The battle of Cannae was one of the major battles of the second Punic war that took place in Apulia Southeast Italy in 216 BC. It was fought between Carthage under Hannibal and the Rome commander Consuls Aemilius and Gaius Terentius. It is regarded as one of the worst defeat in Roman history and greatest tactic acts in military history. Carthaganian initiated the second Punicwar when General Hannibal attacked Romanian allay Saguntum. He marched his army across Alps from Spain and conquered northern Italy then advanced through Roman territory attacking small towns and villages defeating Roman soldiers twice. Hannibal defeated them at Ticino River in Trebia and at LakeTrasimene. He conquered all of North Italy, by then Romans were afraid of an attack; they felt the army controller Consul Quintus Fabius Maximus did not do much to stop Hannibal. He had a harassing policy destroying his plans rather than full engagement. Fabius elected Consul Minucius Rufus as the commander so as to lead a troop fighting against the Carthaginians to fight the Romanians who were easily defeated .Hannibal had good fighting tactics that they could not understand until they gave up. Romanians did not forgive Hannibal for using his brain rather than men’s lives, they mobilized another forces to take to the field resulting to the battle of Cannae 1 .
During the Cannae battle, Rome had over 50,000 forces against Hannibal’s who had less than 40,000 troops. Hannibal had a good tactic and was smart at war. He placed his light soldiers of Gauls in front to mask his best soldiers who formed a crescent behind them. Just before the battle begun, the light soldiers in front moved aside to form two wings as reserves. The Romans matched and the Carthaginians fell back, Romanians thought they were winning and relaxed. The Carthaginian light soldiers completed the crescent, forming a circle and and attacked them from behind. The Romanian strong soldiers who were masked before were unable to come to the front as it was difficult to push those ahead of them. The Romans were surrounded and 44,000 killed while the remaining managed to escape to Canusium. Hannibal lost 6000 soldiers mostly Gauls who made the front line 2 .
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The Carthaginian victory was one of its kinds; it was a supreme example of generalship never seen before. It ended the Roman dependence on large numbers of soldiers and initiated the use of military tactics for many years. The main reason for Roman defeat was their poor positioning of their soldiers which was quite typical by that time. Romans also laid a lot of trust in placing numerically superior soldiers and forgot to enhance their war tactics. The Romans later adopted Hannibal’s tactics at Cannae and become masters of the world through sequences of victory against their enemies including Hannibal himself.
Bibliography
Joshua. J. Mark. Ancient history encyclopedia: Battle of Cannae. 2011. http://www.ancient.eu/Battle_of_Cannae/
