Start 1861: I Just Inherited the Dutch Throne

Time goes back 2 days.

On November 23, 1869, the Prussian First Army and the Second Army swept in from the southeast, north, and west, and surrounded the entire Reims where Napoleon III was located.

And used artillery for bombardment. Seeing that the situation was not good, Napoleon III immediately backed down. He handed the marshal's seal to General Bourbaki, commander of the Royal Guards of France, and prepared to flee westward in a carriage.

On November 24, Radmiro, the temporary commander of the 4th and 5th Corps, the remaining main force of the Metz Army on the Chaumont side, was surrounded by the Prussian army in the fortress of Chaumont, and was unable to resist.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Napoleon III fled to the west with an army of 100,000 in the direction of Paris. However, less than ten minutes after leaving Reims, they encountered the 150,000 Prussian Army of the Second Army of Prince Karl of the Prussian Army.

At this time, he had to retreat to Reims City, so he could only watch helplessly as the 2nd and 3rd Prussian Army Corps except Prince Karl immediately assembled towards Reims City.

On November 25, 1869, the Battle of Reims began. The Prussian army's 700 cannons bombarded the Reims military camp, and the artillery shells fell like raindrops on the French positions. The whole city of Reims was in flames and filled with gunpowder smoke. Napoleon III's hundreds of thousands of French troops suffered numerous casualties. The rest hurriedly got into the fortress. Napoleon III took the lead and tried to boost morale, but was also injured several times.

Then more than 250,000 Prussian troops launched a fierce attack on Reims. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the French army finally could no longer hold on and raised the white flag in the city of Reims. By this time, Napoleon III already knew what he was going to face. ending.

So at 5 pm in 1869, with a heavy heart and stiff hands, Napoleon III wrote a letter of surrender to King William I of Prussia. But what he didn't know at this time was that this letter of surrender turned out to be his fig leaf. .

What Napoleon III did not expect was that that night, the telegraph machines of major newspapers around the world received telegrams from the Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the content of which was the surrender letter of Napoleon III.

"My dear brother, because I am not in my army, I have to dedicate my vision to Your Majesty. I hope to continue to be Your Majesty's good brother, Napoleon"

But at this time, Napoleon III could no longer care about so much. On November 26, 1869, Napoleon III went to Verdun, which was occupied by the Prussian army, and met with Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck who arrived there. They formally signed a letter of surrender. Napoleon III and his subordinates All 39 generals and 110,000 soldiers were captured by the Prussian army. 650 French cannons were also captured by Prussian troops.

On November 27, 1869, Napoleon III sent a telegram to Paris in front of Bismarck at Verdun. The content of the telegram was: "The Eastern Army has been defeated, and all officers and soldiers and myself have become prisoners."

On November 27, 1869, when Napoleon III's telegram was reprinted by various countries, William IV, on his way back, arrived at Bielefeld, a city in the eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia in the west of the Kingdom of Prussia.

North Rhine-Westphalia used to be the province of Gelderland in the eastern part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. As long as he left North Rhine, William IV's return journey was complete.

At this time, Napoleon III was captured and the telegram of surrender was sent out, which shocked the world.

William IV keenly pointed out and criticized Napoleon III's failure: "If Napoleon III does not surrender the entire French Empire to the invaders, and does not want to be trapped in a place where he will soon be forced to surrender, he should start from He immediately retreated from Metz at the beginning of the war, and then his command remained in place, missing many good comeback opportunities."

"Secondly, and more directly, McMahon violated the basic principle of making a scumbag cry and chose the wrong route of detouring around the border city of Sedan to rescue Lorraine and Alsace. Based on the actual battlefield conditions at the time, Mao Zedong For Kermahon, the shortest, fastest and most reliable route to Lorraine is to go directly through the Prussian Third Army. Of course, doing so requires a keen strategic vision and the courage and courage to defeat a strong enemy, but he Mike Ma Hong lacked the necessary qualities in both aspects, so he had to take the road of being annihilated in Sedan.

Sedan is a small place, only 8 kilometers from the Belgian border to the north, and to the west and southwest is the Meas River. During the battle, more than 100,000 French troops were attacked from all sides by the Prussian army, and finally they were squeezed. In an arc-shaped zone with a depth and frontage of only three or four kilometers, it is impossible to maneuver, and it is difficult to carry out appropriate deployment. In this way, the losses caused by the Prussian army concentrating only a few hundred points of artillery for shelling were enough to make the French army unable to If you continue to support it, you will eventually be destroyed.

Napoleon III hid in Reims and did not learn his lesson. He also used McMahon's fighting methods, making Reims now as inferior as Sedan."

Nicholas Pierson, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, could no longer maintain his composure at this time and said with a shocked face: "Your Majesty, Bismarck actually treated His Majesty Napoleon III in a humiliating way. The situation in Paris will definitely escalate because of this." There are huge waves, and the situation in France may have a negative impact on the Netherlands. I am afraid that the Netherlands will be affected by that time.”

Cantur, director of the Dutch National Security Council and Atlantic Affairs Coordinator, shook his head and said: "Don't worry, we need to worry more about how much power the aristocracy can still control in the domestic power struggle in France."

Nicholas Pearson looked at Cantur in confusion.

As the head of William IV's most important think tank in the past decade, Cantur leads William IV's brain team. It can be said that most of His Majesty William IV's instructions were discussed and formulated by them before His Majesty began to communicate with the cabinet government and the military.

Cantur’s influence is evident.

Moreover, everyone has seen the prosperity of the Netherlands in the past ten years, and his think tank has played an important role.

No one would underestimate the king's top chief of staff who thought he had decision-making power.

After getting the nod from William IV, Cantur revealed a shocking truth. It turned out that due to the extremely uneven domestic development of the French Empire in recent years, aristocratic forces and bourgeois-class forces had fought many times. , look at the current war between France and Prussia. The south is almost calm, but the north is in full swing.

It turns out that as early as the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, the southern property owners had taken a sit-and-see approach to Napoleon III's dispatch of troops. At this time, the internal affairs of France's enemy country were being squeezed by two major forces.

Cantur said: "To the west of the entire diagonal straight line, which is mainly Saint-Quentin-Paris-Bourge-Orléans-Chateauroux-Poitiers-Niort-La Rochelle, is Napoleon III. Government regent including Queen Eugenie.

From Chalons-Chateauroux-Poitiers-Niort-La Rochelle to the south, it is now controlled by various factions in France. "