Chapter 680: Battle for a crown(1)
The attacker should ideally outnumber the defender by a ratio of at least three to one—or so the famed Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his seminal work, On War.
It’s a principle that has echoed through centuries not only those following the commander. The attacker, after all, bears the greater burden: advancing across uncertain ground, maintaining cohesion under fire, and gambling everything on a decisive breakthrough before exhaustion and confusion take their toll.
At Agincourt, the French learned this lesson the hard way. They marched through churned mud and uneven terrain, rain soaking their armor and clogging the earth beneath them. The English longbowmen waited with cruel patience, releasing volley after volley as the French forces, noble, proud, and heavily armored, bogged down in a mire of their own making. Their formation and cohesion had crumbled long before steel ever clashed with steel.
It was a clear truth: to attack meant to suffer first.
Seems like Lechlian did his homework, Alpheo mused grimly as he stood atop his steed, arms crossed, gazing out over the cursed ground his army would have to march through.
The land ahead looked like a battlefield drawn straight from a general’s nightmare. There were no flat stretches to anchor a solid advance. The earth rolled in unpredictable waves, not enough to be dramatic, but just steep enough to break formation during a charge. Thick patches of thorn-ridden underbrush punctuated the route, snagging cloaks, biting into legs, and threatening to tear gaps in any shield wall that tried to pass through.
It was, without a doubt, the perfect place for a defender to dig in and wait.
The Herculeians picked their ground well, Alpheo conceded, not without a flicker of respect. Smart bastards.
But then his lips curled into a slow, confident smile.
His army after all wasn’t like others.
While most rulers and lords relied on raw numbers or the noble pride of their knights, Alpheo had at its disposal a standing army.
Marching in formation was merely the beginning for them , his soldiers had been trained in what he called the hot march: moving fast, adapting on the fly, splitting to maneuver around obstacles, and reforming into lethal cohesion in the blink of an eye. Bushes, uneven hills, rocky gullies.