Getting married is like walking into a snake's den, and you have to pray that you will meet an eel. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

- Leonardo da Vinci (typical artist of the Renaissance)

Class: Spartacist heavy infantry

Capacity: 160 people

Experience: Level 4

Recruitment/Maintenance Cost: Special Recruitment/460 Gold

Armament: Extra-long spear, heavy round shield, short sword

Characteristics: Can form a phalanx of spears, bonus against cavalry, high morale, powerful charge, excellent stamina, can dig tunnels

The Spartan heavy infantry was the same tier 4 class as the Germanic Berserkers, and the more powerful was their maintenance cost, and by far the most expensive recruitable class in Rome was the Mastiff, which cost 680 gold, and the second most expensive army in Rome was the 440 gold Youth Army.

The peculiarity of the mastiffs lies in their ability to kill and wound the enemy without the casualties of their own soldiers, except for the special existence of the mastiffs, and the cost of maintaining the Spartan heavy infantry has exceeded the recruitment cost of the youth army, which shows their strength.

Regarding the strength of the Spartan heavy infantry, Bai Feng felt that all his descriptions were redundant, and everyone who had heard the name of Sparta would understand their strength, and this newly recruited Spartan heavy infantry was the instructor of the pikemen of the Cheetah Legion.

After taking these Spartan heavy infantry to the camp of the Cheetah Legion, Bai Feng gave a death order to Gatus, who was bent on training the soldiers, and Gatus must cooperate with them with all the things that the Spartan heavy infantry asked the pikemen to do.

In other words, even if these Spartan hoplites asked the pikemen of the Cheetah Legion to bask in the scorching sun for a day, or let them stab their comrades with spears, Gatus, as the commander of the regiment, had to support them unreservedly!

In the face of Bai Feng's solemn order, Gatus, who was still immersed in the dismal performance of the Cheetah Legion, naturally did not have the slightest opinion, so the Macedonian phalanx of the Cheetah Legion was officially trained by the Spartan heavy infantry.

Bai Feng did not ignore the coordination of other warriors, archers, and cavalry, and the coordination training of the first two was personally commanded by Gatus himself, and the formation of the cavalry officially began after Bai Feng provided 2,000 war horses to the Cheetah Legion.

After dealing with the affairs of the Cheetah Legion, Bai Feng, who desperately wanted to improve the combat effectiveness of the Roman City army, put his goal on another aspect: how to enhance the long-range strike capability of the Roman army, which was another major event that was enough to change the Roman army.

Why was the Qin Dynasty so powerful in Chinese history, the attack of large-scale bows and crossbows was definitely the sharpest attack method of the Qin army's array, and in the Middle Ages in European history, why the use of crossbows was forbidden, it was not because the attack power of crossbows was too terrible.

A commoner who had never received any military training, after obtaining a crossbow, could easily shoot a noble knight who had practiced various sword skills since childhood, which was simply a weapon that subverted the worldview of the European aristocracy in the Middle Ages.

There are many more things like this, all of which are enough to prove the power of the bow and crossbow, and the bows and arrows produced by the blacksmith shop in the city of Rome are ordinary bows and arrows with a range of only 100 meters, which cannot meet the combat needs of the Roman army, at least not Bai Feng's requirements.

Because the blacksmith production in Rome was very rigid, Bai Feng could only hope for those barbarian bow craftsmen if he wanted to develop more powerful bows and crossbows, and with the skill level of the barbarian craftsmen, Bai Feng wisely gave up the idea of his own crossbow.

The production of crossbows is quite complicated, and without the careful teaching of people who know how to construct them, it would be almost impossible for these barbarian craftsmen to make crossbows based on Bai Feng's general description of crossbows.

Although Bai Feng himself did not know how to make crossbows or bows, he still knew a kind of bow relatively well, that is, the longbow that had built miraculous feats in the history of medieval warfare! As a history buff, how could Bai Feng not know the prestige of the British longbowmen?

The English longbow originated in the south of Wales, and it began to be recorded around 1150, and in the 13th century, England began to vigorously develop the longbow, from Edward I to Henry VIII, during this period, the English monarchs all made every effort to develop the bow and arrow unit, improve the lethality of the bow, so that the longbow has been greatly developed.

The longbow is generally about 1.5 meters long, roughly eyebrow-length, individual up to 2 meters, longer than the common 1.2 meter bow in Europe, which is the inevitable choice of a single bow to enhance its power;

The best bows are made of yew wood, which is hard and elastic, and the raw materials come from the warm and humid Mediterranean coast, such as Italy, Tyre, Crete, and especially Castile.

The King of England had set a special tariff on this—every barrel of wine imported from the Continent had to pay a few yew billets;

When the Black Prince went on an expedition to Spain and defeated the primitive spears with his longbow, the Castilians were angry with the trees and legislated to eradicate all yews, and hard materials such as elm, ash, and oak were also available alternatives, but they were always less performant.

The longbow was used in warfare by many European countries in the Middle Ages, although the cross was more popular on the continent, and was the main battle weapon of English archers during the Hundred Years' War between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Normal longbowmen, with their faces and ears wrapped in cloth, chains on their shoulders, leather ropes and leather blocks on their wrists, protective holsters at the knuckles of their fingers, and short swords and leather pouches hanging from their belts, wore all kinds of armor, some of which were just plain compartmentainized straitjackets.

Each archer carried twenty-four arrows, tied them up and put them in their quivers, and when they were used up, they went to the supply caravan to get them, and most archers preferred to put them in their belts rather than put them in their quivers. They can also hang the arrows behind their backs, and when they defend, they stick the arrows in the ground in front of their feet, which can be used more conveniently.

When Bai Feng first saw the exploits of the English longbowmen in the medieval history books, his heart was broken, because he really couldn't imagine that the English archers could defeat the French heavy cavalry, so he focused on learning about this longbow.

After having a detailed understanding of the development history of British longbowmen and the production of longbows, Bai Feng also made a longbow of his own with his own eyes, even if the longbow was made quite shoddy, it could shoot more than eighty meters away!

If a qualified longbow can be carefully crafted by skilled bow-making craftsmen, Bai Feng estimates that even if there is no yew wood as a material, this otherworldly version of the longbow can shoot at least a distance of nearly 300 meters, which is quite a terrifying range; as long as Rome City has a large-scale longbowman, the Cretan archers that Bai Feng once valued extremely much can completely withdraw from the stage of history!