happy5214, thanks for following up via PM. I took a deeper look and found the issue.
As I said above, your first ground attack triggered their forces home which put them in auto-defeat, but this specific situation does not impose the defeat alert damages that you were expecting. I've changed this, so when a "battle return forces home" situation occurs, it won't prevent a normal defeat alert from being triggered afterwards.
While reviewing this, I also found that a nation could self-defeat alert themselves by selling off or deploying too many soldiers, which would put them in Anarchy, but would prevent a ground battle defeat alert containing damages for the remainder of that day. This has been remedied, so if a nation self-Anarchies themselves, they can still be issued a defeat alert via ground battle.