"How is this possible?"
Liedefonk jumped out of his chair in shock. He was holding the report Claude had just sent via carrier pigeon. It stated that they had killed more than 4,000 enemies. Only a few hundred of the invading Canas and Askilin nobles managed to escape. They had also captured six nobles and more than 200 captives. Eight of their own soldiers had been sacrificed and nineteen were injured.
No matter who saw the report, they wouldn't believe it, especially Liedefonk. He knew very well that Claude only had three squadrons and three cannon crews, which amounted to less than 170 men.
Even though the private soldiers of the fief nobles weren't all that strong, they could still bite an elephant to death with enough ants to kill it. A regiment and a battalion of about five thousand soldiers was enough to go up against Claude's force of less than 170 men. Ledefonk could only pray that Claude would be able to defend Squirrel Village for a little longer. Forcing the two dukedoms to retreat after exhausting their supplies was already a pretty good outcome.
It had only been a few days. Liedefonk counted on his fingers. It hadn't even been ten days and Claude had already sent a report saying that he had killed more than 4,000 enemies and captured more than 200. That was truly unbelievable.
Could it be that the nobles of the two duchies had come to attack with five thousand cows and sheep?
But even if they did, it wouldn't be easy for Claude's men to kill more than 400 in a day!
After calming himself down, Liedefonk picked up the report again and read it carefully.
Fortunately, even though pigeon reports had to be concise and clear, Claude still briefly mentioned how he did it at the end of the letter.
He lured the enemy into Squirrel Village, and he prepared a lot of fire starters in Squirrel Village. Then, he held a barbecue …
Major Liedefonk immediately ordered the clerks and staff officers of the battalion headquarters, as well as the officer in charge of the gendarmerie squad, to immediately lead a squadron to Squirrel Village. Such a great victory had to be confirmed and verified.
He believed that when the report was sent to the higher-ups, they would be shocked. Such a victory would greatly boost the morale of the frontline troops.
As Claude's direct superior, Liedefonk would naturally get a share of the spoils.
He wasn't the only one. All the soldiers felt the same. Their faces were pale and quite a few of them couldn't even walk anymore. Mazik even swore that he would never eat barbecue again.
The air above the camp and Squirrel Village was filled with a strange fragrance of meat that whetted one's appetite.
But for Claude and his men who knew where the smell came from, all they felt was nausea and nausea.
Nobody was willing to step into Squirrel Village, which had already been reduced to ashes. The intensity of the fire last night far exceeded his expectations.
Especially when there was a strong gale, the wind fanned the flames. In addition, the nobles ordered the conscripted subjects to cut down a large number of trees to make wooden carts and used them to block the village entrance. This was like adding fuel to the fire, and it also blocked the escape routes of the private soldiers and conscripted subjects stationed in the village.
None of the enemies would think that Claude would use fire to attack, because that was something the nobles didn't think was possible.
The enemies defending Squirrel Village had already holed up in their camp and built it like a small fort, which also blocked their escape routes.
The camp was about a hundred metres away from Squirrel Village and there was only a flat clearing in the middle. If the enemies tried to burn down the wooden carts, they would be easily discovered by the soldiers stationed at the village entrance. Even if the soldiers were equipped with old-fashioned muskets, they weren't firesticks. Ambushing them would only result in a one-way trip.
The enemies, who didn't have enough troops, wouldn't do something like that.
Claude had long set fire to Squirrel Village to deal with the nobles of the Askilin Dukedom.
He didn't think that the Canasian nobles would actually join forces with the Askilinian nobles because they were blocked at the bend in the mountain path.
That forced Claude to set up a defensive position on the hill behind Squirrel Village to whittle down the enemy's forces.
With the nobles of the two duchies joining forces, Claude couldn't guarantee that no one would notice what he did in Squirrel Village.
Fortunately, the nobles decided to use wooden carts as a means of attack. Since they were busy cutting down trees to make them, Claude decided to delay the attack for another three days.
When the nobles used their wooden carts to block the entrance of the village, they filled up the empty space in the village. From Claude's point of view, they were digging their own graves.
Using red-hot cannonballs to attack the enemy was a common tactic used by warships at sea.
Nobody would do that on land.
The reason was simple. Warships were made of wood. If they used red-hot cannonballs to attack the enemy, they might ignite the enemy's warship if they were lucky.
However, most of the enemy's defences on land were made of stone. Under such circumstances, using red-hot cannonballs to attack the enemy would only be more troublesome and lower the effectiveness of the cannons.
Claude, on the other hand, used red-hot cannonballs to ignite the fire. He didn't have to send soldiers out to take the risk.
The intermittent bombardment that lasted for almost half a day had made the enemy relax. Nobody would pay attention to the attacks on the wooden carts from the camp.
The nobles had already said that even if the twenty wooden carts at the entrance were destroyed, they could just replace them the next morning and see if the enemy had more gunpowder or they had more wooden carts.
So, in the middle of the night, the well-fed private soldiers found a shabby shack to sleep in and didn't mind the bombardment outside.
The conscripted subjects, on the other hand, went to bed early after a full meal. After three days of hard work, most of them were exhausted. Chopping down trees and transporting them back to Squirrel Village wasn't an easy task, so most of them slept soundly. After all, they still had to attack the enemy camp the next morning.
The work of pushing the wooden carts forward, to say nothing of anything else, was definitely the job of the conscript subjects.
When the first red-hot cannonball streaked across the sky above Squirrel Village, the nobles' private soldiers who were on guard only raised their heads to take a look. They thought to themselves that the shot had missed, and they didn't know if it would hit some unlucky person in the back of the village.
They didn't know that the first few cannonballs were aimed at the ditch and wooden fences at the back of the village. What they were concerned about was whether the enemy camp a hundred meters away would launch a sneak attack.
When the ditch behind the village and the wooden fences on the dilapidated walls began to burn, the nobles' private soldiers on guard in front of the village didn't notice at all. Instead, they found it strange that the cannons didn't hit the wooden rafts, producing the familiar crashing sounds.
But when the fire at the back of the village grew bigger and bigger, the sleeping conscripted subjects woke up with a start to scream, "Fire!" Only when the sounds of people running around did Claude's cannons take aim at the shabby shacks in the village. The red-hot cannonballs ignited the thatched roofs of the shacks and spread the flames all over the place. Only then did the soldiers and conscripted subjects in Squirrel Village realize that things weren't looking good.
The wind was strong in the mountains at night and the thatched roofs of the burning shacks fluttered in the wind, igniting the places that weren't on fire.
There weren't any stone houses in Squirrel Village. They were all shacks made of twigs and broken wood.
It had been almost two months since the rainy season ended in March. There had only been a light drizzle about ten days ago, so the shacks were all dried up and set ablaze at the slightest touch.
That, coupled with the wood shavings from the wood used to make the carts and the small pieces of wood used to make the wheels, the wheat stalks and firewood piled up all over the village, as well as the kerosene and powder Claude's group scattered three days ago, turned Squirrel Village into a bonfire in a short period of time.
It wasn't that the soldiers and conscripted subjects didn't think about putting out the fire. They even tried to put out the burning areas around them or use water to extinguish the burning logs, but they didn't think that the wind would help the fire spread so quickly that all of Squirrel Village was on fire.
By the time they realized that there was no way to put out the fire, it was already too late. More than twenty wooden carts lined up at the entrance of the village had already caught fire, trapping the villagers inside.
If the soldiers on guard at the entrance had rushed out the moment the fire started, they would've ended up as captives at the worst.
Unfortunately, they only remembered that the enemy's camp was up ahead. With most of the village on fire, all they knew was to wake up their comrades in the shacks in front of them and run towards the back of the village, intending to leave through the back door.
However, the trenches and wooden fences outside the back door were the first to catch fire. The fire had already spread so far that there was no way to rush out. Coupled with the large number of wooden carts lined up on the empty ground and the conscripted subjects scurrying around like headless flies, the back of the village had already turned into a sea of fire. There was no way to escape.
By the time the large group of soldiers and conscripted subjects tried to escape from the front, the wooden carts at the entrance of the village and the empty ground started burning as well, blocking off their only escape route.
Most of the trees that were cut down to make the carts were still smoking. It was a fatal blow to the soldiers and conscripted subjects trapped in the fire.
Claude and the others didn't expect the fire to spread so quickly and fiercely. Even from a hundred meters away, they could feel the heat and smoke in the air. Hearing the cries and wails from the fire, they didn't feel good at all. Even if they wanted to save the people, they couldn't get close to the burning village at all.
A few burning stalks of straw were blown to the wooden shacks on the wooden fences. Claude quickly ordered his soldiers to pour water on the buildings so that their own camp wouldn't catch fire as well.
At the same time, Claude had Mazik take a platoon of soldiers to dismantle the wooden carts on the mountain path and lay them on the undiscovered traps along the mountain path.
After the soldiers splashed water all over the camp, apart from the injured soldiers, everyone else set off to attack the enemy's camp. They even brought along two light infantry cannons and charged towards the enemy's camp.
The nobles' private soldiers in the camp also discovered that Squirrel Village was on fire. The fire was so big that everyone could see it, and almost half the sky was dyed red.
Apart from a few hungover nobles who couldn't be woken up no matter how hard they tried, the rest of the nobles and their servants gathered at the entrance of the camp and looked in the direction of Squirrel Village.
Apart from sending people to investigate what was going on, the shocked nobles were all cursing and discussing the location of the fire. Even though it was the location of Squirrel Village, most of the nobles were still hoping for a fluke. They believed that it was an accident or an enemy ambush that destroyed the wooden carts.
The way they saw it, it didn't matter even if all the wooden carts were burned down. They had the numbers advantage and they could just spend a few more days cutting down trees and bringing them back to make new ones.
The nobles only learned that the entire Squirrel Village had been turned into a huge fire when the private soldiers of the nobles who had gone to investigate returned with nearly a hundred lucky survivors who had escaped the fire. Apart from the less than a hundred survivors who had escaped, the other two thousand people were trapped in the village.
The soldiers who went to investigate reported that they couldn't get close at all. The fire was too intense and they could vaguely hear cries and cries for help coming from the village.
That news struck the nobles like a bolt out of the blue. Quite a few of them vomited blood and fainted on the spot. Those who didn't vomit blood didn't fare any better either. They lay on the ground in a daze and didn't say a word. Everyone knew that their plan to plunder the three southern prefectures had been completely ruined.
Before the nobles at the entrance of the camp could recover from their shock, Claude and the others gave the two duchies a final blow.
Had it not been for the nobles setting up wooden rafts on top of the trap alerting the soldiers guarding the camp, Claude and the others might have been able to capture all the nobles in one fell swoop.
But when the private soldiers noticed that the enemies stationed at Squirrel Village, namely Claude and the others, were setting up wooden rafts on top of the huge trap, they hurriedly dragged the despairing nobles into the camp and closed the gates to defend the place.
However, when Claude and the others set up two light infantry cannons to attack the wooden fences of the camp, the private force defending the camp knew that they had lost their chance. They gathered all the mounts and draft horses in the camp and helped the nobles who had woken up onto their horses before tearing down the wooden fences on the other side of the camp and running for their lives.
By the time Claude and the others broke through the gates of the camp, they only caught a few dozen servants and a hundred or so injured soldiers, as well as six nobles who couldn't make it in time and were still hungover in their tents. Everyone else who could run had already escaped.