Chapter 102: Marcus’s Legion
Chapter 102: Marcus’s Legion
“Uwooo!”
The legionnaires in plate armor showed no fear.
Their confidence was unshakable, knowing that no enemy could harm them. This belief gave them the courage to charge straight into the mass of 15,000 enemies.
Swoosh!
Spartacus led the charge, slashing through the front line of the enemy. His soldiers followed with brutal momentum.
The gruesome sounds of flesh being torn and hacked echoed through the battlefield.
The Roman legionnaires didn’t bother to defend against the Belgae warriors' attacks.
Ordinary spears and axes couldn’t penetrate their armor. One swing of their longswords was enough to kill an enemy with ease.
It was as if the mythical harpe, the divine weapon of Perseus, had been reimagined in their hands.
No one could stop the Roman army.
Spartacus’s legion advanced relentlessly, leaving a trail of blood and fallen Belgae warriors in their wake.
“Soldiers, stay together and don’t get separated!” Spartacus commanded calmly as he continued cutting down enemies.
Despite their superior armor, they were not invincible. If any soldier became isolated and surrounded, they’d be in danger.
That’s why the Roman legionnaires made sure not to become isolated in the chaos.
Longswords required room to maneuver, meaning they couldn’t form a tight, dense formation like the regular Roman army. This risked deep penetration into enemy lines.
Spartacus kept a close watch to ensure no one ventured too far ahead alone.
“Ugh, uaaa!” A panicked Nervii warrior thrust his spear at a Roman soldier’s plate armor, but it bounced off uselessly.
No matter how carefully aimed, their weapons had no effect. The Roman soldier grabbed the spearhead and shoved the warrior back.
Without their weapons, the Nervii warrior fled in fear.
It didn’t matter how hard the Belgae struck their plate armor. The blows shattered their weapons, and even if they tried to block with their own armor, they couldn’t withstand more than two strikes from the Roman longswords.
“Uaak!”
“Kraak!”
“Save me!”
“They’re monsters! They’re not human! They’re monsters!”
More Belgae warriors fled in terror than were killed by the Romans.
But retreating was no easy task in the chaos. The Nervii commander shouted, trying to restore order, but his efforts failed.
Spartacus, meanwhile, targeted the warriors who seemed to be commanders, cutting them down first.
The Roman legion, now empowered by their leader’s success, swept through the demoralized Belgae warriors.
Though the Belgae weapons and armor were inferior to those of Spartacus's legionnaires, it hardly mattered.
The Belgae warriors, having lost their will to fight, couldn’t resist the Roman onslaught.
Thud! Clang!
The Roman soldiers pummeled and stabbed their enemies with shields and gladii.
The Nervii, who relied little on cavalry, had no backup. Once their infantry was crushed, the battle was essentially over.
As Marcus had predicted, this was no war.
It was one-sided brutality.
In this situation, Marcus didn’t need to give orders. The centurions and legionnaires coordinated perfectly, attacking without any need for guidance.
“It’s more powerful than I expected,” Marcus muttered, watching Spartacus’s legion annihilate the enemy in front of him.
He had expected them to perform well, but this was beyond his imagination.
Technically, the plate armor Marcus had designed wasn’t equivalent to later medieval plate armor. There were still some rough elements to it.
Despite advancements in ironworking, there were still subtle differences in craftsmanship.
But compared to the Belgae’s weaponry, it was far superior.
No weapon made of soft iron could breach this armor.
That didn’t mean the soldiers were invulnerable, though.
There were ways to counter soldiers in plate armor.
The most effective was to strike them with a weapon of overwhelming mass. A direct hit from a catapult or ballista would pierce through the armor, killing the soldier.
A large blunt weapon could also cause internal injuries, though it would take several soldiers to repeatedly strike a single opponent.
The third method was to target the armor’s weak points, like the joints. But that was nearly impossible in the heat of battle, especially against a moving target. It required surrounding the soldier and hoping for a lucky strike.
“But they won’t know that yet,” Marcus thought. “They can’t understand how to deal with plate armor when they’ve never seen it before.”
The Belgae warriors were not weak or foolish. They were brave fighters. But facing this unfamiliar enemy, they had no idea how to approach it.
Fear quickly set in as the Belgae warriors realized their weapons couldn’t even scratch the Romans' armor.
To them, it seemed as if the Romans’ weapons were divine, blessed by the gods themselves.
How else could their strikes be so ineffective?
Once the Belgae warriors thought this way, their courage began to falter.
For an ancient tribe steeped in superstition, fear was often linked with the supernatural. And in their minds, this fear took on a mythic form.
To the Belgae, the Roman soldiers seemed like monsters, not human beings. This perception quickly shifted the tide of battle in an unexpected direction.
At first, the Nervii commander had been confident. But now, paralyzed by fear, he stood frozen, unable to rally his warriors. Spartacus, cutting down his enemies one by one, advanced towards him.
With each swing of his silver sword, another warrior fell. The Nervii commander snapped out of his daze and quickly scanned the battlefield. He sought his main force, hoping they had made progress against the Roman camp. But to his shock, they hadn't moved an inch. In fact, they were being pushed back towards the river.
"What's happening? What should I do?" His mind raced in confusion, his battle-hardened experience useless in the face of this unfamiliar disaster. He looked back and forth between Spartacus’s advancing legionaries and his own forces, who were being slaughtered. It was clear: the battle was already lost.
The Romans were unlike anything he'd ever heard of. They were invincible, beings he should never have thought to challenge. The commander felt a pang of guilt for leading his men to certain death with his wrong decision. He couldn’t even contemplate fleeing. He remained rooted to the spot, his face filled with horror and shock, until Spartacus decapitated him.
“It’ll be over soon,” Marcus said.
“Indeed,” another officer replied.
“If it weren’t for you, general, we wouldn’t have achieved this glorious victory,” the hornblower added, unable to hide his enthusiasm.
The Twelfth Legion, along with Caesar’s main forces, had begun to overwhelm the enemy. The Belgae’s morale crumbled with the death of their commander, and their resistance disbanded. Marcus was satisfied with the outcome.
"Send a signal to Spartacus's legionnaires to return."
"Yes, sir." The hornblower complied, signaling Spartacus to stop chasing the fleeing Belgae warriors. Spartacus paused, glanced back, and ordered his soldiers to regroup.
Marcus had only recalled Spartacus’s legion to keep their plate armor a secret. He knew that once the story of their power spread, it would cause rumors, but if they didn’t reveal the armor’s full capabilities, it would remain a mystery for a while.
“General, you’re amazing! How did you make such armor and weapons? Is it true Vulcan gave you wisdom?” the hornblower asked with awe.
Marcus smiled, having already heard the rumors that his soldiers called him the son of Vulcan.
“Well... if you believe that, then maybe it’s true,” Marcus replied.
The hornblower’s eyes lit up. “I knew it!”
In ancient times, anything unexplainable could easily be attributed to the gods.
The hornblower looked back and forth between Marcus and Spartacus, who had returned triumphantly. "I don’t think we’ll ever lose to any enemy as long as you lead us, General."
“Thank you for your trust. But that armor is still not perfect. I haven’t even given it a proper name yet.”
“A name? Can’t you just make one up?”
“No, it has to be something special. I need to improve the aesthetic as well... well, never mind.”
The hornblower scratched his head in confusion, unable to understand Marcus’s personal taste in armor design.
Marcus thought to himself, It would be better if it had a more Roman feel to it. Maybe something like lorica plena laminen... Hmm, that doesn’t sound quite right.
He then turned his attention back to the soldiers of Spartacus's legion. Despite a few bruises from overzealousness, none of Spartacus’s legionnaires had suffered serious injuries. If they had worn any other armor, they would have died.
Spartacus scolded the careless soldiers, and then approached Marcus after the armor had been changed.
"Should we rejoin the front line?"
"No, that’s enough for now. You’ve done more than enough. How did you find the armor?"
"It’s incredible. It gives me goosebumps. I’m worried it might make the soldiers too confident. If they start taking hits for granted because they’re well-protected, that could be a problem. Of course, at the beginning of a battle, it’s useful to take some hits to break the enemy’s morale, but once combat begins, it’s important to avoid unnecessary risks. We should focus on maximizing the armor’s defense and using the weapons efficiently. We need to study swordsmanship that complements the armor."
"I’ll leave that to you. I’ll provide you with the necessary knowledge, and you can work from there. It’ll be a good challenge for you."
Through this experiment, Marcus concluded that using plate armor as the main armor for the entire legion was still unrealistic. As Spartacus pointed out, the skill level of the untrained soldiers was too low. If they relied solely on superior equipment, it would lead to a decline in their combat skills.
Additionally, the cost of producing plate armor was astronomical. Even if he collected ransoms from the captured Belgae warriors, it wouldn’t cover the expenses. The fact that the armor had to remain secret only compounded the problem. It wasn’t worth giving such expensive equipment to soldiers without the necessary experience.
I’ll need to reserve the plate armor for a few elite soldiers who have undergone rigorous training. The rest will wear lorica segmentata, Marcus thought.
The lorica segmentata, a transitional armor that resembled its historical counterpart, had proven itself effective in battle. It was still expensive, but it was far more cost-effective than plate armor. Moreover, it had a strong Roman aesthetic, which was a bonus.
While Marcus was lost in thought, the battle was coming to an end. The Belgae warriors, their morale shattered, fled in all directions. It was a moment that shattered the belief that the Nervii never retreated.
The sound of the Roman war machines fell silent, replaced by the victorious sounds of Roman horns. The cheers of the legions filled the air.
“Woo-hoo! Rome invicta!”
“Glory to Imperator Caesar!”
“Salute to Marcus, the legate of the Twelfth Legion!”
Caesar had quickly reorganized his legion, with minimal damage, and now marched northeast towards the Nervii’s territory. The Nervii, now down to about five thousand men, sent envoys to surrender unconditionally. The Atuatuci, who had allied with them, did the same. Though they still had about ten thousand warriors, they had lost all will to fight.
Fighting Rome had become a nightmare they didn’t want to revisit. Their weapons couldn’t even penetrate the lorica segmentata, let alone the plate armor. They believed that Rome had some powerful god behind them, and fighting against such divine opponents would only bring destruction. They could fight humans, but gods were a different matter entirely.
The Nervii and Atuatuci surrendered, offering hostages to Rome. When the news reached Caesar, other Belgae tribes quickly followed suit, sending envoys and offering hostages. Nine tribes, led by the Veneti, acknowledged Rome’s supremacy, and the Belgae region was now firmly under Roman control.
Marcus didn’t know it, but this marked the early end of a major rebellion in Gaul. Though the Belgae had been defeated, their hatred of Rome still simmered. But this time, things were different. They had planned a surprise attack, only to face a crushing defeat.
The warriors who had fought begged their tribes not to oppose Rome again, convinced that Rome was invincible. They had once argued that they should fight to the death, but after one battle, their values had shifted entirely.
Marcus didn’t chase down the fleeing enemies. He had already accomplished what he needed and didn’t want to waste time. The Belgae were too frightened to resist Rome, and Caesar would soon finish his conquest of Gaul.
“The only thing left is the issue of the Twelfth Legion,” Marcus mused. Over two years of war, the Twelfth Legion had become his personal force. He had recruited and equipped them himself, and now he was uneasy about leaving them in Gaul. There was a risk of information leaks, and he didn’t want to lose his valuable soldiers.
But Caesar was still in charge, and Marcus needed a valid reason to take his legion with him. Luckily, he had one: Egypt, where trouble was brewing in the south.