Chapter 747 Collapse of the Defensive Line (Part 3)

This led to Serbia’s army being mostly equipped with weapons exported from other countries, primarily from Russia and the United Kingdom.

Due to the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary, relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary rapidly deteriorated.

This is also why Serbia purchased weapons and equipment from Russia and the United Kingdom; they needed to assemble a certain number of troops to defend against Austria-Hungary.

Due to their shared Slavic heritage, Serbia eventually aligned with Russia.

This also resulted in most of Serbia’s army using Russian weapons and equipment, with the Russians generously selling their army’s rifles to the Serbians.

However, it was obvious that the rifles used by the Russian army were much more outdated compared to those used by Spain.

As soon as breech-loading guns were invented, Spain became one of the first to adopt them. With the subsequent invention of smokeless powder, Spain once again became a leader, making its weaponry among the best in Europe, highly favored by other countries.

During the previous Russian-Turkish War, Russia purchased a large batch of weapons and equipment from Spain through population trade.

They had experienced the performance of Spanish weapons, and their ally Serbia was just experiencing it in a different way.

This skirmish lasted about three hours, ultimately ending in a total rout of the Serbian army.

Austria-Hungary had prepared thoroughly for this attack, not only leading Serbia in terms of rifles but also overwhelmingly in terms of artillery numbers.

Originally experienced only in fighting the Ottoman army, the Serbians had never felt such overwhelming artillery suppression.

After less than three hours, the morale of the Serbian army was already unsustainable.

Ultimately, casualties on both sides of this skirmish exceeded ten thousand.

Due to Austria-Hungary relying on the city’s defenses, their casualties were actually lower than those of the Serbian army.

After this battle, the Serbian army of 35,000 was left with less than 30,000 troops capable of fighting.

In comparison, Austria-Hungary’s casualties were better than Serbia’s, with still over 47,000 able to continue into the next battle.

After leaving behind a portion of their forces, the Austria-Hungary troops pressed on without hesitation, heading southeast towards Valjevo.

At this moment, the Serbian army had just faced a rout, not anticipating that Austria-Hungary’s counterattack would be so swift. They were even more surprised that Austria-Hungary did not advance towards Belgrade but rather towards the more southern Valjevo.

At this time, Serbia’s total population was only about 2.7 million.

After the war broke out, the Serbian government issued a general mobilization order, expanding its army to about 100,000.

100,000 troops are quite a lot for a Serbia with a population of less than 3 million, but for Austria-Hungary with tens of millions of people, this scale of the army is clearly insufficient.

Despite fighting on two fronts, Austria-Hungary has deployed troops numbering 150,000 to the southern battlefield; this is even after subtracting the numbers due to continuous combat and casualties.

On the Serbian side, although still continuously mobilizing, the pool of mobilizable troops is continuously shrinking.

After all, Serbia is only a country with a population of 2.7 million, at best capable of mobilizing up to 300,000 troops under extreme mobilization conditions.

However, extreme mobilization would severely impact the country’s civil production, industrial economy, agriculture, and virtually every sector.

If Serbia truly did this, even if they win the war, post-victory Serbia is destined not to rise again.

At this time, the Serbian government is still relatively rational, having set their mobilization limit at only 150,000.

This means that once Serbia mobilizes 150,000 troops, they will have difficulty mobilizing additional forces.

Currently, after a month and a half of general mobilization, Serbia still retains close to 100,000 combatants.

But the cost paid for this is the mobilization capacity of 150,000 is nearly full, with tens of thousands of wounded soldiers lying in hospitals in the rear.

Thus far, over ten thousand soldiers have died in this war, and nearly ten thousand severely wounded soldiers lie in hospitals, half-dead. Among them, more than half have yet to escape life-threatening situations, their survival left to fate.

Even if the war stops now, Serbia’s population loss exceeds 20,000. This indicates that Serbia is likely to experience its first year of net population decline since independence.

Moreover, this is not an elderly population decline but a reduction of the young and strong population. Such a population decline is significant, affecting not just the next few years, but possibly the next decades of development.

Serbia, though still maintaining an army of 100,000, has to use nearly half to protect the capital, Belgrade.

This is the downside of having the capital located at the frontier; it requires a significant portion of forces to ensure the capital’s safety.

The importance of the capital goes without saying; once the capital is breached, the nation could fall.

After subtracting half, Serbia has only 50,000 deployable troops.

From these 50,000, some must be reserved as backup forces, dispatched quickly to any breached defense line to seal the gap, preventing complete line collapse.

Simply put, these 35,000 troops are nearly Serbia’s last deployable forces.

The remaining forces are either defending the northern border or the western border, with none available for reassignment.

The direction of retreat for these 35,000 troops is eastward, as they must ensure the capital’s safety. This essentially opens a significant gap for Austria-Hungary’s forces, allowing them to march towards their destination Valjevo unimpeded.