Chapter 235: Crotones Call for Reinforcement

Chapter 235: Crotones Call for Reinforcement

Although the Locrians have fewer ships, they did not even hesitate to attack as well. The ships of both sides quickly sailed towards each other and crossed paths, but the Locrian’s ship did not stop to tangle with the enemy and had continued to speed, which was beyond the expectations of the Crotonians, thus allowing them to easily break away from the Crotonian fleet at the slight cost of two ships.

‘Do they want to escape?!’ Askamas was surprised at seeing the performance of the Locrian fleet.

However, the action of the Locrian fleet had once again surprised him. After taking a certain distance from the Crotonian fleet, the Locrian fleet turned its bow again and took an offensive position.

Askamas didn’t even think about the reason why the Locrians did those extra work for.

Instead, he ordered his fleet to follow suit.

Then the two fleets quickly approached each other again, but this time, the Locrian fleet did not escape.

Then the ships of both sides intertwined, circled and crashed against each other.

Sea battles are different from that of land, land battles paid extreme attention to formations, and so once the formation is broken, then it often means defeat, but sea battles once it starts, the formation will be scattered and often do individual duel between ships, and to win will depend on the superiority and inferiority of the ships and the skilful ship handling skills of the captains and the sailors.

Crotone and Locri have known each other for decades. And Askamas was very clear about the strength of the fleet, the composition of the crew, and even the characteristics of the enemy nauarch, and he firmly believes that it was only a matter of time before he could win the naval battle with the advantage of his fleet having six more triremes.

During the battle, Askamas’ ship went backward with great skill and speed, narrowly avoiding the impact of the enemy ship on the center of their ship. And after escaping the danger, the enemy ship was now placed in front of the bow of his ship. This was a great opportunity, so how could he let it go? So Askamas immediately ordered the sailors to stop rowing backward and move forward again.

But the enemy ship also spun quickly and turned its bow towards the seat of Askamas.

Although the enemy ships responded quickly, the experienced Askamas did not give up, and as his ship approached the enemy ships at a high speed, and were about to cross paths with each other, Askamas yelled, “Reel in the oars!”

The keleustēs(boatswain) who was listening to the order in the bottom cabin had immediately conveyed the order to the rowers. The well-trained men immediately pulled back the wooden oars, while the enemy ship had just passed over the bow and had no time to collect the oars. The 20 meters long triremes had smashed most of the wooden oars of the enemy ship close to its side due to the huge inertia and made the enemy ship unable to move forward.

Just as the sailors cheered and Askamas was ready to turn the bow and completely sink the enemy’s ship, a fleet of triremes suddenly appeared behind the Crotonian fleet and immediately launched an attack on them.

The Crotonian fleet was in danger of being caught in a pincer.

In the end, the Crotonian fleet was badly defeated, with some ships sunk, some captured and some were severely damaged. And Askamas could only lead a handful of ships to break out of the enemy’s encirclement.

On the way back to Crotone, Askamas thought bitterly about where the extra ships of Locri had come from.

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

The naval victory had encouraged the Locrian army that was sieging Caulonia. Early the next morning, when the Crotonian’s reinforcements arrived near the city, the Locrian army, despite their fatigue due to their attack on the city, had immediately attacked the reinforcements from Crotone.

While the Crotonian army did not shy away from the challenge.

As a result, both sides fought a fierce battle on the outskirts of the northern part of the city of Caulonia.

In terms of military strength, Locri was a bit stronger, but due to the need to divide their troops in order to besiege Caulonia, the two sides only had a small difference in troops. However, the majority of the Locrian army were hoplites and light armoured infantry, while Crotone has a clear advantage in regards to the light infantry composed of carefully selected freemen.

The strategos of Locri was worried about the impact of the Crotonian hoplites, and so he had thickened the column. However, the Crotonians had learned a lot from the bitter experience of fighting against the Theonian army. Therefore, just after the formation was completed, they immediately sent the light infantry to attack, and due to the small number of light infantry on the side of Locri, they were soon defeated.

Then the Crotonian light infantry began throwing javelins at the Locrian army and the infantry of Locri then began to suffer huge numbers of casualties.

In the face of the overwhelming hoplite charge of Locri, the Crotonian light infantry who neither has the strict organization and discipline as the Theonian light infantry, nor an experienced veterans to stabilize the morale of the army, nor has excellent and flexible strategoi like Epiphanes, Cid and Arpenst, nor has the stimulation of getting citizenship, lands and other rewards, what’s more, the Crotonian hoplites had no extra space for them to retreat, and so both the light infantry and the hoplites could only flee the battlefield in panic. As a result, many light infantry couldn’t escape and died under the charge of the hoplites of Locri. After finally escaping, and with the efforts of the strategoi, the light infantry tried to regroup but was immediately attacked by the cavalry of Locri and was forced to disperse again.

However, the attack of the light infantry had also consumed and dispersed the strength of the infantry of Locri, and now, only infantry vs infantry is left on the battlefield. One side had just come out of the sufferings at the hands of Theonia, and their body has not yet recovered. While on the other side, they had attacked Caulonia in succession and hadn’t gotten enough rest. One side has fewer soldiers, but they have the determination to wash away their humiliation and defend their territory, while the other side has more soldiers, but their morale is slightly low after being attacked by the light infantry.

After nearly two hours of battle, Locri finally gave up and retreated.

In this battle, the number of casualties in Crotone was similar to that with Locri. However, the majority of the casualties of Crotone were freemen.

Although Locri was defeated, the casualties were not serious and they had also stopped their siege on Caulonia.

Due to this, the reinforcement of Crotone managed to smoothly enter the city of Caulonia and were warmly welcomed by the people in the city, but the situation was not favorable to Crotone.

And the Locrian  army retreated to the camp south of the city, and are still eyeing Caulonia.

While the fleet of Locri cruises the sea and blocks the sea routes of Crotone. And due to this, Crotone has now also felt the pain that Theonia had suffered before.

At this time, the city of Crotone had most of their troops out of the city, while Locri still had some extra strength left. Two days later, more than a thousand Locrian soldiers landed on the coast between Crotone Scylletium, and had begun their invasion to the territory of Crotone northward while they burned, slaughtered and plundered along the way.

After experiencing the tragic defeat of the naval battle, the Crotonians were once again frightened by the news of the invasion of Locri. And the council accused Lysias of doing whatever he wants and making the city empty and are now unable to send troops to repel the enemy’s invasion.

Lysias did not refute the council’s criticism of him, as he was also shocked by the disastrous defeat of the Crotonian fleet. At this time, he could only propose to the council to mobilize the whole city and send envoys to Theonia and Aprustum to ask for help.

In this situation, Crotone actually has no other way out, it’s just that they had just ended the war with Theonia, and there are still some hatred for Theonia in the whole city that had not disappear, however, they had to beg Theonia for help, which made both the members of the council and the public to be embarrassed.

Aprustum was not far from Crotone, with great speed, Sisticos managed to arrive at the south gate of Aprustum in less than two hours.

Although Theonia had made peace with Crotone, they still did not relax their defense of Aprustum and had instead made it stricter, with groups of sentries patrolling back and forth in the city wall and guards being stationed in front of the city gate, and though there are only a few pedestrians going in and out of the city gate, the guards still continue to diligently carry out their task, which made Sisticos able to patiently accept the inspection of the guards.

Then the captain of the city guard appeared before and had brought with him the order from the praetor of the city, Hielos, that allows him to enter the city.

As soon as he entered the city, he was surprised by what he saw: The main street, which was not wide, had some people digging ditches on both sides of the street, while some people struck the stones stacked on the roadside with hammers and awls, and then spread the cut stones on the dirt road, and some others were tearing down some of the building that hinders the smooth road and were rebuilding the brick walls….

There were also those who were carrying soils, stones and garbage…countless strong men were busy with their work and had turned this place into a big construction site. Everyone was doing a lot of work and almost no one stopped to look at him.

“What are they doing?” Asked Sisticos with curiosity.

The captain replied, “Because we will be moving here in the future, so we need to build our own home because the roads in this city are too narrow and uneven, and the garbage and sewages were everywhere….”

The captain said a lot of the city’s disadvantages, which made Sisticos feel amused, he had often come to Aprustum and felt that it was no different from Taranto, so how could this Theonian say that? And so he immediately asked, “Are you not Greeks?”

“We are Lucanians, but we are citizens of Theonia!” Said by the captain of the city guard loudly.

“You speak Greek well.” Then, with a word of praise, Sisticos changed the subject, “I have heard that the Lucanian region is full of mountains, barren land, and you often could barely eat. So I didn’t expect that you would care so much about your living environment.”

“Ever since our tribe joined Theonia, we no longer suffer from hunger!” The captain, blushed as if he had been humiliated and said loudly, “Though the place where we used to live is not as good as the houses here, it is still not good enough compared to what I have seen in Thurii!”