Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

It's like the one-man-for-one thing in Liang En's mind. Compared with the pass that was opened by ten thousand people, this pass is obviously much wider, but from the perspective of real war, it is just enough for the Roman legions to set up their formations here.

According to historical records, in AD 60, the British Iceni, who could not bear the cruel exploitation of the Romans, launched a massive war under the leadership of Boudica.

Boudicca's timing was very good. Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the governor of Britain at the time, happened to be campaigning in the west of Britain.

Therefore, her rebel army basically encountered no decent resistance from the east, and easily captured and massacred Camulodunum, Londinium (London), Verulamium and other important Roman colonies.

Of course, this large-scale massacre also prompted the Celts in the south who had been assimilated by the Romans to choose to stand with the Romans. However, at that time, the rebel army severely damaged the Ninth Legion who was trying to reinforce through an ambush, so naturally they did not care about this Little things.

Paulinus briefly attempted to lead his legionary cavalry south to rescue the largest Roman colony in Britain, London, but he soon realized that the enemy was far more numerous than they had previously imagined.

In this case, if he could not mobilize the volunteers of an entire or even several legions, he would never be able to stop Boudica's rebels, so he gave up his plan to rescue the colony.

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So when those cities were being massacred, Paulinus chose to fortify the walls and clear the country, destroying all the towns on the rebel army's path, and at the same time gathering as many nearby Roman legions as possible. But the final result was far worse than he imagined:

The Second Legion stationed in southern Britain was not ordered for unknown reasons. The Ninth Legion was seriously damaged and lost its combat effectiveness. Only the Fourteenth Legion and part of the Twentieth Legion could gather around Paulinus.

In addition to the regular army, he was also able to recruit 6 brigades of auxiliary infantry and 2 brigades of auxiliary cavalry, but even so the Roman army totaled about 10,000 people.

Fortunately, because of the indiscriminate killings by Boudica's army, the Celts who had surrendered to the Roman Empire chose to stand firmly with the Romans, ensuring the morale of the auxiliary army and the implementation of the policy of strengthening the walls and clearing the country.

As for the other side of the war, many Roman historians strongly promoted the numerical superiority of the British in this battle. Tacitus states that the number of Britons in this battle was about one hundred thousand. Another Roman historian, Cassius Dio, claimed it was 230,000.

Of course, this number is mixed with unknown amounts of water. After all, with the productivity of the British island at that time, these rebels could not reach this number even if they included their families.

According to the inferences of today's scholars, the number of rebels was only 50,000 at most. Considering the extremely overwhelmed logistics of the rebels at that time and the Romans' tactics of fortifying the wall and clearing the field, this number is likely to be overestimated.

Especially before the war began, the Romans had not been able to collect enough food because of the strong walls and cleared the country. In addition, the war affected the farming season, forcing Queen Boudica to disband many of her troops to avoid starving to death before the war began.

Paulinus, on the other hand, chose the place for the decisive battle very carefully. He used vegetation as a cover for his wings so that the enemy could not use their numerical advantage to encircle him. He deployed the legionnaires in a dense formation in the center, with auxiliary troops on the wings.

As a result, Boudicca did something on the battlefield that almost never ended well in the military records of various countries: he surrounded his carts in a circular formation behind his own army, assuming a posture of cutting off his own retreat and fighting until the last moment.

You know, every time a tactic like a last-ditch battle is used, there must be a series of back-up supports. Judging from Chinese history, only two true masters of tactics, Han Xin and Liu Yu, were successful, and there were quite a few who jumped on the street. .

Many people only saw the determination of the troops to fight to the end in a last-ditch battle, but in fact, the reason why China won the two wars was to withstand the enemy's attack from the front and then defeat the enemy from both sides.

And if you just fight with your back against the dead ground, you are just looking for death, and the soldiers will even collapse faster than normal face-to-face combat because the soldiers can't see hope. .

Of course, the British Celtic equipment and tactics were also disadvantageous on the battlefield. The British Celts had chariots and very good swords, but they did not have much armor at all due to a series of reasons such as productivity.

Although those warriors who were bare-chested and painted with blue patterns on their bodies became invincible after using some potions, and gained cool names like Berserkers and even Indigo Raiders, they could not cover up their disadvantages on the battlefield.

The more important problem is that these poorly organized tribal warriors are invincible when charging, especially when ambushing, but once they fail to defeat the opponent in the first charge, it will be difficult for them to block the enemy's attack. .

To put it simply, the battles that the Celts were good at were either fighting guerrillas on complex terrain with flexible advantages, or playing a wave of flow on the plains. As a result, the Romans successfully restricted the Celts in this war. Specialize in these two advantages.

So in this war, although the British had a huge numerical advantage, the Romans occupied favorable terrain and cooperated with better quality to make the British charge in vain.

When the British were unable to sustain a full-scale retreat, the large car formation deployed by Boudicca became the biggest obstacle to the British's escape, turning a failed battle into a one-sided massacre.

It is said that 80,000 Britons were killed, while Paulinus suffered only 800 casualties. Because of the victory in this battle, the Fourteenth Legion received the title of Martia Victrix. It is well deserved to say that they were the conquerors of Britain.

Of course, this record is considered to be very valuable: on the one hand, Rome has the possibility of publicizing its achievements, and in addition, Tacitus' father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola served in the British Rebellion. He served in the army and was probably on the battlefield at that time.

On the one hand, there should be no doubt about the credibility of Tacitus's record of the battle, but it also makes people suspect that such data may contain his praise of the Roman legions and his father-in-law's achievements in this battle.

But in any case, the casualty ratio between the Romans and the local indigenous people in this war was very different, and the ancient Romans did win an undoubted victory.

Liang En and Pierce's search on this hillside also proved this. They dug a total of seven or eight excavations before dark and found a large number of remains from the ancient Celts.

Most of these relics are fragments of decorations and weapons. Judging from the traces left on them, they should be things left on the battlefield during the war.

Of course, the most important legacy is that they were not far from this slope. Broken human bones, even if Liang En and Pierce were amateurs, they could see the trauma on these bones and simply judge that these people should have died in the battle.

"This is indeed an ancient battlefield, and it is the ancient battlefield where the Romans won after the battle between the Romans and the Celts." Liang En concluded after an afternoon of searching. "We can call everyone over for large-scale exploration."