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As Diocles reads my words back to me, I realize that I may be a little harsh concerning Gnaeus and his abilities. He was extremely young, and it had to have been a difficult proposition for someone of his youth to control not only his army, but his generals. All of them were old enough to be his father by a number of years, and all vastly more experienced than he was, particularly Labienus. The only thing that Gnaeus had going for him was his name, but because of his harsh treatment of the locals and the men of his army, the luster of the name was rapidly waning. Still, he chose to continue the struggle. Young he may have been, but he was legally an adult and certainly was smart enough to understand all of the ramifications of his actions. His army seemed willing enough to obey his commands when they moved to intercept us before we could reduce Aspavia, but still Gnaeus would not meet us in open battle, choosing instead to try fortifying a rocky knoll a short distance from the fort that would allow his men to fall on our rear when we besieged the town. Seeing the strategic value, Caesar gave the order for the 10th, the 7th, and the 5th to move from our place in the marching column, drop our packs, pull the covers off our shields, then move directly into battle, the objective keeping Gnaeus from occupying the knoll while taking it for ourselves. We formed up quickly and smoothly, in an aciestriplex with the 10th on the right, the 5th in the center and the 7th on the left, then began the advance towards the knoll. Gnaeus, instead of detaching part of his army to move ahead of the main body as we had, was trying to maneuver his whole army to face our three Legions and beat us to the knoll. The combination of the sheer size of his army, along with the fact that most of them were raw tirones meant that the maneuver was mass confusion as conflicting orders were given to different parts of the army, causing Legions to march into each other, becoming hopelessly entangled. It was comical to watch, while we could clearly hear the cursing and frantic orders of the Centurions as the officers tried to restore order. In contrast, we were marching smoothly and quickly towards the knoll, as finally Gnaeus returned to his senses, the Pompeian cornu sounding the call that sent just three Legions from his army to meet us and try to take the knoll for themselves. As we closed, I strained my eyes, trying to identify the Legions opposing us, as the one thing that I, and I am sure the other Primi Pili, were worried about was if any or all of those Legions were our former comrades of the 8th, 9th, or 13th. If they were the ones facing us, I could not honestly say what my men would do. I remember thinking that if I was Gnaeus, I would have sent those Legions to take the knoll; almost as quickly I realized that he had to have the same fears that my counterparts and I did. Just as there was no way of telling what our men would do, Gnaeus had even less of a history with our former comrades to know whether they would fight us or not. In any event, it did not make any difference, as two of the Legions were made of raw tiros, the third being a native levy, none of them being the 1st, 4th, or the other part of the 6th. Their youth and inexperience was clear to see as their Centurions and Optios tried with only partial success to get them to maintain proper spacing as they approached the knoll. We were closing from opposite sides, but despite our superior speed of movement, the Pompeians had the advantage of being much closer to the knoll, so the Pompeians reached it first.
“All right, boys,” I called out. “Looks like those kids over there want to make us work for our pay today. Let’s push those bastards off that hill!”
The men roared their agreement. Shortly before we reached the lower slope of the knoll, I looked over to the center to see Primus Pilus Battus of the 5th signal the halt to allow us to dress our lines and catch our breath before we began the assault. The formation stopped as one man, the next few moments spent with the Centurions and Optios inspecting their Centuries, ensuring that the men were properly spaced. I walked quickly along the front, using the trick of looking diagonally across each Century to see if I could see the man on the other side of the man closest to me, grunting my approval when I could not see them. It was no surprise, but it was still gratifying to see men continuing to act as true professionals, despite being so close to the end of their time in the army. I moved to my spot at the far right corner of the first line, signaling to the center that all was ready on our side. A moment later, the cornu sounded the advance, the first two lines beginning their move forward.
~ ~ ~ ~
As a battle, it was not much to write about. The youngsters of Pompey’s army tried to put up a fight, but they were too disorganized from the very beginning to be effective, so it did not take long for what little cohesion they had achieved to break down completely. As is always the case, almost all of the casualties we inflicted came when they broke and turned to run, our men hot on their heels, cutting them down before they went more than a few paces. The opposite slope of the knoll was littered with Pompeian bodies, while it took a few moments for the men to stop their pursuit and return to the knoll to begin fortifying it. There was a moment when we were vulnerable; if it had been Caesar leading the opposition instead of Gnaeus, we could very easily have seen the tables turned on us and been in real trouble. We built a redoubt on the knoll, finishing shortly before dark. The next morning, Gnaeus tried to take it with a force of cavalry, using a Legion in support, but we easily repulsed them while inflicting heavy losses. We were whittling the Pompeians down with every engagement, not just by inflicting casualties on them, but by the resulting desertions that inevitably happened after each defeat. Later in the day of the Pompeians’ second attempt to take the knoll, a deserter from Gnaeus told Caesar that all of the members of the equestrian class who aligned themselves with the Pompeian cause were planning to desert en masse, then were betrayed by one of their slaves, Gnaeus putting them all in chains. After losing the knoll, and in the face of mounting losses and desertions, Gnaeus evidently decided that it was wiser to preserve his army than to lose even more men fighting for Aspavia. In order to do that, he broke his camp in the night then began marching again, this time towards the southwest. We did not follow immediately, as Caesar deemed it prudent to secure the surrender of Aspavia, which did not take long, the garrison commander having the same reaction as Munacius back at Ategua at being abandoned by his general. Once the fortress was secured, we marched off in pursuit of Gnaeus, who appeared to be heading for another large town called Urso, which was a good joke to us, because it had been one of the elders of Urso who brought us the letter which caused us such amusement. Gnaeus was in for a surprise when he got there, or so we thought anyway, but what happened just shows the lengths people will go to in order to appease a man who is marching at the head of an army.