18 lugl 755 anni - First Phrourion

Descrizione:

After suppress the Egypt revolt, Leo IV then forced to deal with the Berber and Bulgar raiders, which took him for about three and half a year. Consider that Emperor could not be expected to go to every trouble spot in the Empire, Leo design a special fortress that would be recognize as the first proper phrourion later to delay the Bulgar advance when they start a raid.
These were built around a central fortress similar to old acropolis’s the phrourion would then have a strong outer wall to repel attackers, often with a moat surrounding them with a bridge across that could be either easily destroyed or even raised in the case of major fortresses.
The area between the walls and the acropolis served multiple functions. It allowed the entire population around the phrourion to withdraw inside when threatened, taking livestock and even crops with them. These people could then be given stones or bows and stationed on the walls to defend against attack.
Most importantly however the phrourion were designed to be as easy to defend as possible. A hundred men could hold off a thousands indefinitely, or at least long enough for a response to be organized by the strategos.
Under Leo’s original plans the fortresses would have been built of stone, but it rapidly became apparent that this was unfeasible since its too expensive, and taken too long. Instead the thematic soldiers were set to harvesting timber to be used in the construction. The first phrourions took about a year and a half to build, but as the problems with designs were improved that time decreased to only about nine months.
Each phrourion was garrisoned with only one or two hundred men, and over the next twenty years about fifty would be built across Moesia and Dacia. The remainder of the thematic troops would be garrisoned in the capitals, and dispatched to relieve sieges, if disease and impatience had not already done so.
These phrourions made the Roman borderlands reasonably secure though not exactly safe.

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