Great Generals of the Ancient World by Richard A. Gabriel

Author:Richard A. Gabriel [Richard A. Gabriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Cannae: Final Phase

Now Hasdrubal’s cavalry arrived in the Roman rear to block their retreat, completing the double envelopment of the Roman infantry. Having assured himself that the allied cavalry was clear of the field, Hasdrubal’s cavalry ‘by charging the Roman legions on the rear, and harassing them by hurling squadron after squadron upon them at many points at once began massacring the Roman rear line.’⁴⁰ With no ability to move forward or to the flanks, and with the rear cut off, the Roman army was slaughtered where it stood.

It was, however, no easy task. Hannibal’s men organized in units struck with one combat pulse after another, hour after hour, against the Roman mass, which put up stiff resistance for a long time before, eventually, all resistance collapsed and the survivors fled. Livy says that of the original force of 80,000 men, 45,000 infantry and 2,700 cavalry were killed.⁴¹ From other passages in Livy, it emerges that some 19,000 may have been taken prisoner, some of these having reached the Roman camp and surrendered later.⁴² The Carthaginians lost 5,700 men, including 4,000 Gauls fighting in the centre of the line. Another 1,500 Africans and Spanish infantry died, and about 200 cavalrymen. Hannibal’s casualty rate was by no means insignificant, however, amounting to 11.5 per cent of his force, or three times the average loss rate suffered by victorious armies in antiquity, a figure that testifies to the fierceness of the fighting even after the Romans were surrounded. The total butcher’s bill was 54,000 men heaped in an area roughly the size of New York’s Central Park.

Hannibal had achieved his great victory over the Romans. In the three battles of Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae, the cost to Rome in military manpower had been horrendous. No fewer than 100,000 men, almost 20 per cent of the Roman population of military age, had been killed, captured or wounded.⁴³ Hannibal’s army was intact and capable of further offensive action. Polybius says that while Hannibal and Maharbal were looking out over the blood-soaked plain, Maharbal pressed his commander to strike at Rome itself. ‘You follow,’ Maharbal said, ‘I’ll go ahead with the cavalry – they’ll know I’ve come, before they know I’m coming.’ Maharbal said he could be in Rome in five days. Hannibal, perhaps moved by the magnitude of the slaughter he had inflicted, refused. In frustration Maharbal shouted, ‘So the gods haven’t given everything to one man: you know how to win, Hannibal, but you don’t know how to use a victory.’⁴⁴ Although the war went on for another fifteen years, Hannibal never attacked Rome.

These were dark days for Rome, but darker days lay ahead. Despite the success of the renewed Fabian strategy in preventing Hannibal from destroying any more Roman armies of such magnitude, Hannibal continued to inflict significant defeats on the Romans. In 212 BC, he cost the Romans 16,000 casualties at Herdonea. A year later, at Second Herdonea, Hannibal killed the Roman commander and eleven of his twelve military tribunes as well as 13,000 troops.

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