Legatus Legionis: Book Two in the Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy

by Miller, Ian

  There was one further problem, namely what to do about Aelius Domitius Falco, the original Tribunus Laticlavius of the Valeria. He had already sent two Tribunes back to the Claudia, but Falco was more of a problem. The only reason he wished to return him was because he wished to retain Matius and there was only one Tribunus Laticlavius per legion. More to the point, Falco was anything but useless, but what could he do? If he sent Falco back to the Claudia, that was effectively labelling him as useless, and that would wreck any future career. On the other hand, if he reduced him to ordinary Tribune, that would be a demotion. Worse, this situation had been going on too long, and the troops were starting to believe that he had no faith in Falco, which would make it impossible for him to command in the field. No matter what he did would seem to be wrong. Still, he had little option but to do something, so he called Falco to his tent.

  * * *

  Before him was a strange mixture of frustration, disappointment and resignation. Yes, he knew that his Legatus had made a specific request to bring his Tribunus Laticlavius from the Claudia, and that effectively his career was over before it had a chance to get started.

  "You present me with something of a problem," Gaius started.

  "Yes sir, but with respect, I have more of one."

  "Not necessarily," Gaius replied. "I have a proposition for you, and if you accept, your problems will be with the Celts, and my problems will be with our General Staff. Believe me, most who are in the know would prefer yours."

  "I'm not sure I understand . . ."

  "In the exercises with Matius, you've done quite a bit of improvising."

  "Sir, Matius has to expect that the Celts . . ."

  "I'm not criticizing!" Gaius interrupted. "If anything, I'm praising you. Basically, you and Matius have done very well."

  "Thank you, sir." There was a look of surprise on Falco's face.

  "Accordingly, I don't want to lose you, but of course a standard legion has only one Tribunus Laticlavius."

  "So you wish to demote . . ."

  "No!" Gaius held up his hand. "This legion is going to be different, and if you're willing to go along with what I am going to propose, we will have at least two."

  Falco looked at him impassively.

  "Given half a chance, I do not intend to fight the standard way," Gaius continued, "which is why we have been carrying out all these exercises. Rather than form one big line, I am going to try to be as mobile as possible, and try splitting the legion up into cohort groups, which in turn means I have to find someone to command an independent group of three to four cohorts. That is in principle someone senior to the usual Tribunus Laticlavius, and while there is no such rank, in principle if you took this position and were successful, that would be a good start in getting your own legion. Are you interested?"

  "Yes sir!" came a rather surprised response.

  "Right, then you might as well stay where you are with the first, and you can take the ninth under your wing as well. The Tribune there is a good man, but a bit inexperienced, so he can be your second in command. After I tell him what I have in mind, I want you to get to know him better, and I want you to get on with him. Understand?"

  "Yes sir."

  "If there are any personal problems, let me know," Gaius said, then remembering his own previous experience, he added, "but basically the responsibility is yours. If you want to command a legion, you have to be able to work with Tribunes, so now's as good a time as any to get started. I'll see that Tribune this evening, so you get on with it tomorrow."

  "Yes sir."

  "One last thing. I want every Tribune and the first Centurion of each cohort to join me for a meal on Friday evening. Be there. Now, be off with you."

  "Yes sir!" Falco saluted, turned and left.

  * * *

  "To the province, Britain!" Matius said, and raised his cup of wine. It had been his turn to propose a toast, and this always had the possibility of being embarrassing. He had learned that bloodthirsty toasts brought scorn from his Legatus, but wishy-washy toasts were no better. This time he was pleased to see Scaevola smile a little.

  "Indeed!" Gaius got to his feet. "Now, I've called you all here to let you know what is going to happen next. Next week, provided it doesn't storm, we march, and I want to march quickly. There will be some longer stops where we exercise, and there will be at least three such stops.

  "Now, as you know, a legion usually has only one Tribunus Laticlavius, and we have two. No, this is not a case that I can't make up my mind, and indeed I am looking for a third equivalent, so the rest of you Tribunes can sharpen up your skills somewhat. Then on top of that, there will be three ordinary Tribunes, so those who miss out will still be involved in the invasion. Why do I need these?

  "Well, the standard way Rome fights is to front up and slug it out, with fortifications to back into. The marching camp technique is unbeatable on open terrain, at least as far as we know. However, much of the time in Britain there won't be open terrain; instead there will be reasonably dense forest. Dense forest means we can't form lines anywhere near so readily, and they break up with trees. So, the question is, how do we handle this? The simplest answer is to try to find terrain most suited to our methods, and that will be our first priority, and if we can pull this off, we will be fighting just as usual. However, if the enemy is any good, they'll be trying to ambush us when we can't form lines properly, such as in hilly country with trees and dense scrub. So, how do we defend against that?" He looked around, and pointed to Falco, indicating an answer was required.

  "Find them before they find us," came the laconic response.

  "Indeed," Gaius nodded, "which gets us to the first set of exercises. There will be a long march to the embarkation point, and since we are nominally in friendly territory we do not expect enemy action. Accordingly, we can use the march for exercises. We shall divide into three cohort groups, and they will, in turn, each have a different role. One will march with the baggage, and will be the target. One will have left and marched ahead, and will attempt to ambush the target. The third will try to protect the target, and may march with it, or may try to seek out the ambushers and ambush them. The key to these exercises is that each group must use its exploratores to try to find the other group and/or capture their exploratores. The ambushers, by the way, can split any way they like, and leave decoys. We'll have rules regarding capture and engagement; these exercises are designed to help hone the forest skills, and not to kill each other before we get started.

  "There's one final point to these cohort groups, and we may even split further. Rather than form one line, it may be preferable to form separate groups that may form small lines with bent sides, or small squares that work in conjunction with each other. The idea is if we can get the enemy to try to flank one group, we may be able to wedge them between their target and another group, in which case we can crush them quickly.

  "So, what's the point of what I am trying to say? If we can't form a line, we are going to divide, and when we do, those groups must be able to form different shapes and move in a lot of different ways very quickly, sometimes according to signals from me when they can't see why they are doing it. So, once we get to the coast there will be a lot of further exercises in manoeuvres that most of you won't have seen before. These must be carried out very quickly in dense forest, and we have to know what we can do and what we can't before we embark. So, while you are all thinking that all we have to do is to march to the coast, that is the least of it.

  "So, Falco, you will keep the first, and take the fourth and the ninth under your control, subject to my overall orders. Matius, you will take the third, the sixth and the eighth, and the cavalry auxiliaries. The remainder will get a senior Tribune, when I make my selection." He paused, and noticed the interest show on the face of Sextus Rutilius Lupus, the Tribune of the second cohort. This selection was something of a hint that he should make a big effort during the exercises, particularly since he knew his main opposition was at best, solid.
This was indeed the intended message.

  "Finally, each of these groups will get a secondary Tribune, and that man will be mainly responsible for supporting the senior Tribune, including with the staff matters and supply issues. Nevertheless, should your senior be killed in action, you will step up and take his responsibilities, so don't be lazy during these exercises.

  "We march next week. Until then, get to your Centurions, and start sorting out how you are going to carry out the types of manoeuvres I am going to describe next . . .

  Chapter 20

  The march commenced with the second, fifth and seventh leaving two days before the rest. Their mission was to ambush the Falco's group, while Matius was to attempt to find and intercept the ambushers. Falco set out at a careful pace, with scouts in all directions, and set a solid camp each day. They had been in the forest for five days, and Matius had apparently found the opponents, but they had scattered deeper into the forest.

  Falco's group marched on, and as they emerged from the forest there were various sniggers from the men. Some ambush! Ahead, there was a deserted village, through which the road went. This puzzled Gaius: why was this village deserted? On a hunch, he dropped back.

  The why became apparent: the first cohort was just emerging from the other side of the village when it became apparent the village was not deserted at all! The ambushers leapt out, and "pretend" vicious fighting began. However, the fourth showed considerable discipline in that the ends of their cohort retreated to the cohorts outside the village, which began circling. It was then that centuries of the fifth cohort emerged from various hiding places that had largely been passed, and they in turn began "attacking" the ninth. Gaius called for the signal to end the exercise.

  It took two further days to regroup, with Matius bringing in the "captured" seventh cohort. Gaius then brought all the Tribunes together to his tent for a revision. He began with Falco, and asked him to comment on his own performance. A crestfallen Falco had to admit he had been expecting an ambush in the forest . . .

  "Don't worry," Gaius smiled. "What was important about that was you had a manoeuvre in place, so that when the ambush started, everybody knew what to do. Your one fault was, when you saw a deserted village, you should have checked more fully that it really was deserted."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Don't worry. One of the basic problems with warfare is that the enemy have to have the chance to make some good moves. The fact that you had default manoeuvres in place to cope with an ambush was good. Also, to be fair to you, all the auxiliary scouts were in the other groups, so you were always likely to be a victim. Now, Matius, what happened to you?"

  "We were patrolling through the forest ahead of Falco, sir, spreading wide, and we found the ambushing soldiers. I ordered a third of my cavalry to scout wide, and the rest pursued what we could see, and eventually we caught them."

  "But left the party you were supposed to be protecting unguarded?"

  "Yes sir, but . . ."

  "But?"

  "There were a very large number of the enemy, sir. If this were real, we had to do something about such a significant force, and at the time, we did not know that we weren't facing an equal force."

  "Or a bigger one?" Gaius pointed out.

  "No sir, but we still had to find out. If there is a massive force of enemy, we can't just ignore them."

  "How did you know you weren't going to be encircled if you chased?"

  "I suppose, strictly speaking, we didn't, but I did have the cavalry scouting wide. They should have seen something, so I would get warning."

  "Unless the scouts were captured?"

  "They scouted in depth," Matius replied, "and I received continual reports. If they ceased from a given direction, I would have warning, and . . ."

  "Good!" Gaius nodded. "Again, we can't prevent the enemy from making good moves, and all we can do is take precautions, which you did. Whether you should have pursued for so long is a matter of opinion, but," he continued, looking across the assembly, "I want each of you to have confidence to take action in the field. If you can't get orders, then you have to do what you think is best, and I will back you if you do something that can be construed as reasonable at the time. I do not want my officers in the field to be paralysed into inaction. It is much better to do something that is far from optimal properly than sit on your arse petrified, because that is always wrong. Now, Lupus, your turn to explain what you did, and, more to the point, why you did it. We were supposed to be practising forest skills, but somehow you managed something else."

  "Sir, I thought I was supposed to set an ambush . . ."

  "You supposed correctly."

  "Well, sir, given that Falco knew there was an exercise under way, I felt the forest was obvious, sir, so I left the seventh to divide in the forest, make sure they were seen, and to draw away scouts and if possible capture them, while if Matius came through, they were to draw them away as far as possible, until it was obvious Matius could not rejoin Falco. He may have become over-enthusiastic . . ."

  "An interesting move, but it required you to know there was going to be a second cohort group, which is not obvious."

  "Well, sir, I knew. There was no point in ignoring that and . . ."

  "It was an observation, not a criticism," Gaius interrupted. "Continue."

  "My guess was that Falco would know we were going to ambush, so he would have something worked out for when we were in the forest, but I thought he might have got careless when we came out if it, so I had my cohort hide in the village, and . . ."

  "What did you do with the villagers?"

  "I asked them to cooperate, sir, and promised them we would pay well for supplies, and . . ."

  "That's good," Gaius nodded. "I shall ensure reasonable promises are covered."

  A look of relief crossed Lupus' face, as he continued, "The rest was a bit risky, but I thought it would be a good exercise to see if I could hide a cohort in what looks like the open. In fact there are plenty of places if the opposition aren't looking too closely, and . . ."

  "You did an excellent job," Gaius smiled. "Any problems?"

  "Well . . ."

  "You might as well come clean," Gaius smiled at the discomfort on his Tribune's face.

  "A small number of soldiers protested my orders, sir."

  "Oh, they did, did they?" Gaius' look was now harder. "So, what did you do?"

  "I ordered them imprisoned in a shed, sir, and told them that any attempt to escape would be treated as mutiny . . ."

  "Anything else?"

  "I ordered twenty strokes of a cane to each of them, sir," came the hesitant response.

  "That seems reasonable," Gaius nodded, "but they can each have four weeks of latrine duties added on. Make sure the centurions know that this caning is to be serious."

  "Sir . . ." Lupus was clearly hesitant about the next point.

  "Go on."

  "One of them is a Centurion, sir. I may have trouble with . . ."

  "Was a centurion," Gaius spat. "He is demoted to the ranks, and he gets a double caning, to be applied by a Centurion I brought from the eleventh."

  "He may not survive forty strokes, sir," Lupus pointed out.

  "I know," Gaius replied coldly, "but that's more his problem than mine. Right, so far you've done a good job, so you get the third promotion, but don't let it go to our head, because lots of carelessness can reverse it!"

  "Yes, sir!" came the enthusiastic response.

  "Your cohorts will witness the caning of your men, but the entire legion will witness the caning of that Centurion. I wish it to be very clear that orders are not items for discussion. I don't care what the men think about orders, but I care very much that they are carried out promptly and fully. The more that man hurts, the more likely orders will be carried out the way I want them carried out, and that means that a number of other men, whose lives depend on those orders being carried out, will live."

  "I'll see to it, sir."

  "Good. Now, fol
lowing that, I want you and your Centurions to show the others how you managed to hide so well in what was nominally open terrain," Gaius said. "The punishment is tomorrow morning, the demonstration tomorrow afternoon, then, Matius, you can set off as an ambusher, and now, Lupus, you will be the ambushed, so you set off two days later. Falco, your job is to set off after Lupus and see what you can do to protect him."

  * * *

  The legion assembled on a small rise and the men were ordered to face towards the post at the bottom of the slope. The orders were simple. Any man who did not watch would be taken down to the post. The once-Centurion was brought out, stripped, and lashed to the post. Gaius calmly announced that this punishment was for wilful disobeying orders. In the future, one person so disobeying could expect worse; a group could expect decimation. Orders were not discussion points. He then stepped back and nodded to a Centurion from the XIth, who stepped forward and lashed with a viciousness previously unseen by any of the men. At the end, the unconscious bloodied body was taken down and carried away, to see whether he lived or died. The legion remained silent throughout this.

  * * *

  When Lupus' group had been in the next forest for two days, Matius attacked with cavalry. The forest had been particularly heavy, and accordingly Falco's protective force had slipped behind, however they quickly came to the rescue, and on their appearance, Matius' cavalry decided to beat a retreat. Falco pursued, and Lupus sent his cavalry to assist, but after three hours Falco found the forest thinning and Matius' cavalry had somehow eluded them. He turned back. Meanwhile, the main party had marched on, thinking that they had done reasonably well in this exercise.

  Accordingly, when they ran onto the second ambush, there was momentary confusion, but this was quickly remedied and a defence organized. Eventually, the raiders withdrew when Lupus' cavalry reappeared from behind, at which point the infantry ambushers turned to restrike. At this point Falco's men reappeared, and Gaius called for a halt to proceedings. The exercises were to practice manoeuvres in forests, not to engage in long-winded games of attrition.