260bc - 250bc. Cassius’ Northern Campaign.


It was 258bc before I was ready to start my campaign to conquer Northern Italy. The first blow would not fall against the Gauls but rather against the free city of Arretium. Cassius Pleminus marched north with as many men as one general could command.

The tactic was not to immediately besiege Arretium whose garrison was even more numerous than the forces I had put together for this expedition, but instead to tempt them out onto the open field where they could be quickly and easily destroyed. With Arretium under Roman control my forces could then start the war against the Gauls in earnest.

The plan worked, although the rebels did not send as many men as I had hoped they would - my army outnumbered theirs by about a third as they had left nearly 40% of their men at home.


The mighty force assembled to storm Arretium

The approaching rebels front ranks were mown down by a hail of pila, and the cavalry soon saw off their skirmishers. The Hastatii clashed with the enemy warbands and millita hoplites, the principes moved up into support and before the Triarii could get involved the rebels were fleeing in terror.

Cassius followed up this victory by laying siege to Arretium.

Back home the conquest of Italia was bringing in a nice amount of money, and I was starting to “assimilate” various cities into my empire. Hopefully I would be able to start producing better troops in other cities soon, as constantly recruiting all my Hastatii, Principes and Triarii was causing an unhealthy population drain in what should be my finest city. I resolved to increase the numbers of Italians and Gauls in my armies from now on - hopefully my conquest of Northern Italy would provide me with a pool of fierce Gallic tribesmen for my armies.

The siege of Arretium dragged on - with no relief force coming to save the rebels there was little need to launch a potentially costly assault. Meanwhile strange goings on were happening near Rome, a captured slave named Unluckius Maximus may be able to shed more light on this…

“I worked in one of the vin yards of that famous wine merchant Galerius Figulus along with about a thousand other slaves. It was hard work, unpaid and unappreciated. Then one day Galerius Figulus came riding through on a horse, and in armour too, which is weird because normally he’s too drunk to ride a horse and rides in a litter.

All the slave overseers were with him too, they had armour and swords too. Galerius stood up in the saddle and started giving us all a speech about how the God Jupiter had come to him in a dream, and told him that he was the long lost heir of the last King of Rome - how Publius Laevinus was a weak leader and should be cast down.

Last of all he said that any of us who fought for him would be freed when he won, and any who refused would be crucified. Everyone agreed. He told us all to go to the kitchens and find weapons for ourselves. I couldn’t find a knife but I did manage to pocket a nice looking silver fork. In the end I pulled up one of the vin yard stakes to use as a spear.

We marched north towards Rome, and laid siege to it, but no one knew how to make any siege equipment so we settled down to starve them out. I built myself a nice wooden hut, and we spent our days out and about looking for food. It was a lot more fun than working in the vin yards I can tell you.

After about a month or so I was coming back to the camp after doing some fishing when I noticed it was on fire. All of us who had been out foraging gathered on a hill, and after a while Galerius found us and announced that Cassius Pleminus had returned and gathered a army from the nearby cities. We lined up to face them in the morning, and I noticed we outnumbered them by quite a bit. However they all had spears and swords and shields and stuff like that. They marched up to us and started throwing Javelins at us - it was really awful so I decided to back off out of range. Once I was out of range I decided to keep going, and so did most of my pals. A few days ago a patrol of Italian cavalry men captured me, and I managed to convince them not to kill me by giving them the silver fork I still had.

Eager to make more cash they sold me to the local salt mine, where I noticed Galerius Figulus was there too. The work in the salt mine is a lot harder than at the vin yard, but at least we all get to give Galerius a good kicking every night.”

Javelins rain down on Galerius' unfortunate slaves.

Cassius’ quick march south, taking only his cavalry with him and rallying the local garrisons put paid to this threat, but a new one had already appeared. The Gauls, apparently guessing what would happen after Arretium fell launched an attack across my borders, besieging Ariminum. Rather than split the forces still besieging Arretium I decided to storm the city, then go deal with the Gauls.

My forces went over the walls quickly, and whilst some Millita Hoplites blocked the obvious route to the city centre and inflicted heavy casualties on those Principes who were trying to break through some Hastatii found a less obvious route to the centre and surrounded and destroyed the rebels that were holding this position.


Fighting your way through chokepoints is one of the hazards of siege warfare

However the citizenry of Arretium were proving to be an unruly and obnoxious bunch, and a large portion of my army had to be left to keep them in good order. However Cassius and his ad-hoc army came steaming up the Apennine way and linked up with the main force out of Arretium quickly driving off the Gauls.

I then altered the axis of my advance, and quickly took Segesta and Bononia in quick succession. It was the winter of 254bc before the Gauls (presumably all up north fighting the germans) managed to scrape together enough men to arrange a counterattack. And laid siege to Segesta.

Meanwhila around Bovianum the Samnites were playing the old rebellion game again and I dug up Amulius Coruncanius from his plush governorship job and sent him back out into the field.

Breaking my promise to myself I quickly recruited a big army of Hastatii (‘cos there cheap) and sent them out to face the Samnites.

As the two armies approached the battle turned into two massive brawls, in which the Samnites were routed on the right, but were only prevented from winning the larger melee on the left when some Italian cavalry plugged the gap caused by some routing Hastatii, and the Principes who had been fighting on the right hit them in the rear.


The 3rd (or is it 4th) great Samnite uprising

Meanwhile Cassius, based in the newly conquered city of Bononia sent his remaining intact units (The sieges of Segesta and Bononia had been quick but not bloodless) to push back the Gauls besieging Segesta. This proved easy enough, but in their turn the Gauls returned with an much larger force.

The outnumbered defenders formed a simple line across the battlefield and fought a remarkably bloody battle with the Gauls, which ended in a close victory for my good self.

However there wasn’t now a single intact cohort anywhere on the Gallic frontier, and as I received word from my ambassadors that Iberia and Gaul had signed a ceasefire my mind was full of images of terrifying Gallic hordes coming pouring over the undermanned border.

I decided to make a dash for Rome to rebuild these battered units leaving just the minimum troops necessary to prevent my new conquests raising up against me on the frontier.

It was at this point that a big German army descended out of the Alps and laid siege to Patavium. This was a bad thing - if they took Patavium I’d have to go to war with them to claim all of Italia as my own, and the Germanic empire at this point is looking quite the big scary beast.


The German Reich

The German siege failed however, with high casualties on each side, the perfect result really. The Gauls then launched an assault on Bononia, but Amulius was leading up the newly reinforced army by now and the Gauls quickly fled.

With a great big army and my two most experienced commanders at its head I decided to launch an assault on Patavium before the Gauls could return. Like in my assault on Arretium the purpose of this attack was two fold, aiming both to capture the city and hopefully force the Gauls to gather a large army and do battle.

However the Gauls preferred to hover around the city and rush in to defend it once my attack began.


Lugortorix was a fearsome foe, but heavily outnumbered

The Gallic leader (a potentially fearsome foe) was killed fighting the Triarii as they stormed the gate, but some chosen swordsmen did a effective brick wall impersonation as I rushed my men towards the city centre. Some Principes tried to pull off the old trick of finding another route to the central plaza, but they met the fearsome Venetii Bagdenum when they arrived there and were badly mauled.

In the end only a mad charge by the Italian and Gallic cavalry combined was enough to break the Gauls resistance.

So by 250bc I’ve conquered most of italia, and I’m starting to consider my next objective, push on into Gaul proper, turn around and invade Sicily (allying with either the Carthaginians or Greeks, probably the Greeks) or maybe switching sides again in the German/Gaul war and grabbing the German menace by the horns and pushing into the dark forests of northern Europe.


The Roman Republic and "Allied city states" 250bc