The Roman War: Defending Sicily.

A few months after the debate in the council, Hamalcar II was preparing to move his army to Italy, when he heard of the coming of a Roman legion. An large Roman army was moving towards the island.

Hamalcar II: ‘A few months ago we threw the Romans out of Sicily, we did that to secure the island, to make a strong base from where we could strike all the way to Italy! But now an army of Romans marches towards us. We’ve held the line against Rome’s finest more then once and we shall do so again!’

After saying this he ordered his men to make their stand at a flat piece of land about a mile from the coast. He set his phalanxes on front, ready to counter the triarrii, then came the Iberian soldiers, followed by a band of Samnites that had sworn to fight the Romans. Then he came to the matter of his cavalry.. He knew the Romans had some cavalry to counter his own and as such he decided to split his cavalry in two divisions, one on the left and one on the right. He did this to ensure that should one side be attacked, the other could continue fighting.

Then the battle begun, the overly-proud Romans foolishly charged their cavalry ahead of their main army giving our more experienced cavalry a chance to destroy them.

Hamalcar II: ‘Cavalry! Show those inexperience Roman bastards what a cavalry force is supposed to do! *laughs*’



With the Roman cavalry destroyed, the battle focused mainly on the infantry. Even though the battle had already been decided, the Romans fought on for a long time, taking over a thousand of us with them.



But in the end even the bravest of the triarrii fled. The message to Rome was clear, no one would pass into Sicily without approval from Kart-Hadast.



And whilst the Romans mourned their defeat, Kart-Hadast celebrated, but still, it had only been one legion.. How long could Hamalcar II hold out against the other legions that our scouts reported to be coming?