The Appian Way, yes, way,way before the Incas!
the bases needed to be connected by good roads for easy access and supply from Rome. The Appian Way was used as a main route for military supplies since its construction for that purpose in 312 B.C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way
An army travels on it’s stomach.. grunts gotta eat!
That did in Napoleon.
His armies depended on living off the land. Didn't work in Russia.
It’s amazing what one can accomplish when one has an unlimited supply of slave labor...
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the prerailroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long-distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long-distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of its legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? Roman war chariots made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, the standard U.S. railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches derives from the specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses."