Poor Certorius eventually fled with a remnant of his army to Magnus, a small seaport town at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. The 7th and 8th Corps of Appis, who followed www.biquge.info followed, soon besieged the city.

As with his previous tactics, Apis ordered the soldiers of the two legions to take turns working on the periphery of the city, and within a week a perimeter had been erected around the perimeter of the city. Trenches were dug in front of the wall, filled with sharpened wooden piles and asphalt. A tower was built above the wall, on which the legionnaires stood guard day and night, looking out over the desolate land beyond.

But problems also arose, the siege network on land was completed, but the blockade on the sea was again a problem. The bay of Magnus is in the shape of a standard crescent, and the city port is in the notch of this crescent-shaped bay. There were no large quarries around the city that could provide stone for solid fortifications. The next day, Apis ascended to the vantage point on the side of the bay, overlooking the entire bay, and came up with a bold idea. Ancient Roman man-made bridges, especially temporary military bridges, generally used the form of pontoon bridges. That is, the raft or boat is driven to the center of the river, and then the heavy anchor is dropped to fix the boat in the middle of the river, and then these boats and rafts are used as piers for the bridge to build a bridge on it. So, if the big river can make bridges, why can't the straits make bridges? The strait is not very wide, and it is half the distance wider than the surface of the Rhine, and if the whole strait is connected by a pontoon bridge, it is equivalent to blocking the port from the outside world.

Appis had thought that such a whimsical idea would be opposed by everyone as soon as it was proposed, but he did not expect that many centurions and officers did not have much objection when they heard such a suggestion, but asked when the implementation would begin...... Obviously, at this time, the morale of the regiment was high.

Two days later, the soldiers of the Eighth Legion transported bundles of timber to the top of the Crescent Bay Strait, and the Legion began work from both ends of the strait. Six thousand regimental heavy infantry, stripped of their heavy armor and, each with tools in hand, pushed wagons of earth and rocks from the shore of the strait into the water, filling the shallows. With the addition of the Auxiliary Corps, the number of soldiers involved in this project reached tens of thousands. At the same time, the Eighth Army was outside the city, still guarding the siege fortifications to prevent the troops in the city from going out of the city to destroy the project during the construction of the Seventh Army.

On the fifth day of construction, the depth of the sea increased suddenly, and no matter how much the earth and rocks were pushed into the sea, it was no longer possible to fill in the land. At this time, Apis ordered that when the tide was high, all the rafts and boats should be pushed into the sea, and the anchors should be thrown to the bottom of the water to secure the rafts. As to why he waited until the high tide to send out the ships, Apis feared that at low tide the water would be shallow, and that the anchor would not necessarily be firmly anchored to the seabed, and that the buoyancy of the ships might push the boats and rafts out of the strait at high tide. Therefore, the construction was chosen at high tide to ensure that the project could withstand the erosion of the sea.

During the construction process, the garrison of Certolius in the city was unable to disrupt the project by land, so they requisitioned all the merchant ships in the city, and the Afrika Korps loaded ballistas and catapults onto these merchant ships, and then sailed out of the harbor to destroy Appis's naval blockade.

The soldiers of the Seventh Legion also stood on the platform of the freshly built raft and fought back with scorpion cannons and bows and arrows.

As a result, in the narrow strait, there are scenes of such stone bullets and fire crossbows flying everywhere every day. However, despite the enemy's frantic counterattack, the 7th Army still rushed to repair the works in a difficult natural environment and under enemy fire.

Fortunately, the seabed is not very high from sea level, and the rafts and wooden boats are not washed out of the strait by the lapping of the waves. And the sunken ships soon had new ones to take their place.

What made Certolius's Afrika Korps even more desperate was that the naval blockade network built by Appis's 7th Army was not stopped due to the continuous artillery fire, and even gradually approached completion.

In order to consolidate the blockade, Crassus the Younger also suggested to Appis that rafts be sandwiched and earth and stones should be transported above these rafts to build fortifications on land. The rafts were then chained together. Seeing such a perverted naval blockade fortifications being completed day by day, the Settorius Afrika Korps in the city had little hope of breaking through, and now, they had truly become a trapped beast fight. Appis was surrounded on all sides, and a great net closed all four sides of Magnus.

Standing on the top of a hill at the top of the strait, watching the entire naval blockade stand tall under the crashing of the waves, like a great wall on the sea, Appis couldn't help but feel excited. The grand project of the ancient Roman legions more than 2,000 years ago is now vividly displayed in front of them again. In the past, I only had a few words in books.

……

"General, we have no chance, Octavian will not be able to send reinforcements to help us, this is originally Octavian's last military force in Africa, if we fail again, Apis is afraid that he will sweep the entire African coast with his legions. When the time comes, Octavian may ......"

"Don't say it, you mean to make me surrender to Appis?"

In Magnus, the city magistrate Flavies melancholy persuaded Certolius, but Certolius sternly refused. He once swore allegiance to Octavian and to Caesar's heir in front of the temple of Mars in Rome. He was so true to his oath that he followed Turinus with the Afrika Korps in Octavian's most difficult times. Even now, when the tide of war was already very unfavorable to him, and Apis was ready to attack the city with a Roman army at any time, he was still convinced that he had made the right choice.

"Alright, well, General Certolius, aside from your personal loyalty, you can not surrender to Appis outside the city, but what about your men? Of the 6,000 Roman soldiers under your command, none of whom swore allegiance to Octavian, do you want them to shed their blood for you and die in this civil war? Each of them has their own families, and some are even young people who have just enlisted in the army. ”

Flavis, dressed in a white toga, continued to persuade with a "bitter heart".

"No, I will not surrender. My soldiers, like me, swore allegiance to Octavian, allegiance to the Republic. The imprint of the Legion on them is the best proof of this. You need no more persuasion, Lord Flavies, if you want to surrender to Apis, you can bring your family to Apis after the city is broken. And I, I will choose to fight to the end. ”

After a moment of silence, Certolius replied solemnly and resentfully. His expression grew disgusted, disgusted at the sight of the wind and the rudder in battle, and the ungrateful Magnus city officials.

And Flavis muttered in his heart, what else did he swear allegiance, on the way from Córdoba to here, how many Afrika Korps soldiers fled halfway through, and even surrendered to Appis......

(The construction of the coastal defense line in this chapter is based on the account in Caesar's "Civil War", and has been adapted.) ）