Published at 1st of September 2023 3:46 am

Chapter 832: Campanias Catastrophe

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As a result, the soldiers needed to keep increasing their pace, and the almost sixty-year-old Xanticles felt overwhelmed even while riding a horse.

After entering the mountain path, Xanticles had to slow down the troops even though it was urgent to prevent the enemy's ambush.

Suddenly, the soldiers saw flames soaring into the sky in the distance.

When the mounted scouts they had dispatched earlier returned, he reported that the Caudini had retreated after setting the entire town of Baparia into flames.

By the time Xanticles arrived with his army, flames had engulfed the bustling town built between the valleys. At the same time, in the clearing to the south of the town lay three headless corpses, and beside them was a wooden plaque with a Greek sentence written in human blood: ‘I would exchange the one hundred and thirty-four Theonians in my hand with the Samnite warriors you had captured. Otherwise, they will be like these corpses!’

Upon seeing this tragic sight, all the soldiers felt angry and demanded to pursue the enemy and rescue the captives.

Naturally, the aged Xanticles wouldn't be as impulsive as the soldiers. Instead, after ordering them to gather these three corpses, he made them line up in place and wait for the return of the mounted scouts.

Soon, the report that came back confirmed his speculation, as there seemed to be ambushes on both sides of the mountain path ahead with Caudini warriors lining up.

Xanticles didn't hesitate to lead his army back because he knew that with the long peace between Nuceria and Theonia broken and the war reaching the northwest border of the kingdom, he not only needed to assemble the reserve legions as soon as possible to defend Irna but also needs to inform the Ministry of Military as soon as possible so that they could send more troops or give him greater authority. Otherwise, it would be difficult to cope with the coming war by relying on the four thousand recruits alone.

.............

Pompeii, a small Greek city with a small population, had now most of its residents becoming prisoners. Even with Pompeii's elderlies and women picking up weapons and marching towards the city gate, they still failed to resist the planned invasion of Segobani.

In the afternoon, the city had fallen.

Despite feeling happy at his warriors' cheerings, Segobani still wasn't satisfied as he needed more victories to wash away the shame he had suffered.

So, he let some warriors stay while he continued to lead his army northward along the coast. At dusk, he arrived at Herculaneum, only less than ten kilometres from Pompeii.

Herculaneum, located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, was also a small Greek coastal city but richer than Pompeii because of its proximity to the Gulf of Neapolis, thus becoming a subsidiary trading port of Neapolis' prosperous maritime trade.

However, the people of Herculaneum have their own pride as they believe that their city has a longer history than Neapolis because Heracles was the one to establish it.

Due to being informed of the enemy's attack by the fleeing people of Pompeii in advance, the people of Herculaneum had already prepared their defences.

Upon seeing this, Segobani didn't order another siege. Instead, he had begun setting a camp on site.

Despite the messenger from Herculaneum already arriving in Neapolis to seek help, the city was also threatened by the Samnite forces advancing from the northeast. Initially, they were prepared to send their joint army to repel the enemy. However, upon hearing news of a large enemy force attacking from the south, the people of Neapolis abandoned the idea of going out to face them as they feared being attacked from both sides. Instead, they promptly sent messengers to Theonia by ship, seeking assistance.

(Note: After the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried under the volcanic ash.)

.............

After Theonia's successive great victories in Ausculum and Venusia, the Samnites could only return to the mountains, with even the mountain reconnaissance brigade reporting that there were no traces of Samnites in the mountain areas on the border of the Dauni region.

After suffering heavy losses, the Samnites' joint forces had apparently abandoned their plans to continue attacking the Dauni region. Still, Alexius, the commander of the Dauni region of the Kingdom of Theonia, didn't take the opportunity to lead the army to attack the Samnite region.

One reason was Davos' solemn reminder that he should only enter the Samnite mountain to fight the Samnites with absolute certainty. More than a decade ago, Alexius had led the Third Legion in a battle against the Samnites in the Lucanian mountains. While they achieved a small victory, he also experienced the formidable strength of the Samnite warriors in those mountains. Furthermore, he considered himself fortunate that the battle occurred in the mountains of Potentia. Otherwise, he would have undoubtedly encountered even more difficulties had it been in the Samnite mountains, where the terrain was unfamiliar, transportation was difficult, and they would be deep within enemy territory.

The second reason was the problem with food. Alexius had gathered three legions and one cavalry legion with nearly thirty thousand men under his command. With the rations the soldiers themselves had carried eaten up, the amount of food the kingdom would provide daily wouldn't be small. Now that King Davos is leading an expedition to the Latium region, the already small amount of food left will naturally lean more towards the army in Latium.

The Ministry of Military proposed to Alexius that now that the Samnites had stopped their invasion of the Dauni region after suffering heavy losses, they hoped Alexius could disband some legions to reduce the supply of military rations.

Furthermore, the praetor of Uzentum had sent a messenger a few days before, who had travelled to Dauni and told Alexius a piece of news: ‘According to the pirates who had come to trade their spoils, Vadarka, the son of the former Peucetian king, who had fled across the Adriatic, was in the region of Epirus recruiting the Peucetians, Messapians, and Daunians, who had fled to Greece.’

Thus, Alexius finally decided to let the Ninth and Tenth Legions and the Second Cavalry Legion return to their regions and disband. However, each military camp had to send another brigade of soldiers to bring enough rations to last four days while retaining a brigade in the camp. Meanwhile, the cavalry legion had sent out two hundred riders and had to take turns to come to the city of Ausculum in the Dauni region, where Alexius would stay.

In the military camp in the Dauni region, the Eleventh Legion's soldiers brought their rations and would take turns every four days, with Kapus commanding them.

With Dauni's military camp located in the north and Ausculum in the south and a total of four thousand soldiers and two hundred cavalries guarding the border between the entire Dauni region and Samnite, supplemented by citizens from neighbouring towns, they were well-prepared to handle the small and medium-scale attacks of the Samnites.

And once the remnant enemies landed in other locations in the Apulian region, the garrisoned soldiers in each military camp could first face them. Meanwhile, the citizens who were ready to fight could quickly converge on the camps from the towns and cities to form a complete legion under the notification of the heralds and then destroy the enemy once and for all. And with this approach, they would consume very little of the kingdom's military rations while basically guaranteeing the region's safety.

Alexius dared to do that because the Apulian region is plain, with flat terrain and connecting roads, so a quick march would allow them to reach the southern end, Uzentum, from the northern city of Lucerne. It's just that this makes the legion soldiers busy as they are always on the go, but for the warlike Messapians and Peucetians, having battles to fight, merits to gain, and land to receive is what excites them most.

.............

After multiple exchanges with King Davos, the Ministry of Military has chosen the current strategy of attacking the North and defending the South in this war.

While the army led by Davos is attacking and fighting in Latium, and Alexius' troops have ceased their activities in Dauni, Leotychides decides to adopt an offensive approach to defend. His forces in Sicily, located farther to the south, have not retreated to go for defence. Instead, they are launching attacks across the western end of Sicily, using Selinus as their base. They are plundering all villages and towns outside Mazara, Lilybaeum, Segesta, and other city-states to gather resources, ensuring sufficient food supply for the army. Additionally, these actions also disrupted the order of Carthage in Sicily, creating favourable conditions for their future attacks.

At the same time as when Davos landed on the coast of Latium, the drowned body of Theonia's Navarch, Fulalios, had been found in the reefs on the coast between Minoa and Agrigentum. With his body already decomposed, Leotychides led the soldiers and sailors to hold a solemn cremation funeral in Selinus.

As a result, the whole place was filled with cries.

However, since they still couldn't find a trace of Navarch Seclian, Leotychides had judged that he might have drifted into the coast controlled by Carthage and got captured. Thus, when exchanging prisoners with Carthage, he proposed to exchange more prisoners for Seclian.

But the Carthaginians still didn't reply.

With the signed order of Davos to agree to transfer the Fourth Fleet to Sicily not yet reaching the Ministry of Military, the former division commander, Straphacus, temporarily took on the responsibility of commanding the entire fleet in Sicily(In fact, there are only a few dozen warships left).

As the Theonian army raged on the western land of Sicily, many of Carthage's allies and colonies complained incessantly and asked Lilybaeum for their help.

With the army's morale in the city of Lilybaeum low and the military order chaotic, Bomilcar only wanted to protect himself and dared not leave to fight the Theonian army.

Meanwhile, the Iberian army under Hasdrubal, capable of driving out the Theonians plundering in all directions, had stayed on Palermo. It was because Hasdrubal, on Khilletztartus' reminder, chose to remain as a bystander, for it was only in this way that they could force their allies and colonies to send envoys to Carthage to ask for help and to let the still arguing elders, who had learnt of the urgency of the military situation in Sicily, hasten to make a decision.

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