There were still many things to be done. The camp had to be dismantled, the traps on the mountain path had to be buried, and Squirrel Village had yet to be cleaned up. So many corpses had to be buried. Just the thought of it gave him a headache.
Claude was overjoyed to see Ledefonk. He left everything to him and went back to his room to sleep.
Seeing Claude's red eyes and haggard face, Ledefonk could understand how tough the battle was and ordered all the soldiers to take a good rest. The task of watching over the captives and keeping watch was left to the platoon he brought with him.
It sure was good to be young. Claude slept for 14 hours straight before getting out of bed. The exhaustion from the battle was swept away and he felt refreshed.
When he went downstairs, he saw Major Liedefonk and a few officers from the battalion headquarters sitting at the dining table in the hall checking the list of supplies seized from the enemy camp. He greeted them and went into the kitchen to get something to fill his stomach. He washed his face and rinsed his mouth before coming out to see the results of the harvest.
Unfortunately, while there was a lot of spoils, there wasn't much of value. Most of it was just some rations and ammunition.
The problem was that the rations were given by the nobles to their private soldiers and commoners. Most of them were coarse grains and the nobles didn't have much for themselves.
As for the ammunition, it was far from what Aueras used and couldn't even make up for what Claude had used in the battle.
There wasn't much cash either. There was only a chest of copper coins and a small bag of silver coins. They were the currency of Askilin and were worth around 20 to 30 crowns.
Liedefonc guessed that the money would be used to reward the citizens of the Canas nobles who volunteered to be conscripted.
After all, the nobles of the two duchies wanted to plunder the three southern prefectures, not do business there.
Therefore, although they had a lot of troops, they wouldn't bring too much money.
The most valuable loot was the tents in the barracks, especially the tents used by the nobles themselves. Most of them were made of high-grade sheepskin, with golden patterns and the family insignia of the nobles.
However, these tents had to be handed over as proof of battle merits. Otherwise, it would be quite comfortable to keep one for his own use.
Major Ledefonk pointed to a corner of the hall. "Take two bottles for yourself. You can also choose one of the other items as a souvenir of this battle.
These were all taken from the tents of the nobles and can be said to be the most valuable part of the spoils of war. "
He turned around and saw four to five crates of fine wine. They were all brought along by the nobles for the journey. There were only about a hundred bottles in total.
Next to them were the weapons, clothes, gold, silver, wine jugs, and other souvenirs left behind by the nobles in the tents.
Usually, soldiers were allowed to keep such items as souvenirs of war. After all, they wouldn't be worth much if they were handed over, so most of them ended up in the storeroom.
Claude chose two bottles of white wine and a beautiful shortsword. The shortsword seemed to be a magic item. After casting Appraisal Eye, he saw that it had a layer of silver light on it.
He believed that the shortsword had some sort of sharpness added to it, so he stabbed it into a wooden pillar beside him. As expected, half of the blade easily penetrated the wooden pillar.
"Write a report of the battle in the next two days. We'll go through it one by one," Major Ledefonk said solemnly.
Ledefonk said sternly, "Write it down in as much detail as you can. Write down everything about the traps you set up and how you came up with the plan to burn them.
After all, this victory is just too unbelievable.
Five thousand enemies against 170 with only a few casualties on our side, wiping out more than four thousand of them. It's hard to believe such a report.
That's why we have to prove this achievement and do our best so that no one can find any fault with it … "
"Yes, I understand," Claude said with a nod.
Major Ledefonk busied himself in Squirrel Village for a week. He ordered the captives and soldiers to clean up 2,564 enemy corpses from the ashes of Squirrel Village, dig up pits, and mark them. Then, he brought the captives to dig up the graves of the enemies Claude's men killed at the mountain behind Squirrel Village and the ones they killed at the bend in the mountain path. They checked the number of corpses one by one and dug up the ones that fell into the traps. The corpses of the enemies that fell into the traps were brought up from the valley and the corpses that fell into the pits were counted before they were buried.
In the end, they came up with a total of 4,385 enemy corpses. That number was supported by the enemy corpses.
According to the captives, there were around 400 heavily injured who were sent back first. Coupled with the 200 captives, it was clear that Claude and his men had managed to kill close to five thousand enemies with only a hundred and seventy men. It was a complete victory that would be recorded in the annals of history.
Ledefonk returned with a thick stack of documents. Not only did they include Claude's battle report, there were also the numbers of the enemy corpses and the places where they were buried, as well as the testimonies of the 200 captives.
Some of the more heavily injured captives and the six unlucky fief nobles were also taken with him. The 130 healthy captives were left behind, along with a large amount of rations, ammunition, and other resources. Claude needed them to rebuild Squirrel Village.
Currently, there were still three unorganized platoons stationed at Squirrel Village's camp. Although most of the nobles from the two duchies had fled, they still had to guard against them in their desperation to recruit more troops to retaliate.
Of course, the chances of that happening were low, but Claude and the others couldn't afford to be careless.
Before Ledefonk's report caused a huge uproar, Aueras' situation in the three southern prefectures wasn't all that great.
While Claude was fighting the two fief nobles at Squirrel Village, Rimodra's anti-Aueras army had amassed more than 200,000 men to attack Bluefeather's defensive line at the border. In just half a month, Bluefeather lost a third of its forces and barely managed to hold off the enemy's assault. In the end, they had no choice but to call in another reserve corps.
To the east of the three southern prefectures, there was another reserve corps fighting against the newly formed reserve corps of Askilin and Canas.
Fortunately, the elites of those two duchies were in Rimodra's allied army. The corps attacking the three southern prefectures were formed from newly recruited soldiers and weren't that strong.
Even though they had the advantage in numbers, they still couldn't break through the eastern defensive line set up by Aueras' reserve corps.
The situation was the most tense in the three southern prefectures. Riots and rebellions broke out frequently.
The temporary passage to Piklete Mountains hadn't been opened yet, so reinforcements and supplies couldn't reach the three southern prefectures.
The Aueran army, lacking the manpower to defend the three southern prefectures, couldn't suppress the rebellions, nor could they gather large amounts of supplies to support the frontlines.
If Claude and the others couldn't hold off the attack of the two duchies and allowed the enemy to pillage the three southern prefectures, the consequences would be dire.
The three southern prefectures would erupt like a volcano and ravage the entire region. In the worst-case scenario, it might even affect the frontlines.
Nobody could win a battle when they were surrounded by enemies from the front and back. No matter how strong the Aueran army was, they couldn't do that.
Ledefonk knew very well that Claude's report was no less than a shot in the arm for the Aueran army that was fighting alone in the three southern prefectures. Even the rebellions would calm down after hearing the news.
That was because many of the rebellions were encouraged and connived by spies. Many of them were even spies planted by the fief nobles.
Now, the five thousand-strong army of the fief nobles had been utterly defeated by a hundred and seventy garrison soldiers. More than five thousand of them had been wiped out. When the news of their victory spread, the conspirators and rebels would have to think hard about how powerful the Aueran army was. If they managed to hold off the attack or if reinforcements arrived, would they still have a future?
In fact, Ledefonk's worries were quite reasonable. After Claude's report was made public, no one was willing to believe it to be true.
The three southern prefectures were full of doubts and even treated it as a joke.
The officers of the three corps fighting on the frontlines, on the other hand, thought it was a lie to boost morale. They just didn't want to expose it.
When Ledefonk sent the brief report to the frontline command through a hawk messenger, the officer who received it cursed him for being a liar. How could it be true?
However, he still passed on the battle report to the General Staff Headquarters. The officers of the General Staff Headquarters were even more enraged. They thought that the combat troops below them had falsely reported their military exploits to such an unreasonable extent. More than 5,000 soldiers had fought against 170 soldiers, and 5,000 of them had been annihilated. Were those 170 soldiers gods that had descended from the heavens and were invulnerable?
They sent the report to the frontline commander, Prince Hansbach, and recommended that the officers and soldiers in charge of the false reports be punished.
Prince Hansbach was very busy. As the commander-in-chief of the frontlines, he could be said to be very busy and had his hands full.
He hadn't slept for more than five hours since the rainy season ended.
Due to the heavy rain, landslides and other natural disasters, the temporary passage to Pikleit Mountains was cut off from the rest of the kingdom's forces in the three southern prefectures.
This unexpected turn of events that affected the entire situation of the battle took up most of his energy.
Since the beginning of the fourth month, the first prince ordered the royal guard to lead two second-line corps to continue attacking Rimodra's defensive lines. He wanted to break through as soon as possible and put more pressure on the anti-Aueran alliance. At the same time, it would reduce the pressure on the three southern prefectures.
The plan to launch a surprise attack on the three southern prefectures and annihilate the five hundred thousand soldiers of the anti-Austrian alliance gathered in Rimodra had only been carried out because of Prince Hansbach's forceful suggestion.
But no one expected that the temporary passage to Pikleit Mountains would collapse due to the rainy season. This made Hansbach, who saw a glimmer of hope for victory, anxious once more.
If the three corps of the three southern prefectures were annihilated by the enemy, Aueras would lose the initiative and all their efforts would go to waste.
The war would return to a stalemate, which was extremely disadvantageous to Aueras.
They didn't have any allies and could only fight one against five in the eastern part of the continent. The anti-Aueran alliance, on the other hand, was fighting for support from the northern and southern countries.
They defined Aueras as the hegemon of the eastern part of the continent, the greatest source of unrest in the eastern part of the continent and the source of all the wars that had arisen.
While Hansbach didn't understand the saying, 'a just cause enjoys abundant support while an unjust cause finds little', he didn't deny Aueras' ambition to unify the entire eastern part of the continent.
He knew very well that if the strategy he formulated this time failed, there was no telling how long this war that would engulf the entire eastern region of the continent would drag on.
If Aueras' decades of accumulation were to be used up in this war, who knew how many years it would take for them to recover.
He had to speed up the construction of the temporary passage to Pikleit Mountains and restore transportation to the three southern prefectures as soon as possible. That was the crux of the war.
What left Hansbach helpless was that no matter how determined he was, he couldn't send reinforcements and supplies across Pikleit Mountains to the three southern prefectures.
Due to the cold weather and the freezing snow, the temporary passageway that was built in the winter was able to be successfully erected.
But after the rainy season, the soft mountainous terrain made repairing the passage a difficult task. It wasn't something that could be sped up by numbers alone.
At this time, the First Prince received a request from the General Staff Department to severely punish those who reported false military exploits, which made him even more upset. The three southern counties had lost contact with the rear. What kind of tricks could there be? Did they think that the rear could not confirm it, so they reported false military exploits?
He didn't even look at the report and wanted to order the officers and soldiers involved to be punished according to the general staff's request.
At that moment, his adjutant, Skri, stepped forward to stop him. "Your Highness, it's best if you read this report carefully."
"Why?" The prince was furious.
Skri wasn't afraid of the prince's anger. "Because this report was sent by Major Ledefonk and the one who made the contribution was that Claude."
"Ledefonk?
I remember he's the commander of 1st Ranger Tribe. He's a reliable, responsible, and earnest fellow who never lies.
Who's that Claude?
That name sounds familiar … "Prince Hansbach mused.
"Your Highness, Claude is one of the officers you need to keep an eye on. His name and file are in that notebook of yours," Skri reminded.
He picked up a thick notebook from the prince's desk and opened it. It was filled with names and labels.
These names were the ones that the eldest prince thought had a bright future, but many of the names had been crossed with a black line, indicating that the owner of the name had died on the battlefield.
Skri flipped to the back and found Claude's name. He handed the notebook to the prince.