As I received word of Rome's Declaration of War, I put my initial plan into motion. A two-pronged assault on Roman territory would occur. First, I would divide my forces. Forty thousand men, fifteen thousand Epirotes, and twenty-five thousand allies would embark upon troop ships under the command of Kleon of Pydna while my fleet destroyed the pitifully small Roman Fleet off Ostia. My Fleet would then blockade the Port of Ostia while Kleon's detached army would seize the Port.
While that was going on, I would March North with my main army of some forty-five-thousand Epirotes, Fifteen-Thousand Mamertines, and ten-thousand Local Greek Allies to meet the Romans in Lucanii Territory. The Legions they had sent to the borders of Magna Graecia had gathered at a rallying point near Paestum under the commander who had won Rome Samnium with brutal tactics, Quintus Maximus Samnicus. I intended to crush his sixty-thousand-strong army, which represented the bulk of Roman fighting strength that could currently be drawn together, before marching north into Samnium to hopefully inspire a revolt.
Kleon embarked the day before I did, with the fleet setting sail two days before that to clear the way of any Roman Ships ahead of the transport fleet. Once I saw them off, I began my march north, shadowed by supply ships guarded by quadriremes. As we marched north, my army passed through Scyllaeum, Medma, and Terina, Greek Cities where men joined us, including contingents from Kallipolis, Tarentum, Metapontion, Syris, Sybaris, Thurii, Locri, Croton, Scylletion, and Caulonia. Enough men that I could form an entirely new army of just allies from Magna Graecia. Stopping briefly at Terina, I did just that. I organized a reserve army of forty-thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry from Allied Greeks to act as a pool of reserve manpower before marching north toward Laus.
The City of Laus sat at the mouth of the River of the same name. My army stopped for the evening ten days into my Roman Campaign to rest. The morning of the eleventh day we received word from Laus' Sister City Skidros further north where a tributary from the same mountain source that Fed the River Laus flowed into the sea. Rome had come and besieged Skidros even though they had not sent troops to join me. Samnicus was intent on making another example, this time of Skidros. I refused to allow it. We struck camp and marched north for the Upper Laus River and Skirdros beyond.
As it happened, Samnicus had been expecting something like that and his siege had been primarily an attempt to draw me into battle. If he had been expecting a lightly armored, poorly supported, Samnite Army, similar to what he had faced previously, however, he was to be sorely mistaken. Both our armies drew up on the short stretch of plains south of the Upper Laus, between the mountains on one side and the sea on the other.
I arrayed my forces as I had planned, my phalanx squares of phalangites, hypaspists, and hoplites were linked together by more mobile formations of Thureophorai, Thorakitai, and Mamertine Troops. In front, I placed my peltasts with their javelins. On my flanks were my secret weapons, the heavily armored Kataphraktoi cavalry on their Nisean Horses. Such cavalry had no equivalent in the world at the moment, and they would be what I would use to break the Romans in this battle.
Opposite from my forces, the Romans drew up in their standard formation, Lightly equipped Velites skirmishers with their pila and small parma shields in two lines in front, followed by maniples of Hastati Infantry with their Lorica Hamata, Scutae, and Gladii in their manipular formation, with maniples of the more veteran Principes, equipped similarly to the Hastati but with greaves, Hasta spears, and helmets as well behind them, and a final row of maniples of their most veteran Triarii behind them clad in Lorica Squamata. On their flanks were positioned the Equites, Patricians mounted on slighter horses, equipped with lorica hamata, small parma shields, spatha swords, and hasta spears.
I was mounted this time with my Kataphractoi, waiting for an attempt by Samnicus to parlay now that he saw the force arrayed against him. It never came, instead, the Roman Signifiers blew their horns to signal the advance. I turned to my adjutant, Astios of the Byllones, and nodded to him.
"If Samnicus wants a fight, he'll get one, however ill-advised it might be for him. Send the signal to all captains, hammer and anvil, they're to get stuck in and hold. In the meantime, send out the Peltasts." I ordered.
Astios nodded and began barking orders to various couriers who in turn sped off to relay the orders to individual commanders. With well-drilled efficiency, my army began to move. First went the Peltasts, skirmishers throwing their javelins and trading fire with the Roman Velites. Fortunately for my peltasts, they were equipped with steel at the expense of the state. Meanwhile, the Roman Senate were notorious skinflints, who often paid only for the weapons and shields of their soldiers.
The Velites themselves lacked any real armor aside from their shields and helmets. It bit them here, as many of their pila bounced off steel shields or failed to penetrate steel scales. Meanwhile, my own Peltasts' javelins reaped a heavy toll among the Ranks of the Velites. For every Peltast that went down to a Roman pilum, two Velites went down in turn. Eventually, however, both sides exhausted their missiles and fell back as the lines closed to melee.
Here, my troops also had the advantage in equipment, though the phalanx was a more cumbersome formation than the maniples used by the Romans. Samnicus' men tried to press around the more cumbersome formations, to pierce through the lines of Thorakitai, Thureophorai, and Mamertines but were bogged down in bloody fighting. The Mamertines especially refused to give any ground to Roman attacks, fighting with the bitter hatred of those whose families had been subjugated and lands seized by force. Oftentimes, Mamertine units would rather die than retreat in the face of Roman Attacks.
After an hour of bloody back and forth between the lines, the Roman advance, stymied by steel equipment and dogged resistance failed to push through the lighter-equipped troops between my phalanx squares and a bloody stalemate ensued. That was what I had been waiting for, and I turned to Astios.
"We ride now. Rome has exhausted itself trying to break our line and is bogged down. There's the Anvil, now it is up to us to be the Hammer! We can shatter their spine in one blow, all we need do is charge forth and sweep their Equites off the field first!" I exclaimed.
Astios reached down to his belt and pulled a brass horn from his saddle, blowing three blasts into it to signal to form up for the attack of the Kataphractoi. I rode with them as we formed up, and a long blast of the horn sounded to signal the charge. The Roman Equites charged forth to meet us. My couched cavalry xyston took an Equite through the chest, steel tip punching straight through the iron links of his Lorica Hamata as our two formations met. He fell to the dirt with a strangled cry, taking my xyston with him and I drew my falcata in time to parry a swing of an Equite Spatha aimed for my neck. The Roman tried to wheel around for another strike, but with my stirrups I was quicker to do so, sending a cut at him that carved open the side of his neck in a spray of blood.
Next to me, Astios had also lost his xyston in the corpse of a Roman Equite and was laying about him with a steel Illyrian cavalry hatchet that not only splintered a Roman Equite's parma shield but broke the man's arm in the process. The Roman fell off his horse, unable to keep in the saddle with the pain of a broken arm, and was trampled in the cavalry scuffle. Not slowed in the slightest, Astios whirled his hatchet around to split open another Equite's skull with a sideways chop, as the steel hatchet cleaved through the hinged bronze cheek protector on the Equite's Montefortino Helmet and caved in his temple.
I turned to catch a Roman Spatha in the side, steel armor deflecting the blade, even though I felt my ribs ache from the blow. In response, I lashed out with my Falcata and hacked off the unfortunate Equite's sword arm at the elbow, as the man was too slow to withdraw his blade. He fell from his saddle in a spray of blood and I spurred my horse forward toward an Equite with a helmet that had a plume of dyed blue horsehair and a purple stripe on his cloak, signifying him as Tribune Laticlavius, and thus second in command of a Legion. To his credit, the Tribune parried my first blow on his Parma, but his riposte was telegraphed and I was able to duck it in time. I came up with my falcata in an upward slash that cut open his face, knocking his helmet off in the process. His wild swing was easily parried and my riposte split open his skull. He slumped down in his saddle, dead.
All around me, I could see similar scenes playing out, with the Equites by far getting the worst of the fighting. Eventually, some mounted signifier was able to call a retreat, and I raised my falcata in the air shouting out in hopes that Astios would hear. "Form up on me! Now is the time! We can shatter them with a single charge!" I cried out.
By some miracle, Astios heard me among the din of battle and spurred his horse to my side before blasting three notes on his horn. Instead of pursuing the Equites, my Kataphractoi heeded the sound of the horn and formed up on me once more, then, with another long blast of the horn, we charged once more. Most of us had lost our Xyston in the fighting, but that was fine. The spears weren't entirely necessary when charging into the flank of an infantry line. We plowed into the Roman flank, cutting down legionaries left and right as we rolled up their line like a carpet. I took four legionaries with my falcata before any Romans even attempted to stabilize the situation.
The Triarii attempted to form up to staunch the lost troops, Samnicus sending them in to attempt to fight us back and steady the Roman Lines to avoid a complete collapse. They couldn't do it. Their Hasta spears skidded off the steel barding of horses and steel armor of Kataphractoi, their maniples unused to the sheer power afforded to a charging cavalryman with stirrups to call on. Heavy cavalry the likes of which had never before been seen met the most veteran Roman Troops alive, and it was the Veterans who came up short.
True, they fought courageously, with much discipline, but they simply had nothing in their vast experience that could compare to our charge. We slew many of them before our charge bogged down and we retreated. At first, the Triarii thought they had done it, and the Principes and Hastatii remaining began to steel their resolve and steady their collapsing lines. When we wheeled about to charge in once more, their hopes were shattered. Within an hour of the second charge, the battle was decided. The Triarii died to a man to give time for Samnicus to withdraw with some semblance of an army back across the Upper Laus, but it was over.
When the Battle of the Upper Laus was done with, we had control of the field. It had taken three hours from start to finish, and Samnicus was able to retreat north with some twelve thousand men, primarily Hastatii and Velites, with a smattering of Equites who managed to escape the debacle of a battle. They had left better than thirty-five-thousand men dead on the field or about to die, with another twelve-thousand-five-hundred wounded but conscious enough to surrender. In return, my own forces lost a mere three thousand dead and three thousand wounded, mostly among the Mamertines. Most of the wounded would also survive to fight another day.
One of the Roman prisoners was an Equite named Gnaeus Servilius Caepio, son of a prominent Senator of the same name. His father, Gnaeus Servilius Caepio the Elder was head of his entire Gens. He was a particularly high-value capture. It was also he who identified the Tribune Laticlavius I had killed as Lucius Postumius Megellus, the young scion of the Gens Postumia and, who I knew to be one of the Roman Generals of the First Punic War, the man who would have gone on to conquer Agrigentum for Rome if he had lived. We marched into Skidros two days later, once everything had been accounted for. Five days after that, word came from the Fleet.
The Roman Fleet had attempted to attack my fleet near the Roman town of Circeii and had been completely destroyed. The Town had surrendered in the aftermath of the battle, including the small Roman Garrison holding the small promontory the Town was on. Kleon had elected to leave a small garrison in the town before continuing on North after the Main Fleet to Ostia, which was now Under Siege and Blockade. The news was three days old.
As I read Kleon's missive, I had to wonder if the Roman Senate would be willing to negotiate yet. Probably not, actually. I'd probably have to go through with the next few phases of my battle plan before they saw sense. The Senate of Rome tended to be stubborn like that. To that end, I released the Mamertines to begin stirring up trouble in Samnium and called up troops from my reserve army to replace them. I waited for seven days for that to occur, then continued my march North.
I would not meet stiff, organized, resistance again until I neared Capua. . .
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AN: So yeah, the first battle is a massive victory for Pyrrhus. It turns out, that when heavy cavalry has never been implemented in history before, opposing armies are woefully unprepared to deal with it. Expect Rome to try using stakes or something to deal with that in the future, they're nothing if not both stubborn and willing to adapt to new circumstances. Whether they manage to adapt in time to salvage some sort of negotiating position or not remains to be seen.
As to the Roman Fleet, well, a hundred ships of primarily Triremes and Liburnians aren't exactly a force to be reckoned with. IOTL it took multiple wars with Carthage and multiple losses to Carthaginian Fleets for Rome to actually get good with naval battles. What happened at Circeii was just a wholesale massacre, similar in scale to the one that took place on land at the Upper Laus, but it's one that the Senate had planned to lose.
After all, what use is a fleet? It isn't like Rome can be reached by sea, and the Tiber is blocked by Ostia and can't support navigation from anything larger than a Liburnian anyway. They're about to learn the hard way that Rome isn't as secure as they think.
At any rate, next up will be the Battle of Capua, and then we'll have an interlude with the Roman Senate.
Stay tuned. . .