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“Damn it…”

La Roque ground his teeth as he watched the onrushing Imperial soldiers.

The French army had failed in this war.

He didn’t know what the future held, but at least the French army had firmly fumbled the first button of their strategy in this war.

The French army was deluded into thinking that they could continue a ‘gentlemanly war.’ On the other hand, the upper echelons of the Imperial army had shown the future battlefield in its worst form.

The future war would be nothing but mud, poison gas, and entrenching tools – ‘savagery.’ And if the higher-ups didn’t prepare for that savagery, then they would have to prepare for it themselves.

“Fire! Fire!”

Dududududu!!!

The French army’s Hotchkiss machine guns began to spit fire.

Imperial soldiers fell as futilely as they themselves once had.

But the French army’s situation was not much better.

Thwack!

“Shit! Joffre! Joffre’s been hit!”

The French army’s intense blue and red uniforms were, in the literal sense, conspicuous targets in the muddy trench lines. Most of the French soldiers covered the red parts with cloth to survive, but the highly saturated blue that made up most of the uniform was still a good target in the trenches.

In the end, the French soldiers were easily sniped by aspiring Imperial snipers, not only when charging towards the Imperial trenches but even when hiding inside their own trench lines.

Although rifles with periscope sights were supplied to prevent this… if you asked if they were effective, the answer would be no, not at all.

Seeing a guy who had been supplied with a periscope sight break it because it was inconvenient, and then say it broke because he was hit by shrapnel…

You could see how the ‘periscope sight’ that had just started to be supplied was viewed by the French soldiers.

‘They should have just supplied uniforms with lower saturation. Those damn higher-ups.’

Of course, uniforms with lower saturation had already begun to be supplied preferentially to elite troops like grenadiers and newly enlisted recruits. But those who received the new uniforms were a tiny minority.

People like him had no choice but to fight the enemy wearing colorful uniforms that were out of step with the times. He just desperately prayed that he wouldn’t die before receiving a new uniform.

“Fire! We can’t let those Imperial bastards break through here!”

Bang! Bang bang!

The French soldiers fired their machine guns incessantly, to the point where they felt like the barrels would burst.

But the number of Imperial soldiers charging towards the French position was greater than the bullets the French soldiers were firing. The wave of Imperial soldiers eventually overflowed into the French trenches.

But the hell wasn’t over yet. No. Rather, now was the real beginning of hell.

“Die! Die! Die! You damn frog bastards! Just die!”

Behind the legacies of modern civilization – machine guns, barbed wire, and trench lines – appeared the medieval weapons of murder: entrenching tools, clubs, and bayonets.

Inside the trenches, they stabbed each other’s hearts with bayonets, crushed each other’s heads with entrenching tools, and mangled each other’s torsos with clubs.

Not for the great victory of their country, but to survive this battle.

It was no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Battle of Verdun depended on the Imperial army’s crossing of the Meuse River.

The Meuse River was a long river that ran through eastern France, along the Verdun front. If the Meuse River was breached, the rear of the fortress area located in Verdun would be exposed.

In other words, if the Imperial army succeeded in crossing the Meuse River, they could strike the rear of Verdun to their heart’s content. On the other hand, if the French army prevented the Imperial army from crossing the Meuse River, they could safely defend Verdun.

Both sides were doing everything in their power to cross the Meuse River, and to prevent that crossing.

Of course, the Imperial army once again presented a new card to the French army, who were digging in.

Although the Teutonic Knights had shown outstanding performance in the Battle of Rome and the Battle of Warsaw, they had revealed their limitations in the Siege of Warsaw Royal Palace.

Their small numbers and lack of firepower had tripped them up.

But the Imperial army was completely captivated by the Teutonic Knights’ overwhelming breakthrough power and mobility.

The Imperial army soon created a new branch of service that maximized the strengths of the Teutonic Knights and minimized their weaknesses. That was the ‘Assault Detachment,’ or what they called ‘Stormtroopers’ in the Imperial language.

“Charge! Charge!”

The Stormtroopers charged towards the French trench lines through the thick poison gas and shelling. The French soldiers belatedly noticed the presence of the enemies that had entered their field of vision and aimed their sights, but it was already too late.

Clang.

They lowered their gaze. An object that looked like a cylinder attached to the end of a stick had fallen to the ground. And they knew very well what this object was called.

“A, a grenade-!!”

BOOOOOOOOM!!

One firing position was gloriously annihilated along with the young Frenchmen hiding inside.

And the Stormtroopers entered that firing position. The French soldiers hurriedly began to move to drive out the Imperial soldiers who had entered their trench lines, but what came into their eyes was a very familiar object.

An object they had seen dozens, hundreds of times while they were attacking the Roman walls. A machine gun.

The Imperial army’s high command was already aware of the need to lighten the machine guns.

While the French army’s shelling continued, the Imperial soldiers hid in bunkers. But it was impossible to carry a 100kg machine gun into a bunker. In the end, most of the machine guns were left where they were.

The Imperial army’s high command thought that the soldiers’ actions were not spirited at all! But the high command had no intention of making the impossible possible. They knew how much that would undermine morale and reduce work efficiency.

That’s why they created a machine gun that was ‘possible’ to carry around.

That was the MG08/15, the world’s first light machine gun, also known as the ‘not-so-light light machine gun.’

But not being light also meant that its firepower was comparable to the original MG08 heavy machine gun.

It reigned as a god of death in this hellish trench.

The Stormtroopers advanced, trampling the enemies with ‘firepower’ that was unbelievable for infantry.

One French soldier thought as he grew colder from the machine gun fire. They’re not living people, but machines born for slaughter. He was dying by a machine.

The defense line of the French Republic army that had been formed near the Meuse River had literally collapsed.

The rear of Verdun was exposed.

And the Imperial army’s specialty was always demonstrated in the wide-open defense line.

“Charge! Charge! We’ll sleep after cutting off Verdun’s supply lines! Charge quickly!”

A near-miraculous mobile warfare that struck the rear of the French army hard. In the end, the French soldiers in Verdun had their rear supply lines taken away before they could even do anything.

“Ha…”

The French army had reached its limit. They no longer had the leeway to continue resisting.

Even their rear supply lines had been taken away by the Imperial army, so all that was left was to slowly wither away or obediently surrender to the enemy.

Philippe Pétain, the commander-in-chief of the French 6th Army defending Verdun, sent the following message to the French Ministry of War.

“Verdun is lacking in everything right now. The soldiers lack ammunition, clothes to wear, food to eat, and even soldiers themselves. Our 6th Army can’t last more than three days.”

The French army’s high command’s response to Pétain’s words was as follows.

“There can be no surrender. The soldiers will fight to the end. If possible, defend the reduced fortress with the soldiers who can still fight. The courage and tenacity of the soldiers who saved France and defended the fortress provided an opportunity to build a new front and launch a counterattack. Therefore, the 6th Army has made a truly great historical contribution to the history of France.”

A clear refusal. Even in the midst of that, the situation of the French army in Verdun was falling further and further into that dirty quagmire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The Imperial army’s shelling continued towards the Verdun fortress line. This time, not from one side, but from four sides.

There was no blind spot in Verdun where they could hide from the Imperial army’s shelling. The only fortunate thing was that the Imperial army was not taking an active offensive.

They hated taking damage to the extreme, so they were just firing shells at the French fortress from afar. Of course, the sturdy concrete bunkers helped them withstand the Imperial army’s shelling.

But if the goal of the shelling was to collapse the French army’s will to resist rather than to destroy the defense line, then the Imperial army had very successfully carried out their mission. Soldiers whose minds had collapsed or gone mad even began to appear.

De Gaulle was one of those officers. He had recently come to realize, to the point of being sick of it, what it meant for a human to be pushed to their limits.

‘Damn it…’

He hated defeatists. He thought they were disgusting people who ruined the country. But when he was cornered, he could understand the feelings of the defeatists. To the point of being sick of it.

He walked to the basement where Commander Pétain was staying. The reason was to suggest that he surrender.

Creak. He opened the tightly closed iron door.

The stench of uncleaned, disgusting filth spread out.

Unfortunately, it was impossible for the current French soldiers to clean up the dirty filth. The moment they went outside the bunker to throw away the filth, they would be turned into finely chopped fertilizer by snipers and stray shells.

“Commander.”

“Ah, yes. Your name is… De Gaulle, wasn’t it?”

Pétain, who was scribbling something in a corner of the bunker, looked up when he heard his voice.

His eyes were like his own, those of a defeatist.

“…Colonel De Gaulle. I have come to suggest surrendering to the Imperial army.”

Further resistance is impossible. He didn’t want to say these words. He hated it to the point of being sick of it. But… he had to admit it now.

“Further resistance is meaningless… We have… lost.”

“…”

A brief silence followed. Soon, Pétain opened his mouth.

“Well, if we’ve done this much, the Ministry of War guys will understand, right? Don’t you think?”

“Heh.”

A slight laugh escaped at Pétain’s joke.

“Yes. Maybe if we’ve done this much, the Ministry of War guys will understand.”

And so, the fortress city that boasted of being impregnable, Verdun, surrendered.