Shiks wanted to form ten new standing corps to fight the colonial war on Nubissia. The news that they were going to fight Aueras to the death didn't concern Michelc much.
He knew very well that the ten standing legions were not something that could be created with just a touch of his upper and lower lips.
Even as the hegemon of Northern Freia, Shiks would need at least two to three years to form ten standing corps.
Michelc ordered the strategists to increase their efforts in gathering information on Shiksan's military forces in Vebator. At the same time, he wrote to the ministry of the army to pay attention to the progress of the ten Shiksan standing corps.
He also personally went to Cromwell and Balingana to conduct a geographical survey to build an unprecedented defensive line to deal with the invasion of ten Shiksan standing corps in two or three years.
It wasn't until the 12th month of year 587 of the Sacred Light Calendar that the reward for the victory in Balingana finally reached Ranger.
However, the reward this time was rather stingy. It was said that the kingdom was in a difficult economic period and the colonial war had already exceeded their budget.
In the end, the soldiers who participated in the battle weren't very satisfied with the rewards they received.
General Michelc was the only exception. He was promoted to field marshal due to his masterful plan to wipe out five of Shiks' standing corps and cripple Seaking's fleet. He became the seventeenth person to take up the marshal's scepter in Aueras 383 years since the founding of the kingdom.
At the same time, he was given the title of an honorary earl, which could be passed down to his descendants for at least three generations. He was also given a royal manor near the royal capital.
Compared to the royal favour Michelc received, the rewards given to the soldiers who participated in the battle were a little harsh. Most soldiers only received one crown, sergeants two, lieutenants five and colonels ten.
Only the soldiers who had killed or injured the enemy would be able to obtain the merit required for promotion through the registration of military achievements …
That was what the higher-ups said about the soldiers' rewards. Victory in Balingana was mainly due to Michelc's strategic planning, which put the enemy in a difficult position.
Apart from wiping out Tanya and Kujoa first, Ranger and the 1st Frontier Corps had to work together. Afterwards, Wickren, Cybok and Faybort Corps basically didn't engage in any intense battles with Ranger.
They only wiped out a folk sent by the three corps to escort supplies and wiped out the scouts who came out to scout. After that, the enemy holed up in their camps and didn't move a muscle.
The only truly intense battle that involved Ranger was the one where they crippled Seaking's fleet. However, only three of Ranger's cannons and most of the light infantry field artillery squads participated in that battle.
Seaking's fleet had fallen into Michelc's trap on Dorinibla River at that time and became targets for the three heavy cannons hidden along the riverbank.
Just like during training, the cannoneers of the three cannon lines didn't suffer many casualties in the seemingly fierce battle. That was mainly due to Michelc's pre-battle planning.
As a matter of fact, in this miraculous battle of Balingana, the unit that suffered the heaviest casualties was the artillery garrison regiment of the 1st Overseas Field Regiment that guarded Port Patres, the capital of Robisto.
Port Patres was practically reduced to rubble by Seaking's fleet. Less than 600 of the four thousand cannoneers survived. That was more than eighty percent of the casualties.
Fortunately, the surviving officers and soldiers did not give up. With the remaining eight heavy cannons, they continued to fight back against the enemy warships, forcing Sea King's fleet to abandon their plan to capture Port Patres. They sailed upstream from Dorinibla River and fell into a trap and perished.
That was why the evaluators of the army didn't think much of Ranger's victory had anything to do with it. The minimal casualties was the best proof of that.
Apart from the light cavalry who were tasked with clearing out the enemy scouts, most of Ranger's soldiers were just there for the fun of it.
All they had to do was follow General Michaelci's orders, track and follow the enemy's three standing corps, and then wait for the enemy to surrender in despair, collect the enemy prisoners, and then complete their mission and win the entire battle.
As for Line 131, who burned down the enemy supply depot at Wickhamsburg, Cromwell's capital, Wickhamsburg, they performed well in the early stages of the battle. They successfully cut off the enemy's supply route and ambushed and captured the enemy convoys.
But they didn't perform well in the middle of the battle. The enemy holed up and stopped sending convoys to the three standing corps. As a result, Line 131 couldn't do anything even if they wanted to.
As for the meritorious deed of burning down Wickhamsburg later on, it was also built on General Michelić's plan. If it wasn't for General Michelić's order for Line 131 to dig a secret tunnel leading out of the city, Line 131 wouldn't have been able to sneak into the castle so easily. They wouldn't have been able to work together from the inside to take over the castle gates and occupy the entire castle.
There was also Michelc's request for Claude's contribution. Claude had used the supplies from Wickhamsburg to build a camp in advance, preventing the 200,000 enemy captives from being left without food, clothing or treatment, and preventing Ranger and the kingdom from being blamed by the other kingdoms for the loss of the captives.
However, he was refuted by the ministry of the army. Instead, he got into a whole lot of trouble because of the eight hundred four-wheeled carriages he seized from Wickhamsburg.
Claude, as the commanding officer of Line 131, was given a great merit. He still had to make two more contributions to become the youngest major-general in Aueras' history.
Claude was only 29 at the time. If he could become a major-general before the age of 35, he would become a legend in the kingdom's military.
It only took him a little over a decade to go from a commoner to a general.
Claude's younger brother, on the other hand, had followed Claude into Wickhamsburg as a non-commissioned officer. His performance was outstanding and he was promoted three ranks in a row. He was currently undergoing Ranger's training.
Myjack, Claude's brother-in-law, did well too. He made another great contribution and accumulated two tier-one contributions. One more and he would be promoted to major.
Claude's problem was the whereabouts of a sum of more than 500,000 crowns worth of military funds. That wasn't the kingdom's military budget, but the money Shiks had stored in Wickhamsburg to pay the salaries of the five standing corps as well as the benefits they received during wartime.
According to the captive logistics officer, the five hundred thousand crowns was basically Shiksan currency of gold kepton, silver kale and copper feenies. However, its whereabouts were unknown at the moment.
Wickhamsburg had been reduced to rubble by the explosion of the gunpowder depot, especially the ammunition depot, which had a huge crater in the ground.
The captive Shiksan logistics officer said that the depot where the gold, silver and copper coins were stored was in the middle of the ammunition depot because it was the safest.
Even the safest depot couldn't withstand the explosion of the ammunition depots around it. How could they find the whereabouts of the funds?
Unwilling to give up, Ranger's logistics officer, Fansnik, mobilized quite a number of soldiers to search the rubble for a few days and found quite a few deformed copper feenies.
However, they didn't find any traces of gold kepton or silver kale.
Fansnik began to suspect that it was Claude's Line 131 who had embezzled the Shiksan military funds. He summoned Claude three times to question him and demanded that he hand over the huge sum of military funds.
Claude naturally protested his innocence and said that he had never seen the so-called 500,000 crowns.
Back when they occupied Wickhamsburg, they only managed to take it over in the morning. What came after that was to supervise the movement of the 7,000 captives onto the carriages. They only chose grass and other supplies and didn't care about the enemy's ammunition depot at all.
The reason was simple: the enemy's ammunition and weapons weren't compatible with the kingdom's standard equipment. Not to mention, they weren't light and took up a lot of space on the carriages. Only those who had nothing better to do would use them.
Claude had Fansnik ask the sentries and officers in charge of patrolling the area and found out that he hadn't entered the ammunition depot at all.
After learning that it was the ammunition depot, Claude ordered a platoon of soldiers to guard all entrances so that the soldiers wouldn't waste time going in.
The battle lasted all night until the castle was occupied in the morning. What came next was to collect the captives and escort them to transport the supplies. Around four in the afternoon, Line 131 was evacuated from Wickhamsburg.
By then, most of the supply depots had been set on fire.
Claude asked Fansnik about how he didn't have the time to check the depots full of ammunition and weapons.
They didn't even bother to interrogate the enemy logistics officers who were captured. This was proven by the confessions of the enemy logistics officers who were captured in Wickham Castle.
That was why he and Line 131 didn't know that there was a warehouse of military supplies worth close to half a million crowns hidden among the weapons, ammunition, and ammunition.
However, Fansnik was still suspicious of Claude. There were two pieces of evidence that pointed to Claude's innocence.
First, Claude was the last to leave Wickhamsburg with his trusted aides and guards. Behind them were five fully loaded four-wheeled carriages.
Along the way, quite a number of Ranger and captives saw the deep ruts on the five carriages, which meant that the goods they carried were extremely heavy.
It was very likely that Claude and the others had secretly smuggled the Shiksan military funds out of Wickhamsburg.
The second piece of evidence was that Claude loaded a carriage full of Shiksan honorific daggers as spoils of war from Balingana and distributed them to Ranger. Almost every officer in Ranger had one of those honorific daggers.
The honourable saber was a weapon Shiksan gave to officers who fought bravely on the battlefield for meritorious service.
They were decorated with gold and silver and were very beautiful and sharp. They were spoils of war that Shiksan's enemies could pass down to their descendants to boast about their ancestors' bravery.
The problem was that the place where the honorary sabers were stored was in the ammunition, firearms, and other supplies. The fact that Claude was able to get a carriage full of them meant that he was lying when he said he didn't enter the ammunition, firearms, and other supplies.
That was why Fansnik suspected that Claude and the others were hiding the Shiksan military budget from him. It wasn't without reason.
However, Claude didn't admit to it. He believed that Fansnik's suspicions were baseless.
Even though he was the last to leave Wickhamsburg, that was because he was the commanding officer of Line 131.
Leading troops had to be the first to charge and the last to retreat. That was the only way to convince the troops to follow his orders wholeheartedly. That was the foundation of Line 131's continuous victories from battalion to line.
As for the five carriages that were filled with deep ruts, they were filled with luxury goods that Shiks had stocked up in Wickhamsburg, such as the fine wine, silverware, luxurious art pieces and pure white cashmere blankets for the officers of the five corps to enjoy.
In fact, those items could be considered Line 131's spoils of war and didn't have to be handed over according to the rules of the battlefield.
However, Claude still gave Line HQ four carriages filled with those luxurious goods so that every officer who participated in the battle could get a share of the spoils of war.
Claude pointed out that the total value of the five carriages was more than sixty thousand crowns. If he was really as greedy as Fansnik accused him of being, he wouldn't have to hand over those luxurious goods at all. They would be his spoils of war after all.
It was understandable that the ruts were deep. Anyone could imagine how heavy a carriage loaded with dozens of chests of fine wine would be.
Not to mention, it was just after the ice break in February. The roads in Cromwell weren't that good to begin with. They weren't exactly muddy, but they weren't sturdy either. It was normal for a fully loaded carriage to leave deep ruts behind. It would be abnormal if there weren't deep ruts.
There was also a cart full of honorary sabers. Claude told Fansnik to ask the captive logistics officer about it and see what he said.
That was because the warehouse that stored the honorary sabers was at the very front of the ammunition, firearms, and ordnance area. It was decorated the most luxuriously, and even the soldiers who were standing guard at the entrance of this area knew that the items inside were honorary sabers.
So, when Claude received the report, he ordered the soldiers stationed at the storehouse to clear out all the honourable sabers before retreating. He didn't enter the storehouse himself.
Even though Claude had witnesses and even the accounts of Line 131's spoils of war could be checked, he still couldn't shake off the trouble.
Fansnik, whose job was to hand over the huge sum of military spoils of war to the Stellin royal family, still treated Claude as the prime suspect. Every few days, he would order Claude's subordinates to go to his office for questioning and investigation.
General Fansnik, whose job it was to hand over the huge sum of military funds to the Stellin royal family, still treated Claude as the prime suspect. Every now and then, he would order Claude's subordinates to go to his office for questioning and interrogation.
In the end, Claude couldn't take it anymore and had a huge argument with General Fansnik in the office. He almost beat the man up and the case ended up in front of General Michelc.
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