The Invincible Legion

“Tis not self-esteem that builds men, but lack thereof.”

Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by a weak king who by appeasing his enemies reduced the people to serving as vassals of the surrounding realms. The people suffered mightily, endured humiliations at every turn. Their women violated, food confiscated, and the army reduced to a token force. The king’s people hungered for freedom, for food, for revenge.

The king had a son who was wise and brave, unlike his father. This prince wanted to someday crush the enemies of his people and free them from the indignity of servitude. As a little boy he often played war games with his playmates who were the children of both nobility and peasants alike. To the boy prince, no hardship was too difficult to endure, and, like all great generals, he was capable of exhorting the children on his team to accomplish incredible tasks in pursuit of victory during these mock battles. 

The king’s generals were aware of the young prince’s natural prowess in the military arts, and they secretly wished for the day when he would take the throne. In their hearts, they prayed the stain of shame upon their people would forever be erased.

When the king at last died, there was little mourning because the people knew it was his lack of character which resulted in their terrible predicament. The prince was crowned the new king and immediately put into motion his long-held plans for war. 

He quietly expanded the kingdom’s tiny army, training them relentlessly in what appeared to be nothing more than particularly rigorous athletic games, but it was still vastly outnumbered by the armies of the surrounding realms, many of whom had long been hostile to his land. 

Many of the kingdom’s men had been sold into slavery or forced to work the fields and mines in these other lands, and there were few men left. The small expansion of the army did not result in more than casual attention from these neighbors because they had become complacent in their long rule over the kingdom. In fact, they gleefully mocked these puny preparations of the “boy king” as he was called derisively.

The new king knew that his army would have to compensate with skill and bravery for their lack of numbers, so, over the next seven years, he developed a well-trained cavalry, hardy infantry, eagle-eyed archers, clever and resourceful combat engineers, and pieced together a separate battalion he called the Invincible Legion.

Even his own generals found the Legion a curious creation on the part of the King. It was composed initially of young boys, barely in their teens, who’d been secretly gathered together upon the king’s ascension to the throne and placed in a separate camp and drilled as infantrymen for many years under the most austere conditions.

Eventually the time came for his army to strike. The Invincible Legion were now men. Upon first seeing these troops, the king’s generals assumed the king had somehow gotten together the money to hire battle-hardened mercenaries from some far-off land. They were told, no, these are the lads we’ve been training all these years.

Each of the surrounding kingdoms, in their turn, was defeated and its territory incorporated into the king’s rapidly growing empire. When this was finished, the king next marched on the realms beyond those who had once ruled his people, and these others also fell to his army. Like all great generals the king was slave to the most irresistible of man’s destinies: world conquest.

A companion of the king was the Royal Historian, whose duty it was to carefully chronicle the king’s life, and especially the rise of his people’s new empire. This man was thorough at documenting and a well-read student of military history. He was repeatedly impressed by the remarkable achievements of the king’s army, particularly the Invincible Legion. To the critical point of each battle these men were sent, and without fail they crushed all who opposed them. They wielded battle-swords like a thousand teeth of some great and horrible beast that must feast on an enemy’s flesh and blood. Their fame spread, and many armies fled in terror at the mere sight of the Legion’s banner approaching.

One day the historian was talking to the king and shared his observations regarding the Legion.  “My God, these men fight like demons.  I cannot believe the drive, the frightening look burning in their eyes; it is as if they will not be beaten, no matter the cost.  I tremble every time I see them march past me toward the battle line.  Sire, where did you get men such as these?”

A hint of a smile came to the king’s face: “I knew where I could find the one type of man doomed to spend the rest of his life proving to all others his worth, and what better place than to show this but on the field of battle. 

“After my father’s death, I sent messengers to each of the schools in our realm that educate boys between the ages of ten and fourteen, for these are the years when children are cruelest, and I requested that the shortest boy from each place be brought to a single camp where I trained them severely and thoroughly.

Every challenge I forced them to face, they overcame. They eventually grew into the men they were destined to be. 

Thus, did I create my Invincible Legion, and thus shall our people eventually rule over all men.”