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The bells of the battle for maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean stopped. Pen ~ Fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info.

The new fleet hastily assembled by the Romans ceased to exist under the blow of the combined naval forces of Great Qin and Carthage, and the Roman navy, composed of merchant sailors and mercenaries, was obviously weaker in terms of combat power, and their end was like that of the Roman Republic, a great sunset power, which was about to wither before it was fully opened.

The Roman fleet was almost completely wiped out in the waters off Corsica. This battle quickly spread from Genoa throughout the Apennines, and the Roman authorities who were going all out to deal with the Qin army's offensive on the eastern front were shocked, without the protection of the navy, the outer defense of the entire peninsula would become fragmented, and the Qin naval fleet could carry soldiers on board Rome itself anytime and anywhere.

Faced with such a critical situation, Scipio could no longer sit on the front line in the Alps, and after urgently instructing Pompey to defend it, he returned south with more than 20,000 elite soldiers.

In the eighteenth year of the Great Qin calendar, the beginning of summer.

Lost from supplies by sea, the Roman capital of the Iberian province of Porto Belle fell, and the Roman army of about 3,000 defending the city laid down their arms and surrendered to the Qin general Li Zhongxiang.

During this surrender, the arrogance of the Romans was once again revealed, and their stubborn insistence on excluding the Carthaginian side greatly annoyed the vengeful Hannibal, and the Carthaginian army carried out a massacre in the northeastern part of Iberia, beheading nearly tens of thousands of Roman dependents.

Under the bloody wind, the crisis of the Roman Republic was imminent.

In the face of the grim situation, Scipio convened an emergency senate meeting in the city of Rome, at this meeting, Scipio proposed that he should be the president of the senate, and this proposal was passed with almost no resistance, as a result, Scipio, the Roman military strongman, finally gathered military power and political power, and the Roman republican system ceased to exist at this moment, and was replaced by a new ** system of the Roman Empire.

Republic & **.

They are two important comparative indicators in the course of human history.

At the beginning of human civilization, collective deliberative bodies such as the Roman Senate promoted the development of society at that time to a large extent, and it was with this republican system that the Romans gradually developed from a small weak city-state to the most powerful power in the Mediterranean.

However, with the further development of the social economy, especially in the face of the oppression and attack of the great power of the East, the shortcomings of the Roman republican system have also been revealed, and the most important point is that Rome has been slow to respond to important decisions of the whole country, and has repeatedly lost the initiative in the military and battlefield.

October to November.

For a whole month, Scipio ordered the reduction of his forces to defend against the Qin attack, and on the other hand, he hurried to start military reform measures in the country.

In this reform, Scipio and his cronies made a lot of determination, and many of the measures at the military and military industrial level were related to the Qin state, even if they were in a hostile relationship, the Romans finally had to admit in the face of the facts that they had to learn from the strengths of the enemies in the east, otherwise, they would really destroy the country.

At the military level, Scipio decided to change the army from a phalanx to a legionary combat formation, which was also the prototype of the formation of Roman infantry legions in history. The soldiers' weapons were no longer provided by the soldiers themselves, but imitated the way of the Qin State's military manufacturing, and were uniformly made by the state's departments specializing in the manufacture of weapons.

Short swords, heavy javelins.

These two weapons that can give full play to the advantages of Roman soldiers in hand-to-hand combat and long-range strikes were recognized by Roman generals such as Scipio, and then unified into the army, the weapons of Roman soldiers before were mainly spears and bows, swords and javelins were only auxiliary weapons, and now the spear was replaced by heavy javelins, and the long-range strike ability of the Romans was greatly improved all of a sudden.

In addition, the short swords newly issued by the Roman army were about two feet long and two inches wide, which were very heavy and had sharp heads. The hilt of the sword can be made of wood, bone, ivory, or metal. The role of this short sword is better at assassination than slashing, and its power is better reflected in hand-to-hand combat.

In terms of defensive weapons, the Romans also imitated the shield style of the Qin State, and changed the original round shield into a strong oblong convex body, which is more in line with the characteristics of the human body, and can almost cover most of the body after being erected, which can easily block the shooting of the Qin army's crossbow arrows.

In addition to the improvement of weapons, one of the most obvious changes in the Roman army in terms of conscription was the addition of two fixed branches of the standing army and the reserve junior soldiers.

Under the original compulsory military service system, Roman soldiers usually ploughed, wartime expeditions, and rarely had the opportunity to conduct centralized tactical training, and now, the Romans decided to follow the example of the Qin army, all the existing front-line soldiers were adjusted to the standing army, these soldiers' equipment, food, baggage and other utensils were uniformly reissued by the state, and no longer borne by the soldiers' personal families, at the same time, in order to reward the merits of the soldiers who went out to fight for the country, the Roman Empire will also be the same as the military lord system of the Qin State, and the soldiers who have made meritorious contributions will be commended.

The reserve cadets were mainly composed of teenagers between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and although they were not yet physically mature, they had a strong sense of patriotism under the encouragement of the imperial propaganda machine, especially for Scipio, the military leader, and they loved them from the bottom of their hearts.

The pace of militarization and reform of the Romans was carried out in a hurry under the oppression of the Qin army, and the Qin side was also aware of these changes that had taken place within the Apennine Peninsula, but Li Yuan was now more concerned about the difficult battle in the northern foothills of the Alps.

The winter snow in the Alps was exceptionally thick in this year, and the advance of the Qin army encountered great difficulties, especially the heavy weapons could not be transported, which made the Qin troops who could only fight with light weapons sigh in the face of danger.

After Scipio returned to China, the 100,000 Roman troops commanded by Pompey, the Roman general who stayed behind, strangled the important passes in the northern mountain range, and their existence was like an invisible chain, binding the hands and feet of the Qin army's attack. (To be continued.) )