at his men with a telescope with a sullen face as they fled from the valley, running around like mice chased by a cat. He immediately gritted his teeth and ordered others to retreat first, and he took the most core 3,000 soldiers to the exit of the valley.

Half of these people were the Guards who had followed him. Although they were not young, their combat experience should not be underestimated. Moreover, they were now equipped with good guns sent by France!

Gadick was chasing the rout and killing excitedly, when he suddenly saw a neat enemy square not far away.

His morale was high at this time, and he ordered a frontal attack without thinking, and at the same time ordered the cavalry to continue to chase the fleeing enemies.

A dull horn sounded, and two musketeer regiments under his command lined up to approach Yunis's army from the front, while a half scimitar regiment quickly rushed from both wings.

However, when the two sides were still more than 100 steps apart, Yunis's side was the first to burst into dense gunfire.

Gedik was about to mock his opponent for being impatient - the muskets had little killing power at this distance - but he was shocked to hear screams from his own army. Some timid soldiers even began to shrink back in fear when they saw their companions who were shot and rolling in a pool of blood.

After a moment of hesitation, Gadik hurriedly ordered to fire back, but at this distance, his guns did not have much killing power.

After the untrained Tunisian Guards fired a chaotic shot, the Younis army on the opposite side took a few steps forward, reloaded, and fired a volley.

The deafening gunshots rang out, and as many as thirty or forty people fell on Gadik's side. Even though the officers shouted loudly not to retreat, they still could not stop the momentum of some soldiers to retreat.

For a time, some of Gadik's musket troops held their ground, while others retreated, and the front line was already in a mess.

Through the smoke, Gadick saw his men in a mess from afar, and had to grit his teeth and order the scimitar corps to speed up the attack, while letting the musketeers retreat and reorganize.

Yunis did not give him a chance at all, and immediately ordered the musketeers to continue to move forward, while the fierce Rabia led hundreds of scimitar soldiers to meet the scimitar soldiers on the opposite side.

Hand-to-hand combat is never like in the movies, where both sides display their martial arts, fight hard and finally lie on the ground with corpses.

In reality, the close combat between the two armies is a competition of momentum.

Which side has weaker momentum will be almost instantly overwhelmed by the opponent. So the hand-to-hand combat lasted less than a minute, and Gadick's scimitar soldiers were frightened by the terrifying momentum of the female pirate and turned around and fled.

Once a large-scale military battle breaks out, it is difficult for even gods to restrain it.

Rabia immediately roared and led his troops to chase behind, while Yunis's French musketeers almost stuck to the face of the enemy after several volleys.

Before Gedik could even deploy his reserve troops, his main force was overwhelmed by the enemy, who was only half his size, and fled in all directions with wailing.

Yunis defeated the enemy, but did not dare to delay for too long. He ordered his men to cover the previously defeated troops and quickly retreat to the south of Sfax.

A few hours later, when Koca led the main force of the Guards to appear on this side of the valley, he only saw the dusty Gedik and the soldiers who were carrying corpses in a dejected manner, and Yunis's main force had long disappeared.

He looked at the sky and did not dare to continue the pursuit. He ordered to set up camp on the spot and arrange defenses, and at the same time had people send the battle situation back to Tunisia City.

On the other side, Yunis ran until dusk before he finally stopped. It was not until dawn the next day that he counted the approximate losses. Nearly two thousand people were killed or missing, including Nizamiddin and Rum, who were completely wiped out, and hundreds of people were injured.

At this time, he had less than 5,000 troops left.

In the military tent, several officers looked at Yunis with gloomy expressions. Just now, someone had suggested continuing to move south and retreating into the barren Ghadames area.

At this moment, the French advisor who was traveling with them showed an inappropriate smile:

"Don't be discouraged. Please believe me, the aid from His Royal Highness the Crown Prince should be delivered soon!"