Looking at the entire world of Rigal, an army that can fight head-on with the elite hoplites of the Ottolo Empire with the same legion-sized strength without falling behind can be counted on only ten fingers. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

When it comes to individual individuals, they are not overly outstanding. If you fight alone, an Otolo elite heavy infantry is not even as good as a mid-level mercenary who knows how to play more tricks and has more experience in skirmishes. Their advantage lies mainly in the standard weaponry and strict discipline and coordination - two Ottolo heavy infantry may not be able to beat two blue or orange mercenaries, and ten may still be the same, but when the number exceeds fifty, they will become equal, and when the two sides reach a hundred to one hundred, the mercenaries who are good at the flexible combat of the squad will in turn be bound by their own numbers and become self-defeating, and will be defeated in the face of a well-trained and professional army.

There is a specialization in the art industry, and the professional army has extremely high requirements for the selection of soldiers. Mercenaries are loyal only to money, while soldiers must be selected from their origins, and then massively collectivized to ensure that they are able to give freely - the population and sphere of influence required is an extremely difficult prerequisite, and with the space, equipment, and logistics required for training, it is a luxury to imagine a country that is not wealthy.

And this series of things is just the expenses on weekdays, the so-called raising soldiers for a thousand days and using soldiers for a while, the materials and money to be consumed by a professional army are really not something ordinary people can afford.

This is one of the main reasons why the kingdoms of the West Coast are prevalent in the way of fighting with noble cavalry and military forces, supplemented by a small number of civilians, and only a large number of militias are recruited in large-scale battles.

Unlike highly centralized empires, the kings of these kingdoms, including Avenella, did not have the influence and funds to form a standing army. This is also the reason why the lower-level mercenaries who prefer to do odd jobs and take care of war are popular here, and the more stable and prosperous empires have their own standing garrisons, of course, there are no job opportunities for war mercenaries, even in the southern border, which is structured as a city-state and does not have its own standing army, we also know that the locals there are more willing to become hunting mercenaries.

"Mercenaries are like sharks that smell blood, where there is war, where there is chaos, there are them. The slightly ironic summary shows the nature of these fellows, who are undisciplined and profit-seeking, and it is no wonder that even a mercenary of thirty or forty thousand men can hardly compete head-on with a mere 10,000 well-trained professional infantry.

The power of the individual is weak in war, and those things that can change the situation on their own are expected precisely because they are scarce. But in any case, after experiencing the size of 150,000 troops being beaten by the cavalry of the Southern Army and the Ottolos, anyone with a little brains will understand that they can't go on like this.

In a head-to-head confrontation, with all the armies deployed on the vast terrain to face each other, the militia of the Northern Army could not have the slightest chance of victory in the face of the meticulous and cold-blooded Otolo hoplites with almost all-round combat capabilities. Add to this the fact that the Southern Army also has militia and cavalry that were more powerful than this side before Charles and the others split their forces, and if they continue to follow the previous path, they will have only a dead end.

Admittedly, Edward's Northern Coalition was an army that Avennella had never seen before, and the rank and file officers assigned to the various units, plus the generals who had been enemies of Ottolo and had experience in commanding the strategic scale of the legions, maintained order, making them very different from the chaotic militia of the Southern Army. The professional logistical supply personnel, coupled with the various deployments and arrangements during the march, the whole team moved forward in an orderly manner even more than the average mercenary of a thousand men, but no matter how proud these people were of the Northern Army, they were personally proud of all this, the fact is that they were compared to the Ottolos.

Still, just.

Outright amateurs.

"Smack!" said Edward, who slapped him on the conference table made of a huge piece of wood, his agitation was evident by this gesture, and the reason was obviously related to the results of the army's statistics, which had been dragged on until now in the midst of the chaos and evacuation—more than 60,000 men had been lost, and in addition to about 50,000 dead and wounded, more than 10,000 had fled into the jungle and gone missing. The supply and spare equipment, as well as the livestock and other kinds of baggage are even more serious, more than eighty percent of all kinds of things have to be abandoned in the chaotic evacuation, the vast flat land, the front half of the dead corpses, and the second half of the long distance is pulled out of a long distance, all of which are scattered with oxen, horses, and wooden carts.

While the militia, which had been marching with the army since the beginning of the Ekasta Plains, had been able to maintain a certain order at this time, the logistical support staff and the new militia recruited by the Dordogne had begun to shake completely. They had not heard of Prince Edward's stirring March proclamation, nor had they experienced the exhilaration, training on the march and fighting side by side to victory, and many of them simply took advantage of the situation and shouted to join in, and now after a brutal death and a one-sided defeat, they were like a basin of cold water poured over their heads and immediately wanted to retreat.

Among the 10,000 people whose whereabouts are unknown, in addition to those who got lost, I am afraid that a considerable number chose to flee directly back to the Dordogne in the process of large-scale retreat.

They can't be blamed for this, after all, they didn't have a particularly high level of loyalty to Edward - the people were real, and slogans and momentary enthusiasm could not sustain morale and give them a real victory in return, and this would be the case.

The hard-earned supplies were now in the hands of the Confederate Army and the Ottolos, who did not even have time to burn them in order to avoid being exploited by the enemy. The captured materials and the experience of the Ottolo people must have been able to increase the combat effectiveness of the militia forcibly recruited by the Southern Coalition Army, but on the contrary, only the remaining 90,000 people of the lightly armed Northern Army remained, and it took several days just to unify the command of these numbers and not to be chaotic, and no one was left behind to escape the pursuit of the Ottolos, and then solve the problem of housing.

It is almost impossible for an army of this size to disappear completely, and it will take at least a week for a hundred men to disappear from the same area, but the Southern Coalition will not rush after it under the leadership of the experienced Ottolos. The vastness of the Nella Forest Corridor can only cover a small area if a hundred thousand troops are thrown in, and once they penetrate deep into the dense forest, more variables exist, and the advantage they have created by defeating the Northern Army will become less obvious.

If it had been led by Ahibon II himself, the Southern Coalition would not have had such calm and composure. The experience of large-scale warfare far superior to that of the Avenella makes them never act rashly until they are fully prepared, and this mentality is the same as that of the Ottolo Empire - if something can be done to ensure that it develops as intended, then whether it is an internal affair of another country or not, it will do so - This kind of great-power power-like mentality was more or less displeased with the local nobles of Avenella, which is why it took so long for Ashbourne II to convince the southern nobles to form a coalition.

The news of Edward's successive captures of Dawwolfberg and Dordogne facilitated all this to some extent, both of which were provinces after all, and the population was so large that there could not have been no people loyal to Ashbern II, so the news was naturally conveyed quickly, and in the face of the actual threat, these lords and nobles in the south gave up their remaining grievances, gathered together to protect their interests, and sent out coalition forces.

-- It is almost impossible to count how many times this has happened, and whenever there is some change in a given country that affects the whole country, it is often those with vested interests who enjoy the prosperity and wealth of a stable life that are most resistant. After all, people are selfish, and when the country is stable and nothing happens, they can maintain their current status and life, and once there is a change, everything is difficult to say.

It is for this reason that the nobles of the South, who saw the Plains of Acasta prosper under Edward's rule, remained conservatively closed after a year. Of course, they knew that if the border was opened and merchants and mercenaries poured in, their living standards would rise as the territory became prosperous, but who could guarantee that they would not bite them one day, and maintain the way they are now, they would still be able to live a prosperous life, and if they were disobedient, they would become slaves. The sluggishness and peace paralysis brought about by this sense of stability and control were the biggest differences between the southern aristocracy and the northern aristocracy that had experienced the flames of war - and it was this mentality that determined that the northern army still had a slight chance of turning defeat into victory.

They have lost their heavy baggage supplies and cannot maintain the ability to fight independently like a regular army, but this may not be entirely a bad thing, because in terms of professionalism at this moment, they will definitely not be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Ottolos, and if they form a frontal army, the 100,000 army will only be crushed - even if they can inflict casualties on the Ottolos, they will face more than just this 10,000-strong hoplite, and the result of gambling all the weight in a battle is to lose the whole battle.

And those that bring their own supplies, baggage and heavy equipment may provide excellent sustained combat effectiveness, but in order to protect them, the whole army will inevitably become bloated and difficult to move, it is composed of a large number of amateurs, without professional training, they have to be allowed to cooperate in combat, with the growth of the number of people, the difficulty of the overall deployment also increases exponentially.

This is not to blame our Mr. Sage, or Prince Edward and Archduke Lesky, for in fact the three of them, far from being short-sighted, have seen farther. Avenella needs a strong and professional enough army, and it is cultivated in a short enough time, and the best way to cultivate a professional army is naturally actual combat, so that these people can quickly grow up in the successive battles to become the backbone elite veterans of the future Avenella's regular army is something they have planned for a long time, and if the enemy they encountered this time is not the top Otolo elite army that even the equipment has been smuggled over, I am afraid they will not fall into such a situation.

Either way, something happened that no one wanted to see, and it was impossible for a few people in the leadership to just lose their temper at everyone and not come up with any solution like an incompetent loser. Edward's irritability lasted only a moment, and it was largely due to the grief of the damage to the personnel - they had to solve the problem, and if they couldn't overcome it, all the rhetoric and vision that had been made up of them would be nothing more than empty talk that no one would believe in.

Like a basin of cold water poured down, this defeat was a wake-up call that the unlimited recruitment of an expanding army was too bloated, and the abundant supplies could provide high morale and combat effectiveness, but also make the army vulnerable to ambushes by professional enemy forces - this is what the other side is good at, but the Ottolo people are only outsiders after all, just as the Sivaliers do not understand the winds of Aikasta, and the Ottolo people do not know anything about the Nera Forest.

The peasants of Avenella were simple and strong, they were hard-working, and when the lords were cowering in their stone castles and enjoying the service of servants, they ran every day in such forests, collecting wild fruits, wild vegetables and fungi to satisfy their hunger, they were familiar with the stones, flowers and trees, they were familiar with the terrain, they were familiar with the air, they grew up here.

It was the nature of the mountain people to be able to walk through the jungle at night without even the slightest hint of the stars and moonlight, a trait that the Ottoros and the nobles of the south could not learn in their lifetimes.

Discarding supplies, all kinds of shields and equipment of the Legion War, and battle commanders, they scattered into the forest, like leaves, light and imperceptible.

- Henry broke up the entire Northern Army.

He divided them into small groups and made their way through the jungles familiar to the Avenella.

They eat wild fruits, hunt wild animals, and imitate the calls of birds and finches to communicate with each other over a wide area, and they scatter into the entire Nera Forest and the surrounding territorial system.

They knew the territory where they were born and raised, but more than that, they spoke the same language as the native farmers of the South.

-- From the very beginning, it was probably a bad decision to carry a lot of supplies and baggage. Everyone, including our Sage Lord, has focused on obtaining enough supplies to sustain an entire army directly from the large and rich territories, ignoring the small villages and towns that are widespread throughout the territory of Avenella.

There were no obnoxious southern aristocrats, but villages made up of equally simple peasants.

This is our country.

This is our Avenella.

This is our home turf.

The counterattack began. (To be continued.) )