Chapter 102: Marcus’s Legion
“Uwooo!”
The legionnaires in plate armor were fearless.
They had the confidence that no enemy could kill them, which gave them the courage to hurl themselves at the crowd of 15,000.
Swoosh!
As Spartacus slashed through the front line of the enemy, the other soldiers followed him with a ferocious momentum.
The gruesome sound of flesh being cut and torn echoed continuously.
The Roman legionnaires did not even bother to defend themselves against the weapons of the Belgae warriors.
Ordinary spears or small axes could not harm them even if they hit their bodies.
One swing of their longswords could kill an enemy with ease.
Did the mythical harpe, the divine weapon used by Perseus, have such a formidable power?
No one could stop the Roman army.
The legion led by Spartacus advanced forward, leaving behind a trail of blood and fallen Belgae warriors.
“Soldiers, do not get isolated and maintain formation!”
Spartacus calmly surveyed his surroundings while killing an enemy with each stroke of his sword.
No matter how well they were armored, they were not invincible.
If they were surrounded by hundreds of enemies alone, they would be in danger.
That’s why the Roman legionnaires were careful not to let themselves be encircled by the enemy.
Longswords required a wide range of motion, so they could not form a dense formation like the regular Roman army.
Therefore, there was a risk of accidentally penetrating too deep into the enemy lines alone.
Spartacus made sure that none of his subordinates did that.
“Ugh, uaaa!”
A terrified Nervii warrior stabbed his spear at a Roman soldier’s armor, but it bounced off.
It was impossible to have any effect with a random attack, even if he concentrated his mind and aimed at the joint area.
The Roman soldier grabbed the spearhead and pushed it back.
The Nervii warrior lost his weapon and ran away in panic.
It didn’t matter how hard they hit the plate armor, their weapons would break, and they couldn’t withstand more than two strikes from the longswords even if they tried to block them with their own armor.
“Uaak!”
“Kraak!”
“Sa-save me!”
“They are monsters! They are not human! They are monsters!”
In fact, there were more people who ran away in fear than those who were killed by the Romans.
But it was not easy for the soldiers in the front line to retreat in such a chaotic situation.
The Nervii commander shouted loudly to restore order, but he couldn’t control them.
Moreover, Spartacus targeted the ones who looked like commanders as his first priority.
The Roman legion that followed him crushed the Belgae warriors who had lost their morale.
Their weapons and armor were inferior to those of Spartacus’s legionnaires, but that didn’t matter at all.
The Belgae warriors who had lost their will to fight couldn’t resist the Roman charge.
Thud! Clang!
The Roman soldiers bashed and stabbed their enemies with their shields and gladii.
The Nervii tribe didn’t use cavalry much, so if their infantry was completely pushed back, the battle was practically over.
As Marcus had declared before, this was not a war.
It was a one-sided violence and slaughter.
The situation was like this, so Marcus didn’t need to command his legion at all.
The centurions and legionnaires coordinated their soldiers and attacked the enemy without any difficulty.
“It’s more powerful than I expected.”
He muttered to himself as he watched Spartacus’s legion sweep away the enemies in front of him.
He expected them to perform well, but this was beyond his imagination.
Strictly speaking, the plate armor that Marcus made was not exactly equivalent to the plate armor of the late Middle Ages.
There were still some rough parts in it.
No matter how much he improved the ironmaking technology, there was a subtle difference in experience among the craftsmen.
But considering the relative technological gap with the enemy, it was much more powerful than the plate armor of the medieval era.
No weapon made of soft iron in ancient times could break through plate armor.
Of course, that didn’t mean that they were immune to all attacks.
There were some ways to deal with soldiers in plate armor.
The most effective way was to crush them with a weapon that had an overwhelming mass.
If they were hit by a catapult or a ballista, they would die regardless of their armor.
The second way was to use a large blunt weapon to cause internal damage.
It would take dozens of soldiers to hit them repeatedly to incapacitate them, but it was still a possible option.
The last way was to aim precisely at the joint area and pierce the weak point of the armor.
Of course, it was almost impossible to hit the joint of a moving opponent accurately.
They had to surround them with many soldiers and swing their weapons until they got lucky.
‘But well…they can’t think of these methods right away when they see plate armor for the first time.’
The Belgae warriors, who were famous for their bravery, were not being pushed back because they were stupid or their reputation was false.
It was natural that they couldn’t figure out how to deal with an unknown enemy they encountered for the first time.
And the unknown existence that they couldn’t understand soon aroused fear in them.
The Belgae warriors couldn’t understand how their weapons had no effect on the plate armor soldiers.
They felt as if the weapons wielded by the Romans were divine tools given by the gods.
How else could they explain that their weapons couldn’t even scratch them?
Once they thought that way, it became harder and harder to continue fighting.
Especially for an ancient tribe that believed in many superstitions, this fear was quickly associated with mythical elements.
To them, the Roman soldiers were not human, but monsters.
This complex factor caused the tide of the battle to tilt more than expected in an instant.
The Nervii commander who was full of confidence at first couldn’t muster the courage to lead his warriors and just stood there stupidly.
Spartacus cut down the enemies blocking his way and approached the commander.
Whenever he swung his silver sword, at least one warrior fell to the ground.
The Nervii commander came to his senses and looked around.
He wanted to check on the main force of his army.
His eyes turned to the direction where his comrades had charged towards the Roman camp.
Strangely enough, they had not advanced at all since the beginning.
Rather, they were being pushed back towards the river behind them.
‘What the hell is going on… Wh-what should I do…’
He was at a loss as he saw that even the main force was not doing well.
He had fought in many battles, but his experience was useless in this situation.
His judgment was paralyzed by the incomprehensible flow of the battlefield.
He looked back and forth between Spartacus’s legionnaires who were approaching him and his subordinates who were being slaughtered one-sidedly.
The fight was already over.
The Romans were completely different from what he had heard.
They were beings that he should never have confronted, that he should never have thought of fighting.
He felt guilty for leading his warriors to their doom with a wrong decision.
He couldn’t even think of running away.
The commander stood still as if he had roots in the ground.
Until Spartacus cut off his neck, his face was filled with horror and shock.
“It will be over soon.”
“Indeed.”
“If it weren’t for you, general, we wouldn’t have achieved this glorious victory.”
The hornblower who assisted Marcus spoke with excitement, unable to hide his enthusiasm.
Not only the Twelfth Legion, but also Caesar’s main force had begun to overwhelm the enemy.
The flank of the Belgae coalition was demoralized and collapsed with the death of their commander, and the military tribunes gave up the fight.
Marcus was more than satisfied with this outcome.
“Send a signal to Spartacus’s legionnaires to return.”
“Yes, sir.”
The hornblower sent a signal, and Spartacus stopped chasing the fleeing enemies.
He looked back once and ordered his legionnaires to return.
The reason why he only called back Spartacus’s legionnaires was obvious.
He would soon join forces with Caesar’s main force, so he didn’t want to show them the soldiers in plate armor.
It would spread as a rumor anyway after such a formidable performance, but as long as he didn’t show them the real thing, he could get away with it somehow.
“General, you are amazing. How did you make such armor and weapons? Is it true that Vulcan gave you wisdom?”
The hornblower asked Marcus again, looking at him with awe.
Marcus had already heard the rumor that his soldiers called him the son of Vulcan.
“Well…if you think so, then maybe it is.”
“Wow! I knew it.”
It was convenient in ancient times that anything that was incomprehensible could be accepted if it was related to a god.
The hornblower looked alternately at Marcus and Spartacus, who returned triumphantly.
“I don’t think we will ever lose to any enemy as long as you lead us, general.”
“Thank you for your trust. But that armor is not perfect yet. I haven’t even given it a proper name yet.”
“A name? Isn’t that something you can just make up?”
“No, that won’t do. I need to improve the aesthetic aspect of the armor as well. Something more…well, never mind.”
The hornblower scratched his head with a puzzled expression.
He couldn’t empathize with him.
It was purely Marcus’s personal taste.
‘It would be nice if it had a more Roman feel in its design…maybe a plausible name would do. Translating full plate into lorica plena laminen? Hmm, it doesn’t sound right.’
Marcus called out the names of each soldier who returned and praised their achievements.
There was not a single casualty among Spartacus’s legionnaires.
However, some of them got bruised because they got too excited and left their formation.
They would have died if they had worn any other armor.
Marcus didn’t have to say anything, Spartacus scolded those careless soldiers harshly.
As soon as they changed their armor to another one, he came up to Marcus and asked him.
“Should we join the front line again?”
“No, that’s enough. You have done enough, so rest here. How do you feel about fighting in that armor?”
“It’s so amazing that it gives me goosebumps. It’s so good that I’m worried it might dull the senses of the soldiers. If they take attacks for granted just because they have good defense, it will be a problem. Of course, it would be good to allow some attacks at the beginning of the battle to break the enemy’s morale, but after the actual combat starts, it should be avoided. We need to maximize the defense of the armor and use the weapons efficiently. We need to study the swordsmanship that suits them.”
“I’ll leave that to you. I’ll give you the necessary knowledge, so think about it based on that. It will be a good challenge for you.”
Marcus came to one conclusion from this experiment.
It was still unrealistic to adopt plate armor as the main force of the legion.
As Spartacus said, the skill level of the untrained soldiers was too low.
If they tried to crush the enemy with only the superiority of their equipment, they couldn’t avoid the qualitative decline of their soldiers.
That was not what Marcus wanted.
Moreover, the production cost of plate armor was astronomically high in this era.
Even in the late Middle Ages, plate armor was a money-eating hippo, but now it was even worse.
It cost a fortune to produce 100 pieces of equipment for the experiment.
Even if he got all the ransom from the Belgae prisoners, it wouldn’t cover the expenses.
The fact that he couldn’t mass-produce them because he had to keep them secret was also a problem.
It was a waste of money to give such expensive equipment to inexperienced soldiers.
‘I guess I’ll have to give plate armor to a few elite who have undergone rigorous training and make lorica segmentata the main force of the legion.’
Marcus moved his eyes to the soldiers of the Twelfth Legion who were faithfully destroying the enemy.
The transitional armor he introduced already had a name: lorica segmentata.
It was a very effective armor for an experimental one.
The armor looked similar to the lorica segmentata in the original history, but its defense was incomparable.
It was also quite expensive, but it was nothing compared to the plate armor.
Even in a war, he couldn’t ignore the cost-effectiveness.
Besides, the design of the armor had a strong Roman feel to it, which was a bonus.
While Marcus was lost in thought for a moment, the battle was already nearing its end.
The Belgae warriors, whose morale had hit rock bottom, scattered and fled for their lives.
It was a moment when the common belief that the Nervii never retreated was proven wrong.
The sound of war machines that filled the Sabis riverbank stopped at some point.
Whooosh!
Amid the noise of clashing weapons and enemy screams, the sound of horns grew louder and louder.
It was a sign of victory.
The Roman standard fluttered, and the legion’s cheers filled the Sabis riverbank.
“Woo-hoo! Rome invicta!”
“Glory to Imperator Caesar!”
“Salute to Marcus, the legate of the Twelfth Legion!”
Caesar only spent a day to reorganize his legion, as the damage was minimal.
Then, the Roman army marched northeast without hesitation towards the territory of the Nervii.
The Nervii, who had about five thousand adult men left, sent envoys and expressed their unconditional surrender.
The Atuatuci, who had sided with them, did the same.
They had about ten thousand warriors left, but they had long lost their will to fight.
Fighting against Rome was a nightmare they didn’t want to remember.
The weapons of the Belgae couldn’t even pierce through the lorica segmentata, let alone the plate armor.
They thought that Rome had some powerful god behind them.
Fighting against those blessed by gods would only bring destruction.
They could fight for their lives against humans, but it was different if their opponents were gods.
The Nervii and the Atuatuci voluntarily offered their hostages and submitted to Rome.
When the news of the Nervii’s complete surrender reached him, other Belgae tribes also hurriedly sent envoys.
Nine tribes, led by the Veneti, acknowledged Rome’s supremacy and offered their chiefs’ sons as hostages.
With this, the area where the Belgae lived became completely part of Rome’s territory.
Caesar didn’t know it, but this had the effect of nipping in the bud a major rebellion that would occur in Gaul later.
The Belgae had been defeated by Caesar, but they had not completely abandoned their hatred for Rome.
But this time it was different.
They had devised a meticulous surprise attack, but all they got back was a dismal result.
They literally couldn’t do anything and only tasted a miserable defeat and powerlessness.
The warriors who actually participated in the battle cried in front of their tribes and begged them not to fight against Rome.
“Rome is invincible. It’s not a matter of numbers. They have some great god behind them. If we fight, we’ll just die…there’s no possibility of winning at all!”
These were the ones who had argued that they should fight against Rome even at the cost of their lives.
Their values changed after just one battle.
Marcus didn’t chase after the fleeing soldiers and annihilate them for this reason.
He had run out of time to stay in Gaul.
Fortunately, he had succeeded in taking measures to ensure the security of the area he had conquered so far.
The Sequani were already his servants, and the Belgae were too scared to fight against Rome.
Caesar would have an easier time completing his conquest of Gaul, so he didn’t have much to worry about anymore.
“The only thing left is the issue of the Twelfth Legion…”
Through two years of war, the Twelfth Legion had become nothing less than Marcus’s private soldiers.
He had formed them with his own men from the beginning, and he had provided them with equipment as well.
He felt uneasy about leaving them in Gaul for good.
There was a risk of information leakage, and he didn’t like giving away his valuable human resources that he had trained so hard.
But Caesar was still in charge of all Gaul.
Even if Marcus was a legate, Caesar had the ultimate authority over his legion.
He needed a valid reason to take away his Twelfth Legion.
Luckily, Marcus had such a reason.
It was Auletes, who had fled to Rome, and Egypt, which was causing trouble in the south.
< Chapter 102. Marcus’s Legion > End
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