On the way back to the Red Hill camp, Chang Le had already discovered that the situation was not right, with a tidal wave of refugees coming from the west, and the mud after the rain made the trek even more difficult.

The poor people struggled to help the old and the young, and from time to time someone slipped and fell, and their luggage and belongings were scattered all over the ground, numbly trampled by the passers-by behind, and cried and shouted.

Wild beasts wander not far away, waiting for an opportunity to sneak up on the lone or infirm.

The broad man in the carriage was not too painful, but he was also angry because of the blockage of the road, and cursed at the coachman and pedestrians.

Chang Le relied on his mount and rode a divine horse, and ordinary ravines could not stop his footsteps, so he could walk everywhere in the wilderness, and there was no need to fight with others.

But out of curiosity, he approached the crowd and asked the refugees about what was ahead.

In Changle's thoughts, Duke Stanis's father and son are both straw bales, and it is strange that they can win battles, but after all, the empire is strong, and the Western Front has gathered 200,000 troops, including more than 50,000 well-trained guards, and the duke has a strong man like Agnes by his side, so he should not be defeated too badly.

Ordinary people can't tell the specific situation, they only know that only five days after the start of the war, four cities in Western Xinjiang have fallen, and the castles of large and small nobles are even more unreliable, so they can only flee quickly, hoping to find a safe place to escape the war.

As for the current situation of the empire's 200,000 troops, the life and death of the duke's father and son, etc., they don't know anything.

So Chang Le went to find a wealthy businessman in a car, and he estimated that the businessman had more news channels and a clearer understanding of the overall situation

According to the principle of "judging people by their appearance", he chose a more pleasing family, which seems to be a middle-aged couple with a pair of young children.

The men are kind-hearted, the women are gentle and elegant, and the children are all good-looking.

The other party was full of vigilance, vigilantly watching Chang Le who knocked on the car door, repeatedly interrogating intentions, and refusing to open the door easily.

Chang Le had an idea, took out some food, held it in his hand and shook it.

No matter how rich the merchant was, he couldn't buy food on the way to escape, so he immediately opened the door and invited Changle to enter, and treated him as a food peddler, asking the price in a very casual tone, pretending that he was not interested in food, lest he would be too eager to sit on the ground and raise the price.

As a result, Chang Le said that he was "giving it away for free".

Of course, the other party was surprised and delighted, but then he became suspicious, hesitated and did not dare to eat, and took back the bread in the child's hand, as if he suspected that the food was drugged.

Chang Le smiled bitterly and took the bread back into his hand, took a hard bite and munched on it.

At this time, the other party had no doubts at all, apologized repeatedly, and Chang Le also took out more bread and jerky for their family to devour, and the two teenagers choked halfway, and asked him if he had any water.

When Chang Le took the jug out of the beast soul space again, the relationship between the two sides was completely closer.

The businessman was well-informed, and he could see at a glance that Changle had space props, which were worth at least several million, and since he had space props, there was no need to fight their family's idea at all.

"Good guy, you have space props, you must be a child of a wealthy family!" The man's eyes lit up and he made a warm invitation, "Don't you have a car, you can come with us!"

Chang Le's face is delicate and kind, he seems to have an extraordinary family background, and he carries an endless supply of food and water, and the other party invited him to go with him, obviously after calculating the gains and losses.

If this businessman learns the truth about Chang Le's identity and invites a famous robber leader to ride in a car, I don't know what his mood will be.

Chang Le politely declined the other party's suggestion, and then asked:

"I'm going to the front, it's not the same way as you, I just want to know, what's going on on the front? Is the empire's 200,000 army still there?

The merchant was shocked when he heard this, and he didn't bother to answer the question, so he persuaded Chang Le first, advising him not to go any further and turn back quickly, and said that the enemy army was like a demon.

The word "demon" has basically become a compliment in Changle's concept, and of course he will not be frightened, but just smile to soothe the panicked businessman and ask him to tell him what happened.

To explain what happened, we have to start with the time when the Havilland Empire had not yet become an empire.

The empire was formerly known as the Kingdom of Havilland, whose predecessor, Emperor Bruno III, was king at the time, and the Kingdom of Havilland and the Kingdom of Payne in the South were married for generations, and the two countries had a close relationship.

These two countries, together with Fisher and Zalan in the west, formed the "Start River Alliance", hence the name because they are all located in the Start River valley. The purpose of the alliance is to fight against the giant in the south of the continent, the Cayan Empire, also known as the "Dark Empire".

The kingdom of Havilland itself did not border the Cayan Empire, so all wars were fought with reinforcements to the "front-line states", namely the Kingdom of Payne or the Kingdom of Fisher, to fight against the Cayan invasions.

About forty years ago, King Payne died on the battlefield.

Just as Bruno III was leading his army to fight alongside him, he took the opportunity to claim that he was the cousin of King Payne and had the right to inherit, and successfully took over the command of the front-line Payne army, and accused the crown prince of colluding with the Cayenne people in an attempt to subvert the Starr Alliance.

After raising the banner of justice, Bruno III and the Cayenne secretly negotiated a truce, and then returned to the division and went straight to the capital of Payne, where the crown prince did not have many troops in his hands, so he had to give up resistance and flee in disarray.

The next day, Bruno III was crowned at the palace of Penn and forced the southern nobles to pledge allegiance to him, and those who refused were soon swept away.

Thus, Bruno III served as King of Havilland and King Payne at the same time.

It was precisely because of his dual status as kings that he announced his elevation to emperor, merging the two kingdoms into what was collectively known as the Haviran Empire.

The other two countries of the Starr Alliance have been slow to react because they have difficulty in reacting appropriately, and they are morally opposed to such illegal usurpation and annexation, but they simply have no strength to confront Havilland.

Relying on the wealth of the Havilland Plains, the empire maintains a professional standing army of more than 50,000 people, and the Royal Military Academy has trained generations of outstanding generals, maintaining a very high victory rate against the powerful enemies of the Cayenne, and of course, it also deters Fisher and other countries.

However, Fisher and Zaran took in the fugitive crown prince and insisted on not recognizing Havilland's annexation of Payne, which also aroused the anger of Bruno III, but because of the threat of the Cayenne, they did not use force against the two countries, but made it difficult for them to ship on the Starr River.

The original "Starr Alliance" then broke down, and Fisher and Zaran remained allied, while expelling the Haviland Empire.

And in order to make up for the power gap, the two countries paid a large amount of wealth in tribute in exchange for the support of the Kayans.

More than 20 years ago, in 5113 of the Illuminati calendar, the Starr Alliance united with the Cayan Empire and launched a large-scale attack on the Haviran Empire, known as the "Apostate War".

This "historical name" is of course from the history books of the Havilland Empire, because Fisher and other countries actually joined forces with the Cayenne, which is simply a betrayal of light, a betrayal of justice, and a standard "apostasy".

At the beginning of the war, the Haviland Empire faced both the Starr Alliance in the west and the Cayan army in the south, which was completely difficult to resist and retreated.

But a brilliant star rose in this battle, and that was the later Marshal Fontaine, then the commander of the Guards Infantry, Colonel Lance Fontaine.

Fontaine, who was trapped in the lonely city, neither surrendered weakly, nor did he stupidly "shed the last drop of blood", but left a few people to hold on to the containment, and he led the main force to break through at night.

After disengaging from the enemy, Fontaine did not retreat to the rear, but launched a surprise attack in the middle of the night, crushing a coalition force.

Fontaine gave a brief speech on the thousands of captives he had captured, recalling only the brutality of the Cayenne and listing the many massacres carried out by the Dark Empire against Fisher and Zaran.

Then he asked the captives to choose for themselves, this war the Havilland Empire will win, because they were allies and brothers, and there is no deep hatred, he does not want to kill and wound too many Fishers or Zalan, but decides to pounce on the southern front and focus on the Kayan people.

The captives could choose to leave on their own, or they could follow him south, and they would be rewarded for their merits after the war.

As a result, most of the captives were moved by the speech and succeeded in arousing hatred for the Cayenne and volunteered to fight with Fontaine. The few who left brought Fontaine's story back and spread it widely, which had a great impact on the morale of the coalition forces.

Needless to say, in the end, Fontaine broke into the rear of the Cayan line, skillfully maneuvered in the face of superior enemy forces, constantly avoided the real and attacked the weak, and won seven battles and seven victories in fifteen days, which also dragged down the advance of the main force of the Cayan army and bought the empire time for the mobilization of the whole army.

Moreover, Fontaine's men were so fierce that no matter the enemy resisted or laid down their arms, they did not leave any room alive, and the corpses of the Cayenne were erected high in the wilderness with wooden poles.

Fontaine's troops fought without a rear, and of course there was no food supply, so they directly ate people, made the corpses of the Cayan people into barbecue, or pickled them into jerky.

He told his subordinates:

"We are not eating people, we are biting the flesh of the devil, drinking the blood of the devil, and we are avenging the countless compatriots who have died in the past hundred years!"

Actually, it was just to solve the food problem, but when everyone heard this, they all ate very energetically.

At first, the people of Cayan were indignant when they saw such a scene, but the more they became afraid, like the high poles of the forest, the dense corpses, and the blood condensed into a river...... Everyone understands that as long as they encounter that "Fontaine", it is inevitable that they will end up like this.

When they saw Fontaine's troops marching and munching on pickled human hands, the Cayenne people were completely frightened.

Who is this? This is the real demon!

Fontaine's reputation became more and more popular, and the sight of his flaming banner would cause the enemy to flee in fear, and these ten days would be known as the "Ten Days of Blood".

When the Cayan army was panicking, the imperial army was reorganized, and launched a counteroffensive under the leadership of the emperor himself, and inspired by Fontaine, it also adopted the strategy of defending the west and attacking the south, with a small part of the troops pinning down the coalition forces, and the main Guards swooping down on the Cayenne.

The final battle of Fontaine's seven victories in seven battles was to cooperate with the main force of the Empire to pursue and destroy the remnants of the enemy, and chased them all the way out of the country, slaughtering 60,000 Cayan soldiers in the area of the Death Swamp, the corpses were piled up in the swamp, and the blood stained the Pierce River red.

The Cayenne suffered such a crushing defeat that they did not dare to invade Havilland again for twenty years, and this bloody massacre also shook the combined forces of Fisher and Zaran, and the two countries, which had already been waiting and wavering, hurriedly withdrew their troops and sent envoys to sue for peace, for which they did not hesitate to pay compensation and cede land.

What followed was 20 years of peace.

The veterans of the empire are gradually falling, the emperor Bruno III has long since died, and the new emperor Robert V does not like to gallop with swords, but prefers to drink and listen to opera.

Despite this, no one dared to provoke Havilland again, because there was still that fierce god in the army, Marshal Fontaine!

Later, Fontaine often explained to people that he was not cruel by nature, and that he did not like to eat human flesh, and that the war situation required him to do so, and that he had often engaged in charity for many years to make up for the guilt in his heart.

Yet, in any case, there is no doubt that Cayenne, Fisher, and Zaran, these countries were terrified by the name of Fontaine.

Since the alliance with Kayan was asking for their own hardships, Fisher and Zaran, in order to embolden themselves, turned to the northern Hanhai Kingdom and recruited it to join the Starr River Alliance.

The Hanhai Kingdom is a desert and has no connection with the Starr River at all, and its king is a bandit and self-proclaimed king, and has no connection with the continental aristocratic system, and its legitimacy was not recognized in the first place.

Fisher, who had often been attacked by the Hanhai Iron Cavalry, and while suffering from it, he gradually realized the strength of the opponent's combat power, so he announced together with Zalan that he recognized the legitimacy of the Hanhai King, opened trade, supported funds, and gave a piece of southern land in exchange for the joining of the Hanhai Kingdom.

With the existence of the Hanhai Kingdom, the Starr Alliance regained the balance of power, and the Haviland Empire did not dare to act rashly.

The two sides have a peace of mutual deterrence.

Now, more than forty years later, the crown prince of Payne is in his sixties, and if the Starr Alliance does not hurry up and push him out, the crown prince will lose his good moral excuse as soon as he closes his eyes, so the situation gradually becomes tense and develops into a threat of war.

However, the purpose of the Alliance's war was not to fight, and it had nothing to do with the throne of Payne, and if Havilland was willing to cede part of the Staar River Valley to Hanhai and open shipping restrictions to Fisher and Zaran, the Three Kingdoms would not mind giving the Crown Prince to the Empire as a gift.

And the empire, with its own strength, is of course extremely tough.

But the problem is that when Fontaine is in charge of the Western Front, he might as well continue to be tough, and the other side can only repeatedly revise the terms of the negotiations.

However, political infighting led to the exclusion of Marshal Fontaine, and Robert VI dismissed him, and the commander-in-chief of the Western Front was replaced by Duke Stennis and the situation took a sharp turn.

Hearing this, Chang Le's eyes widened:

"It turns out that I caused the outbreak of this war?"

"What? How could it have anything to do with you?" the merchant laughed, "Are you Crown Prince Payne, or Marshal Fontaine? ”

If it weren't for Chang Le's angry "mutiny", the marshal would not have been implicated and dismissed, and if the marshal was not dismissed, the alliance would not have really declared war, so he couldn't help but sigh like this, but the root cause was still in the Marquis Philip, who was bent on power struggle, and the Changle incident could only be regarded as one of the triggers.

Chang Le didn't explain at the moment, smiled bitterly, and continued to ask the other party to tell what happened after the war.

To put it simply, Duke Stennis was fooled, confused by the enemy's troop movements, and thought that the focus was in the direction of the southwest Fisher Kingdom, so he gathered all 200,000 troops on the front line, and once the battle began, he would use the thunderous momentum to overwhelm it and win the decisive battle.

But the first thing the other party dispatched was the Hanhai Iron Cavalry on the North Road, which entered from the northwest, and because there were basically no large-scale defenders along the way, they broke through 300 kilometers in one day and one night.

The Hanhai cavalry is very special, the combat effectiveness is higher than that of the light cavalry, and the mobility is stronger than that of the heavy cavalry, and they did not go to the duke for a decisive battle at all, but divided the troops into multiple routes, burned and looted along the way, and even conquered four large cities, and these four cities did not even have time to close the city gate due to the sudden encounter with the enemy.

The Hanhai people behave in the same way as the bandits, focusing only on wealth and women, and their supplies also come from local looting, without the need for rear transportation.

In fact, this "kingdom" was originally formed by bandits, and when the "state" was first founded, it was all bandits, all men, and women in the country were all snatched back from different historical periods.

And such an attack by the Hanhai cavalry was like a ferocious left hook that hit the back of Duke Stennis's head. Because they burned and killed like this, whether it was out of predetermined strategy or bandit nature, they objectively cut off the back route and supply of the duke's army.

That's an army of 200,000! Even men and horses, thousands of tons of various materials will be consumed in a day!

When the Duke led the army to retreat and prepare for a decisive battle with the Hanhai cavalry, the combined forces of Fisher and Zalan finally dispatched and took advantage of the chaos of the 200,000-strong army to launch a fatal blow.

The merchant couldn't tell how many enemy troops there were, but the 200,000 horses in the chaotic state under the duke were receiving the duke's chaotic orders, and it was a hell of a battle to win.

Speaking at the end, the merchant sighed:

"Even if Marshal Fontaine is reinstated quickly, I'm afraid it will be too late, all the elites of the empire, 60,000 guards, will be wiped out in one battle!"

Chang Le's original relaxed mood of "nothing to do with himself" has now become extremely depressed, and what weighs heavily on his heart is the fate of the civilians who have been looted and burned, and I am afraid that it also includes the untouchables in those cities, the city gate is broken, and the jade is burned!

The untouchables have no wealth to rob of, but they have women!

Of course, he is also concerned about the Guards, the sky-blue Guards uniform, he has been wearing it for more than a year, to say that he has no feelings, it is a lie.

And Lola is in the cavalry regiment of the first division, her sex will never surrender as a prisoner, and it is difficult to escape after the defeat of the heavy cavalry, and the life and death of the "female man" is worrying.

Among the old classmates, there should be many who follow the newly formed army into the battlefield like a thin monkey.

He couldn't help but ask, but his voice was a little trembling and low:

"200,000 people...... Are they all dead?"