Reincarnated: Vive La France

The mist hung low over the Monte de la Peña. Dawn hadn't broken yet, but the Francoist lines were already awake.

The sound of shovels scraping into rock rang up and down the ridge.

Men packed sandbags into makeshift shield.

If they came, they'd come from there.

Captain Domínguez wiped sweat from his brow. "Artillery on the west slope, now. We don't get second chances."

A conscript hesitated beside him. "But we've only got four shells."

Domínguez turned. "Then you make every one sing like opera."

Below them noise came.

Not a single engine, many.

Rolling.

One soldier whispered, "That's armor."

The captain didn't speak.

He just stared into the haze and reached for his binoculars.

Minutes passed.

Then the French emerged.

Not in a rush.

Not even spread out.

They advanced like they'd done it a hundred times.

Trucks in formation, infantry dismounting in synchronized groups, light tanks flanking behind cover.

No shouting.

No rush.

Domínguez barked, "Hold. Wait for the signal. Wait."

The fog parted just enough to see the first ranks.

Green coats.

Helmets glinting.

"Now!"

A single mortar fired.

It whistled, hit ten meters wide.

The second hit closer.

Screams rose.

The French didn't break stride.

They deployed smokescreens instantly white fog over gray hills.

Then came return fire. Precise, short bursts.

Their howitzers came into position behind cover and lobbed shells in a tight arc.

Every ten seconds, another landed.

A line of Nationalists in the forward trench were thrown backwards, limbs twisted, rifles flying.

"Fall back to the second trench!"

But there wasn't time.

Flamethrowers swept the edge of the ridge, clearing out machine gun nests.

The heat roared across the hillside.

Domínguez saw one of his gunners stand up, hands on fire, before collapsing into the ditch.

Within twenty minutes.

French infantry had encircled the hill.

A voice called in Spanish:

"Drop your weapons. We will not fire unless fired upon. The hill is lost. There is no shame in surviving."

Some threw their rifles.

Others ran.

Domínguez stayed.

A grenade landed two feet from him.

He didn't move.

When the dust settled, French troops moved up.

A radio operator set up.

"Monte de la Peña secured. Casualties light. Prisoners in transit."

One soldier looked at the broken Spanish trench system.

"This isn't a battlefield. This is a museum."

Elsewhere, French momentum continued.

South of Huesca, armored recon groups rolled along the roads, fanned out to nearby villages.

A lieutenant ordered house-by-house sweeps.

No looting.

No aggression.

Just control.

One town had its streets cleared by civilians before the French even arrived.

Children ran ahead of the trucks, pointing toward buildings where Franco's men had fled.

A shopkeeper waved a tricolor flag from a window.

It looked hand-stitched.

Lieutenant Hadj Ben-Kacem stepped down from his carrier and nodded.

"Secure water access. Check the train depot. Get those civilians medical aid if they need it."

A corporal grinned. "Sir, no one's shooting at us."

"That's why we keep moving."

At Sangarrén, a Francoist battalion about 600 strong waited behind hastily dug-in positions.

They hadn't fired a shot yet.

Across the field, French artillery gave three warning shots, deliberately wide.

Then a voice came from a radio tower the French had set up in the hills.

"This is not the end of Spain. It's the end of tyrants. Lay down arms. Let this end here."

The battalion commander paced behind his men, shouting.

"Hold! Anyone who drops a weapon gets shot in the back!"

But his soldiers looked at one another.

Looked at the precision with which the French moved.

The quality of their weapons.

The lack of panic.

The organization.

A private dropped his rifle first.

Then another.

Then the machine gun crew.

Within five minutes, the entire line stood with their hands up.

The commander stood alone.

He turned, fired one shot into the dirt, and walked back into the trees.

He never returned.

In Burgos, Franco leaned over a map littered with red circles.

"They haven't taken much ground," he said.

"But what they've taken," his chief of staff replied, "they fortify immediately. They're turning villages into depots. Hills into forts."

"We still have men."

"Yes. And they're starting to question the cause."

Franco pointed to the southern rail line. "Recall the Andalusian reserves. Send them to the Navarre sector."

"We're stretched thin already."

"Then stretch thinner. If we don't stop them now, we won't stop them at all."

He paused. "Where are the Italians?"

"In Rome. Watching."

Franco looked away. "And Berlin?"

"Still silent."

Franco gripped the map edge so tightly it ripped under his fingers.

A counter-attack was attempted east of Barbastro.

Three companies, hastily armed, flanked by two trucks of mortars, pushed north.

They ran straight into a French defense grid that had already mapped the approach.

Spotter planes had seen the dust cloud two hours earlier.

When the Francoist units reached the river bend, they found the bridge gone.

Dynamited the night before by French sappers.

They had no crossing.

Two sniper shots rang out.

Then mortars.

The counterattack dissolved before the third shot.

A French officer radioed HQ.

"The enemy is not lacking in will. But they are lacking in everything else."

Moreau visited the captured hill at Monte de la Peña that evening.

Reanud stood beside him.

"They're trying harder," he said. "Franco's finally reacting."

"He's late," Moreau said.

"He's desperate."

"Good," Moreau replied. "That makes him predictable."

He looked at the trenches below.

"You could push farther. You could take Zaragoza in a week."

Moreau looked down the valley, where French engineers were already reinforcing the slope with sandbags and steel beams.

"Speed wins battles," he said. "Weight wins wars. We are weight."

He didn't argue.

Behind them, a convoy rumbled up with fresh medical supplies.

Inside French field HQ, Colonel Vaillant laid out a grid of intercepted Nationalist communications.

"They're trying to stage an offensive in the Navarra corridor," he said. "Three divisions, minimal air support, some Italian-trained units."

Captain Rousseau tapped the map.

"We let them come?"

"Let them burn fuel. Let them walk into prepared earth."

Moreau sat alone outside a bunker at dusk.

A supply runner passed by, paused, then saluted awkwardly.

"Sir. Everything's in place for the eastern push."

Moreau nodded. "Not yet."

"But we've got the advantage."

"We always will," Moreau said. "That doesn't mean we rush. We let them throw their fists. Then we break their wrists."

The runner hesitated. "And if they don't throw anything?"

"Then they choke themselves trying to hold the air."

By week's end, France held over 140 kilometers of forward front.

Franco had slowed one French push but only after losing three towns.

His army was stretched, tired, and still lacking any promise of German or Italian reinforcements.

In the hills, French engineers buried cables deeper.

Concrete bunkers took shape.

Command tents became permanent.

France was not passing through.

She was building into the ground.

Franco could hold hills.

He could even win a few.

But nothing he did made France move backward.

Not even once.