"Chapter 54: The Roman Army"
People on land like to find out the roots, and waste a lot of time. The pen www.biquge.info worries about the late arrival of summer in winter, and worries about the approaching winter in summer. So they keep wandering around, seeking a place that is out of reach, where the seasons are like summer – and I don't envy them.
- Giusebe Tornatore (upstart director of the Italian genre of realistic cinema)
In actual combat, the heavy javelins of Roman soldiers were thrown with one hand, with a maximum projection distance of about 60 feet, but it was difficult to reach such a long theoretical range.
In order to increase the accuracy of the heavy javelin, and sometimes to increase the throw distance, the Roman soldiers would wrap a rope around the wooden pole of the heavy javelin, and pull it hard in the middle of the projection, causing the javelin to spin and fly forward.
If it penetrated the enemy's shield, the shield would be useless, and the soldier with the shield would have to let the Roman soldiers rush up and slash with his short sword, and if the angle of incidence of the heavy javelin was more than 45°, it could penetrate the breastplate and helmet and shoot the enemy directly.
In the previous Roman army, when the barbarian army was fighting and fighting, the javelin rain shot by the Roman youth army could always give a great psychological shock to the barbarian warriors who rushed up, and achieved a good shooting effect.
The actual value of the heavy javelin is not only that, but it also has another important effect: the soldier who wields the heavy javelin can hold the heavy javelin in his hand and use it as a powerful melodial spear.
This was of great significance in actual combat, as once the Roman army without pikemen was caught in the attack of the enemy cavalry, the heavy javelins in the hands of the Roman soldiers became the only weapon they could use to resist the charge of the enemy cavalry.
The young men and heavy infantry of the Roman army, in the event of such an unexpected situation, could use their flexible mobility to immediately build a long wall of shields and heavy javelins to deal with the onslaught of enemy cavalry.
At first, the javelin was only a secondary weapon for the dagger, but when the Roman youth advanced close to the enemy, they threw the javelin together, and then drew the dagger at their waist to engage the enemy in melee combat.
When they were exhausted, the Roman heavy infantry came up to replace them, and the Roman youth army went down to rest, and the attack was carried out on a wide front, usually in several batches in a single battle.
According to the Roman legion structure formulated by Bai Feng, before the Roman youth army is put into battle, there will also be a group of Roman light infantry who specialize in throwing heavy javelins, to the front of the battle line, and carry out several rounds of javelin throwing against the approaching enemy army.
The tacit cooperation of the three arms of the Roman light infantry, the Roman youth army, and the Roman heavy infantry is the core of the three-line battle formation of the Roman army, and it is also the basic standard for Bai Feng to formulate the Roman legion brigade.
Every Roman soldier was armed and trained according to the requirements of offensive warfare, which is why Bai Feng strictly divided the various arms of the barbarian army, and whenever possible, the commander of the Roman army always tried to preempt the attack.
The so-called preemptive strike is not only to give one's own army a strategic advantage, but also to put one's own army in the position of an attacker in battle; the latter plays a more important role than the former, and that is the key to determining the outcome of a battle.
The latter is the key to determining the outcome of a war, and the commander of the Roman army generally only needs to think about how to preemptively win as much as possible, and strategic matters are not for the army commander to consider.
The use of the dagger and the development of highly mobile legions of centurions brought the Roman legions to the stage of their greatest combat effectiveness, replacing the early phalanx formations as the dominant force on the battlefield.
Ancient Rome relied on this legion to break out of the Apennine Peninsula and conquer the entire Mediterranean region through a series of wars in which it rarely suffered defeat, until it extended the Roman Empire to Asia Minor and Great Britain.
The existence of the Roman all-out war system allows Bai Feng to directly enjoy the military achievements accumulated by the Romans over the past hundred years;
Although the Roman system of total warfare provided Bai Feng with numerous powerful Roman troops, the Roman army was always inferior in two aspects: the first was the lack of pikemen in the strict sense of the word, and the second was the lack of strong cavalry units.
When it comes to the Romans and their empire, the first thing that comes to mind is the Roman legions, and when they think of the Roman legions, they inevitably think of short swords and shields, as well as heavy javelins for throwing.
This configuration has also become a very iconic weapon combination in everyone's understanding of the Roman legion, but does the real Roman legion really only need a sword and shield combination to play the imperial hegemony of dominating the Mediterranean?
Historically, the Romans did have a penchant for hand-to-hand combat with heavy javelin throws and short swords, and based on this mode of warfare, Roman soldiers won the final victory in several famous battles, and pushed the empire forward time and time again.
As a result, the weapon configuration of the heavy javelin, short sword and square shield has become the iconic symbol of the prosperity of the Roman army, and even many people have the illusion that the heavy javelin and short sword formula shield are the most effective melee equipment in the era of cold weapons.
Long before the Roman soldiers used the familiar heavy javelins, daggers, and shields, the Romans used Greek tactics and weaponry, and the origins of the Roman legions began around the 6th century BC, when Thurvers Tulliers unified the federation of Atreuscans, Romans, and Latino tribes.
This new military system breaks with the old method of dividing the army according to different tribal origins, and instead organizes the army according to the amount of property; in this way, soldiers of different grades bear different levels of weapons and equipment and undertake corresponding combat missions in accordance with regulations.
Underneath the elite Greek-style units were infantry of the second or fourth class citizens, who differed slightly in terms of defensive area and style of equipment, but this did not prevent them from fighting in the traditional Greek phalanx mode with the military elite.
It can be seen that the Romans initially chose the Greek-style phalanx of spears as their main tactical choice, but compared to the orthodox Greek army on the east side of the sea, the Romans were still far behind in many aspects, or they only learned the surface but not the essence.
It was also at this time that the Roman army lacked the foundations of pikemen in the strict sense of the word, and from this time on, the Romans' understanding of pikemen went so wrong that the Roman factions in the Roman total war system lacked real pikemen.
In the 4th century B.C., the Gauls swept across the Mediterranean coast and stormed the Roman capital, and the Romans used two centuries of lame imitation Greek tactics to end them once and for all!