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- Socrates (famous ancient Greek thinker, philosopher, and educator)

The Fifth Army and the army under the command of Exarka did not end up in a fierce battle; After being attacked by the Fifth Army, Exarka quickly withdrew his troops to his own barracks.

In order to avoid being crushed by the Fifth Legion one by one, Exarka ordered Iker's Iberian Legion to be stationed with his own Third Legion; After experiencing the first battle blow of the Fifth Legion, those old troops of Joan of Arc did not toss, but silently obeyed orders.

The Fifth Legion had no intention of taking the initiative to attack, and Exsaka's headquarters were also stationed in the barracks with peace of mind; The tacit confrontation between the two sides made it almost imperceptible to the previous battle, and also silenced the land here.

After the remnants of the Third Army had withdrawn from the barracks, they withdrew all the way south to Córdoba; Marcus knew that even if he reached Córdoba with his 3,000 remnants alone, he would not be able to withstand the army of the Kingdom of Spain that followed.

So, on the way south, Marcus sent his personal cavalry out; A part of the cavalry was ordered by Marcus to immediately rush to the Fifth Army on the Eastern Front, inform them of the fate of the Third Army, and tell them not to act rashly and to stabilize the Eastern Front.

The other part of the cavalry was the Fourth Legion, which was ordered by Marcus to rush to the port, and their task was to get the Fourth Legion to move quickly north into Córdoba and fend off the Spanish attack with the Third Legion.

In addition to this task, the cavalry were to take a swift boat back to Sicily in the harbor and immediately deliver information about the Kingdom of Spain's war against the House of Augustus and the devastating blow of the Third Legion to the Oscar leader.

In fact, Marcus's arrangement in this regard is a bit redundant; The intelligence system of the Augustan family is incomparable to any force in this world, not to mention that the province of Betica is the territory of the Augustan family.

Within an hour of the outbreak of the battle, the Augustus family had received information from the Tragic Dead and the Brocade Guards in the province of Betica; Marcus, the governor of the province of Betica, who is based in Córdoba, also received urgent information from the intelligence organization at dawn.

During his tenure as governor of the province of Betica, Marcus also made good achievements in government affairs; However, military matters were never within the purview of the governor, and the Augustans were very taboo in this regard.

Therefore, Marcus never took part in military affairs, and none of the three legions stationed in the province of Betica had any affiliation with the Doge's Palace; Nominally, however, Marcus was still the supreme leader of the Provincial Guard in Betica.

Since the Battle of Zama, Oscar has correspondingly set up five officials in each province of the House of Augustus; The province of Betica is no exception, and the establishment of these five officials greatly disperses the power of the governor, and indeed improves administrative efficiency.

Among them, the military officer among the five officials is the actual supreme head of all the guards in the entire province of Betica; Marcus immediately consulted with the five officials about how to defend Córdoba after learning of the intelligence organization's information.

Because they did not know whether the Third Army would be able to withstand the Spanish attack, nor whether the Third Army would be able to withdraw to Córdoba; Therefore, they decisively sent a request for help to the Fourth Legion, and began to recruit temporary militia in the city.

It turns out that the low sense of identity of the Augustan family in the province of Betica has serious consequences; The temporary recruitment notice issued by the Viceroyalty of Marcus was not approved by the Córdoba, and only a few conscripts were recruited.

In the end, the governor's palace of Marcus tried its best to recruit a temporary militia of several hundred men; After the provincial military officer of Betica distributed the spare weapons and equipment of the provincial guard to them, he organized an army of about 1,500 to guard the wall.

Just when Marcus was busy trying his best to defend Córdoba after receiving the information, the Tragic Dead and the Brocade Guard also began to find a way to pass the information back to Sicily.

Whether it's a sad song of the dead, or a brocade guard; They all have their own internal intelligence analysis agencies, and they naturally know that it is impossible for the Third Army to retreat in its entirety, and they also know the information that Segudus died in battle.

All this vital information was continuously collected and transmitted back to Sicily by the two intelligence organizations; By the time the battle between the Third Army and the Spanish army was over, all the information had been transmitted back to the two intelligence groups through their respective channels.

Of course, it was not only the battle between the Third Army and the Spanish army that was passed back by these two intelligence organizations, but also the battle between the Fifth Army and the Exsaca Division.

At the same time, both the Tragic Dead and the Brocade Guard began to operate their respective organizations in full force; In addition to speeding up the transmission of information, they also began to gather various information within the Kingdom of Spain for the Augustus family to use in future counterattacks.

Only six days elapsed between the attack of the Spanish army led by Botricott on the Third Army and the receipt of detailed information by Oscar in Syracuse; At this time, the remnants of the Third Army had just withdrawn to Córdoba.

The reason why we can have such a fast speed of information transmission is thanks to the gift of the Maxentius family back then; The two communication eagles of the Maxentius family in the past are the protagonists of this information that can be transmitted so quickly!

When Oscar got the information from the falconer, he immediately ordered the family guards around him to urgently gather all the family members in the ancient city of Syra to go to the consul's mansion to discuss important military affairs!

To be honest, the undeclared war of the Kingdom of Spain really made Oscar furious; In particular, the unfortunate death of Segudus and the heavy defeat of the Third Army made Oscar's heart ache and bleed.

The Augustan family had never suffered such a loss in their history! Even if Oscar's father led the Wolf Legion to be defeated by Hannibal that year, the Wolf Legion was only more than half killed, and there were no casualties like the Third Legion.

What made Oscar even more angry was that the large number of old weapons and equipment of the Roman Republic appeared in the Spanish army, which was enough to prove that their actions were carried out with the support of the Roman powers; This means that the war between the House of Augustus and the Kingdom of Spain has begun!

The family members who were inexplicably summoned to the Archon's mansion, after seeing Oscar's face, no one dared to ask the doubts in their hearts, they just sat in their places cautiously, for fear of angering Oscar, who was obviously angry.

After everyone entered the conference room, Oscar forcibly suppressed his anger and said to all the family members present:

"I have suddenly summoned all of you here today because of bad news that I have to tell you; Although we Augustus tried our best to avoid war, war has come!

This time, the war broke out not in North Africa, but in the Iberian Peninsula; Our so-called Spanish friends, united with the Roman powers, went to war against our House of Augustus. ”

How dare the weak kingdom of Spain go to war against the rising House of Augustus? What kind of joke is this, is the Kingdom of Spain looking for death? Mary, who was puzzled, asked directly to Oscar:

"How is this possible? The standing army of the Kingdom of Spain was only 25,000, and it was not as strong as the three legions stationed in the province of Betica; How could the Kingdom of Spain blindly declare war on our House Augustus? ”

Mary's doubts were also the doubts of all the members of the Augustan family here, they really couldn't understand how the Kingdom of Spain could take the initiative to declare war on the Augustan family, wasn't that an act of seeking death?

After hearing Mary's questioning, Oscar couldn't help but sneer:

"A declaration of war? The Kingdom of Spain did not declare war at all, they had already begun preparations for war; In addition to the 25,000 standing army, they formed a new army of 30,000 men with the support of the Roman powers.

In the early hours of the morning six days earlier, the 35,000-strong army of the Kingdom of Spain, under the command of Botricott, had launched a surprise attack on our Third Army, which was stationed in the northern part of the province of Betica; The entire Third Army suffered heavy casualties, the commander of the Segudus Army was killed on the spot, and only the adjutant general of the Marcus Army led the remnants of about 3,000 troops to fight their way out of the siege and retreat to Córdoba.

Even the Fifth Legion, stationed in the eastern part of the province of Betica, was attacked by more than 10,000 troops of the Kingdom of Spain; It's just that Longkina and Gabriel sensed the abnormality of the Spanish army in advance, which ensured that the Fifth Army did not suffer heavy losses! ”

Oscar's answer made all the members of the Augustan family present gasp involuntarily, and they understood why Oscar kept his face blue and held an emergency military meeting of the family.

It turned out that the Kingdom of Spain had undeclared war on the Augustus family, and had attacked the Augustus' third legion with an army three times larger than the Third Legion; The legion of the Augustus family has never had a legion commander killed, and more than seventy percent of the casualties have been killed or wounded!

Needless to say, the sneak attack of the Kingdom of Spain completely angered Oscar; The war between the House of Augustus and the Kingdom of Spain was doomed from the very beginning to be an inevitable and unending situation.

The death of Segudus and the near-total annihilation of the Third Legion left the Kingdom of Spain in place of all other powers as the archenemy of House Augustus; The casualties of the Third Legion must be paid for by the Kingdom of Spain! (To be continued.) )