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Nearly the whole army met their death here...
Livy, “The History of Rome”
HANNIBAL'S TRIUMPH over the Romans at Cannae is one of the world’s great victories. A foreign army consisting mainly of mercenaries annihilated a well-led, well-equipped, much bigger force fighting for its homeland. Down the centuries soldiers have been fascinated by the battle and, even if Apulia were known for nothing else, it would still be famous because of Cannae.
Hannibal’s strategy was to beat the Romans so often that their allies in the Roman Confederation would eventually abandon them as a lost cause. He had already destroyed two Roman armies, in 218 BC at the River Trebia and in 217 at Lake Trasimene. Nevertheless, the Romans remained convinced that their legions were invincible.
He had wintered his troops in Apulia, at Gereonium near Lucera, and during the summer seized the town of Cannae to provide himself with a base from where he could devastate all Southern Italy. The Romans decided that they had to engage and eliminate him at all costs.
The battle took place on 2 August not far from Cannae, at the foot of the Murge and on the banks of the River Aufidus, today known as the Òfanto. The consuls Emilius Paulus and Terentius Varro, one cautious and the other rash, who according to custom commanded on alternate days, had 80,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Hannibal had 40,000 foot-soldiers, Gaulish and Spanish swordsmen, Libyan spearmen and Balearic slingers, together with 10,000 Gaulish, Spanish and Numidian cavalry. It was the turn of Varro, the rash consul, to command and despite their inferiority in cavalry, the Romans marched across the flat Apulian plain to attack Hannibal.
On his right, next to the river, Varro placed his armoured horsemen, volunteer Roman citizens, putting the more effective allied cavalry on his left towards the plain. His infantry was in the centre, legionaries in armour with shields, short swords and javelins. They marched in unusually deep formation, to give them maximum impact so that they would smash through the opposing centre. A screen of light troops, archers, slingers and javelin men ran ahead of the legionaries as they advanced. When the Romans got near, they saw that Hannibal’s infantry in the centre was in a very odd formation, his swordsmen bowed outwards in an arc, with the Libyan spearmen on their flanks. More conventionally, on his left, next to the river and facing the Roman heavy cavalry, he had put his own heavy cavalry, while on his right the Numidian horsemen were placed opposite the Roman allies’ horse.
As the Romans grew closer, Hannibal’s screen of Balearic slingers, the best in the Mediterranean, opened fire. Their sling-shots inflicted many casualties, smashing the arm of one of the Roman consuls, Emilius Paulus. Then Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s chief engineer, led his mounted Celts in a charge against the Roman heavy cavalry, routing them, after which he brought his men across the field to help the Numidians break the allied cavalry. But about 500 Numidians surrendered, throwing down their shields and javelins, and were taken to the Romans’ rear.
Meanwhile, in the centre the Roman legions were pressing for-ward steadily, pushing back the Gaulish and Spanish swordsmen so that the arc-shaped formation was reversed, becoming concave. But as the closely packed Romans advanced, the Libyan spearmen began to outflank them, attacking from each side. Suddenly the Numidian ‘prisoners’ behind drew swords from beneath their cloaks, picked up shields from the fallen and started slashing the Romans’ backs and legs. Having sent the other Numidians in pursuit of the Roman and allied cavalry, to ensure it did not return, Hasdrubal now brought his horsemen back and charged the Roman legions from the rear.
Surrounded on all sides, they were annihilated. By the end of the day, out of 86,000 Romans, 70,000 had been killed and another 4,500 taken prisoner. The dead included the consul Emilius Paulus, twenty-nine tribunes and eighty senators. Among the few who escaped, fleeing to Canosa or Lucera, was the consul Varro. Many thought that this shattering defeat meant the end of the Republic.
Despite centuries of passionate debate, it is not possible to re-construct the battle with complete accuracy, since the River Òfanto has altered course. Livy says the Romans were defeated as much by Hannibal’s brilliant use of ground as by his troops: “a wind that got up, locally known as the ‘Volturnus’, hampered the Romans by throwing dust in their eyes.” Ramage asked his guide “if he had ever seen this phenomenon, and he said that it was not uncommon in autumn, after the stubble had been burnt, and the land exposed to the air, for clouds of dust to be driven along the plain.”
Like Ramage, most of the travellers had been brought up to read Livy, and in consequence Cannae was a place of pilgrimage for them, one of the main reasons for visiting Apulia.
Not only early travellers were fascinated by the battle. At the end of the nineteenth century, Cannae became an obsession with the chief of the German Imperial General Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, who wrote a book about it – Hannibal’s tactics inspiring his plan for the next war against France. He hoped to tempt the French into invading Germany and then attack their flank with overwhelming strength through Belgium. In 1914, however, the infallible Schlieffen Plan went off at half-cock because the German commander, Field-Marshal von Moltke, lost his nerve when the Russians advanced with unexpected speed into East Prussia, and brought too many troops back to Germany.