Battle of Cannae
Hannibal destroyed the largest army Rome had ever put in the field on 2 August 216 BC, and Rome did not surrender. He had crossed the Alps two years earlier and beaten consular armies at the Trebia and Lake Trasimene, and Rome had responded by appointing a dictator, Fabius Maximus, whose policy of shadowing the Carthaginians without fighting was militarily sound and politically unbearable. The Romans elected two consuls for 216 who intended to fight, raised eight legions with their allied contingents — perhaps 80,000 men, roughly double Hannibal's force — and marched to meet him on the plain of Apulia. Hannibal drew his line up with a bulge in the centre, the Spanish and Gallic infantry forward, the African veterans on either flank drawn back. The Roman infantry, formed unusually deep, pushed the centre in. It bent without breaking, drawing them into a pocket, and then the African infantry turned inwards on both sides while the Numidian and Spanish cavalry, having driven the Roman horse from the field, came round the rear and closed it. Something like 50,000 to 70,000 Romans were killed in an afternoon of hand-to-hand fighting in a crush too tight to use a sword, including a consul, eighty senators and twenty-nine military tribunes. Rome refused to ransom the survivors, refused to negotiate, and refused to use the word peace. Much of southern Italy and Syracuse went over to Hannibal, and Rome raised new legions and went back to Fabius's methods. Cannae is still taught as the model double envelopment.
- Category: Military
