After May 12, the city of Athens became a forbidden area for life.

Yuribiad and his party, after leaving the city, were not allowed to return to the camp, but could only go to the dock; At the edge of the dock, Wang Jun had a few cauldrons and some wood prepared, and Yuri Biad needed to boil hot water for a bath and burn all the clothes; After completing this series of actions, more than 200 people boarded a 201-class triremes and began a month-long "confinement" life, and if nothing happened, they could be lifted from the confinement and return to freedom.

All persons shall not be allowed to enter Athens; The Spartans left behind an army of 4,000 people, and the occupation no longer made any sense, and the purpose of these people was to prohibit anyone from entering or leaving, and those who violated the order were killed. Before the army marched north, according to the advice of the king's army, the Spartan trebuchets and longbowmen fired a large number of rockets and entered the city of Athens; There may still be living people in the city, but no one cares about it, and most of the Athenian buildings are made of stone, supplemented by wood, and the fire started at the edge of the city and spread throughout the city.

Half a year later, the Spartans lifted their vigilance, and Athens, like a ghost town, was abandoned for twenty years; No one knows that shortly after the withdrawal of the Spartan army, a dozen teenagers came out of the city of Athens and left at night.

Twenty years later, the Spartan Empire went from prosperity to decline, and Athens was rebuilt; And the people who shook the Spartan Empire and rebuilt Athens were all these teenagers who came out of the dead city, of course, this is all an afterthought, and everything has nothing to do with the royal army.

The plague mentioned by Wang Jun was confirmed by the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Athens, and Leonidas's trust in Wang Jun seemed to have returned to the past; Of course, Wang Jun didn't take it seriously and accepted all the changes indifferently.

Whether it's good for yourself or bad, if everyone wants to separate after all, why be persistent?

The Spartan army resumed its operations along the lines of the king's army.

The two armies in the north concentrated their main forces in Aetoria and Malis, respectively; The Aetolian garrison was to deter Epirus in the north, while the Malis garrison was to guard against the Persians in Thessaly from moving south.

The main force of Sparta, 90,000 troops, with the cooperation of the navy, set out from the plain of Marathon and attacked Evia.

Evia is a large island, about half the size of the Attica Peninsula and a quarter of the size of the Peloponnese, and is the second largest island in the Greek region, after Crete in the southern part of the Balloponnese.

Strategically speaking, only by capturing the island of Evia would the Spartan army be able to face the army in the Maris region across the sea and jointly deter Thessaly to the north; The city of Larissa in Thessaly, where Madonios was garrisoned with 50,000 Persian troops, and in the bay of Pagasitikos in Thessaly, Alahasia commanded 200 Persian warships and a navy of more than 80,000, which could go south at any time.

Because the Spartans rose faster than the Persians could imagine, Madonios' plan to secretly support the Athenians went bankrupt; A lot of resources were spent, and the Delian alliance gathered by the Athenians did not consume the strength of the Spartans, and for such a result, Madonios could only find some Persian girls to vent his anger.

Although Artaxerxes I decided to support Madonios to continue his westward crusade, the Persian Empire, which had suffered a great loss of strength, could not give Madonios a large army in a short period of time; The Persian Empire was huge, and many of its subjects were always in trouble, and they needed to maintain a proper military presence. The most optimistic estimate is that it would be five years before Madonhos would receive substantial military support from the Empire.

All 190 Egyptian warships returned to the coast of North Africa, where a number of rebellions had arisen and needed to be suppressed by land and sea; Of the 560 remaining warships in Alahasia, 360 were dispatched in batches to the east coast of the Aegean Sea to suppress the local rebellion. These upheavals began after Madonios was defeated by the Greek coalition, and they all saw the opportunity of the Persians' loss of strength.

South?

Madonhos really wanted to go south, and thought about it at night; But now with such a small number of troops, let alone going south to fight the Spartans, even holding Thessaly, Madonhos has no confidence.

The royal army was not in a hurry to start a war with the Persians, and the occupation of large and small island city-states in the Aegean Sea was the first thing to complete, especially Delos, where the treasury of the Delian League was built, and it was necessary to rob the treasury.

Time flies, and the time quickly enters September.

With the launch of new warships, the naval strength of the Spartan Empire swelled again; 100 class 101 sail warships, 338 class 201 trirem ships.

The two old administrative districts of the empire, Laknia and Messinia, could no longer provide soldiers, but among the dozen or so new administrative districts, there were a large number of slave-turned-black laborers, who were eager to be "drafted", so the total number of naval personnel soared to more than 114,700. After the expansion of the navy, Leonidas temporarily stopped the pace of expansion, the size of the army of nearly 300,000, the sales of materials is huge, and if it expands, the empire will not be able to make ends meet.

In mid-September, with the incorporation of Crete into the Spartan Empire, all the Greek island city-states of Reading were completely gone; The main forces of the Spartan Army began to assemble in the vicinity of Maris and Aetoria, while the navy was assembled in the Bay of Paitali, north of the Marathon Plain.

The 40,000 Western Route Army was handed over to Commander Fassbinder, who set out from Aetolia and fought all the way to the northwest; Epirus and then Illyria, the last two remaining continental city-states in Greece; Finally, it turned eastward into the Persian-controlled region of Macedonia.

The 50,000-strong central army, led by Leonidas himself, set out from Maris and headed due north, first against Madonios in Thessaly, and annexed the whole of Thessaly; The Central Army would then continue its offensive northward, entering Macedonia and joining up with the Western Route Army, and then moving eastward along the northern shore of the Thracian Sea until it stopped on the northern shore of the Strait of Hellesbon.

The 40,000 eastern route army was handed over to the commander of Starlius, who assembled on the island of Evia, and when Yuribiad's navy defeated the Persian navy, they were transported to Asia Minor in batches; According to the plan, Starlius would land in the Persian-controlled region of Caria, and then fight north along the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea to the southern shore of the Strait of Helles.

The remaining strength of the army is less than 50,000, mainly distributed in the Attica Peninsula and the Peloponnese; The rest were scattered in a number of island districts to maintain internal stability within the empire.

The Imperial Navy of Sparta, from the day of the annihilation of the combined fleet of Delos, became a formidable maritime force.

Their first task was to gain sea power in the Aegean and Thracian Seas, and this required Yuribiad and them to defeat the Persian fleet scattered in the Gulf of Pagasitikos, the port of Rhodes, and the Strait of Hellesbon; Only by completely controlling the sea power in this area can the Eastern Route Army safely reach the Caria area.

After completing this task, they will build a large military port on the island of Crete; Crete, which separates the Mediterranean Sea from the Aegean Sea, has an entrance to the east and west, and if you add the island of Kissera near the Peloponnese at the western end, and then capture the port of Rhodes near Caria at the eastern end, then you will form a chain of islands with Crete as the core that can block the Aegean Sea.

The battle was first fought by the Western Route Army in the Epirus region, and the city-state of Epirus, whose main army was hung in Athens, could not effectively resist the powerful Spartan Imperial Army, and was defeated one after another, and the capital city of Dodona was soon occupied by the Western Route Army; Epilia, in fact, is the real world part of northwestern Greece plus the southern part of Albania, and the actual area of control is not small, the heart of the Spartan Empire, the Peloponnese Peninsula is the same size.

The Central Route Army and the Eastern Route Army both stayed where they were, waiting for news from the Spartan Imperial Navy.

The Eastern Route Army wants to cross the Aegean Sea eastward, of course, until the navy first ensures the safety of the sea routes;

The Middle Route Army, on the other hand, could only stay in the Ancili Plain in the Maris region and blow the sea breeze; The Tifri Mountains, which run from east to west, completely cut off the land traffic between the two regions of Thessaly and Malis; Of course, if you have to climb mountains and mountains, it is not impossible to pass, but this is obviously not suitable for tens of thousands of people to do it with weapons and equipment, not to mention, what about supplies?

From south to north, there is only the sea route, which is the sea route that the Persians came to Greece last year; Depart from the Bay of Mariakos and head straight to the Bay of Pagasitikos; And to enter the bay of Mariakos, one must pass through the bay of Pagasitikos.

Therefore, Wang Jun decided that the second place to start the battle was in the bay of Pagasitikos.

Yuribiad brought only 100 Class 101 sail ships and 100 Class 201 Triremes; There were also 238 201-class warships divided into several small fleets, one of which headed north along the east coast of the Ionian Sea to cooperate with the smooth Fassbender, while the rest operated around the Peloponnese and north of Crete, guarding the seas.

The two sides of the battle were the Spartan navy led by Yuribiad on one side, and the Persian navy of 200 Persian warships and more than 80,000 men under the command of Arahasia on the other; The number of warships on both sides was exactly 200 against 200, but the Persian warships were all large sail ships, while half of the Spartans were medium-sized warships.

The geographical location of Pagasitikos Bay is special, the bay is round, the opening is small, the inside is relatively open, and the water depth is also good, which is suitable for the activities of large sail warships; The entrance is only 5 kilometers wide, and the sea area in the bay is about 600 square kilometers, making it an ideal natural large port.

Because the island of Evia fell into the hands of Sparta, Alabasia was very wary of the Spartan army that was close at hand; Every day, 50 warships leave the bay and cruise along the eastern coast of Evia; In addition, 50 warships will enter the Gulf of Maliakos and cruise along the western coast of Evia until they turn around and return in the waters near the city of Harkis.

Strictly speaking, Alahasia was right to be on high alert, but unfortunately his arrangement was too regular; On the island of Evia, the commander of the expeditionary force on the eastern route of Sparta, Stalius, stayed in Gouves, in the north of Evia, for several days, and every day watched as 100 Persian warships would come out of the bay of Pagasitikos on the other side of the strait, 50 of which would go around the island to the west and 50 to the east.

The number of Persian warships was calculated, and the law of activity of Persian warships was also determined, and the first battle between the two sides was fought in the waters near Kimi on the east side of Evia Island; The two sides of the battle were 200 warships of the Spartan navy led by Yuribiad on one side, and 50 patrol ships sent by Ala Hecia on the other side.

The Kimi region is the coastal area in the central and eastern part of the island of Evia, with high mountains and high grounds, and the Spartan navy chose to ambush the Persian navy in this area, for a very important reason, that is, the mountains around Kimi break eastward into the Aegean Sea; The Persian warships sailing down the eastern coast of Evia all the way down the island could not find a large Spartan fleet hiding behind the mountains that lay across the sea; Similarly, the Spartan fleet could not see the Persian fleet.

However, the rules of movement of the Persian warships were already in the hands of the Spartans, and Starlius, in order to cooperate with the navy, placed lookout posts on the peaks of the coastal mountains in the Kimi region; As soon as the Persian fleet reached the sea area where it was scheduled to engage, it was warned by beacon fire.

50 Persian warships were cruising as usual, and just after rounding the Kimi Mountains jutting out of the sea, 200 Spartan warships suddenly appeared in front of them; The Persian navy soldiers were immediately frightened, you sister! The Spartans were too insidious!

Although the Persian navy was beaten to the ground by the combined Greek fleet in Salami Bay, it was because the special bay environment played an important role, and both the Greeks and Persians understood this very clearly; If it was on the wide sea, the Persian navy could still sweep the combined Greek fleet, and the huge size of the warship always had the advantage of being huge.

It is precisely for this reason that the cruising fleet of 50 Persian warships cruises every day without any scruples; The sea in this area is open and the water is very deep, and even if they encounter a Greek fleet twice their size, the Persians are not afraid; With a length of only 45 meters, the Greek triremes have a low chance of winning against large warships in the deep sea.

The question for the Persian soldiers was, why did the Spartans have so many large warships?

100, a full 100 large warships of the same size as the Persian warships; And that's not all, 100 triremes shuttle back and forth among the large Spartan sail ships; This is not a multiplication, this is completely several times the self!

There's nothing to think about, run away!

The escape of 50 Persian warships ended in an attempt.

In fact, by the time the Persian soldiers discovered the Spartan navy, the fleets of the two sides were already very close.

100 101-class large sail warships, all equipped with medium-sized trebuchets, each equipped with 4 units, one is not more, and one is not less; The level of naval warfare of the Persians also stayed at the level of ramming, bowing and arrows, and relying on gangs to engage in broadside battles, with these three axes and no other tricks.

The two sides were still separated by more than 250 meters, and hundreds of stones weighing more than 100 kilograms roared down from the sky above the Persian fleet; The officers and men of the Persian navy felt very sad, where is this called naval battle? This is clearly being abused!

And the order to escape issued by the commander of the patrol fleet made the Persian officers and soldiers even more sad.

To escape, it is natural to turn, and to turn, you will inevitably lose your linear speed; This is equivalent to death when the Spartan battleship has trebuchets and the two sides are very close. However, the Persians didn't know what trebuchets were, and they weren't wrong in their decision, and without them, more than half of the 50 Persian ships might have been lost.

In order to ensure the victory rate of the naval battle, Wang Jun also seconded all 3,000 longbowmen to the navy, and arranged for many adaptation to the surname Hai training; For the seasick Astinos and others, this is definitely worse than killing them, but fortunately, as long as the seasickness is a few more times, it will slowly get used to it.

Within 300 meters, the accuracy of the longbowman far exceeds that of the trebuchet, but the lethality of a single longbowman is compared to a single trebuchet, which is a scum; In order to be able to exert the power of longbowmen in naval battles, the use of rockets became a necessity. On each class 101 sail battleship, there are 30 longbowmen; The large hull provides a fairly stable deck environment; The relatively accurate rocket attack effect is no worse than that of the trebuchet.

Large sail warships must use huge sails, within 300 meters, can such a huge target not be missed?

50 Persian warships disappeared in the waters near Kimi; And the Spartan fleet, not even the fur was hurt. (To be continued.) )