Battle of the Trebia
Hannibal destroyed a Roman army on the Trebia in December 218 BC, weeks after bringing it across the Alps. He had lost perhaps half his force in the crossing and had arrived in Italy with about 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, and he needed a victory quickly to bring the Gauls of the Po valley over. The consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus was recalled from Sicily and wanted a battle before his year of office ran out. His colleague Publius Cornelius Scipio, wounded in a cavalry skirmish, argued for waiting through the winter. Hannibal built the trap around Sempronius's impatience. He sent his brother Mago with two thousand picked men to hide overnight in a watercourse overgrown with scrub in the middle of open ground, having satisfied himself that the Romans never scouted it. At dawn Numidian cavalry rode up to the Roman camp and shot into it, then withdrew across the river. Sempronius sent his men after them without breakfast, through water chest-deep and freezing on a sleeting December morning, while the Carthaginians had eaten, oiled themselves and warmed at fires. The Roman infantry nonetheless fought well in the centre. Their cavalry was driven off, elephants and light troops rolled up both flanks, and Mago's force came out of the ground behind them. About ten thousand broke through the Carthaginian centre and marched away in order to Placentia. The rest were destroyed, and northern Italy went over to Hannibal. Trasimene followed in June and Cannae the year after, and Rome lost some 100,000 men in twenty months without surrendering.
- Category: Military
