Calm down when almost everything is forgotten in an instant, at the chaos of endless time at both ends of the moment, when the world's praise and disapproval are hollow, and when false flatterers are like grass on the wall and only praise the wind. Even if it is a huge earth, it is only a small point in the universe, and you who live in it, how small, what we have is really not worth mentioning, in this case, think about who will praise you?

- Marcus Aurelius (the only philosopher-emperor in Western history)

Now that the Kingdom of Tripoli has completely become a historical term, the next target of Tsuguta is naturally the Kingdom of Carthage; Now Tsuguta is not afraid of Hannibal's reputation as a god of war, but he is also unwilling to pay more casualties to achieve the final victory. Therefore, Zuguta decided to launch Armageddon against Carthage as soon as possible before Carthage could recall Hannibal; Djugurdah and Ahmed agreed, and they were reluctant to wait for Hannibal to return before starting a war.

This is not to say that Ahmet and the others must be afraid of Hannibal, nor that Hannibal can turn the tide and change the tide of the war as soon as he returns; And no one wants to pay a greater price in the face of a low-hanging victory. Before Gaia and the other three corps commanders did not change, the Numidian army, although superior in numbers than it is now, was much weaker in combat than it is now; The total strength of the current Numidian army is still nearly 60,000, and the number of troops that can be used is more than 50,000, excluding the troops stationed in the Great Leptis, which must be left behind.

These 50,000 troops were the troops that could attack the province of Baisasian in Carthage directly from the north of Tripoli, plus the 35,000 troops that were still confronting the province of Afrika in Carthage on the eastern border of Numidia; At this time, the total number of troops that Numidia could use to directly attack Carthage was as high as 85,000, while the defenders of Carthage had less than 40,000 troops, and they had to face the dilemma of defending the two places.

Of course, the Kingdom of Carthage is said to have two exceptionally strong armies; One is a formidable army composed entirely of armoured war elephants, far larger than ordinary war elephants, and the other is a powerful army controlled by the Holy Order, the most mysterious religious organization in the Kingdom of Carthage. Whether this legend is true or not, at least in Tulguta's opinion, these two so-called powerful armies are nothing to worry about; Armored war elephants are powerful, but how much more powerful are they than ordinary war elephants? Just be willing to pay the price. Humans can always defeat war elephants.

As for the so-called Holy Order army, just because the Carthaginian Senate can allow this army to be controlled by religious organizations, it basically means that the size of this army will not be very large; If this so-called Holy Order army is large and powerful, there is no reason for the Carthaginian Senate to let this powerful army go unused. Since in the Punic Wars between the Carthaginian Kingdom and the Roman Republic in the first three times, the Carthaginians did not release this legion. In Tulguta's opinion, this legion either does not exist at all, or its strength is quite limited.

In any case, the absolute superiority of the Kingdom of Numidia over the Kingdom of Carthage at this time was true; What's more, among the 85,000 troops, except for the 30,000 troops facing off on the eastern border, they are pure recruits, and the other armies have already formed a strong combat effectiveness. Even the three legions under the command of Thuguta, who were also recruits, also had quite good combat effectiveness under the transformation of the three generals of Gaia, at least more than one step stronger than the ordinary recruit army; So. The main factor that determines the combat effectiveness of an army is the ability of its commander-in-chief.

Now that Turguta had decided to attack Carthage immediately, the specific battle arrangements had to be ordered; Tulguta had originally intended to leave the Gaian Legion in charge of garrisoning the Great Leptis, but Ahmet objected. Ahmed believes that among the three generals such as Gaia, Gaia has the most potential and great generals; Moreover, the province of Tripoli is connected to the territory of the Kingdom of Numidia, and there is no need to send the main generals to stay behind, leaving an ordinary general and five thousand light infantry of the Gaia Army to garrison it.

Not only that, Ahmet also took the initiative to request that the 5,000 desert infantry that had previously belonged to his command be reassigned to the Gaia Legion; In this way, the Gaia Legion will have 5,000 desert infantry and 2,000 archers, making it the second largest army after Ahmet's and Juguda's, and its combat effectiveness will be far superior to that of other recruit legions. General Ahmed's kindness to Zuguta naturally would not refuse. Gaia also accepted this kindness after repeated thanks; When everything was ready, Tulguta himself led the army on the march.

There were now six combat units under his command, Ahmet's legion (3,000 desert infantry, 3,000 archers, 2,500 Numidian infantry, 5,000 shield cavalry), Juguda's legion (2,000 shield cavalry, 2,000 camel cavalry, 1,000 javelinmen), Gaia's legion (5,000 desert infantry, 2,000 archers), Neptasan's legion (7,000 light infantry), Egclos (7,000 light infantry), and 12,000 javelin cavalry under the command of Zuguta himself.

The actions of the more than 50,000 troops were impossible to hide from Carthage's scout cavalry and spies, and Tulguta did not intend to hide his head and tail, so he directly led the army to kill Carthage. At the time of the previous attack of the Numidian army against the Great Leptis. Victoria Secreta had already rushed back to the city of Carthage; Viminina, who returned in a hurry, did not pay attention to the whispers of some senators about the king of Tripoli who had kidnapped him, but reported to the senate the main army of the Kingdom of Tripoli, which was easily annihilated by the Numidian army, and the battle report of his own sneak attack.

The fact that Vimini was able to sneak up on the Numidian army with minimal casualties and inflict nearly 20,000 losses on the enemy was indeed a legendary achievement, but the news that the Numidian army had annihilated the 25,000-strong army of the Kingdom of Tripoli without much effort also made the Carthaginian senators feel concerned; However, it is unrealistic to get the senators of the Senate to agree to recall Hannibal on the basis of these things alone. In the face of the indifferent senators. Victoria's Secret is really powerless; Helpless, Victoria's Secret could only prepare to return to the front line on her own.

Even if the senators of the Carthaginian Senate could not yet make up their minds to recall Hannibal, given the current situation and unfavorable circumstances for the Carthaginian kingdom and the commanding ability of General Vermyna; The senators of the Senate adopted two new methods in the form of a collective vote to compensate for Carthage's disadvantage on the border. The first is to hand over the armored war elephant troops of the absolute ace of the Carthage Kingdom to Viminia and bring them back to the battlefield on the southern front; In this way, the new army originally stationed in Baisasian and the original army of Vimini added up to 20,000 troops, plus the armored war elephants, which can be regarded as a fairly strong army.

And the 20,000 troops of the newly formed Recruit Legion and the Recruit Elite Legion were not much worse than the 35,000 troops of Numidia on the Western Front; At the very least, the Carthaginian army was much stronger than the Numidian army in terms of weaponry. But. The absolute numerical inferiority was an unavoidable problem on the part of Carthage; Therefore, the second way of the Senate is to continue to expand the army. In order to deal with the extremely large cavalry clusters in the Numidian army, the Carthaginian Senate also decided to form two new cavalry regiments.

However, the Kingdom of Carthage did not have a tradition of using javelin cavalry and archers; In the Kingdom of Carthage. Cavalry is generally divided into two types, namely the round-shielded cavalry with ordinary equipment and the well-equipped long-shield cavalry. Because of the importance of this war, the Kingdom of Carthage directly skipped the ordinary round shield cavalry and began to recruit elite long shield cavalry; The Kingdom of Carthage did not lack sufficient cavalry and possessed a strong production capacity of weapons and equipment. The Senate decided to recruit 10,000 shield cavalry per legion!

However, recruiting large-scale cavalry is not just a matter of words, it takes a lot of time to build weapons and equipment and complete some basic cavalry battle formation combination training; Even the most basic group charge and triangle formation breakthrough take time to grind and train. In terms of cavalry, Numidia has an advantage over Carthage, because Numidia's cavalry is also a first-class cavalry, although its comprehensive combat effectiveness is not as good as Carthage's cavalry combat effectiveness; But the Numidian cavalry had an advantage that the Carthaginian cavalry could not match.

That is, the speed of forming an army is unusually fast! This is also determined by the composition of the country. The Numidian javelins were largely made up of herders from their own country; Herdsmen have lived on horseback since childhood, living a nomadic life, and are far more familiar with war horses than ordinary people. Therefore, the Numidian cavalry was generally directly recruited herdsmen, who were familiar with war horses and more familiar with how to control them; In this way, the fighting power of the Numidian cavalry was not comparable to that of the newly formed cavalry of Carthage.

Even so, the kingdom of Carthage still had to form cavalry; The best way to deal with cavalry was always cavalry, and if Carthage did not have enough cavalry to fight a decisive cavalry battle with the Numidian cavalry, then it would be simply impossible for a purely infantry army to fight against an army of tens of thousands of cavalry and tens of thousands of infantry. This is not to say that the infantry will never be able to defeat the cavalry, the pikemen and pikemen of the Greek nation are excellent against the cavalry; The Libyan spearmen of Carthage also had such capabilities.

But the key to dealing with cavalry wasn't just in weapons; If you rely on a few spears, you can deal with cavalry. Then the cavalry could not have become the king of war. The key to what really determines how these classes can deal with cavalry is the formation and the elite of the soldiers; The Macedonian phalanx created by Alexander the Great, who once ruled the world, was an excellent phalanx for pikemen to deal with infantry cavalry, but this phalanx was too demanding for soldiers.

In the face of the cavalry charge of thousands of horses, these warriors with spears must hold their spears in a neat queue without changing their faces and hearts; Not only that, although this rigorous phalanx could withstand the charge of the cavalry, the front of the phalanx would definitely suffer heavy casualties under the onslaught of the cavalry. The soldiers in the rear must be replenished in an orderly manner, and the soldiers in front must continue to stand still after the comrades around them have fallen one after another; In short, the requirements for infantry against cavalry are too high.

In addition to the 3,000 infantry under the command of Vermitage and the elite army under the command of Hannibal, the other 35,000 newly recruited troops in Carthage are still 108,000 miles away from this step; This led to the fact that Carthage's idea of relying on infantry to deal with the Numidian cavalry had to go bankrupt, and the only solution was to form cavalry. But, will Tulguta give Carthage time? Did Carthage still have time to form and train its own cavalry?

The answer to the question is obvious. Viminina had just hurried back to Tapsus when she received a report from the scouting cavalry; The defenders of Pletes the Great surrendered without a fight after the Numidian army descended on the city. After a simple rest and recuperation of his army, Tulguta led an army of more than 50,000 people to the Carthaginian territory; To Vimini's despair, after the sneak attack and capture of the Great Leptis, the Numidian army was more than 20,000 fewer than before, but it was more elite and combative.

Of course. Vermini did not know that the reason why the Numidian army had become more combative was simply due to his own sneak attack; If it weren't for the heavy losses of the Numidian army that Vito's last sneak attack, Gaia and the other three generals would not have been able to change their minds and become what they are now. Not to mention the combat effectiveness of the army under their command, at least they are still trying to bring down Ahmed; It was precisely because of Vimyna's sneak attack that they changed themselves and eliminated the gap within the Numidian army. (To be continued.) )

PS: Chasing the wind has been trying to write as hard as he can, but the results are always unsatisfactory; It can even be said that it is gloomy and bleak. I hope that friends who support Chasing Wind and "Empire" can continue to support it as always. Chasing the wind needs your support; Please, thanks!