Just as
On April 25th of the year 1768 by the Galentea Common Calendar, Krisen Redlis, King of the Redlis Kingdom and former First Prince of the Krisen Empire, declared that Crown Prince
The moment the First Prince's proclamation was released, everyone who read it laughed their heads off. The document felt inexplicably familiar, and when those with sharper eyes investigated, they discovered it was nearly identical to the proclamation the Andinac Kingdom—back when the Third Prince served as Regent of the Krisen Empire—had issued to declare war on the First Prince during the Imperial Civil War. This time, the First Prince had simply changed a dozen-odd words before returning it verbatim to the Andinac Kingdom.
Though the proclamation was a joke, the seventy thousand fierce, battle-hardened veterans under the First Prince were no pushovers. In less than ten days, every one of the seven fortresses—large and small—that the Andinac Kingdom had stationed along the border fell. The Gale Legion suffered devastating casualties and could only retreat step by step, relying on the manors and castles of the kingdom's nobles to mount resistance.
On April 32nd of the Galentea Common Calendar, Grand Duke Maderas captured Siss Castle—at the cost of nearly five thousand casualties in his Haishan Legion—which had been defended by two battalions of the Andinac Kingdom's Royal Guard Legion. This opened a passage from Cidegale Province to the outside world, and he triumphantly joined forces with the Iberian Kingdom's relief army, led by the Second Prince, beneath the walls of Varnandez.
At the time, the two battalions of the Andinac Kingdom's Royal Guard Legion defending Siss Castle—over five thousand men strong—had suffered only slightly over a thousand casualties before hastily retreating to Varnandez. Combined with the city's existing garrison, they fielded a total force of fifteen thousand. Everyone assumed the Second Prince would rely on Varnandez's reinforced defensive installations to fight a fierce battle against Grand Duke Maderas's Haishan Legion and the Iberian Kingdom's relief army led by the Second Prince of Iberia.
No one had anticipated that, on the very night before the Haishan Legion and the Second Prince's forces finished building their siege equipment and prepared to assault the city the following day, the Andinac Kingdom's garrison defending Varnandez silently abandoned the city, retreating to a newly constructed mountain pass fortress over ten li away.
When Grand Duke Maderas and the Second Prince discovered that Varnandez's gates stood wide open with not a single guard in sight, the two armies clashed in several incidents as they vied for the strategic location. In the end, the Haishan Legion seized two-thirds of the city, while the Iberian Kingdom's relief army controlled the remaining third.
What followed was an endless round of squabbling between the Maderas Duchy and the Iberian Kingdom. Both sides treated the Andinac Kingdom's garrison in the fortress over ten li away as though they were nonexistent, first bickering endlessly over who would control Varnandez.
With the mediation of interested parties, Grand Duke Maderas finally reached an agreement with the Second Prince. After paying a large sum of ransom, the Iberian Kingdom's relief army withdrew from Varnandez, leaving behind the one-third of the city they had almost completely trampled into wasteland.
Following this, Grand Duke Maderas and the Second Prince each led their armies toward the mountain pass fortress built by the Second Highness, preparing to continue the attack to recover Yungeshandera Province. After Grand Duke Maderas launched two unsuccessful assaults on the fortress, a letter penned personally by the Second Highness was sent to him.
The letter's general meaning was to remind Grand Duke Maderas. It advised him that while he firmly resisted the Second Highness, this tiger, he should not forget the Second Prince, this hungry wolf, lurking behind him. If he persisted in his own way, the Second Highness could withdraw his troops from the mountain pass fortress, and might even abandon the Liechtenau fortress castle. It was just unclear whether, after Grand Duke Maderas led the Haishan Legion into Yungeshandera Province, the Second Prince would seize the mountain pass fortress and block off Grand Duke Maderas and the Haishan within the province...
After reading the letter, Grand Duke Maderas broke into a cold sweat. He then understood why the Second Highness had built a new mountain pass fortress over ten li from Varnandez. It was to annex Yungeshandera Province. In the future, the mountain pass fortress and Varnandez would become the new border between the two nations...
Grand Duke Maderas hesitated. Among the duchy's three provinces, Yungeshandera was the most barren, with little arable land. It was full of hills, swamps, forests, and small streams. If he gave this province to the Andinac Kingdom as compensation, the Second Highness would surely gain both substance and face, and would be content to end the hostilities. For Grand Duke Maderas, it would be like discarding a burden. Otherwise, stationing a legion to defend the border between the two nations would require the two provinces behind him to constantly provide logistical supplies, which was a considerable expense.
If Yungeshandera Province were ceded to the Andinac Kingdom, Grand Duke Maderas would lose face but gain peace. For the duchy, the most important parts were the grain-producing Delamuk Province and the commercial hub of Varnandez. Now that Varnandez was recovered, Delamuk Province was largely in the Second Prince's hands. Although someone guaranteed the Second Prince would not forcibly occupy Delamuk Province, Grand Duke Maderas, who knew the Second Prince's character well, did not quite believe it. Moreover, messengers arrived daily from the noble lords of Delamuk's territories, complaining about the Second Prince's army, yet the Second Prince showed no restraint. It was clear he did not respect Grand Duke Maderas's authority.
If the Second Prince seized the mountain pass fortress behind him, it would be over. The Maderas Duchy would cease to exist.
So the next day, Grand Duke Maderas met with the Second Prince. The Grand Duke demanded that the Second Prince recover Yungeshandera Province for him. His reasoning was that the Second Prince had brought an army to support the Maderas Duchy, yet had not fought a single battle against the Andinac Kingdom's forces, instead just following along and sitting on the sidelines. That was rather unjustifiable.
The Second Prince was no fool. He had come to support Grand Duke Maderas precisely to profit—first to absolve the debts between the two nations, second to obtain gratitude money from the Grand Duke, and third to see if he could seize Delamuk Province in the chaos. Now he cursed why the Second Highness hadn't defended Xist Fortress to the death and blocked Grand Duke Maderas in Xidegel Province, so that his own plans wouldn't have failed and he would have only occupied half of Delamuk Province's territory.
If both Delamuk Province and Varnandez fell under the Second Prince's control, Grand Duke Maderas would be utterly finished, because he simply could not afford the ransom for both Delamuk Province and the commercial city of Varnandez. These provinces and cities would become the Second Prince's wealth supply...
The Second Prince was none too pleased, and when he heard Grand Duke Maderas demand that he attack the mountain pass fortress and recover Yungeshandera Province, his mood soured even further. He flatly refused the Grand Duke's proposal and pointedly stressed that the force he had brought was the Iberian Kingdom's reinforcement army—they had come to support, not to serve as the vanguard. It would only be their turn to move up after Grand Duke Maderas's Haishan Corps had been beaten to pieces.
Grand Duke Maderas very nearly drew his sword and cut down this brazen, thick-skinned Second Prince. To rob someone in their hour of need and still sound so righteous about it! But remembering that he was currently inside the Second Prince's camp, he swallowed his fury hard and took his leave. The Second Prince then cheerfully told his subordinate generals: "Want us to go throw away our lives? Not a chance…"
And then the Second Prince really did lose his door. No one had expected that Grand Duke Maderas would lead a night raid against the Second Prince's camp in the dead of night, smashing the thirty thousand troops the Second Prince had brought into a scattered, broken mess. Of the Second Prince's thirty-odd thousand men, aside from a handful of nobles such as the Second Prince himself and a few knights who managed to escape the catastrophe, the rest of the army was completely annihilated.
This was the event that would go down in history as the "Dawn Raid." The Grand Duchy of Maderas's forces suddenly launched a surprise attack on what had been the allied Iberian Kingdom's reinforcement army camp in the early hours of May seventh. The unsuspecting thirty thousand Iberian soldiers were wiped out entirely. The Second Prince, commanding this army, managed to flee through a hole broken in the camp's palisade under the cover of a few bodyguards.
This sudden upheaval left everyone following the course of the war completely bewildered. No one could understand why Grand Duke Maderas had turned against the Second Prince. The Grand Duke publicly accused the Second Prince of harboring sinister intentions, claiming he had been secretly plotting to entrap him and annex the Grand Duchy of Maderas.
Meanwhile, the Second Prince, who had fled back to Delamuk Province, was seething with rage. When had he ever suffered such a devastating loss? Not only had the twenty-odd thousand private soldiers from his fiefdom's nobles who had accompanied him been swept away entirely, but even a border defense regiment that his father-in-law Fisabron had lent him had been completely destroyed. And before he even had the chance to cry foul, Grand Duke Maderas had already spat blood with his accusations and played the victim first, leveling a string of charges that left the Second Prince unable to defend himself no matter how he tried…
He could only blame his own reputation. No one believed him. Everyone sided with Grand Duke Maderas's one-sided account, and one after another they condemned the Second Prince for feigning support while secretly plotting against the Grand Duke.
The Second Prince had had enough. Since that was how it was, he would smash the broken pot for good. He declared that he and Grand Duke Maderas could not coexist under the same heaven. On one hand, he began rallying fresh forces from the homeland; on the other, he let loose the two border defense regiments stationed in Delamuk Province to burn, pillage, and plunder, committing every manner of atrocity without restraint.
Grand Duke Maderas, for his part, set about fortifying the defenses and armaments of Varnandez City and Xist Fortress on one side, while on the other he conscripted troops and called upon the duchy's fiefdom nobles to unite their efforts and assemble a defense force, resolved to drive the wolf-like Second Prince and the Iberian brigands out of the Grand Duchy of Maderas's borders. And so both sides forgot entirely about the Andinian Kingdom's garrison troops in the mountain pass fortress and fell to fighting each other furiously in Delamuk Province.
While the Grand Duchy of Maderas was caught up in this maelstrom of change, the Plymouth Fortress Castle to the south of the Andinian Kingdom was finally captured by the Reddith Kingdom's army led by the First Prince. Nedrangram, the
However, with Plymouth Fortress Castle taken, the road to the former imperial capital lay wide open, completely unobstructed. Flush with victory, the First Prince led his thirty thousand troops onward without rest, driving straight for the capital.
At Liushui River, a hundred li from the capital, the First Prince and his thirty thousand men stumbled into a trap the Second Prince had long prepared, lying in wait for days. Nearly seventy thousand soldiers of the Royal Imperial Guard Corps surrounded the First Prince so tightly not a drop of water could seep through. They did not attack the besieged First Prince and his army—they merely seized the favorable terrain, fortified their positions, and dug in for a stubborn defense, determined to cut off the First Prince's supplies and starve him and his thirty thousand men to death inside the encirclement…
The Great Victory at Liushui River: the Second Prince deployed the newly expanded seventy thousand troops of the Royal Imperial Guard Corps, exploiting the favorable terrain and adopting a strategy of fortifying positions and digging in for stubborn defense. Over the course of more than a month, at the cost of twenty thousand casualties, he annihilated the thirty thousand elite veterans who had followed the First Prince through campaigns north and south to establish the Reddith Kingdom. The First Prince abandoned his armor and helmet, changed into tattered farmer's clothing, and with two trusted bodyguards climbed over mountains and ridges to escape with his life.
The city.
On August fifteenth, before the royal city of Phedriga, the Reddith Kingdom and the Andinian Kingdom signed an armistice agreement. The First Prince ceded the two southwestern provinces to the Andinian Kingdom as reparations for his war of aggression. The two sides made peace and ceased hostilities, and the Second Prince led his troops home in triumph.
On August twenty-first, the Battle of Kebo came to an end. This battle, fought beneath the walls of Kebo City in Delamuk Province of the Grand Duchy of Maderas, pitted the fifty-thousand-strong allied lord's force led by Grand Duke Maderas against the forty-thousand-strong army of the Second Prince who had invaded the Grand Duchy of Maderas. It too drew to a close, with both sides suffering grievous losses. The Second Prince was forced to lead his remaining forces to withdraw from the Grand Duchy of Maderas.
After reclaiming Delamuk Province, Grand Duke Maderas, despite the opposition of his subordinate lords and knights, insisted on signing a peace agreement with the Andinian Kingdom. He ceded Yungeshandra Province to the Andinian Kingdom in exchange for mutual understanding and a five-year alliance pact.
Following this, Grand Duke Maderas launched a massive construction of defensive installations across the Grand Duchy's two provinces. He not only built several fortress castles along the border with the Iberian Kingdom but also erected a line of defensive works along a hundred-li stretch of the southern bank of the Mitorubro River downstream of the original Baron Shulace's fief, forbidding any crossing of the river and completely severing the Northland from the Grand Duchy of Maderas.
In the continental war records, the period of hostilities lasting nearly a year—from the Royal Imperial Guard Corps and the White Lion Corps of the Andinian Kingdom launching their assault on the Lichidana Fortress Castle of the Grand Duchy of Maderas in October of the year 1767 to the signing of the peace agreement between the Grand Duchy of Maderas and the Andinian Kingdom in August of the year 1768—is collectively known as "Ogero's Counterattack."
In this series of campaigns, the exceptional strategic capabilities and military command skills of Crown Prince Ogero, His Highness the Second Prince of the Andinian Kingdom, were fully displayed. He not only consolidated the turbulent internal state of the kingdom and devised schemes to turn Grand Duke Maderas and the Second Prince against each other, but also defeated the First Prince, compelling both the Reddith Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Maderas to cede territory and sue for peace. The Andinian Kingdom's territory doubled in size, catapulting it into a regional power.
As a result, His Highness the Second Prince rose to fame, making a name for himself across the entire Galentea Continent and earning renown as the most outstanding military strategist of the new generation.
…(To be continued.)
PS: My daughter is sick and I've been looking after her at home. I finally managed to push out a chapter, but the update came late — please forgive me, fellow readers…