ancient greece mediterranean ruler

Chapter 468 The Great Battle of Taranto ([-])

Davos was relieved.When they made a crazy plan to "use themselves as bait" in advance, Sekerian and he made detailed arrangements for it, and deployed more warships around Davos's ship to protect Davos's ship. Stay safe while having a final showdown with your enemies.

"There is a warship coming from the front left!"

"There is a warship on the starboard side!"

"There is an enemy ship on the right side of the stern!"

……

The exclamations of the three lookouts continued, and the Syracuseans launched a frantic attack on Davos's ship, making the nerves of the entire ship tense.

"Retract the suspension bridge! Retract the suspension bridge!" At this time, the deck sailor at the bow of the ship shouted loudly.

Miltias breathed a sigh of relief and shouted, "Back!"

At this time, the sea around the ship was filled with two warships, two together, with only a larger space behind.

The sailors immediately rowed backwards. The ship had just picked up speed when they heard the lookout hand at the end of the bed shouting urgently: "An enemy ship is ramming from behind! There is an enemy ship ramming from behind!"

This Syracuse warship was quite cunning. It relied on its superb maneuvering skills and used the surrounding warships to block its view. It flexibly shuttled through the gaps in the ship like a fish and quickly approached the ship. It was discovered by observers. At that time, the distance was only more than 40 meters.

However, the warship was rowing backwards again, so the distance was quickly closing. Miltias shouted sharply: "Turn to the right rear! Turn to the right rear!..." He wanted the warship to turn around and let the "crow" The "drawbridge" works, but it seems time is running out.

"Paddle forward! Paddle forward!..." He changed his voice and shouted again.

Although the oarsmen did not understand the situation outside, they had a premonition that something was not going to happen when they heard the captain's frequently changing orders and nervous voice. They became a little panicked for a while, and some even fell into the sea with wood pulp.

Seeing the bronze ram of the enemy ship rushing through the waves, he could even see the appearance of the enemy on the bow of the ship clearly. At this moment, Davos's heart was in his throat, but Martius led the soldiers. Catch up and urgently take off Davos' armor. If a ship is hit and sunk, they will jump into the sea with Davos until they are rescued.

At this moment of lightning, in the narrow gap between warships (trireme warships can't pass through at all), a warship sprang out from the slant, blocking the enemy ship and the ship. In between, that is Dionia's 50-paddle warship.In normal naval battles, the role of 15-oar warships is mostly used for reconnaissance, messaging, rescue, assisting in ship-jumping operations, etc., and is generally used as a fast ship.However, when the new naval tactics were implemented in Dionia's fleet, in view of the weakness of the trireme warship equipped with the "crow suspension bridge" in terms of flexibility and relatively poor speed, Sekrian gave fifty A new tactical function of paddle warships is to use the characteristics of small, flexible and fast 16-paddle warships (up to [-] to [-] knots at the fastest) to block the attacking route of enemy ships so that the main warships can escape

In order to ensure the safety of Davos, there are naturally several such warships wandering around the ship.At this moment, the enemy ship had no time to turn. The bronze ram directly hit the fifty-odd warship. There was only a loud "bang" sound, followed by the sound of wood breaking, the screams and screams of the sailors, and the whole body was cut open. A big hole, sea water immediately poured in, diluting the blood of the injured...

The fifty-oar warship sank rapidly under the crushing force of the trireme enemy ships...

But the forward momentum of the trireme enemy ship has been significantly weakened, and finally stagnated.

Just as the captain yelled in panic, "Pull back quickly," the ship where Davers was located had turned around, quickly approached, and the "Crow Suspension Bridge" crashed down.

Davos shouted angrily: "Avenge our brothers!"

Leading the escort team members, he personally committed suicide on the deck of the enemy ship...

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The people of Syracuse originally hoped to use their superb sailing skills and rich naval combat experience to deal with Dionia's weird warships. However, they suddenly discovered that although the Dionia warships were less flexible, , but that device was extremely flexible. When it turned and fell in all directions and in various ways, all the warships approaching them were unable to escape being hooked and were eventually captured.

The people of Syracuse were completely frightened.

Due to Leptinis' insistence, the attack on Davos's ship became the final madness. More than 30 Syracuse warships surrounding Davos's ship were captured. Syracuse The fleet finally couldn't hold on any longer...

Leptinius was allowed to shout loudly: "Come forward! Let me rush forward! Let me die here! Let me go and let me drown! Ahh..."

How dare his captain let anything happen to him.When charging before, he secretly asked the oarsmen to slow down their oars, so that the flagship would stay outside the assault circle.The fiasco of the naval battle this time must ensure that the naval commander returns safely to Xiliting, otherwise the wrath of the plenipotentiary general is not something they can bear.

The few remaining warships of the Syracuseans hurriedly turned around and fled south, and the Dionian fleet did not pursue them because their ships could not catch up with the enemy ships that were determined to escape at the speed of their ships.The most important thing is that they also need to rescue the soldiers who fell into the water and seize the time to deal with the aftermath.

"Your Majesty, the Syracuse Navy is retreating! We-we are victorious!!" Amid the cheers of the rowers and escorts, Miltias rushed to him and reported to him with an extremely excited expression. .

Davos looked at the enemy that had disappeared on the skyline, suppressed the excitement in his heart, and replied with a slightly trembling voice: "Victory... has just begun!"

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This large-scale Battle of Taranto, which shaped the course of the war, finally came to an end after more than two hours.

The Syracuse navy lost 220 three warships, most of them triremes.The Dionia fleet lost more than 40 warships, half of which were [-]-oar warships.The Dionia fleet, which was at an absolute disadvantage, was beyond the expectations of many outsiders and defeated the Syracuse Navy.

In the war a picture emerged that was very different from other naval battles.The Syracuse Navy lost so many warships, but there were rarely scenes of warships being rammed and sunk, and a large number of sailors floating on the sea, crying out sadly.Because there are a total of 157 triremes, which were completely captured by the Dionians. They only need to be slightly repaired and equipped with their own sailors before they can go to sea to fight. The strength of the Dionian fleet will suddenly increase. More than twice as much.

This really became a strange thing in the history of Greek naval warfare. In naval battles, the number of warships has always been reduced as the number of battles increased. I have never heard of the principle of more and more warships fighting.

While the sailors and soldiers of the Dionia fleet were cheering for victory, the shore was also boiling.

The people of Castellon cheered.After witnessing a thrilling naval battle, they knew their homeland would never again be ravaged by the evil Syracuseans.

What a miracle!After seeing the Syracusans' warships retreating, Amycles was so surprised that he didn't come back to his senses for a long time. Although he was holding on to a bit of luck beforehand, it was a fluke after all, but the Dionysians actually really Make it a fact!In this regard, it took Amicles a long time to come to a conclusion: "Hades' oracle really came true! After Davos was elected king, Dionia really received great blessing from Hades! "

His words were actually recognized by the surrounding Castellon senior officials. A member of the council hurriedly asked: "So everyone...are we still meeting the envoy from Syracuse?"

"No!" Amycles said firmly: "Kill him immediately!"

"Is this... too intense?" Someone asked worriedly: "What if the dictator of Syracuse is angered..."

"Aren't you afraid of angering our neighbor Dionia!" Amycles reminded them: "We have such close ties with Thurii, and sooner or later the Syracuse envoy's entry into the city will be known to the Dionia. What will Davos think at that time, and what will the Dionia Senate think! Dionia, blessed by the Oracle of Hades, has won such a disparate number of naval battles, and they will inevitably win in the end. Just like the famous 'wooden wall' oracle in Delphi decades ago, Athens finally defeated Persia. We can only make up for our mistakes in such a drastic way and show that we are firmly with Dioria. Determination together!”

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The people of Dionia cheered for victory earlier.

As each captured trireme was forced to the seashore and then sailed north along the coast to the mouth of the Craty River, everyone watching the naval battle on the shore cheered and shouted to the legions on the deck. The soldier waved desperately.And this kind of cheers continued, because the captured Syracuse warships also continued to sail to the seaside.

Other Syracuse warships did not take advantage of their slow speed to sink these captured warships. On the one hand, the fierce attack of the Dionian fleet prevented them from taking time, and at the same time, because Syracuse The Zha people knew that the people driving these captured warships were all their Syracuse sailors. No one was willing to make such a crazy decision rashly and send their comrades who had been together day and night and trained together for a long time to the grave of death. And once they did this , after returning to their mother state, they will also face accountability from the people of the city state.What's more, their benevolent naval commander Leptines would not issue such a cruel order.

Therefore, when one captured Syracuse warship passed in front of the Dionian people, everyone understood that victory was not far away.But perhaps for fear of scaring away this hard-won victory, no one dared to completely let go and celebrate. It was not until the Syracuse fleet retreated that the joy in the hearts of the people of Dionia fully burst out.

　Thanks to Qiankun Feiyu, Feng Yuzhi, a big book fan, can I add more updates, and Tong Guan for the reward?Your support is my biggest motivation for writing! !

　　
　
(End of this chapter)