First, the Roman legion was a vegetarian-based army, with more meat and less vegetarian food, which would cause widespread discontent and even mutiny.
The main food of the Roman legions was bread, oatmeal, green vegetables, cider, and a little cured meat (pork or fish). It can be said that it is basically vegetarian-oriented, and meat is eaten very little, or even not eaten.
According to caesar's war account, in 52 BC, Caesar led an army to attack Bourges, which resulted in a scorched earth policy and destroying supplies outside the city. Caesar's Roman legions had only a few days of dry food, and had no choice but to slaughter cattle and horses to fill their hunger, ready to take Bourges in one fell swoop.
As a result, due to the shortage of grains and vegetables, the soldiers were generally dissatisfied with beef and horse meat as staple foods, and even almost caused a mutiny. Caesar begged Grandpa and Grandma, and it was so easy to calm the anger of the soldiers.
A similar situation has also occurred in Britain, because of Britain's unfortunate climate, bread is easy to spoil, vegetable supply is not easy, so the supply of beef has been increased, and the result is almost an army mutiny.
Hui Ge did not have a very reasonable explanation for this, and could only think far-fetchedly that Rome at this stage was an agricultural country, the soldiers were all self-cultivating farmers, and Italy was rich in vegetables and fruits. From the snack vegetarian habit, cattle and horses are an important labor force, emotionally and habitually can not accept eating beef and horse meat.
Second, the Roman legion was a unit of all engineers, the best at civil engineering, doing nothing wherever they went, and building fortifications first.
The marching speed of the Roman legions was very slow, which was equivalent to an average daily marching speed of no more than 30 miles, which can be said to be a turtle speed.
It should be known that the earlier Wei Wuzhu standards of the same era: wearing armor and holding a halberd, negative arrow fifty, carrying three days of grain, driving hundreds of miles in the middle of the day. That is to say, Wei Wuzu was equipped with heavy infantry equipment, and he had to run 100 miles from early in the morning to noon.
Why did the Roman army move so slowly? In fact, their energy is focused on building fortifications.
No matter how far the Roman army marched, it basically stopped marching after the morning, and all of them built fortifications. The standard is that there should be a trench outside the camp, a parapet on the inside of the trench, and a defensive measure on both the trench and the parapet, and this work can be done to clean up the tent inside the camp.
To put it bluntly, the Roman fortification is a simple city or stronghold, as long as it is moved, it must be rebuilt on the new garrison, it can be said that the energy spent on the fortification is much higher than the march.
This practice has taken the step-by-step camp to the extreme, which is the same as Zeng Guofan's practice of "forging a hard village and fighting a stupid battle". In the entire history of Roman legionary warfare, there seems to be no record of a long-distance attack and a big victory.
Of course, this practice is related to the geographical conditions of the Roman Empire, after all, this is a country around the Mediterranean, long-distance transportation is mainly by sea, and in many places inland waterway shipping is also good, and there are few long-distance trips on land. If it is often thousands of miles of land travel, this game is already exhausted.
Third, the Roman legions were units with heavy infantry as the core, and all other services and weapons were designed around heavy infantry.
The cavalry of the Roman legions was mainly light cavalry, deployed on both flanks of the large array, the main role was to harass and communicate, at most as a scout or capture the defeated soldiers, there was no record of cutting off the enemy's grain routes, and the key to success or failure was heavy infantry.
The most important equipment of the Roman navy ships is the hook, the purpose is to hook the opponent's warship, in fact, it is also to create conditions for infantry to rush to the enemy ship for close combat, the Roman navy was repeatedly hoisted by Carthage, that is, by hooking to change the naval battle into a land war to reverse the situation. The Roman navy never had the idea of fire attack, or water combat with bows and arrows as the first, and in fact the main task was transportation.
And land combat, the bow and crossbow is also an auxiliary weapon, belonging to the jujube without dates to hit three strokes to test it, the importance of the bow and crossbow is even less than the javelin. The Romans even invented the javelin that was thrown but the neck of the opponent's shield would bend, in order to make the opponent's shield inconvenient to use, after all, the shield was inserted with a curved javelin, and the center of gravity was difficult to grasp.
The core of the land battle is that the shield soldiers of the two sides collide with each other, and at the moment of impact, they use short swords to stab at the gaps in the shields, and the subsequent ones fill in the gaps. If that side loses the shield battle, it can be declared defeated, and the fate of being slaughtered is followed.
Fourth, the Roman legions were well-disciplined troops, and the most frightening thing was the "eleventh killing law".
For teams that were in a rout, or for those whose officers had died, the Roman legions enforced the "ElevenThought-Kills" law. That is, all the defeated troops lined up and took the method of random drawing lots to kill one-tenth of them.
You know, in full view of the lottery, who is drawn out and cut, this psychological pressure is not generally large, many people collapse or even sudden death.
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