Herald of Steel

864 Perseus's Battle Plan

Perseus and Alexander's venue for the battle was right along the banks of the River Diannu, near the estuary where the river met the sea.

It was after all where Lilybee was situated.

The terrain was a piece of pristinely flat land, perfect for the use of heavy cavalry on Alexander's side and the phalanx of Perseus's side.

Personally, Alexander did not like this setup and would have of course preferred much rougher grounds which would more disadvantage the phalangites.

But unfortunately, he was unable to employ that technique here.

Mainly because there was no such terrain nearby.

The southern half of Tibias was in general very flat, devoid of almost any hills.

This made the whole place perfect for agriculture, and indeed on his way, Alexander had seen vast swathes of very fertile land, fields full of wheat, oats, and other produce.

But although that was very good news for Alexander in terms of obtainable booty, it was not that great for using the type of battles Alexander wanted.

Especially around the vicinity of Lilybee, Alexander did not find even a small mound of ground around a 10 kilometer radius.

But it could be argued that even if there were hills nearby, Alexander did not think he would have been able to bait Perseus into giving battle after his last defeat.

The king had to have learned his lesson by now.

And this time, their roles were reversed.

It was now Alexander who was looking for a fight, so he knew he had to face Perseus on his own terms, with the court disadvantage now on his side.

It was also because he had taken into account such a possibility that he had wanted to bolster his army numbers before assaulting Perseus, wanting to have superior numbers to offset the phalanxe's inherent advantage in open terrain.

And now that he had that, Alexander felt prepared.

As the two lines prepared, neither side sent any last minute messenger to urge the other side to stand down.

With his peace proposal rejected, by now Alexander decided that he wanted to kill Perseus and destroy the royal family line, while Perseus believed if by some miracle Alexander could be 'taken out', he might yet be able to regain his kingdom.

Thus both men began to form their lines.

In the case of Perseus, he organized his line according to the strategy he had discussed the night prior with his generals.

"We will thin the center and thicken the wings. The strategy will be to hold on in the middle until we can crush the wings and then swing around the enemy and destroy the middle, thus getting us ultimate victory."

Perseus had claimed.

And credit where credit is due, this tactic was indeed a valid strategy and was very much like what Hannibal had managed to successfully do at Cannae.

There the Roman cavalry lost in their exchange to their Numadian counterpart and fled the battlefield, leaving the legionaries to be outflanked by the now free enemy cavalry, who surrounded and killed them to the last men.

So on paper Perseus's very similar strategy seemed very good and plausible.

But it had to be remembered the reason why the Battle of Cannae was famous was because it was the Battle of Cannae, because it was a one time thing that was never repeated in its full grandeur ever again.

Very few successive generals ever managed to pull off a victory using this method.

And why so, you ask?

Well it was not because all of them were incompetent, or simply unaware.

Instead, they did not try it because of how dangerous of a strategy it was, and how easily it was disrupted

The main concern with the strategy was the task asked of the thinned center- to hold back the furious onslaught of the enemies until battle on the wings could be decided.

This was of course very hard to do, as all the troops in the center knew they were bait and that there was a very real possibility that the troops on the wings would fail to rout the enemy and the battle would develop into a stalemate.

And if that happened, then what awaited the 'bait' was clear to all.

Thus many times the center tended to crack way before the enemy flanks did, destroying the strategy.

Even Hannibal was aware of that risk, so to bolster the morale in the center, the Carthaginian general had even placed several of his sons on the frontlines, to show the troops their general was fighting alongside them.

And even then it could be seen that this was really not a reliable strategy as the precondition of routing the enemy flanks were hard.

Hence it was more of a desperate gamble- a one last move that you only made when you back was stuck to the wall.

And at that time, Hannibal's back was indeed stuck to the wall.

The Romans had raised an army the size of which they had never seen before- eighty thousand, 80,000 strong, while Hannibal numbered only around forty five thousand, 45,000 to fifty thousand, 50,000.

Almost a 2 to 1 disadvantage.

So for the man, it was either this worked or they all died.

And luckily for Hannibal, it worked.

And perhaps the same could be said for Perseus- that he was in a very similar situation, with this throne and even life on the line.

This was also why this strategy was not contested even though the many experienced officers and soldiers knew exactly how dangerous a move it was.

This was the only move they realistically had left.

Thus they nodded in acknowledgement at Perseus's proposed idea and quietly listened as Perseus delineated,

"I will have all my seventeen thousand, 17.000 Tibian phalangists in the middle. They will be led by my sons, with the Crown Prince Philips being in overall command."

Like Hannibal, Perseus too had recognized the major weakness in this strategy and unsurprisingly chose the same method- use the princes as anchors to boost morale and try and prevent the section from crumbling.

And knowing what was at stake, although some of the sons who had been brought up in the lap of luxury felt their hearts squirm, they ultimately chose to follow their father's instructions.

While Perseus continued,

"The wings will be led by the most elite troops we have. They will be our talons!"

"Lord Taaraf- you lead the right flank with your seven thousand, 7,000 men." Perseus placed a noble under Matbar (Marquis) Kyaum in charge of there.

"And I will personally lead the left wing with the Kaiser mercenaries, the elephants, and Petricuno making up another seven thousand, 7,000."

To show that he was not asking others to simply die for him while he stayed back, Perseusdecided to put himself on the front lines too, then pointing out the true coup de grace of this attack-

"It will be the left flank that will contain our greatest strength. Alexander will most likely have his cavalry deployed in the wings- like it is tradition."

"So we will use our elephants to scare them away and easily destroy the right flank just like we did before (because they would be facing each other, Perseus's left wing would face Alexander's right), before swinging around to smash the defenseless center!"

Perseus clenched his fist in hope, and finished by saying,

"While Mithriditus will lead a reserve of four thousand, 4,000- consisting of the remaining Thesian units. His main job will be to plug any gaps in the center if they appear and repel any breakthrough attempts by the enemy!"

Perseus sounded more hopeful than confident as he finished laying out his battle plan.

"The elephant charge… won't the enemy just use arrows and other projectiles to their charges… like they did with Lord Ponticus?"

However, the king's own favored son- Philips was quick to point out the flaw in that plan, adding the ominous warning,

"If those beasts start rampaging like they did in that battle, it would be our flanks that would be smashed, not Alexander's! What to do about that?"

Philips turned to face his father with a skeptical look.

"Of course, I thought about that!" But Perseus was not stumped by this.

He would not be called a legendary general if he had forgotten to take into account such a crucial lesson.

So he frankly revealed,

"That is why I have placed the elite Kaiser and Petricuno mercenaries on that side."

"They will first engage and tire the enemy, eating their stocks of javelins and short spears and if possible even rout them with their sarissa."

"Remember those huge spears are deadly for any cavalry!"

"If they can do it by themselves, then it will be the best for us. We can then simply send the elephants held in the back into the empty flanks and smash the enemy easily."

"But even if the enemy cavalry still persists, they will surely be tired out after a while, and we will time the elephants' charge such that they will neither have their stock of projectiles, nor the time and space to launch them."

"Haha, I can't wait to see how they handle this out of the blue attack," Perseus revealed a cunning smile.

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