H36

The Battle of the Trigona started with a cavalry clash as Gisgo sent more Gallic Cavalry to try and force the ford and I sent my Kataphractoi to stop them. The two formations met in the center of the ford and smashed into each other, with the Gauls coming off worse but refusing to back down. The refusal by the Gauls to withdraw after their charge was overwhelmed by my Kataphractoi bogged down the cavalry skirmish into a brawl that quickly widened to encompass more than just my Kataphractoi and the Carthaginian Gauls as Balearic Slingers and Nuragic Peltasts lined up on the far bank to lend support to the Gallic Cavalry from range.

That necessitated my own Peltasts to move in to try and silence the enemy and soon enough, my light elements were engaged along with the Cavalry. Gisgo then sent his Celtiberian Swordsmen in to attempt to sweep aside my peltasts, skirting the Cavalry Brawl in the middle of the ford to attack them and forcing me to send in my Thorakitai to defend the Peltasts. By the end of the first hour of battle, only the heavy infantry and the reserve units of both mine and the Carthaginian Army remained uncommitted, along with the War Elephants of Carthage. That wouldn't last for long, however.

Gisgo sent in his Libyan Heavy Spearmen into the brawl and forced me to counter with my Phalangites, phalanx against phalanx ground on into a second hour. As the brawl continued into its third hour a stalemate developed over the ford, one that Gisgo would send in his Numidian Light Cavalry to attempt to break and force me to lead a group of reserve cavalry into the fray to chase them off. I charged the Numidians from the side, leaning out of the way of a thrown Javelin just before my charge impacted the Numidian Formation. 

My Cavalry Xystos plunged into the lightly armored Numidian Cavalryman in front of me. Numidian Cavalry, armored only in helmet, greaves, and shield, had no defense against a Steel Cavalry Xystos to the body and the Cavalryman I struck was skewered through the side like a kebab. Unfortunately, the falling body ripped my Xystos out of my grip, forcing me to switch to my falcata as I parried a thrust by an incoming Javelin being used as a short spear. 

My steel, forward-curved, hacking, blade easily sheared the head off the incoming javelin, even as I pulled up my shield to block a second, thrown, Numidian Javelin. My return stroke tore the throat from the second Cavalryman, even as one of my Illyrian Cavalrymen with his Illyrian Hatchet hacked the arm off the third Numidian who had thrown the Javelin at me. I laid about with my blade, hacking off arms and decapitating heads, parrying attacks on my blade, blocking with my shield, or dodging as I did so. Eventually, the Numidians had enough and disengaged.

As I reconstituted my reserve cavalry, going to charge the reforming Gallic Cavalry, I noticed that Gisgo was looking out at the battlefield from a hill on the far bank and gesturing at my extreme right flank, where a group of Syracusan Hoplites were engaged with a group of Punic Hoplites fighting under a standard bearing a yellow wagon wheel on red, signaling them as belonging to Utica, a feudatory city of Carthage in North Africa. In the fighting, the Syracusan Hoplites had become disengaged with the Tarantine Hoplites to their immediate left, opening a gap in my lines that Gisgo could exploit.

Sure enough, he sent in a group of Masillian Mercenary Thureophorai to attempt to exploit the gap and roll up my right flank. The Hellenic Mercenaries of the far-flung Greek Emporion on the Gallic Coast would succeed if I didn't intervene. Instead of reforming to hit the Gallic Cavalry, I instead turned my reserve Cavalry to charge the advancing Masilians. Bereft of Xystos, I was forced to make do with my Falcata, which meant maneuvering to flank the Masilians to avoid the hedge of spears they could put up. Thankfully, with Stirrups, such maneuvers were far easier than they otherwise would have been.

My falcata came down on a Masilian Thureophorai's shoulder, parting through the Linen Linothorax and hacking into his body cavity. With a jerk, I wrenched my blade out in time to parry the head of a Dory spear that attempted to skewer me from the side, even as my mount trampled the offending spearmen beneath steel-shod hooves. I lashed out, cleaving through the raised arm of a Thureophorai even as another tried to kill my horse, iron speartip skidding off the steel mail barding of my Nisean Mount. When that failed, however, he attempted to pull me out of my saddle, drawing a dagger and jumping at me.

He bore me out of the saddle, dagger skidding off the steel scales of my armor before sinking into the meat of my upper shield arm. I cried out in pain but kept my wits about me, drawing a dagger of my own and plunging it into his eye through the opening in his Corinthian Helm. Fortunately, I was saved from certain death by the Masilians retreating in good order, and able to remount my horse, but by that point, I required stitches for my wound, returning with my Cavalry contingent back to the reserves. An hour later, the fighting ceased with the coming of Dusk, and both my forces and Gisgo's withdrew to our respective camps.

The fighting had been a heavy slugging match that day, and as I was being stitched up, I listened to the casualty reports coming in, it was likely that I received the single largest amount of Casualties of any battle I'd personally commanded so far in the war. Eight thousand men killed or wounded was no small amount of casualties, however, Gisgo had gotten off worse. Of the fifty-thousand infantry and ten-thousand cavalry he had pulled in for the battle, he had maybe forty-thousand infantry and four-thousand cavalry remaining to fight on the second day of battle.

That day dawned with an elephant charge across the ford, Gisgo attempting to break our lines with maximum force right from the outset. Fortunately, I had planned what to do in the event of an elephant attack. I gave the signal and my lines broke apart, phalanxes stepping aside and Thorakitai moving to do likewise, funneling the war elephants into alleyways between formations where they would be showered with Javelins from peltasts moved up as a counter.

Many war elephants died to this tactic and the ones that didn't panicked, stampeding back into Carthaginian Lines and mauling a phalanx of Libyan Heavy Spearmen in an attempt to get away from the slaughter. My lines reformed and began to counterattack, moving across the ford to slam into the enemy line. For several hours, the battle resumed, but it was clear that Gisgo had lost here. He'd lost too many troops in the slaughter of the first day and the backfired elephant charge that started the second. By the afternoon of the second day of battle, Gisgo called a retreat, and I sent in my Kataphractoi to try and charge the withdrawing enemy.

Unfortunately, Gisgo had one last trick up his sleeve, fresh Gallic Cavalry, this time from Armorica moved to block my Kataphractoi, causing another large-scale cavalry battle to erupt. I couldn't participate in this one, and it allowed Gisgo's remnant of an army to retreat in Good Order back west. The Battle of the Trigona was over. The Butcher's bill for my forces was high, eleven thousand killed or wounded over two days an eighth of my army in the field. Gisgo's were much worse, however. We counted twenty-one-thousand dead or wounded Carthagenian Forces left on the battlefield.

In the week that followed, we recaptured Gela, the City having been abandoned by Gisgo, and I received a message from an army raised by Diodoros of Kala Akte that he had taken ten thousand men to attempt to recapture Himaera and had succeeded after a brief struggle against the small Carthaginian Garrison. Gisgo, it seemed, had abandoned his last two conquests to return to Akragas for the winter and was hiring Sikanoi mercenaries from Camico in the Interior Hills to attempt to replenish some of his losses.

As I settled into Winter Quarters at Gela, it appeared that the war would continue for at least one more year. . .

XXXX

AN: Gisgo got spanked, though the butcher's bill was heavy, comparable to IOTL's Battle of Heraclea, though Pyrrhus has a lot more to work with here than he did there. He also managed to kill or wound almost twice as many Carthaginian Troops, prevent them from cutting the remaining Poleis of Sicily in half, and even retake Gela and Himaera, though the latter was done by an ally on his own recognizance. 

That doesn't mean the war is over yet. He still needs to dig Gisgo out of the rest of Sicily and the Fleet needs to do something about the Carthaginian Navy to shut off the flow of reinforcements and mercenaries from various Carthaginian Clients and partners. It's gonna last at least one more year.

At any rate, next up will be more interludes about goings-on elsewhere. Starting with the Ptolemies.

Stay tuned. . .