After much reflection, the king of Sparta finally decided that it would be better to let King Xerxes of Persia assist them. After all, all these newly manufactured warships belonged to the Phoenicians, and they, the Spartans, had indeed learned how to

They also knew the techniques of naval warfare and a lot of navigation knowledge, but the problem was that the Spartans had never conducted any actual combat.

So in the end, the King of Sparta decided to donate more gold and silver to King Xerxes of Persia. Then it was equivalent to joining forces with the Persian navy, and planned to launch an attack on the Athenian fleet, which was to destroy the world.

The great sea battle of the earth!

In AD 405, that is, the sixth year after the Athenian fleet wrested maritime hegemony from the Spartans again, and even the right to speak of the Greek Empire, the Spartans also tolerated it for six full years, so they were angry.

monstrous!

The current Spartan fleet is completely different from the past. In the past, many of the Spartan fleets were almost the same as those of Athens, because the Athenian fleet defeated the Persian fleet in the Gulf War and made it famous. But now Spartan fleet

Bada's fleet is completely a Persian heavy fleet suitable for large-scale naval battles!

Another one is that according to the assistance of King Xerxes of Persia, the number of Spartan fleets currently at sea is around a thousand ships. On the other hand, the number of Athens' fleets is really not impressive, with only more than 300 ships at most.

left and right, and these more than 300 ships still occupy maritime hegemony.

But why can’t the Athenian fleet develop to the size of the Persian fleet? In fact, this is not difficult to understand. The Athenian fleet is only being developed and built by the city-state of Athens. The city-state of Athens, including all the slaves, has a population of more than one million.

Moreover, in the system of the Greek empire, each city-state only developed its own model. This was mainly caused by the fact that the Greek empire did not perfect the centralization of the empire. Therefore, the city-state of Athens, which had only a population of about one million, wanted to develop more.

Navy warships, this is simply impossible to achieve.

The Persian Empire was different. The Persian Empire was very vast, and it was an absolutely centralized structure. All city-states were not called city-states, but provinces. They all had to obey the orders of the Persian King Xerxes. We

If we say that a province in the Persian Empire has a population of about one million, then the entire Persian Empire has about twenty or so provinces. After calculation, doesn’t it have a population of more than 20 million?

With such a comparison, we can better understand that the productivity of a population of more than 20 million is definitely very different from the productivity of a population of more than 1 million. The productivity in the Persian Empire and Athens is nearly 20 times higher.

What’s the gap? The other one is the Phoenicians of the Persian Empire. They are the best at making naval warships, because the Phoenicians make maritime warships. This is a technology they have passed down from generation to generation and have been improving. This is equivalent to an ancestral inheritance!

The Athenians were not very good at building naval warships.

At this point, after the huge naval battle between Athens and Sparta began, first of all, the Athenians did not take the Spartans seriously, and always felt that the Spartans were inferior to them in naval warfare.

What a pity! When the Athenians had a clear look at the fleet that was engaged in a great sea battle with them, the Athenians felt suffocating despair, because their Athenian fleet was not fighting against the Spartan fleet at all, but was actually fighting against the Spartan fleet.

Fight against the huge and overwhelming Persian fleet.

When the Persian fleet went to sea to fight naval battles, at least 600 heavy warships were used as the main force. They also learned from the lessons of previous defeats. The Phoenicians also invented the escort ship! It is smaller than the heavy warships and more maneuverable and flexible.

Small battleships with more powerful characteristics are used to escort the bulky and huge heavy battleships.

Seeing this, some of our friends will ask, since small escort ships are more maneuverable and more sensitive, why don't they all be made into warships like escort ships? In fact, the role of escort ships is only to protect bulky ships.

Large battleships, because the real source of firepower is on large and heavy battleships.

Let’s take an example: talking about throwing rocks, in fact, small escort ships cannot load more rocks at all because they are not buoyant enough, and they will sink if they load too many, but large and heavy warships can, and even catapults can be used.

They can all be loaded on large and heavy warships. I believe everyone knows the power of a catapult. In this era, this kind of thing usually throws huge stones, or

If a burning oil barrel, especially a burning oil barrel, hits an opponent's warship, the consequences will be unimaginable! Because all maritime warships in this era are made of wood.

When we understand this, we can also understand that in fact, there is no suspense at all in this devastating sea battle. Athens will definitely lose! Because the Athenian fleet and the Persian fleet are not at the same level at all.

At the beginning of the great sea battle, the Athenians saw the overwhelming Persian and Spartan fleets, so they still had some luck. They thought that they had not defeated the Persian fleet when they were in the Gulf of Salamis before.

Have you withdrawn?

But this time the Athenians thought wrong. They saw that the Persian escort ships did not let their Athenian fleet get close to the large warships. Another thing is that the large Persian warships always used catapults as their main attack weapons! To Athens

The fleet threw a large number of stones and burning oil barrels, and suddenly the Athenian fleet was shattered into pieces before it was completely close to the Persian fleet. Countless Athenian warriors lost their voices on the ship.

Shouting, some people were even hit by stones and turned into miserable pulp.

Why did the Persian fleet use catapults to throw big rocks at the Athenian fleet first? In fact, this is not difficult to understand, because Athens has developed very rapidly in recent years due to the development of the slave industry. So far, the Athenians have been surrounded by some of their ships.

The warships were inlaid with copper, and the Persian fleet used catapults to throw stones to break off this layer of copper, and then used catapults to throw burning oil barrels at the Athenian fleet.

We can also think that the current advanced tactics of the Persian fleet are simply like the attacks of our modern fleets and even artillery today! However, the Athenian fleet still needs to get close to the Persian fleet to launch an attack. They are a crossbow formation deployed on the warships.

, firing rockets at the opponent, and more using human power to throw stones, or using the angle of attack of the ship to impact the opponent's warship. But all these tactics are not at the same level as the Persian tactics.

There is absolutely no doubt that Persian catapults are cannons in the true sense!

The Athenian fleet was beaten to a tragic point, and this time there were more Phoenicians in the Persian fleet. They hated the Athenians very much, and they secretly received orders from the Persian King Xerxes to carry out the attack on the Athenian fleet.

An absolute strategy to kill everyone!

The Spartans also hated the Athenians, so the Athenian navy was completely defeated on the sea! What's even more outrageous is that we actually say that the large Persian warships are bulky, but on the sea, they are no more maneuverable than the small Athenian warships.

inferior.

Therefore, the entire Athenian naval fleet, plus the fleet that Athens constantly dispatched to the sea, were completely wiped out by the combined fleet of Sparta and Persia in just one year! This was also absolute.

A perfect battle of annihilation! No one in the Athenian navy survived! How terrible is this? Of course, we can also understand that in fact, the Spartans and the Phoenicians of Persia treated the Athenians simply.

Extremely cruel! Not a single prisoner was captured, they were all brutally killed!

In the past year, the entire city-state of Athens seemed to be living in a nightmare. Time and time again, the city-state of Athens continuously lost power over slave resources in certain places, even if it struggled to resist.

It is also of no use, everything is in vain, because hundreds of warships and thousands of warships fighting naval battles are not opponents of the same level at all. Although Athens has been developing its navy, it is a pity that they do not have the technology or even the manpower to make it bigger and stronger.

warships, so you cannot place catapults on warships and then compete with Persia.

In short, the city-state of Athens completely failed, and because the city-state of Athens has only been developing its navy, it has neglected the development of the land army. At present, the navy of the city-state of Athens has been completely annihilated, and the land army is no match for the Spartans.

Although during this process, the city-state of Athens has been reporting this situation to the top leaders of the Greek Empire, the top Greek officials have remained silent because they cannot control it. After all, there are too many factors involved.

Let’s briefly analyze why other Greek city-states did not assist Athens. This is actually easy to understand. Because of its strong naval power, Athens controls maritime hegemony and has been plundering the resources and slaves of other coastal tribes, making the lives of the Athenians very difficult.

Wealthy, this caused people in other Greek city-states to have jealousy and even hatred in their hearts. In addition, the Athenians often used their dominance in the Greek Empire to exploit the interests of other city-states in the Greek Empire. This ultimately led to

As a result, people in other city-states in the Greek Empire wanted to see the Athenians die.

Therefore, the current situation in Athens is that only land troops are left, and these land troops are no match for the Spartan warriors. Therefore, the era of Athens' dominance of the ocean is over, and its dominance in the Greek Empire has also disappeared.

Only a year had passed, and Athens, which had dominated the oceans for countless years, was as if it had been forced back to the technology of the ancient times by the combined fleet of the Spartans and Persians. AD 404

, Athens was forced to surrender to the Spartans.

After Athens surrendered, the Spartans were still unhappy, so they insulted the Athenians and made them sign a very humiliating peace treaty.

This peace treaty is to cancel the maritime alliance of Athens, which means the dissolution of the maritime alliance, that is, the dissolution of the Delian League! Moreover, Athens must also dismantle the external long wall defenses. The last stipulation is that from now on, Athens will only
Chapter completed!