Chapter 23: Illegal Wars I
"A republic is built on ancient traditions and the strength of man." - Elius, On the Republic
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"Then let's fight, then let's fight! We'll crush your faction with our swords and snatch all these wonderful purple and transparent liquids. The samurai was drunk and mad, and shouted and screamed until Caesar's servant said, "Please go out."
"From tonight onwards, all the wooden fences must be strengthened." When the messenger was forcibly sent away, Caesar gave this order.
Behind the fence in the evening, little Hortensius was full of dissatisfaction, and said that the order of His Excellency the Governor was really difficult for a strong man, because even if the full army was divided among the positions on the four sides of the Jura, it would be even more difficult to defend the Helvetians to the death.
Li Bida had another way in mind, he scattered the eighteen cavalry cannons in a triangular core position, fixed the firing position, and asked Pop to adjust the shooting Zhu Yuan in advance, and play it at full capacity, in a state of standby at any time. Then he asked Sabokemus to bring some special things to the garrison behind the wooden fence.
The Illyrian Twelfth Army was laid out in such a way that every little Stadia, there were some sharp soldiers, who were acting as secret posts, and then at the critical place behind the wooden fence, only a hundred-man squad was stationed, and about one to three quarters of the guards on the first line were like this, and the rest rested in the temporary camp to maintain the state of reserve.
For he and his men had also pondered it carefully, and decided that on the Rhone side, it was unlikely that the Helvetians would fight the legions in a decisive battle. The barbarians' boat and bridge skills are very backward. They just found some canoes that would only be used in the wilderness. The carrying capacity was extremely limited, so once Caesar sent all the Asase tribes that could be crossed on foot to guard them with heavy troops, they would not be able to effectively exploit their numerical superiority, nor would they have the strong will to attack the Roman military fortifications head-on, which was also the fundamental starting point of Caesar's previous use of delaying troops.
But if this is the case, the Helvetians are still likely to launch a medium-sized infiltration attack, and according to Lipida's estimates, the attack is likely to occur at night, as the barbarians tend to think. The moon and the black fog were their world, and the timid Romans fought only against shield walls or camps.
As it was, many of the soldiers of the Twelfth Legion had a lingering fear of the night when they confronted the barbarians, and they had not forgotten how the murderous Iberian warriors had ambushed and killed their patrols or convoys at night during the battle at Barantia, Spain, two years earlier, and how they had thrown their bloody heads into the camp with their javelins tied to them.
The moon on the battlefield, especially in April, sparkles in the night sky. The crescent moon with a faint cold light looked particularly terrifying in the eyes and hearts of the soldiers.
So. Saab Kemus handed over the special thing that could pierce the darkness of the night to the wooden fence of the front-line garrison, and after they understood how to use it, they felt a lot more at ease no matter what.
But what was more disturbing than the night was that days had passed, but the north bank of the Rhone River was quiet, and the air was so peaceful that it was suffocating, and every day Li Bida asked several centurions to carefully observe from a prominent cliff in the Jura Mountains, but on the other side of the river, the camp of the Helviti was not unusual at all, it was still about wisps of smoke, and men and women led horses and mules to drink, which was a great example of pastoral beauty.
"Don't think about it, their attack is about one or two days away, and if there is no hostility after three days, the other party will definitely send an envoy to negotiate again." This is Li Bida's judgment, some gods and gods are chattering in it, so he also asked a soothsayer to use the goose to eat food, "verifying" his prophecy, making Milu and others laugh secretly, this Li Bidaus was very good at playing this trick before.
On the eighteenth day of April, a moonless night, and the inky cumulonimbus clouds covered the banks of the Long River, Li Bida sat in his tent, chewing figs and peas with some restlessness, and it was only the last day from the day when he used the white goose to divinate and predict the attack of the barbarians, and when he had eaten all the plates, he wiped his palms with a napkin, and called Tagus, and told him to bring flags and torches with him, and he was to inspect the whole fence and the ditch himself.
Although the rainy season was about to come, but the night wind was very cool, and the temperature that could easily induce people to sleep, the dense sound of frogs and insects, rose and fell on the bank of the river, and Tagus shook his torches a few times, and burned some of the flying insects that approached the commander, and the thin wings of those small insects, after being contaminated with fire, instantly brightened, and then turned into a wisp of smoke, leaving only the sound of fluttering and a slight scorching smell.
Just as a few people kept walking forward along the wooden fence, soldiers kept getting up under the blankets under the shadows and stretching out their hands to salute them, and Li Bida took the opportunity to ask about the situation on the other side of the strait in the past two days, and the answer he got was that everything was normal.
At this moment, a fire quickly ignited in everyone's eyes, it was on a certain big tree in a long place in front of the wooden fence, on which there were two spearheads of the legion, hiding on it to be responsible for reconnaissance, but just when the two were ready to go down the tree at this time and wait for others to come to change the guard, the new soldier was afraid of heights, so he recklessly snatched the pine light from the veteran's hand, and hurriedly lit it, preparing for the need for lighting, but as a result, the branches next to it were burned, and the fire fell on the long grass on the ground, and suddenly the grass flew up with the firelight, and someone screamed and fluttered the fireworks on his body.
Then, the sound of the horn sounded violently from under the inky black night sky, far and near, it felt that there were traces of trumpeters in all directions, Li Bida hurriedly shook his hand, and shouted to Tagus that the enemy is coming, you stay here to command, and I will run to the cliff to dispatch people! By this time, the tree was already burning everywhere, like a great torch, and was surrounded by rapidly moving figures, armed with javelins and axes, when did the Helvetians lurk in the grass on the riverbank in droves? No one knew what to do, and Li Bida, who was running wildly towards the top of the mountain, even had the heart to punish all these so-called top soldiers to be crucified.
"Don't panic, don't panic, get those things out of the way!" Tagus drew his sword and shouted to the soldiers who were at a loss to kill the enemy in the dark night, and when the soldiers saw that the chief centurion was calm, they stayed where they were, and lit a flame under the thing, a frame made of thin wooden strips, covered with a thin skin on the outside, and a device and clear oil for a fire underneath, and the soldiers gave them the nickname "Juditya's Eyes", and soon countless "eyes" burst into flames, and were manipulated by the soldiers with ropes, floating in the air, and slowly crossing the wooden fence along the direction of the wind, Only then did they slowly dispel the darkness of the wilderness on the riverbank in front of the wooden fence, and the whole hideous scene unfolded in front of the soldiers of the Twelfth Legion, and everywhere there were ant-like Helvetians, howling and pressing towards the edge of the trench! (To be continued......)