According to after-action reports, nearly a hundred of the defending soldiers had either blended in with the civilian population or slipped away during the surrender. The Northern Domain's forces were simply too shorthanded to watch everyone in a population several times their own size. Besides, the battle was still raging that night and the situation was chaotic, so for only that many to escape was entirely acceptable.
"Once those men become bandits, they'll just avoid our regular army and prey on civilians. If we want to clean them up... well, it might not be that difficult, but the trouble? It would be an absolutely unacceptable amount of trouble. It's time-consuming, exhausting, and expensive. And believe me, it's definitely more expensive than you're imagining right now."
Counter-insurgency was quite different from conventional warfare.
In terms of both difficulty and intensity, conventional warfare was far greater than any counter-insurgency campaign.
