To the stars, p.23
To The Stars, page 23
Coren turned to one of his aides standing to his left.
"Tell them to give the signal to open fire," he ordered.
The aides saluted and dashed over to a group of men some distance away, and shortly afterward, there was a whoosh, and a fiery rocket leaped into the sky. It rose to maybe two thousand paces before it exploded in a mass of smoke and a bright flare with a faintly red cast before it began to sink towards the ground hanging below a parachute. He would have preferred to have used the radio, but not all his commanders had them yet.
Immediately after the rocket had taken off, the artillery opened fire. Being positioned along the slope of the hill not too far from where the rocket launch took place, they were positioned to see the signal first and wasted no time in unleashing hell upon the barbarians in the plain below. They had already sighted the guns in before the barbarian horde arrived, and now the combined artillery of eight legions and one bombardment Ala produced a firestorm of exploding shells right across the middle of the oncoming enemy infantry. The troops were so packed together that the carnage was horrendous. The artillery engaged in a reverse creeping barrage, slowly shortening the range as the Langobardii army moved forward.
Then the horde reached the point where the mortars positioned behind the front line of troops joined in the action adding their soft whoomps to the cacophony. They were spread right along the line, and the vast horde of enemy cavalry advancing across the open paddocks on the left now began to take casualties as well. Ragged holes began appearing in the dense masses of infantry as the rain of shells continued, and then the front of the horde reached the firing range of the legionaries themselves.
The massed rifle fire and the staccato bursts from the mittorapidos simply mowed down the entire frontline of the Langobardii force in a display of absolute destruction. And still, the enemy infantry came on, stumbling over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they pressed forward, across the creek, where they at least had some protection from the infantry fire provided by the banks, and then they came up out of the creek bed only to find their way blocked by the ditch.
Coren had never seen anything like the massacre unfolding before him. Probably a third of the enemy infantry were dead or dying already, and if that wasn't bad enough, he heard another blast of the horns, and the reserve infantry began moving forward to back up the people getting slaughtered in front of them. The ditch began filling with bodies as the warriors tried to climb out and moved towards the firing line of the Roman infantry. Later on, reading the accounts, it was quite clear that not a single Langobardii warrior made it even as far as halfway up the prepared glacis.
And still, they kept coming and coming. Over on the left, the massive horde of cavalry had not been seriously affected by the mortar fire directed at them as they advanced, but once they reached the infantry firing range, they were simply shot down in droves. Horses make big targets, and between the aimed rifle fire and the massed mittorapido fire across the open paddocks where there was nowhere to hide, they were shot down in their thousands. The only reason any of them managed to reach the river was because of the indirect cover the trees and bushes lining the river offered. None of them made it across the river.
"This is just sickening," Coren said to no one in particular.
"Let this be a lesson to you, gentlemen," Arturo said loudly enough for all those present to hear. "Never believe your own propaganda and always check your assumptions."
He paused and pointed out over the barbarian horde, which had finally given up the pointless assault on the Roman position and was starting to trickle back to their starting area. As they did so, they discovered that withdrawing under fire was nearly as bad as trying to attack under fire.
"The Langobardii King claimed he was leading the largest army in the world, which he possibly or even probably was. Unfortunately, large doesn't necessarily equate with most effective, something he couldn't seem to grasp. He attacked despite knowing we had superior weapons. These days you would have to assume he's seen at least one breech-loading rifle, but even if he hadn't, there are plenty of muskets around, which give a very poor idea of the firepower any Roman Legion has these days. Even a single breech-loading rifle is not going to give you a good idea of what hundreds of men trained to fire quickly and accurately are going to achieve at close range."
He pointed at the horde again. "That many men, deployed that deep, charging a line equipped with muskets, is simply going to roll over the top of it unless there is some compensating factor like our ditches. He was so confident in the ability of his troops to roll over the top of our small force that he attacked without even carrying out basic reconnaissance of the ground. All they were interested in was discovering the numbers and location of our troops. Even if our troops had been armed with muskets, they would have still taken so many casualties trying to get through that ditch that they may not have been able to punch through our troops anyway."
"Just because you have seen a weapon in use in a controlled test doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to grasp exactly how effective such weapons will be in real life. Never assume. In the history of my land, there was a country that had the most advanced weapons in the world. It didn't have the biggest army, but it didn't need to because it had the best weapons. They were gradually expanding their control of an area inhabited by various native tribes whose weapons were not even as good as these men. They had spears and cowhide shields."
He paused as Coren ordered the army to cease fire as the barbarians had fallen back beyond effective range.
"The advanced country decided to acquire more native land using their army in the next-door province. Now because they were only facing these poorly armed natives up until this point, that army, while it had the latest rifles, which were roughly equivalent to what your men have, didn't have all the equipment to go with it. Yes, they had some light field artillery but only a few. They hadn't been issued with any of their country's equivalent of the mittorapidos because their rifles were deemed good enough to beat spear-armed locals with their cowhide shields. They did have a cavalry force that the natives were particularly wary of as they were trained to fight dense masses like this lot out here, so were particularly vulnerable to cavalry charges."
"So far, there were no problems. The command advanced into the native territory in three columns; a left wing, a right wing, and the main center column. He did this partly for supply reasons, but also so he would have a warning of any attacks on his flanks. It was a fair enough invasion plan in the circumstances. The natives had about three times as many troops as he did, but he had cavalry and rifles. Once across the border, things began to fall apart."
"First, the natives deployed a screen of troops to prevent his scouts from spotting their main body. Then they deployed a force of around four thousand men in such a way that it looked like their main force, so the commander then split his center column taking his main cavalry force and a part of his infantry in pursuit, looking to win a quick early engagement against the natives. The natives meanwhile maneuvered their main force close to the balance of the center column. The commander of this force hadn't even bothered to begin preparing for battle, thinking they were not under threat and that they would be following up the rest of their column very shortly."
"The native main body was discovered when it was almost on top of the bulk of the center column, and once they were discovered, they charged immediately. The troops of the advanced nation were trained, experienced veterans and quickly deployed into their standard firing line and began shooting the crap out of the charging natives with their breech-loading rifles. So far, everything was going according to the script, the superior firepower of the advanced nation's troops knocking down hundreds of the enemy just as expected. Unfortunately for the advanced nation's troops, the natives hadn't read the script and rolled right over the top of them regardless of the casualties they suffered. It would have been different if they'd had a ditch and palisade, but in the open field, once they got to close quarters, the spear and shield combination proved to be more effective than the bayoneted rifle of the advanced nation's men. There were problems with ammunition supply at one time or another before it devolved to hand-to-hand combat, which didn't help."
He paused again and studied the barbarian horde that was milling around in the distance.
"Both sides in that battle went into it with assumptions and overconfidence. Even the natives suffered from overconfidence. Another force of natives attacked a supply base at the same time, over two thousand natives against a hundred and twenty men in defensive positions. The natives lost over a thousand men and failed. Sometime later, the main native army again engaged a force from the advanced nation and tried to repeat the same tactic, but this time the advanced nation had supporting artillery, had dug a basic ditch to defend their camp, and so on. This time it was the natives that suffered the disaster."
There was a blowing of horns and trumpets from the enemy force, and Arturo pointed out at them.
"They came charging in there thinking they'd roll right over the top of us and failed dismally. Now they're getting ready to do it again. Why? Who knows? If it didn't work the first time, it's not likely to work a second time. On the other hand, all those troops that survived the initial charge have to be very antsy about charging your line of death again. A canny commander would realize that now is the time to unleash a weapon that the enemy hadn't seen. A weapon that no one had seen in the numbers he had available." he looked over at Coren and smiled.
"Really?"
"Apart from the odd one that breaks down or tips over on the rough ground, how are they going to stop five hundred of the things? Just the noise alone should be enough to break them."
Coren looked out over the battlefield to where the enemy commanders were clearly trying to bolster the morale of their troops, putting the big blocks of the reserve in the lead in preparation for the next charge. It was all right for Arturo to suggest they attack now, but he wasn't the one in command of the army. Still, he could see Arturo's point. Half those troops were shaky at best, and the rest had just seen their mates get obliterated. And no one had ever seen five hundred steam wagons all in one place advancing upon them. Damn, he was right as usual. Coren turned to his aides.
"Lucius, contact the commander of the combined steam wagon Legion. Tell him he is to advance on the enemy forthwith." He turned to the next one. "Adraxes, get on the radio to the First and Second Legions and tell them they are to advance in support of the steam wagons."
He let those two young men depart from the command center before issuing his next orders.
"Once the First and Second Legions are clear of the frontline, I want the rocket signal for a general advance sent up, Decius. Arturo Sandus is right, now is the time to show them the error of their assumptions."
No one had faced the armored masses that Coren unleashed on the Langobardii. There were nearly five hundred of the steam combat vehicles lumbering forward in a cacophony of clanks and chuffing steam and smoke. Apart from the few that broke down and the couple that turned over on patches of rough ground, nothing could stop the wheezing, clanking monsters.
They drove through and, in a lot of cases, over the Langobardii warriors and their subjects. The spear-armed men had no way of stopping the iron behemoths, and the archers were only a little more effective with the very rare arrow that managed to fly through one of the firing slits in the armored box the combat troops rode in. The steam wagons spread out after crossing the stream and simply drove over any organized pockets of resistance. The reserve cavalry of the Langobardii proved to be a waste of time as the horses panicked at the approach of the wheezing, hissing, and clanking monsters. Probably half the Langobardii horsemen finished up on the ground as their frantic steeds galloped away from the fearsome metal beasts, while a good many of those that retained their seats in their saddles only did so by allowing their horse to follow the others in galloping retreat.
The artillery had been picking off enemy leaders as they were identified. Unknown to the Romans, the Langobardii King had been severely wounded very early on but had managed to stay mounted on his horse for some considerable time as he slowly died from blood loss. By the time the main Roman army began to advance, the Langobardii horde was reduced to a leaderless mob that had already lost upwards of half of its men. It didn't so much break as simply dissolve.
Chapter 26.
The long advance
In the space of less than two hours from the initial advance, the defeat of the Langobardii horde had been total. Over forty thousand had been captured, close to a hundred thousand killed, and the pursuit had continued for days. The Roman army broke up into three, then four, and then five columns as they pursued the broken enemy troops through the somewhat rugged terrain northeast of where the Rhenus turned to the south. Many of the surviving tribesmen from the various peoples the Langobardii horde had overrun during their advance across central Germania dropped out of the retreating army and simply went home.
The third column of the Langobardii, having already taken heavy casualties during their defeat of the Alemanni, fell back as soon as they heard the word of the defeat of the King and their other two columns. During the pursuit, the flexibility offered by the legionary organization was clear and obvious to everyone, with each legion now being a self-contained force in its own right. Occasional pockets of resistance were overcome with ease as the Roman army swarmed through the lands that the Langobardii had carved such a swathe through.
By and large, the areas the horde had passed through most recently were reduced to an uninhabited wasteland. Further back, survivors of the local tribes who had managed to dodge the carnage were filtering back into their traditional lands. In other places, tribes on the border of the line of advance were now moving into the vacated areas to occupy them while they could. Everywhere the Roman troops advanced, the people they came across either submitted or ran. None but the Langobardii survivors attempted to resist.
The third of the Langobardii columns moved to the southeast into the rugged mountainous areas there, where they ran afoul of the Marcomanni. These people were no longer the large, powerful force they had been several hundred years earlier, but they knew their land well and were still tough fighters. The Langobardii force, of which only about a third were truly Langobardii, was ground down and eventually disappeared in the mountain vastness. A lot of the people making up the column were from tribes that had joined the Langobardii horde only because the alternative was to be crushed underneath the Langobardii juggernaut as it rolled through their lands. Many of these people now split away from the core of the column and either tried to make their way back to their ancestral homes or tried to merge with the local population of the areas they passed through. The third column effectively dissolved, more than anything.
Coren took the decision to occupy nearly all the vast swath of land that the Langobardii horde had marched through in central Germania until his lead unit, the Second Legion, reached the Albis River, where it bent to the west. It was a river that no Roman army had seen for centuries, but it was clear that they were here to stay this time. Negotiations took place with the tribes on either side of the land they occupied over the next few weeks and months, and eventually, firm borders were drawn up that resulted in the Romans adding three new provinces to the Empire. The Mattiaci province was enlarged a little from the original area occupied by those people. Beyond that, a rectangular-shaped area running southwest to northeast was claimed and declared to be the province of Germania Septentrionalis, with a third, gradually narrowing area ending at the Albis River being named the province of Albis Inferior.
The huge number of prisoners they had acquired would be too many to be absorbed into the army, assuming that there would be the usual two-thirds or so choosing the army over the labor gangs. The cost of maintaining the legions they already had was proving onerous even with the rapidly expanding economy. The Concilium Romanum was loath to add the cost of even more legions to their budget, but they settled for forming one new legion, the Thirty-Seventh. This would be based at Mogontiacum, while the Eighteenth that had made its home there was moved to a new site a few miles northeast of where the battle had been fought. Here a new city was laid out to be named Corenia in his honor, much to Coren's disgust. The Fifteenth was moved from Treverorum to the site of a new city to be built on the Albis, which was named Albis Magna.
A good deal of the area they had taken over was largely uninhabited now. While the few surviving former occupants of the area were willing, for the most part, to accept Roman rule, many of those that had moved into the area after the Langobardii horde had passed by were not so keen. The Romans did try to accommodate these people to an extent, but ultimately, they had to accept that the area was coming under Roman control, and they could either become Romans or leave. It was a little harsh, but then as the Romans were the ones to defeat the Langobardii, they felt they deserved the spoils.
With the budgetary constraints, the majority of the prisoners they had taken were simply assigned to the labor gangs regardless. Many of them soon found themselves working to build roads and railways through the desolation they had wreaked in central Germania. Once the temporary Governors for the two depopulated provinces had made it clear that they were happy to accept settlers from any of the surrounding tribes who were willing to accept Roman rule, the population of those two new provinces began to grow slowly.
