The unhappy ending left the Fifth Army as the biggest loser. After fighting a desperate bloody battle, they did not even get to see what the spoils looked like before someone destroyed them.
Once the losses had been counted, no one could remain calm. No one had the time to care about the dead and wounded serfs, but the noble casualties could not be ignored.
Seven wounded, three crippled, eight killed—the noble officers had lost nearly a quarter of their number. In an ordinary war, an army that had suffered such losses would likely have collapsed long ago.
Had Hudson not reacted quickly and resorted to the utterly ungentlemanly tactic of overwhelming numbers, the Fifth Army's fate would have been even more tragic.
Even though Count Pierce promised not to pursue the earlier matter and said the kingdom would not forget everyone's contributions, no one felt the slightest bit happy.
The Fifth Army had suffered such grievous losses that the little matter of looting was no longer worth mentioning. Continuing to make an issue of it would have been far too lacking in human decency.
The noble officers had suffered devastating losses, and even more of their elite private troops had died. Their numbers had fallen from over seven hundred at departure to fewer than four hundred.
Aside from the initial hard-fought battle, a large part of those terrible casualties came from their inability to retreat, as the serf soldiers on the outskirts had pressed them into the front lines.
Nearly every noble who had participated had suffered heavy losses. Without three to five years, there was no way they could recover their strength.
Looking at the sets of cold numbers, Hudson became even more low-key. Even when dividing the spoils, he merely symbolically fought for two warhorses and three