Forty-two kilometers northeast of Athens, the Aegean Sea is sparkling; Huge wooden warships, one after another, sailed in from the southeast mouth of the Atik Strait and headed straight for the Marathon Plains.

"Athenians, I'm coming!"

Standing on the foredeck of the battleship, Madonios looked blankly at the land ahead; Ten years ago, his army was beaten by the Athenians here.

At that time, a general under his command only landed with more than 30,000 soldiers, and Madonios with more than 100,000 troops was still in Asia Minor, waiting for the navy to return to transport; The hateful Athenians took advantage of the unstable foothold of the Persian army, and the 11,000 Athenian warriors directly fought with the Persian army.

The rain of Persian arrows, which had been repeatedly featen, had no practical effect on the Athenians, who had strong shields, but the Athenians' dense battle formations and sharp spears quickly broke the two wings of the Persian army. In the end, the Persian army had to choose a strong man to break his wrist and arrange for the army to be evacuated on ships; At the Battle of Marathon, nearly 7,000 Persian soldiers were killed by the Athenians, and Athens became the leader of the Greek League.

The father-in-law is hanging, the brother-in-law is hanging, and Greece still has not been conquered; Madonios doesn't believe in this evil, the Persian Empire has been spanning for more than half a century, and the soldiers are pointing at and invincible, how can it be possible for a small Greece to end up without a problem?

The body of the brother-in-law was transported back to Yanjing, and Madonhos stayed; The matter of electing a new emperor will not fall on him anyway, so it is better to continue to conquer Greece while the army is sufficient; There were 300,000 army and 200,000 navy.

In Mardonios' opinion, these forces were three times more than when he attacked Athens ten years ago; Moreover, by fighting with the Athenians and Spartans successively, the generals under his command have accumulated some experience, and the army is already in Greece, and there is still a great chance of winning if they continue to conquer.

For Madonhos, the choice to land on the plains of Marathon again, in addition to the fact that it is indeed a good landing site, has some other meanings; For example, if you fall there, you have to get up there.

In the city of Athens, groups of soldiers gathered in the square, and the citizens were talking in groups nearby, and the atmosphere was very uneasy; Kalimaya was a little restless, and in the council chamber, the other nine Athenian generals were arguing.

The military power of Athens was in the hands of the Athenian Military Council; The so-called military council was composed of the ten most powerful families in Athens who each selected a representative to become a general and formed a committee to control the Athenian army. Each year, the Military Council elected a representative to serve as the supreme commander, with the title of Governor of the Athenian Army; As a matter of fact, the representatives of the ten families take turns to serve as military and political chiefs, and each person holds the post of military and political chief for a year, and what kind of election or whatever, is all a trick to fool people.

Ten years ago, Calimaya's elder brother happened to represent his family, serving as the military and political governor of Athens, and won the glorious victory of the Battle of Marathon; However, only seven of the ten generals returned, and the elder brother and the other two generals died on the shores of the Marathon Plains.

This time, the Persians invaded Greece again, claiming to be a million-strong army, much larger than 10 years ago; Of course, the Athenians were worried, so they used their status as allies to invite Sparta and some other city-states to resist together; This is one of the reasons why the king of Sparta, Leonidas, led a group of Greek allied troops to fight at Thermopylae.

With ulterior motives, Athens, as the leader of the alliance, actually used the traditional festival as an excuse to send not a single warrior to the hot springs; You know, there were many city-states in Greece, but their so-called festivals were all the same, and the other city-states were more or less manned; Athens......

Perhaps the average Athenian did not know why, but Calimaya and the other nine Athenian generals knew it; After defeating the Persians 10 years ago, Athens was given the position of leader of the Greek League, but this was far from satisfying Athens. Sparta was also strong, and there were other city-states that were also strong, and Athens, which wanted to be the overlord of all of Greece; Obviously, Sparta, along with some other powerful city-states, was naturally a roadblock to Athens' hegemony.

borrowed the hands of the Persians to weaken the power of the other Greek city-states, and when the two sides were almost finished, Athens entered the war again; Reaping the fruits of victory over the Persians at minimal cost is not yet the main thing; The final goal was to defeat the Persians, so that Athens could easily take over Sparta and other city-states.

However, it seems that the other city-states did not exert their full strength, and the Greek coalition army that finally gathered at Thermopylae did not even have 10,000 troops; At that time, the people of Kalimaya who learned the news felt a little pity.

It seems that the Greek gods did not pay attention to Athens this year, or turned to the arms of Sparta; The Greek coalition of less than 10,000, under the leadership of the Spartan king Leonidas, actually wiped out tens of thousands of Persians and killed the Persian emperor! Moreover, it is said that the Spartans suffered very few casualties; In fact, none of the city-states that participated in the war were injured, because they did not send many warriors in the first place.

did not succeed in consuming the strength of Sparta and other city-states, but made Sparta prestige, and the glory of the results has overshadowed the aura of Athens' defeat of the Persians; The helpless Athenian rulers of Calimaya and others could only find some comfort for themselves: fortunately, Athens did not make any effort, and the Persians were blocked.

However, plans never change as fast as possible.

Calimaya's self-consolation, before it had any effect, heard the Spartans retreat to their lair with all the Peloponnese warriors......

Your sister's!

Even if Leonidas ran away on his own, and took away all the warriors of the other city-states in the Peloponnese, could he still hold the hot spring pass with just the remaining city-state warriors?

Athens had no choice but to hurriedly put aside the festival and prepare for war with all its might; Going to Onsenseki?

Ten generals in total, yes.

How many people go?

This one is a little more troublesome; Ten years ago, there were only about 30,000 young men in Athens, and only about 10,000 of them were able to fight. Ten years later, Athens absorbed several small surrounding city-states, and there were more than 50,000 young and strong men, but only 20,000 warriors; The whole of Greece, the Spartans, was perverted, and all the people were soldiers.

Before Calimaya and others could decide on the number of troops to send, news came from the Thebans that the Persians were evacuating the plain of Ancili on a large scale.

This is good news, and it seems that there is no need to fight the Persians; The only regret is that the warriors of other city-states have died too little.

The corners of Kalimaya's mouth were full of bitter water, these Persians died the emperor, and they did not give up; You said that if you don't give up, you can continue to attack Hot Spring Pass! How good is it to fight the Thebans first, why do you have to target Athens?

Time was short, and the 10 supreme rulers of Athens, including Calimaya, finally made two decisions.

First, after the 20,000 warriors were assembled, they immediately marched northeast to the Marathon Plains;

Second, send a large number of messengers to ask for help from the members of the alliance.

Madonhos stood on the shore of the plain of Marathon, looking back at the choppy Aegean Sea, where his own warships were densely packed; And on the coastline, the soldiers of the brigade are landing.

Compared with the Greeks, the greatest advantage of the Persian army was that it was outnumbered; At the Hot Springs, Madonhos had no interest in continuing to attack, in fact, Xerxes had touched a nail at the Hot Springs Pass at the beginning, and Madonios persuaded him to take the sea route instead, but Xerxes insisted on going his own way.

In that damn place, the numerical superiority of the Persian army could not be exploited at all; To fuel a warrior is waste, and pure waste; The individual abilities of the Greek warriors are very strong, the equipment is also good, and the dense battle formation is very troublesome. However, in the plains, the situation may be different; Madonios believed that the plains were the best terrain to destroy the Greek army.

As in the plain of Ancili, the Persian soldiers slowly established a large military camp on the coast of the plain of Marathon; Looking from the distant peaks, the dense tents cover almost the entire coastline.

Madonhos is not in a hurry, he wants to play steadily; 300,000 army and 200,000 navy, far exceeding the strength of the opponent, there is no need to run long distances; From the plain of Marathon to the city of Athens, there are still 42 kilometers to go, which is a little far for the infantry; In addition, it takes a lot of time and effort for hundreds of thousands of people to land.

2 days later.

Sparta, Senate Chamber.

"Athens, I hope to weaken our living forces, and then make us submit to their feet......"

Wang Jun stood in the center of the hall, talking to Leonidas and a group of parliamentarians.

brainwashing, this is the "great cause" that Wang Jun has been doing for several days; In order to guide the entire Sparta to embark on the road of hegemony as soon as possible, Wang Jun exerted all his strength; It was not enough to change Leonidas alone, the royal army needed to change more Spartans.

Policies must be effective from the top to the bottom.

Wang Jun had no way to get aircraft and artillery from modern times, so he could only use some of his advanced theories and various cases of hegemony to arm the Spartans.

The Spartan barracks outside the city more than tripled in size; The fourth-class citizens, who had acquired the status of Spartans and enjoyed the political rights of Sparta, the so-called neo-Spartans, provided 30,000 young warriors in one go; Fassbender had sent a large number of soldiers in his prime as instructors for the Neo-Spartans, and was training them intensively.

Now, like a large war machine, the whole of Sparta began to run wildly; an army of second-class citizens, collectively known as the Spartan Royal Guard; an army composed of citizens of the fourth class, collectively known as the Spartan Wehrmacht; An army of helots called the Spartan militia.

The 900 "pro-black laborers" who had been freed from slavery status but had not yet obtained civilian status came forward to gather 60,000 black laborers to form the Spartan militia. Under Leonidas's new decree, this army, which was essentially all black laborers, radiated a new brilliance and already had a certain combat effectiveness; Of course, there is still a gap compared to the professional army of Athens, but compared with the city-states such as Arcadian that have no professional soldiers, these militias with hope will definitely not be worse than the Arcadian warriors.

Of course, the two armed forces, the Spartan Wehrmacht and the Spartan militia, the commander-in-chief and the senior officers, were selected from the current Royal Guard; Wang Jun believes that this can better implement control, and at the same time, it can also give better play to the combat effectiveness of these two troops.

"After His Majesty Leonidad's reforms, we soon had an army of 100,000, all young men."

"10,000 royal guards, with the same number, no one can stop them; 30,000 Wehrmacht, probably close to the combat effectiveness of the Thebans; 60,000 militiamen, what do you think? Wang Jun not only said it himself, but also had some interactions, which is said to have a better brainwashing effect.

"I think it's on par with the Arcadians, or at least better than the Phossi." One MP responded loudly, and the other MP nodded; Everyone will go to see the army training every day, and it feels like a day, although the two new armies can't compare with the royal guards, but they can't stand the crowd!

"We, Sparta, have always suffered from the lack of people; It is glorious, of course, to be outnumbered, but then when we die of old age, we will not be able to rule Greece. ”

"Now, it's different; For example, if Athens wants to fight us alone, then, compared to the elite combat power, the royal guard can make them desperate; There are more people than us, we can use crowd tactics and drown them. ”

Hahaha......

There was laughter in the Spartan chamber; There is no real gain in defeating the Persians, and unifying Greece is a good thing of both fiction and reality.

"Sorry to excuse me." A Royal Guard soldier trotted into the council chamber.

"Your Majesty, Athens has sent a messenger to ask for help."

"Oh? This shameless Athenian still has the face to come to Sparta for help? "Leonidas has been washed clean by the king's army, and he is no longer the king who only knows how to fight and kill.

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