From my father's fame and memories of him, I learned humility and courage.

From my mother, I was imbued with the qualities of piety, charity, and abstaining not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts, and a simple lifestyle away from luxury.

From my teacher, I learned not to get involved in any faction of the circus, and not to get caught up in partisanship in gladiatorial scenes; I also learned from him to endure toil, to be pure-hearted, to be self-conscious, not to interfere in the affairs of others, and not to believe in rumors.

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

After sending off the Chengguan Legion, Luquis and Quintus took the Legion Commanders to begin the mixed reorganization of the Legion; Luquis is specifically responsible for the mixing of the seven main battle legions, and Quintus is responsible for the mixing of the seven auxiliary legions. In addition to Licinius and Marie, who were still in charge of training the Guards, Wipsani and Oscar were also starting to get busy; The decentralization of the Senate is not just as simple as the freedom of the major families, and the influence of all aspects has just begun.

Just when the House of Augustus was busy dealing with the internal affairs of Sardinia, the Julius family was busy digesting new territories, the Scipio family was busy developing Campania, the Brutus family was busy training new soldiers, and the Maxentius family was busy expanding their influence in the Latin provinces, the war between the Kingdom of Numidia and the Kingdom of Carthage finally broke out!

In fact, from the time of the new Numidian king Zuguta to the throne, war between the two countries was inevitable; After expelling his nephew Adheba, the ambitious Tulguta not only gave up the continued suppression of Adheba, but even handed over the province of Mauritania to Adheba, in order to be able to free up all his strength to fight Carthage. In Tulguta's heart, there is only one overlord left on the land of North Africa; There was simply no possibility of coexistence between Numidia and Carthage.

The former kingdom of Carthage was not only the overlord of the Mediterranean, but also the overlord of North Africa; Whether it is the current kingdom of Numidia, the kingdom of the Sahara and Tripoli, or the kingdom of Cyrenaica far to the east, these countries were once vassals of the Kingdom of Carthage. However, times have changed now; Since the Carthaginian navy was defeated by the Roman navy in the Mediterranean. Carthage has not only lost its position as the hegemon of the Mediterranean, but also its hegemony in North Africa.

The Kingdom of Numidia, once subject to the Carthaginian kingdom, finally emerged from the shadow of being a vassal and became an independent and powerful kingdom; The kingdoms of the Sahara and Tripoli and Cyrenaica were also freed from the rule of the Kingdom of Carthage. If it weren't for Carthage's emergence a few years ago with Hannibal, the god of war who had no temper to fight the Romans, it is estimated that the Kingdom of Numidia would have united with other forces to divide the Kingdom of Carthage; Even so. The ambitions of the Numidians swelled as well.

Why was it that after the death of the Numidian king Siepusa, his uncle Gouta was able to take over the throne, while his brother Adheba was banished to Mauritania? Is it simply because the traditional illegitimate children of the Numidians are more honorable? That's just an excuse that everyone generally agrees on. For those nobles who had long been dissatisfied with Siepusa's subservience to the Carthaginians, it was better to choose Adheba, who did not dare to be an enemy of Carthage, as the king, than to choose the ambitious Zuguta!

So, with the support of the vast majority of the nobility. Zuguta succeeded to the throne of Numidia; At the same time, the surrender of King Jugudah, the king of the Sahara Kingdom, who had always been known for his bravery and bravery, further stimulated the ambitions of the Numidian aristocracy. If you think about it, when Carthage was the overlord of North Africa, the Saharan Kingdom was a vassal state of the Carthaginian Kingdom; What now? The Kingdom of the Sahara has become a province of the Kingdom of Numidia! What does this mean? This shows that Numidia is truly powerful!

The ambitious Numidian aristocracy was eager to continue expanding under the leadership of Tsuguta in order to realize the Numidian dream of overlordship in North Africa; But the Numidians have ambition and ambition, and they are not fools. If you just take the liberty of organizing an army to attack Carthage, you will not be able to defeat Carthage in the end; It's a victory, it's just a miserable victory, and the result will only be a cheap third party. The Numidians were ambitious though. But not so arrogant as to completely ignore the existence of Hannibal, the god of war.

So how can we avoid direct confrontation with the Kingdom of Carthage and continue to expand the power of the Kingdom of Numidia? All that remains of North Africa is the kingdoms of Tripoli and Cyrenaica; Among them, the Kingdom of Cyrenaica is located in the northwest of the Libyan province in the easternmost part of the Numidian Kingdom. Coupled with the geographical location, if you want to deal with the Kingdom of Cyrenaica, only the army of the Libyan province can fight, and the other Numidian armies cannot participate in the war at all; In this way, it is naturally impossible to deal with the Kingdom of Cyrenaica, because the army of the Libyan province cannot defeat them at all!

The only thing left is the Kingdom of Tripoli, which is geographically the existence that the Kingdom of Numidia must annex; Because in the existing territory of the Kingdom of Numidia, the Kingdom of Tripoli is sandwiched between the Kingdom of Numidia proper, and the province of Libya. Divide the kingdom of Numidia in two. Whether it was for the sake of the connection of the national territory or the further expansion of the Numidian Kingdom, attacking Tripoli became the only option for the Numidian Kingdom.

In order to fulfill the promise made to the nobles in the struggle for the throne, Tulguta, who had just ascended to the throne, gathered the most elite Ahmet army under his command to the border between the kingdoms of Tripoli and Numidia. Prepare to wage war against the Kingdom of Tripoli. When the king of Tripoli knew that the powerful Numidian Kingdom was going to launch a war against his country, he immediately panicked, and hurriedly sent an envoy to the Kingdom of Carthage for help.

Why is the Kingdom of Tripoli no longer a vassal of the Kingdom of Carthage, and still has to ask the Kingdom of Carthage for help in the face of aggression? It's all about location. The native kingdom of Carthage in North Africa consisted of two provinces, one on top of each other, the province of Africa, where the capital was located. Below is the province of Baisasian, which is connected to the Kingdom of Tripoli. The Carthage land was bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east, the kingdom of Numidia to the west, and the kingdom of Tripoli to the south.

That is, if the Kingdom of Numidia occupies Tripolitania; Then the kingdom of Numidia not only connected all its territories, but also completely surrounded the kingdom of Carthage itself. If the Kingdom of Numidia wanted to launch a war against Carthage in the future, the Kingdom of Numidia would be able to attack Carthage's native borders from east to south. If only there was a day. Not to mention whether Carthage can beat Numidia, even if it can, it can't be stopped.

Therefore, even if the patriarchs of the kingdom of Carthage were no longer stupid and incompetent, and they were still hating and fearing Hannibal; They would never allow the Numidians to occupy Tripolitania. Because no matter how excessive Hannibal is, he is also a Carthaginian. At best, it was to limit the power of the senators; The Numidians had no grudge against the Carthaginians, and they would not show mercy to the Carthaginian senators. The Carthaginians could not allow the Numidian kingdom to occupy Tripoli, either from the point of view of national interests or from the point of view of private families.

After receiving a letter of help from the king of Tripoli, the Carthaginian Senate immediately sent its most elite Carthaginian legion, led by another Carthaginian general, Vimina, to support the Kingdom of Tripoli in Greater Leptis (the capital of the Kingdom of Tripoli). The reinforced Vimina legion consisted of only 3,000 Iberian infantry and 2,000 round shield cavalry. But they are all battle-hardened Carthaginian elites; Coupled with the 5,000 King ** Regiment and the newly recruited 20,000 infantry of the Tripoli Kingdom, the total strength of the Tripoli Kingdom has reached 30,000.

The corresponding Numidian army, even the Ahmedic legion, which has 16,000 elites, does not dare to start a war easily, because the Numidian army is the attacking side after all, and the armies of the Kingdom of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Carthage are only the defending side; With such a comparison of forces, neither the Zuguta nor the Numidian nobles dared to start a war easily. However, the present kingdom of Numidia is, after all, a unified kingdom; As long as the king is determined to wage war, his war potential is still considerable.

In order to form an absolute advantage over the kingdoms of Tripoli and Carthage, the nobles of Turguta and Numidia directly opened their treasury to recruit troops from all over the country and began to form new legions; This is no ordinary army recruitment. Instead, he took out his family resources and prepared for the two countries of Tripoli and Carthage, which were settled in a war. According to the plan, Tulguta was to form five new legions; In order to make up for the lack of weapons and equipment and give full play to the advantages of Numidia's own cavalry, the establishment of these five legions was quite simple.

Each legion consisted of three thousand slingers, two thousand javelinmen, two thousand archers, three thousand desert infantry, and five thousand Numidian javelin cavalry; In addition to the weapons and equipment of the desert infantry, which are built and distributed by the kingdom, the weapons and equipment of slingers and javelinmen, archers and javelin cavalry, and even war horses need to be brought by themselves. That is to say, the five legions recruited by the Kingdom of Numidia were ostensibly regular, and their numbers were as high as fifteen thousand; But the combat effectiveness is simply not as good as the worst regular army, and even the weapons and equipment are varied.

According to the intelligence reported to Carthage by the spies of the Kingdom of Tripoli, the seventy-five thousand troops of these five legions were more like a group of peasants who took up arms than an army; In addition to the desert infantry and javelin cavalry, which also have a certain combat effectiveness, the others are not to be worried at all. The spies even discovered a ridiculous phenomenon, and that was in these newly formed armies. Many so-called javelinmen simply held an unsharpened stick in their hands; The ugliness of the slingers and archers is even more unsightly.

Even so, such a large army still unnerved the kingdoms of Tripoli and Carthage; Because no matter how poor the 75,000 troops are, the 25,000 javelinmen of them are also real javelin cavalry. The Kingdom of Numidia was originally a semi-agrillary and semi-nomadic country, and the Numidian javelins who brought their own weapons and equipment were themselves standard Numidian javelins; Its combat effectiveness should not be underestimated. Plus the slightly better equipped fifteen thousand desert infantry. The threat of these 40,000 troops is real.

The result of the frantic expansion of the Numidian Kingdom not only terrified the Kingdom of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Carthage, but everyone else also believed that the victory of the Numidian Kingdom was basically a sure thing in such a disparity of power; In order to be able to get a piece of the war, Jugudah, who had already annexed Numidia with his kingdom, also joined the front-line army in Numidia with his elite army of 6,000 and 100 war elephants.

While the kingdom of Numidia was frantically expanding, the kingdoms of Tripoli and Carthage were not idle; At this time, the number of recruits in the Kingdom of Tripoli had grown to 30,000, and the total number of troops in the city of Great Leptis had reached 40,000. For the Kingdom of Tripoli. It's already an exhaustion; Even the newly recruited 10,000 troops used the weapons and equipment provided by the Carthage Kingdom for free, otherwise the Tripoli Kingdom would not even have the weapons and equipment to arm these 10,000 recruits. (To be continued.) )