Claude didn't think there would be so many troublesome matters to deal with. He had thought that after the war ended with the destruction of Canas and Nasri, Aueras would unify the eastern part of Freia.
All he had to do was rest and recover. There was nothing else he needed to do.
Once the kingdom rewarded the overseas autonomous region's two corps, everyone could pack their belongings and happily return to the overseas autonomous region with their spoils of war.
But now, he was stuck in Nasri as a temporary viceroy and couldn't leave for the time being.
He had to deal with countless documents and administrative matters all day long. It was a torturous experience for him.
Had he known it would be so troublesome, he would've regretted destroying Nasri and putting himself and his two corps in such an awkward position.
To put it bluntly, Claude, Beechlin, Eiblont, Thundercrash, and Monolith were all working for the king for free.
Originally, when the two corps joined the war, the agreement was that they would return to the region immediately after the war ended and no longer participate in the kingdom's affairs.
But now, Thundercrash and Monolith had become Garrisons stationed in Nasri and Canas to maintain order and security.
They didn't have military authority, but they were doing the work of the military. In fact, before the royal court sent an official to take over, Claude and the others would have to stay there and carry out their duties as temporary viceroys.
It wasn't a matter of whether the royal court trusted Claude or not. While Claude was a temporary viceroy, his authority wasn't that great.
He was only a temporary viceroy, so he didn't have the authority to govern.
After a serious analysis, he was only representing the royal court and the Stellin royal family to collect taxes and tributes and maintain order in these two regions. In other words, he was the tax collector and the head of the patrol force combined together.
The royal court was using Thundercrash and Monolith to suppress the region and collect taxes from the two regions for a period of time to replenish the national treasury.
The expenses of the two corps didn't need to be paid by the kingdom. It was stated in the agreement that it would be borne by the region itself.
Therefore, the Royal Court's move was equivalent to commanding two powerful armies for free, which was a great advantage.
Claude began to suspect that sending officials to Nasri and Canas only to be met with resistance from the selectors was just an excuse the imperial court came up with to use the two corps for free.
Fortunately, two months had passed and the Nasrian region was basically settled. The Canasian region was also entrusted to General Eiblont.
Now, all that was left was to collect taxes and send troops to suppress local riots and rebellions.
General Bolonik arrived at the capital of Polyvicia at the end of March after the rainy season. He stayed in Emis for half a year and finally sent the hundreds of thousands of Nasrian captives, officers, administrative officials, and local nobles, as well as their families to the port of Florida in the Rimodra region. They boarded the transport ships.
In the future, the captives and their families would have to settle down in the Loki Mountain region of the overseas autonomous region and mine for a living.
After sending the captives away, Bolonik brought Monolith's 1st Folk and HQ to the capital of Polyvicia to meet up with Claude.
Claude was overjoyed and left all the official duties to him, ready to relax for a while.
However, Bolonik stopped Claude and told him that he had his eye on the 200,000-odd captives in the capital and wanted to send them to the overseas region to fill up the population.
Bolonik told Claude that the 300,000-odd captives that were sent to the region caught the attention of many councilors. The chairman of the mining association, Henderman, gave a speech in the council, saying that the captives from the war in the east of Freia would be the best way to fill up the manpower gap in the region. The 300,000-odd captives would be perfect for the mining industry in Loki Mountain.
That was why the councilors of Arturas hoped to get at least a hundred thousand captives from the two corps that participated in the war.
Due to the huge sales of cigarettes, Arturas, which was the main source of tobacco, was running out of wild tobacco.
Many wealthy people in the region began to invest in tobacco plantations in Arturas to grow tobacco on a large scale.
However, Arturas was one of the less populated regions and the plantations required a lot of manpower, so they turned their attention to the captives.
Even though Aueras and the autonomous region didn't practice slavery, it was still cheaper to hire slaves than to hire laborers from the outside.
Bolonik brought a few councilors and locals with him. They were willing to compensate the region and pay for the expenses of the captives. They would also be supervised by the military.
Claude smiled bitterly. The war seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. The two corps didn't seem to be fighting for Aueras' survival, but to provide more manpower and immigrants for the region.
He received a letter from Myjack a while ago. He said that the soldiers that belonged to the first prince's faction had been requesting to migrate to the region with their families.
They were worried that the old nobles of Aueras would come after them in the future and it would be too late for them to regret it. It would be better for them to migrate to the region.
At the same time, Myjack asked Claude if he wanted to recruit the soldiers into the region's military, such as creating a 4th folk.
Currently, Myjack had taken in nearly eighty thousand soldiers from Prince Hansbach's forces in the three southern prefectures and the Askilin region. Sixty thousand of them were rescued captives, while the rest were small units that had escaped into the mountains.
When Askilin became the eastern enclave of Shiks, the small units that escaped into the mountains had been fighting guerrilla warfare against the Shiksan army.
The leader of the largest troop was Claude's old superior, the one he hadn't seen in more than a decade. He was the battalion commander of 1st Ranger Tribe, Major Liedefonk.
Myjack believed that while the soldiers were once the first prince's subordinates, the prince was no more and they were stray dogs now that he was gone.
Thundercrash, on the other hand, swept through the newly conquered lands and destroyed Sidins and Rimodra, reclaiming the Askilin enclave.
Now that the newly conquered land had returned to Aueras, the soldiers felt a great deal of unease.
Even though they were soldiers of Aueras, they were the old subordinates of Prince Hansbach, so they were still labeled as rebels.
Back then, during the kingdom's civil war, they fought to the death against the old nobles and there was already a blood feud between the two sides.
Even though the one sitting on the throne was Fredeli I and not Stellin XI, the soldiers were still worried about the revenge of the old nobles.
During the civil war, Prince Hansbach had already moved the families of the soldiers from Aueras to the newly conquered lands, so the soldiers weren't opposed to migrating to the region.
However, Myjack felt that it would be a waste to send them to the region to farm. They were all strong and experienced soldiers and it would be best if they could be recruited back into the army.
Originally, Myjack had wanted to organize these soldiers into local garrison forces to assist the 3rd Thundercrash Division in maintaining order and security, but in the end, he only managed to organize two garrison regiments of around ten thousand people.
It wasn't that the soldiers looked down on the local garrison forces, but they were worried that they would have to stay in their own region and face the kingdom's wrath in the future, which would affect their families.
That was why Myjack wanted to form them into Thundercrash 4th Folk. That way, they would be able to calm their minds. Additionally, the soldiers were also envious of the treatment and benefits of being a soldier in the region and were more than happy to become a part of Thundercrash.
Apart from that, Myjack also reported that the original mission given to him was to reorganize the military industries in the three southern prefectures. The plan to build a new rifle bullet production line had been completed.
The new recruits were the families of the soldiers who were going to migrate to the region. At present, the production line could produce half a million rounds per month.
The only problem was that there was a constant shortage of production materials, such as brass cases and primers, which couldn't be produced in a stable manner.
As for the new cannon shells, the current production conditions weren't perfect. They lacked some large-scale forging machinery.
The reason for that was that during the Shiksan occupation, they shipped some of the larger forging machinery back to the kingdom. As a result, the manufacturing standards of the three southern prefectures plummeted and they weren't able to forge large parts.
For example, the shell cases of cannonballs required three types of large-scale forging machinery to make.
Actually, Claude didn't want to expand Thundercrash. The three folk already had a total of 120,000 men, while a folk only had 35,000 men.
Originally, a corps had two folk. Coupled with the independent line and four logistic battalions, they had a total of 82,000 men.
They expanded a folk before the war, bringing the total number of men to 125,000. Claude had always felt that it was a little too bloated.
It wasn't a good thing to have more troops. Instead, the expenditure would have to exceed the budget.
That wasn't something that could be solved by increasing the expenditure of a folk. The addition of a folk would have to be accompanied by an increase in the number of administrative and logistics officers and support staff.
In the past, it was an era where people lined up to be shot to death. The establishment of corps was to offset the negative impact of heavy casualties on the battlefield and maintain a lasting fighting capacity.
It was said that in the past, when both sides fought, they would gather their forces and find an open area to set up their battle formation. The commanders of both sides would command their respective troops to close in and fire, engaging in hand-to-hand combat. The casualties were very high, and two divisions of a corps would be wiped out in a single morning.
A battle could be decided in three to four days. Casualties in the hundreds of thousands were common, so the more troops a corps had, the better. As a result, most countries used a corps of around 60,000 men and two folk.
During the first great eastern war, the Anti-Aueran Alliance was well aware that they weren't a match for the four great corps of Aueras.
That was why they adopted a defensive strategy, digging trenches and building defensive structures while waiting for the Aueran army to attack. This counteracted Aueran's invincible advantage in the field.
In the end, they managed to drag the war to a point where both sides were too exhausted to continue and signed a peace treaty.
From a certain point of view, the first great eastern war had changed the traditional way of fighting on Freia for the past thousand years.
Even the weaker nations knew which way to fight when they didn't have the upper hand in terms of military might.
The colonial war between Aueras and Shiks on Nubissia broke the bottom line of traditional warfare.
First, the weak folk of Ranger used all sorts of tricks to trick the enemy and won two colonial wars.
Later on, the five folk formed for the war theatre swept through four corps of Shiks and forcefully occupied Port Vebator, turning it into the eighth colony of the colony.
The three colonial wars were an eye-opener for the nations of Freia. When Shiks returned two years later, they rented Fochs' colony of Cape Loducus at a high price to continue the war, attracting the attention of almost every nation on Freia.
At that time, Aueras was in a civil war between two kings and the war theatre only had two corps. Shiks, on the other hand, had ten standing corps. Nobody thought that the war theatre would win.
The first time, Thundercrash ambushed the main camp of Shiks' expeditionary army and won by a fluke. The expeditionary army only lost two and a half corps and was still as strong as ever.
The second Shiksan expedition returned the favor and landed at the fishing town of the colony, Lanu, where the war zone was located, reducing it to rubble.
However, Thundercrash came to their aid and the war theatre survived the disaster. They surrounded and annihilated the three Shiksan corps that landed.
After that, Thundercrash ambushed the main camp of Shiks' expeditionary army and worked together with Monolith to annihilate the entire Shiksan expeditionary army, winning the war in the end.
In the final battle of the war, the two corps of the war theatre were equipped with new rifles that caught the attention of the nations of Freia. The new rifles were far more powerful than the matchlocks used by the nations. But due to the tight security in the war theatre, little information about the new rifles was leaked.
That was until Aueras went through too many changes. The colonies became a dominion and the war theatre became a military region.
Shiks, in the name of helping Sidins and Rimodra recover, attacked and occupied the newly conquered territories of Aueras.
The capital of Aueras rebelled and Fredrey I took the throne. The Shiksans formed the Eastern Union.
Nasri and Aueras got into a debt war. The Eastern Union intervened and formed an allied army to invade Aueras.
After that, two corps from the autonomous region returned to the kingdom as reinforcements. In the end, the eastern alliance was destroyed. Only a few of its 700,000 men remained. Four nations were wiped out and Aueras unified the entire eastern region of Freia.
The appearance of the new rifles and cannons as well as the armoured fleets in the second Eastern Union war changed the way wars were fought. Victory no longer depended on the number of troops on both sides, but on the power of the new weapons.
Thundercrash, for example, used a division of troops, which was more than enough to resist the attack of four legions of the Alliance Army. While inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy, they retreated while fighting, luring the Alliance Army to the capital of Polivisia, laying the foundation for the victory of the battle.
That was why Claude believed that they could replace corps with folk. Quality was more important than quantity. There was no need to build up a large corps.
However, Bolonik didn't think so. He told Claude that the prime minister, Blancarte, had written to him in private that the kingdom wouldn't be able to govern Nasri, Canas, Askilin, Rimodra and Sidins for the next three years. They didn't have the financial resources to invest in those areas either.
That was why the two corps from the region were needed to guard those areas for three years. They would first accumulate some tax revenue to support the kingdom's recovery before handing the areas back to the royal court.
That was a shocking piece of news. The royal court would be entrusting the region to manage those areas for three years on behalf of the kingdom.
However, it wasn't officially announced and was only discussed in private.
Bolonik said that it was a reward from the royal court to the region. The kingdom didn't have the financial resources to honor the contributions of Thundercrash and Monolith, so they were using this as a form of compensation.
Ruling over those areas for three years meant that apart from the taxes and tribute paid to the royal court, all the profits from trade in those areas would be in the hands of the region. That was a huge sum of money.
At the same time, they could migrate to the region within three years. The royal court, on the other hand, pretended not to notice.
After all, they used to be enemies with each other. Having more immigrants would reduce the hassle of managing those areas in the future.
"Alright then. Let's expand Thundercrash by one folk. Also, let's pick some suitable soldiers from the prince's former subordinates to fill in the gaps left by the two corps' sacrifices.
Let General Birkin make a trip to take charge of the expansion and replenishment. Myjack will be his deputy, "Claude made up his mind.
Just as Bolonik said, Thundercrash had to expand to be able to guard so many places.
"As for the captives you want, there are nearly a hundred thousand Nasrian soldiers here. You can take them along with their families and send them to Aduras.
However, I don't intend to let the remaining 100,000 or so Shiksan captives go to the region. I'll let them build roads here for now, "Claude said.