Chapter 173: The Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell

One of the reasons why Iphiclates was still leading the somewhat unstable Greek coalition to suppress the camp of Dionysa after the Thessalian army left, and now what he feared has happened. But at the moment, he can't take care of much, the order is still not changed, and it must be carried out.

Of course, it was impossible for Iphiclates to retreat immediately, because the logistics supply of the Greek coalition army was different from that of the Dionian army, and according to the regulations, the armies of each city-state were responsible for their own military rations, so they did not establish a special logistics department to oversee them, but set up a market near Leprion, where the merchants of the various city-states could sell grain and other supplies, and the city-state armies went to the market to buy military rations on their own, and some merchants even followed the city-state army when it set out. Only Athens and Thessaly's armies were different, and Athens, thanks to the assistance of Persia, unified the city-states of Thessaly, and both had enough financial and material resources to form baggage battalions to meet the supply of military rations for the soldiers. So on the morning of the day when Patroclus led his army into Central Greece, there was a great bustle outside the small city of Leprion in the Peloponnese, and in addition to the soldiers of the city-states uprooting their tents, the merchants from the city-states were also packing up their goods and arranging their caravans to leave...... The whole scene was very chaotic.

Fearing an accident, Iphiclates ordered the nearly 20,000 Athenian soldiers who had been assembled to defend themselves, leaving their tents and belongings entirely to the baggage detachment.

The Dionian army did not appear, but the whole process of pulling out the camp took a lot of time, and it was only in the afternoon that the whole army began to march eastward.

During this time, the armies of Ellis and the city-states of Arcadia left the coalition one after another, reducing the number of troops under the command of Iphiclates to less than 30,000, much to the uneasiness of the soldiers.

Iphiclates kept urging the coalition forces to speed up their march, and even at dusk he did not let them stop and rest, and he did not give the order to rest until nightfall, when the coalition forces reached the junction of Megalopolis and Tegya.

It is home to the camp built by the Dionian army in the past, and was used for a short time when the Greek coalition attacked Lagenia, so it can be camped directly.

While the soldiers who had been tired from a long day were soon asleep, Iphiclates was still frowning in his tent, for the Greek coalition had retreated so smoothly that it had not been harassed or pursued by the Dionian army, and the sentinels sent out had reported to him that the Dionian camp on the northern border of Messenia had found no anomaly.

Although the Dionian army has always been unable to hold out in the past, but today the Greek coalition forces are so moving when they retreat, don't they want to retaliate?! …… Iphiclates was puzzled.

On the second day, Iphiclates suddenly asked the coalition forces to change the route of their march, first turning back to the city of Megalopolis and then heading north through the mountains, which was equivalent to bypassing the Tigoa-Mandinian plain and then marching towards Corinth.

This way of marching without taking a convenient road and choosing to take a long detour was immediately opposed by the Argos, because the western side of the Tigea Plain was next to the Argos, and the Argos citizens had been out to fight for more than two months, and they wanted to take advantage of this march to return home, but the sudden change of route by Iphiclates prevented their wish from being realized, and the Argos immediately refused.

Since the Argos were a powerful state in the Greek alliance, sending an army of 7,000 people, second only to Thessaly and Athens, and had considerable weight in this new alliance, Iphiclates had to persuade him, such as "he was worried that the Tegura region might be intercepted by the Dionian army" and other reasons, but the Argos had the same stubborn and conservative character as the Spartans, and once a decision was made, they were unwilling to repent easily, otherwise they would have succumbed to Sparta's hegemony for a hundred years.

Seeing that he could not convince the Argos, Iphiclates thought about it and immediately proposed a plan to "march separately from the army of Argos and the combined Greek army and meet at Corinth", and the Argos agreed.

Iphiclates thought that now that the strength of the Greek coalition has been greatly weakened, if the Dionian army, which has been very calm before, dares to appear in the Tegura region to intercept, it must be victorious, and the Greek coalition army is in danger of being completely annihilated, so it is better to let the Argos go to the test. If the Diorian army did intercept the Tygea region, the Argos could attract the attention of the Dionian army and buy time for the Greek coalition, which was dominated by Athenian soldiers, to escape; If not, the Greek coalition will just take a little more detour, and in the end everyone will be happy.

Iphitrax certainly hoped for the latter result, but unfortunately his instincts weren't wrong.

When Patroclus gathered his forces in Thessaly to prepare for the south, he had the ships of the First Fleet carry the news to Klotocatax in Messenia. After consulting with Printors, Klotocatax decided that the Greek coalition would soon retreat, and decided to quietly withdraw the legionary forces stationed on the northern border of Messenia to Lagenia, while the defense of the camp was taken over by the newly formed Messenian reserves.

Since the Greek coalition forces have not made any decent assault on the Dionian camp these days, Iphiclates did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

Crotokataxs also sent mountain scouts to closely monitor the movements of Leprion's camp, and as soon as the Greek coalition retreated, the sentinels desperately rushed back to Lagnia and reported the news to Crotocatatax, so when the Greek coalition troops entered the original Dionian camp in Maigalópolis, the 1st and 7th Dionian legions had quietly entered the territory of Tigea.

Printors' plan was to wait for tomorrow when the Greek coalition army marched to Tegea, with the 1st and 7th Army Corps and the newly formed Ragnian Brigade lined up in front of it to intercept it, and when the enemy had to stop preparing for battle, Commander Clotokatáx led the 4th and 6th Army Corps and the 1st Cavalry Corps, which had long been hidden on the northern border of Ragnia, to rush to the battlefield and flank the front and rear, completely defeating the Greek coalition army.

But to Printors' surprise, this elaborate net ended up catching only the small fish of the Argos army, and delayed the Dionian army for most of the day.

Not only did Iphiclates lead the main force of the Greek coalition to break out of the encirclement, but he also ordered his troops to abandon the merchants and packs that accompanied him, and accelerated their advance, and finally entered the city of Corinth before the Dionian army.

The main force of the Greek coalition led by Iphiclates joined the army that had previously besieged Mandinia, and the strength of the army recovered to more than 30,000 men, but he soon learned that "the Thessalian army had suffered a crushing defeat and that the landing army north of Dioonia had invaded the region of Attica", and he did not rest much in Corinth, so he was anxious to lead his army to Attica and defend Athens.

At this time, however, the Greek coalition was once again divided: Corinth refused to let the citizen soldiers of his city-state follow him, as it itself faced a threat from the Ionian army from the south; Fearing for the safety of their city-state, the citizen soldiers of Phocis and Locrates insisted on risking their way through the Piosian League, which had declared war on the Greek League, to return to their home state, despite the dissuasion of Iphiclateus.

As a result, the entire Greek coalition was actually left with only more than 10,000 troops of Athens and its maritime alliance, and the Greek coalition army had already existed in name only.

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After Patroclus' army converged with the Theban army, the first target of the attack was not any town in Athens, but the easternmost city-state of Aulops in the Piosia region.

Although Auropes belonged to the Piosia region, it had always been attached to Athens and refused to join the Piosia League, and the Thebans had long looked at it unpleasantly, but they were afraid of Athenian interference, so they never took action against it. Patroclus chose it as his first target, as well as to show Thebes the goodwill of Dionia.

More than 40,000 Ionian troops quickly surrounded Orops, and the Athenian reinforcements did not even show a shadow, and thousands of Theban soldiers launched a strong attack on the city of Orops.

After a day of fierce fighting, although the city could not be captured, it had already caused many casualties among the Olopus, and the enemy was strong and they had lost strong reinforcements, and the desperate people of Olopsan had to open the city and surrender early on the morning of the fourth day.

The morale-boosting Ionian coalition turned to the Athenian border.

The region of Attica and Piosia in Athens is separated by a series of mountains that serve as a natural border dividing line. After learning of the "crushing defeat of the Thessalian army and the southward march of the Dionian army", Athens carried out an emergency military mobilization, quickly assembled an army of 10,000 men and nearly 8,000 mercenaries from the contained Iason, and rushed to the border for defense.

To the north, Mount Panisa is used as the defense center and the defense line is arranged, and to the south, the west is used as the defense center and the defense line is arranged. Considering that Platia, which was controlled by the Thebes, was not far from Mount Thesaron and had a lot of advantages for attacking, Athens deployed more mercenaries in the southern mountains, as they were more combative.

Patroclus did seem to be preparing to break through from the southern ridges, as he led more than half of his army into Platia. But in fact the north was the center of gravity of the Dionian coalition, and the Gallic Reserve, the Twelfth Army, and the Third Army were all deployed in the north, led by Lizarus, who first attacked the defensive line.