Rome must fall.

Chapter 122
  By the time messengers from nearby seaside towns went to great lengths to find Publicola and told him the news of "the defeat of Clodianus' army," Hamilcar had already led his army to approach.

Publicola, who had a stronger force than his opponent, immediately formed a formation to fight.

However, Hamilcar did not attack, but stood in formation. When Publicola ordered the army to attack, he ordered the troops to retreat quickly.

Publicola secretly felt something was wrong and immediately ordered his troops to retreat.

However, Hamilcar led his troops to follow closely, which forced Publicola to be on guard, causing the army's retreat to slow down significantly.

In the end, Publicola simply led his army to retreat to a place that was conducive to defense, with mountains behind and rivers beside it, and then resumed their formation.

In the afternoon, Spartacus led the army to arrive. After observing the enemy's position, he arranged for each rebel army to launch an attack in batches.

The battle was fierce. Facing the Roman army that was dedicated to defense, the rebels fought for a long time without any results.

However, due to the large number of rebels and Spartacus's clever planning, the frontline troops were able to withdraw when they were tired from fighting, and the troops behind them pushed forward and continued to fight without major chaos in the process.

Almost all the soldiers of the Roman army have been fighting, and in the previous battle with Cross's army, the main Roman legion of its army suffered a lot of losses (Due to post-war rest, Publicola initially pursued Spartacus The main force of Sri Lanka marched at a slower speed) and its strength was weakened. Finally, at dusk, the defensive formation was breached and the Roman army was defeated. Publicola fled the battlefield under the protection of cavalry troops.

The rebels won another great victory.

A few days later, the mighty rebel army approached the Ascoli barracks defense line.

Although Spartacus and the others had already learned from the people of Marsi who had surrendered to them, Cassius, the governor of the Roman province of North Italy, led more than 1 soldiers into Ascoli two days ago, which enabled the defense capabilities of the Roman military camp to be restored. Reinforcement (originally this army was ordered by the consul to encircle and suppress the rebels). However, the rebel leaders were encouraged by their previous victories and still launched an attack, only to suffer a minor setback.

When the leaders were struggling with how to break the Roman camp, Quintus made a suggestion to Maximus.

"I suggest that we do not attack this camp, but go west around Ascoli and then continue our march westward -" Maximus relayed Quintus' proposal to the meeting of military governors.

"Chief Maximus, are you crazy!" Cleonis shouted first. He had become a formal member of the Military Chiefs Council and thought he had caught Maximus' sore feet and could criticize him.

"We have seen in the past few days that there are mountains to the west of the city of Ascoli. It will definitely be more difficult to march westward, not to mention the Latium area to the west, where Rome is! Once Rome sends troops to intercept us in the west, The Roman army of Ascoli’s army attacks us from the rear again, and we’ll be in big trouble!”

"What you said is not entirely correct." Maximus dismissed Cleonis's criticism. Instead, he smiled and said unhurriedly: "The west of Ascoli is not the Latium region, but Umbria, and further west is Latium. Secondly, bypass Ascoli. It is not difficult to march westward, because there is the Via Salaria leading to Rome, which is also one of the closest avenues from the east coast to Rome. If we march westward along this avenue, we can reach it in 10 days. Rome.

We are worried that Rome will raise another army to attack us, because it does have the ability. But isn't the consul hiding in the military camp in front of us worried? As the Roman consul, he shouldered the expectations of the Roman citizens and led a powerful army that spent huge sums of money on the treasury to encircle and suppress us. As a result, he not only suffered a defeat, but also allowed us to attack Rome...

Except for Hannibal who led the Carthaginian army to attack the city of Rome more than 100 years ago, the Romans have never experienced the panic of being attacked by the enemy. If we do this, no matter whether we succeed or not, the Romans will definitely hate this man very much. Consul, then his political future will be completely ruined, so as long as we assume the posture of marching westward, I think he will definitely lead his army to stop us! "

Spartacus, who was listening patiently, his eyes lit up, and he said knowingly: "Maximus, you are saying... we are pretending to march west to attack Rome, but in fact we are trying to lure the Roman troops out of the barracks and force them out. Fight us in the wild!"

"That's right." Maximus glanced at Cleonis and said confidently: "It is difficult to break through the Roman camp, but it is much easier to defeat the enemy in a battle. I think you can give it a try."

In the end, Maximus's proposal was approved.

The rebel army began to take action. In order to make it easier to cross the mountains and ridges, they even abandoned a large number of pack animals and left the soldiers to carry the supplies on their backs.

At first, Crotianus found out that the rebels were heading west over the mountains and around Ascoli. He thought that the rebels wanted to avoid the blockade of the military camp and continue to move north, so he decided to hold on until Rome could send troops. Reinforcements are coming and we will talk about it after we strengthen our strength. Because he had learned the news of Publicola's defeat, he no longer dared to underestimate this rebel army that he had once regarded as a rabble.

But he soon learned that the rebels, after bypassing Ascoli, did not continue northward, but instead embarked on the Via Salaria and began to march westward.

This rebel group wants to attack Rome? ! ...A terrible thought came to Crotianus' mind, and he couldn't sit still because he was very aware of the military preparedness in the area along the Salaria Avenue. He had led his army from Rome through the Salaria Avenue. When he arrived in Ascoli, he recruited the city guards from the towns along the way and assembled an army of 5. However, this also made the area along the Saragna Avenue, which had not been fought for many years and was already lax in war preparations, almost losing its defense capability. He could imagine that the rebels could enter Latium without hindrance, approach Rome, and cause panic among the Roman people...

Thinking of this, Crotianus began to sweat coldly. He knew what this would mean after having been in Roman politics for many years, so he immediately called Cassius, the governor of North Italy, and quickly convinced him.

Although Crotianus was eager to send troops, under the persuasion of Cassius, he sent out multiple scouts first to find out that the rebel army was indeed marching westward without any ambush before leading his troops out of the camp. The pursuit was west on Salaria Avenue.

Two days later, the Roman army caught up with the rebels, who deliberately slowed their march.

This is the junction of the Picenum region and the Umbria region. It has continuous mountains and only a valley washed by a river. The Salaria Avenue was built along with this river. Therefore, the terrain is narrow and the rebel army is huge. The army could not deploy, and the situation was favorable to the Roman army.

Clotianus took the army of the Italian province as the vanguard, while Spartacus placed his troops at the forefront, and the two sides soon started fighting in the valley. The troops brought by Cassius were two standing legions of the Roman province of Northern Italy. They were established to defend against the barbarians in the north. The soldiers had been training for many years. Although they had not seen a war for many years, their combat effectiveness was far from what it was at the end of last year. The eight Roman legions formed are comparable.

After a period of fierce fighting, the rebel frontline troops were unable to withstand the situation.

Spartacus had expected this, because Maximus had reminded him of the differences between this Roman army in the North Italian province and other Roman armies (from Quintus, Frontinus, etc. (reminder from others), so he had already made arrangements to issue an order for the frontline troops to retreat.

The vanguard of the rebel army immediately retreated backwards, followed closely by the Roman legions in North Italy, trying to force the broken troops to disrupt the enemy's formation.

It's just that there were no other troops arrayed adjacent to the rear of the rebel frontline troops. Instead, after they ran for a certain distance, they saw another rebel army arrayed across the valley in a Roman checkerboard format. The retreating soldiers passed through the array. They ran to the rear in the gap, and the subsequent Roman soldiers loosened their formation during the running process and were unable to form a strong impact quickly, allowing the rebel troops facing them to smoothly merge their square formations front and back to form a tight front, blocking With the enemy in pursuit, the battle begins again...

Spartacus once used the same tactics when fighting against the consul Publicola, but that time it was an offense, this time it was a defense-focused approach, with the first life and the second time familiarity, and each unit used more tactics. To become proficient.

Through this method of warfare, the rebels were able to take advantage of their large number of troops even in narrow river valleys and use wheel warfare to consume the energy of the Roman army.

When Clotianus and Cassius realized this, they also began to use rotation tactics to save the physical strength of the soldiers. Even if they were not prepared in advance, as the attacking party, it would be easier for the front and rear teams to change positions.

But whenever the Roman army implemented this tactic, the rebels immediately came forward, making it difficult for the Roman army to complete the conversion.

In this way, the offensive and defensive positions continued to change, and the battle became intermittent, lasting from morning to afternoon.

Suddenly, Cridianus received an urgent report from the messenger: the rear team was attacked by rebels!
  Clodianus was shocked and confused: since he sent out the army, he had not stopped sending sentries to inspect the surrounding environment, and he had not found any abnormalities. Why did these rebels suddenly appear at the rear of the army.

It turned out that there were a large number of Samnite and Lucanian mountain people among the rebels. Before the war began, Spartacus sent them to climb the steep walls on both sides of the valley, then climb over the mountains and ridges, and then go around to Rome. Attack from the rear of the army.

When the news spread among the Roman soldiers, their morale dropped sharply, because they all knew that the front line had been fighting for a long time, the rear was attacked again, and the army was about to be surrounded in the river valley.

Especially since the troops of the former Ascoli barracks were defeated at the Vaumanus River not long ago and had a narrow escape, the soldiers dared not repeat the same mistake, so they refused to obey the orders of the generals and fled one after another. .

Seeing that the situation was over, Clodianus took Cassius with him, and under the desperate protection of the escort, he took advantage of the fact that the rebels in the rear had not yet formed a siege and killed them out, but most of the soldiers were trapped in the river valley.

However, when the troops of the Northern Italian Province knew that there was no hope of escape, they resisted desperately. The rebel army paid a high price in order to completely annihilate it.

Within twenty days, the rebels won three major victories in a row, defeating about 120,000 Roman troops and breaking Rome's encirclement and suppression plan. However, the rebels also suffered more than 40,000 casualties and their strength was greatly damaged. Even if some leaders had illusions about marching into Rome before, they had to be shattered now.

The rebel army stopped advancing westward, quickly turned around and headed east, approaching the Ascoli military camp again. There was no one in the camp, only burning fires.

The rebel soldiers rushed into the camp to put out the fire and rescue various military supplies.

At the same time, the brilliant victory achieved by the rebel army swept through Pisenum like a spring breeze. Countless poor people and slaves from Marsi, Vesti, Pelligni and other races came one after another, asking to join the team.

In a few days, the rebel army not only recovered its strength, but also became stronger than before. What's more, at this time, the rebel army captured a large amount of Roman army equipment and military supplies. Most of the soldiers had armor and weapons, and their strength was greatly enhanced.

After resting for ten days at the Ascoli military camp, the rebels began to move north.

It stands to reason that the two armies of the Roman consuls and the two legions of the North Italian Province have been wiped out. There is no force on the east coast of Italy that can threaten such a powerful rebel army. On the contrary, the towns have to worry about their own safety.

However, the rebel army's marching speed was getting slower day by day. When the rebel army finally entered the province of North Italy and reached Ariminum, the southernmost seaport town in the province, some rebel troops refused Moved forward.

As a result, a meeting of military commanders of the entire rebel army was held here.

"Everyone, the Alps are not far ahead. As long as we lead our troops and march for more than ten days, we can leave the area controlled by Rome. By then we will be completely free!"

Maximus spoke first at the meeting. He was also the most active leader during this period in urging the rebels to continue marching north. Since such meetings had happened several times along the way, he looked a little anxious at the moment. His voice also showed impatience.

"Although we have defeated the Roman army many times, Rome is still very powerful. It may send another army to attack us at any time. If we delay for one more day on the road, then the risk of the Roman army intercepting us will increase! So I implore you to do your best to persuade the soldiers under your command to continue to hurry up. Only when we leave Italy can we be truly safe!"

(End of this chapter)