Turn 154-162
(ooc: due to some health issues I have been forced to keep my typing down to a minimum, so I will have to add up a few turns now. Unfortunately some turns I have also forgotten to take screenshots).
The war with Austria moves back and forth, and the Austrians prove to be a though foe. The French troops take alot of losses, and our economy has to be completely reworked for this war. We decide to max out our dole payments to increase morale, and we also increase our draft rate and tax rate. In the end we manage to make a surplus of some 20 NM per turn, but that only means that we are able to engage in a large battle every 20 turns or so as the Austrians tend to win these fights.
After some initial confusion, Russia, The Ottoman Empire and France finally manage to work as allies, and every move is debated before it is executed, but nevertheless some confusion still exists, but things are working far better than before. The Russians keep advancing in the east, the Ottoman Empire stabs at the Austrian underbelly, and France grabs what we can in the west.
However bringing down the Austrian armies are not easy, and as of last turn the Austrians still mustered 300.000 men. The situation was that both Russia and France was two provinces away from Vienna with their main forces and Austria had all her forces in Vienna. The Russians expressed some worries that the Austrians might strike at her, but I said that France would be a more likely target due to the Russian NM being a comfertable 600 while French NM was around 0, meaning that the Austrians might knock France out of the war with a huge victory.
And they went for it, you knew it when you read the last sentence, did you not?
Well, it backfired! 300.000 Austrian soldiers fled before the 175.000 French troops after battle was initiated, losing 2.5:1 in troops, and one infantry division even surrendered. The best part of it all, was the direction in which Austria retreated.
And the fact that since most of Austria is occupied, she will have a hard time bringing her forces back up to strenght. While Austria lost something I estimate to 4 month worth of reinforcements, France only lost 1 month worth.
Seing the last battle, plans were made up by the alliance, and we are now going to keep harassing the Austrian forces, to make them attack on every turn, and those turns they do not attack, we will. Hopefully we will be able to bring down the Austrian divisions to a size where they simply will not be able to function very well.
At the moment I feel like a wolf who keeps slashing at the hind legs of that sickly, bleeding deer...
