-the angry people-

The cry echoed throughout France.

"Do you hear the voices of the angry ones---!?"

　It wasn't any one person in particular, but all the people who were angry at the incompetent government who had finally spoken out.

　None of them thought they could become heroes. They simply broke away from the resignation and cynicism that had covered the nation under the guise of perseverance, and took action to improve their own lives and the lives of their neighbors, even if only just a little.

　However, that small expression of anger soon became a huge wave that swept across France.

　**

　News of the widespread popular uprisings throughout France quickly reached the court in Petrograd.

"Another riot?"

"No, Your Majesty, it's almost a revolution."

　That was the only answer that Mikhail Alexeyev, the chief of staff who reported to Nicholas II, had to give. That was how terrible the situation in France was.

　The city of Paris withstood the German attacks, with 60% of the city occupied and countless soldiers and civilians killed, but when the army decided to launch a large-scale offensive, some units, where war-weariness was widespread, began to refuse orders.

Fearing that this decline in morale would spread to the entire army, Marshal Pétain and other senior officers court-martialed the soldiers who had disobeyed orders and sentenced them to death for desertion before the enemy.

　However, this only added fuel to the fire of discontent among the soldiers on the front lines. Upon hearing the rumors, the soldiers on the front lines exploded with pent-up frustration, storming the military prison, the military headquarters, and the armory in an attempt to rescue their comrades, and barricading themselves in front of Paris City Hall together with other citizens who were also dissatisfied with the government.

　The French government in Bordeaux was alarmed and quickly sent another division to put down the soldiers' uprising, but the soldiers shot their officers, deserted, and began joining the rebels in Paris.

　The next day, more troops joined the rebellion, bringing the size of the rebel army to tens of thousands, and by the start of the next week, 50 of the French army's 110 divisions had joined the rebellion.

　The following month, revolutions began in other cities, and strikes broke out even in units that had not taken part in the revolt, as the entire military was aligning itself with the Paris Commune of 1917.

"France is always having revolutions..."

　As a fellow revolutionary, one can feel a sense of sympathy for him, but at the same time, Stalin is troubled by the fact that the French Revolution, the second of its kind, occurred at the worst possible time.

(Could it be that France in this world is in the same position as Russia in my previous life...?)

　To be honest, it is hard to imagine that the exhausted French government could suppress such a large-scale rebellion while fighting the German army.

Furthermore, according to spies' reports, the German army immediately relaxed its siege of Paris and began an organized retreat, resulting in the Paris Commune receiving a large amount of "German weapons and ammunition that had been abandoned during the retreat." This was an unusual timing no matter how you look at it.

"...France will perish."

　Right at the beginning of the film, Nicholas casually drops a bombshell at a military council. The outbreak of the August Revolution in France has reached the ears of the military leaders present, but that's not all.

　The German army was gradually stepping up its attacks around Paris, where the revolution had broken out, while at the same time launching large-scale attacks on areas such as Verdun, which was still barely under the command of French government forces, steadily pressuring France to surrender.

　**

"It seems that the German army has used new tactics to break through the Verdun fortress. The trench lines built by the Allied forces have been breached."

　Although the details of the situation are not yet known, the use of many new weapons and tactics appears to have caused great confusion among both the British and French armies.

In addition, to coincide with this offensive, the German army deployed new weapons such as approximately 10,000 MP18s, the first submachine gun in history, 20 A7V tanks, the first German tanks, and the Paris Gun, a giant railway gun.

　The MP18 is a newly developed firearm as the main weapon of assault infantrymen responsible for infiltration tactics.

　The MP18, also known as a "submachine gun," is a weapon capable of firing pistol bullets in rapid succession. It is much lighter and easier to handle than a machine gun, and has much higher firepower than a rifle or pistol, making it the forerunner of later assault rifles.

　It was assumed that if shock troops, supported by artillery and machine gun diversionary fire, could sprint up to the enemy lines and close in on them, the MP18, which fired short-range pistol rounds, would be able to provide sufficient suppressive firepower, and that when combined with thrown grenades, they would be able to effectively suppress enemy machine guns.

　The German army formed new "assault battalions" made up of soldiers armed with the MP18 and deployed them on a large scale.

　That's not all.

　The A7V assault tank was developed to support the assault battalions and was tasked with breaking through stalemated trench lines.

　Its armor was twice as thick as that of the British diamond tanks and nearly four times thicker than the light tanks used by the Russians in the Romanian campaign, and it was said that it could even deflect bullets, let alone infantry guns. Of course, its mobility was very poor, but it was one of the best solutions for trench warfare in the west.

　The Paris Cannon, also known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Cannon, was the largest cannon in the world at the time and plunged the French people into terror.

　A shell weighing nearly 100 kg fired from a caliber of over 200 mm could reach an altitude of 40,000 m, achieving an astounding range of 130 km.

"...annoying"

　As he listened to the report, Tsar Nicholas's face visibly began to twitch, because most of these new weapons were "due to be deployed in the Russian army in the future."

(Could it be that a spy is leaking secret information about our military to Germany...?)

　Although he did not say it aloud, Nicholas II looked around at each of the generals gathered there, as if appraising them.

(Ah, it's started again...)

　Seeing her father sulking like a child who had his toy taken away, Tatiana sighed in half exasperation, "Not again." Being cautious is a virtue, but at this point it was a kind of paranoia. Or rather, it was childish.

　Wanting to deal with the issue before it becomes a nuisance to those around her, Tatiana changes the subject by asking a question.

"After analyzing the fragmented information that was being sent to us, it appears that the enemy had withdrawn troops from the Paris area and deployed them at Reims, a key transportation point between Paris and Verdun, and then made a sudden breakthrough from there, dividing up the French army and defeating them piece by piece."

　The tactics used in the German offensive were what would become widely known as "infiltration tactics."

　This was a tactic aimed at psychological shock through surprise attacks, rather than physical destruction through long-range artillery fire and successive charges.

　They would launch short artillery bombardments, infiltrate shock troops into weak spots, and attack command and supply areas and the areas surrounding strong points of resistance - thus destroying isolated positions with their more heavily armed infantry.

　With the help of new weapons such as the A7V tank, the Germans were able to take the impregnable fortress of Verdun in a week. The Germans broke through from Reims and struck the French forces at Verdun and Alsace-Lorraine in a counterclockwise direction, while at the same time launching an offensive from the German side of Alsace-Lorraine, surrounding and annihilating the French forces.

As a result, nearly a third of the French army was surrounded, and coupled with a long-standing war-weariness and distrust of their superiors, the morale of the soldiers was so low that they surrendered with almost no resistance.

　At this point, the French army no longer had any reserve forces to fill the gaps in their broken front lines, and they were so busy dealing with the Communes that had broken out all over the country in the wake of the Paris Commune that they no longer had the strength to resist the German army.

　Finally, on March 24th, the government of the French Third Republic in Bordeaux decided to make peace with the Central Powers and entered into ceasefire negotiations.