On Sunday, September 27, 1914, a fleet of seven Zeppelin airships appeared above Paris at noon. Due to repeated air strikes by German bombers recently, the defense forces in the French capital took some initial air defense measures. The fire alarm bells and church bells sounded together, and the radio speakers urged the people to leave the congested apartments, residences and churches, and evacuated to nearby parks, cannons, river beaches and other pre-demarcated refuges. The rapid-fire cannons and cannons temporarily converted into air defense weapons rushed to fire. Before the bombs of the German airship fell, the entire Paris city was already as lively as a pot of boiled soup.

The majestic German air fleet obviously expected that the French would invest air defense weapons with larger calibers than machine guns and machine guns. All airships flew at an altitude of more than five thousand meters, which far exceeded the effective air range of French guns and cannons. The shells using delayed fuses continued to bloom in the air, but failed to shoot down even a German airship.

After the French artillery had almost done it, the Zeppelin airship group began to drop bombs. It was only more than 200 kilometers from the airship base in western Germany to Paris. It was a good weather that day, and each airship was carrying as many bombs as possible. The hit error of high-altitude bombing was astonishingly large. The bombs dropped at the Plaza de Concorde might fall to the Pangbo Palace on the opposite bank of the Seine, but these German airships themselves were a terrible psychological bomb. Large bombs with a single weight of three to four hundred kilograms fell from a height of five to six thousand meters, and the impact force when they arrived at the ground was no less than that of the main guns of the dreadnought. The whole Paris was trembling in the shocking explosions of energy. The buildings collapsed one after another, and countless glass windows shattered in an instant, and the spiritual defense lines of the Parisian military and civilians suffered an unprecedented blow...

As the Battle of Marne came to an end, hundreds of thousands of German troops gathered towards Paris along various roads. German aircraft and airships began to frequently invade Paris airspace, reconnaissance the deployment of French troops, attack French baggage vehicles, and repeatedly confronted the Allied fighter jets that took off. Just as the huge Zeppelin fleet bombed Paris, several inconspicuous Albatros B-type combat reconnaissance aircraft flew over Damartan-Pontu at a low altitude.

The French defense line on the front line of Watz-Leziland-Great Nouisi. Faced with the machine guns and machine gun shooting of French infantry, German pilots were flying planes calmly and skillfully, and flexibly shuttled and freely over the French positions. In recent days, they found that the French front was dusty everywhere, and countless soldiers and civilians were working hard like ants. In front of the original trench position, a wide and deep trench was gradually taking shape.

The trenches used for defense have existed since ancient times. They can withstand the impact of cavalry and obstruct the invasion of infantry. Some trenches are dug around the city, and some run across the battlefield, which can be inserted into sharp spikes and can be poured into water. It is an easy-to-operate and versatile defensive weapon. German pilots always report the battlefield situation they have reconnaissance to their superiors at the first time, but conventional military reconnaissance cannot see all the enemy's deployments. Before the Battle of the Marne River ended, the French senior officials issued an unusual order to the naval fleet. In accordance with this command, French naval officers and soldiers dismantled 1,200 m1877 five-barrel rapid-fire cannons, 2,000 qf1 type Maxim machine guns and 500 other models of small-caliber rapid-fire cannons.

These rapid-fire weapons produced in different eras have one common feature, that is, they use 37mm caliber Hatchaccis shells, which can penetrate thin steel plates or cause fatal damage to targets without armor protection. This type of rotary gun, machine gun, was widely used by British, French and other navies since the late 19th century, and were equipped on surface ships to resist the attack of torpedo boats. The reason why the army was less equipped before was only because the generals of the army thought that this weapon had a speed of fire and was too high to deal with enemy infantry, the cost of Hatchaccis shells was much more expensive than that of ordinary machine gun bullets.

During the days when the British and French coalition forces retreated from the Marne River front to Paris, hundreds of naval rapid-fire guns arrived in Paris from southern France and were deployed to various strongholds on the Paris defense line of the Greater Paris. The trenches and machine guns became the hope of the French team to resist the German offensive. The French troops stationed in Mocheng got 36 QF1s. This automatic weapon designed by Maxim adopts the principle of short barrel recession like the Maxim machine gun, with a rate of fire of 400 rounds per minute and a maximum range of 4,000 meters. However, on the Mocheng defense line, the Maxim machine guns in the hands of French soldiers had no time to play their role, and their positions were destroyed by the devastating German artillery bombardment. Almost all machine guns were lost to the frontier positions, resulting in the retreating troops having no weapons to fight against the German tank troops.

The news of the fall of Mocheng was still talked about by the German people. The German 5th Corps and Marines attacking Paris successively tasted the power of the French new defense combination. The former advance troops attacked the French defense line in Villeparisi, which was only more than 20 kilometers away from Paris, did not rush to attack the French defense line in front of the position, and laid barbed wire fences behind the trenches, and deployed small-caliber rapid-fire cannons in front of the trenches. The naval chariots that launched the charge were either destroyed and injured or blocked by the trenches. The war horses of the German lances could jump through such trenches, but could not pass through the interception of barbed wire fences and enemy guns and bullets. Without the support of chariots and cavalry, it was difficult to break through such defense lines by infantry alone.

Crown Prince William's troops had a terrifying number of field artillery and heavy artillery troops to support the battle. The German 1st Marine Division, who rushed from Amiens to Paris, did not have such resources. The 3rd Marine Brigade fought for two days and struggled to break through the Melu defense line, which was defended by six French infantry regiments and two artillery regiments, with more than 3,000 troops in the battle. The naval infantry gritted their teeth and continued to advance. They were once again stubbornly blocked by the French army in a tributary of the Seine River, and had to stop and wait for reinforcements. At this time, the end of the Battle of the Marine River caused a large number of troops from the stalemate Marine Army.

The river battlefield was liberated, and the 9th Cavalry Division, the 14th Infantry Division, the 40th Infantry Division and the heavy artillery group belonging to the Cluke Legion were ordered to rush to assist the northern front. The cavalry and infantry troops first arrived in Aras by train, rested there, supplemented the reserve troops and weapons and equipment, and then took the train to Amiens. The heavy artillery group was transported directly to Amiens via the railway line. At this time, the railway line from Amiens to Beauve was opened to traffic. The next journey required soldiers to march on foot, and artillery transportation also changed to the traditional means of livestock dragging and pulling and pulling.

On September 28, the German Army and Navy gathered 18,000 soldiers, 143 field artillery and 16 chariots on the banks of the Oise River. Inspired by the long-cherished wish to attack Paris, the German soldiers who were haggard and tired of fighting marchs were cheered up and resolutely launched an attack on the French positions, and soon took the French positions on the north bank of the Oise River. At this time, the French had already blown up all the bridges on the river, and then relied on the position fortifications built on the south bank of the river to resist the German attack. The German crossing troops encountered fierce fire from the French artillery fire. The 12 naval chariots that were put into battle lost 7. The surviving chariot crew mentioned in the report that their chariots were penetrated with frontal armor when two to three hundred meters away from the French positions, resulting in some of the crew members on the car casualties on the spot.

When he learned of the failure of the attack, Xia Shu had just followed the 1st Marine Division command to Melu, which was only ten kilometers away from the battlefield. Earlier, he received a letter from Crown William, in which his brother mentioned the nails encountered by the 5th Corps in Villeparisi. Crown William's staff officers carefully studied the aerial reconnaissance report and found that the French were far from being able to complete such a standard fortification on the entire front line defending Paris, so he temporarily suspended the frontal attack on the French position, and dispatched two infantry divisions to move north to find a weak position in the French defense to make a breakthrough. At the same time, the German artillery group that almost razed Mocheng to the ground also advanced to Villeparisi one after another. Just when enough ammunition supplies arrived, they could use destructive artillery fire to split a passage on the French defense line again.

Under the heavy pressure of life and death, the French suddenly realized the essence of trench warfare and put it into practice at an urgent speed. Xia Shu was not very surprised. He did not have to worry that this classic defense method would drag the war to the abyss of attrition, because the chariot factory of the Friedrich Shipyard was producing naval chariots day and night, and a large number of personnel with vehicle driving or artillery control skills could go to the front line in just one week of assault training. As long as the artillery, infantry and chariot troops were properly cooperated, no matter how wide the trench was, it would not be able to stop the German team from advancing into Paris.

"The officers and soldiers are all exhausted, why don't we wait patiently for a few days to gather the equipment before attacking?" Xia Shu wrote in a reply letter to Crown Prince William. The equipment he mentioned is similar to the equipment used by the engineering troops to set up floating bridges. The key question is how to pass through the battlefield covered by enemy gunfire and transport these equipment to the trench.
Chapter completed!