Original subtitles

Hannibal battles his way across the frozen Alps,

bloodies the ground with tens of thousands of Rome's

fiercest warriors, and makes military history on a battlefield where he

slaughters 70 ,000 men in one day.

Hannibal is a killer.

Hannibal is a conqueror.

Hannibal is the annihilator.

The year, 219 BC.

The man, Hannibal Barca of Carthage. One of history's greatest... and deadly as

generals.

Hannibal burns the Roman town of Saguntum to the ground. These smoldering

are just the initial sparks of the raging inferno that will soon engulf

as Hannibal the Annihilator launches a bloody reign of vengeance aimed to crush

mighty Rome.

Hannibal's home of Carthage is a commercial beacon on the northern coast

Africa. Their trade and military influence reverberates throughout the

Mediterranean.

They traded far and wide, as far off to the eastern Mediterranean. There's even

some evidence that they traded as far west through the Straits of Gibraltar to

England.

400 short miles from Carthage is Rome.

Though not yet the colossal empire they will become, their military might

threaten Carthaginian commercial dominance in the region.

The Romans are very much a warlike imperial people.

They're not an empire yet, but you could definitely see this republic.

starting to expand its borders.

It was only a matter of time before Rome and Carthage bumped into one another.

Hannibal's personal and brutal destruction of Saguntum is a bloody

hand -delivered to Rome, inviting them to join his deadly game of butchery and

annihilation. The siege of Saguntum lasted eight months as far as we know.

pretty much lacking in detail from a historical perspective. What we do know,

however, is that once the walls were breached and Carthaginian troops went

they went house to house and hunted down almost all of the Roman families,

killed the Roman males, and sold the women and children into slavery.

Through the smoke and stench of scorched earth and torched Roman corpses comes

Rome's response, capture Hannibal and crucify him.

It's a very famous scene by the Greek historian Polybius where the Roman

ambassador grabs his toga, a fold in each hand, and says, Rome offers you

or war.

Choose. It matters not to Rome.

Hannibal and the Carthaginians gladly choose to fight.

It is war, the seeds of which were planted nearly half a century earlier.

Then... Carthage and Rome bloodied the Mediterranean Sea in what is called the

First Punic War, named for the Latin term for Carthage, Punica.

400 ,000 casualties, almost 15 % of the military manpower of the entire country

of Italy was lost in that war. It was a terribly bloody war.

The war eventually ends in a military draw, but for Carthage, the peace treaty

is especially costly.

Part of the deal they make with Rome is that Carthage will limit their navy to a

hundred ships. This is pretty crippling to an empire that was a naval and

commercial trading power.

With most of their commercial fleet gone and their pockets empty, Carthage uses

its military power to exploit the riches of Spain.

Turns out that Spain's got vast silver mines, and the Carthaginians quickly

a hold on them and amass a fortune.

They decided to build up their land defenses instead of their navy, which

been pretty much depleted in the First Punic War.

Hannibal's father, Hamilcar Barca, one of Carthage's most accomplished and

battle -hardened men, lead the army into Spain.

Now, Hamilcar Barca is the founder of a great military dynasty in Carthage

called the Barsids, after the name Barca. And he really hated the Romans.

Young Hannibal is immersed in a violent and bloody world as he watches his

father, teacher, and role model engage in fiercely brutal combat.

Hannibal is only nine when Hamilcar takes over Spain, so he essentially

on the battlefield.

Hamilcar provides young Hannibal with a hands -on education in brutality and

warfare. By the time he's 19...

His whole life has been in a military camp, and here he watches his father and

other general officers and learns how to command men.

Hannibal learns that to build an army of loyal fighters willing to march by his

side into the horrors of war, he must sometimes punish his own.

If a Carthaginian officer fails in battle, he is crucified in the public

Carthaginian rule in Spain is downright cruel.

It's based on fire, sword, and crucifixion.

But Hannibal also motivates his men by sleeping where they sleep, eating what

they eat, and fighting where they fight. They obediently follow his words, his

sword, and his deep -seated desire for revenge against Rome, which he inherits

from his father.

But Hamilcar will never taste revenge.

In 228 BC, he dies suddenly. Some say assassinated.

His place is taken by his son -in -law, called Hasdrubrul the Splendid, who

continues on again for about another six years, building Carthaginian power,

increasing its scope.

And then finally he's assassinated too.

And there's some question historically of whether or not Hannibal had a hand in

this.

It is finally Hannibal's hour. He is only 26 years old, but commands the

Carthaginian army.

But he is fierce, battle -tested, and driven.

Legend has it that Hamilcar made the young Hannibal swear an oath on the

of Baal that he would spend his life in opposing and then ultimately destroying

Rome.

In 219 BC, with his father's hunger for revenge burning inside him, and with

Saguntum aflame, Hannibal launches his attack against Rome.

The Second Punic War is on.

Hannibal amasses a strike force of about 50 ,000 soldiers.

But because he has no navy, he's got to invade Italy by land.

Hannibal's on the move. From Spain, he leads his fighting force of about 50

north along the Mediterranean coast toward Rome.

A grueling two and a half months later, an exhausted but battle -ready Hannibal

reaches the Rhone River.

But Hannibal is shocked to discover the Romans had caught wind of the advance

and launched a strike force to intercept.

The Romans had caught wind of Hannibal's movements in Spain, but instead of

heading directly to Spain, they were smart. They looked at a map, figured out

where Hannibal was going to march, and tried to block the land route to the

Italian peninsula on the coast of the Mediterranean.

It is the great military Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio who leads the

attack against Hannibal.

Scipio's force, 10 ,000 men strong, is in Massilia, a Roman ally on the

Mediterranean coast.

Hannibal's force, five times as large, has crossed the Rhone River.

Scipio sends 300 of his cavalry up the Rhone to find Hannibal.

Hannibal orders 500 cavalry to scout the Roman advance.

The two reconnaissance units collide.

War between Rome and Carthage rages once again.

This is a small skirmish between scouting parties. In this particular

Hannibal's forces take the brunt of the attack and then retreat.

Scipio orders his entire force to follow.

Hannibal knows Scipio is only a few days' march away, and Scipio is a

commander. He should be able to give Hannibal a run for his money.

But when Scipio arrives at the location where Hannibal's army should be, They're

gone. It's as if Hannibal's whole army has vanished into thin air.

Scipio forced Hannibal to change his plan.

Now, instead of marching along the Mediterranean coast to Rome, Hannibal's

attack will come from the north through the Alps. The reason why Hannibal came

by land through Spain and over the Alps was not because it was a great strategic

choice. It was, in fact, the route that was forced upon him by, essentially,

Roman events, by the situation he confronted at the time.

Hannibal reaches the Alps in autumn of 218 BC.

At this altitude, he and his 50 ,000 soldiers face freezing temperatures and

treacherous ice on a narrow rocky terrain.

The men are hungry, their supplies are limited, and he's leading more than just

infantry. He's also leading 9 ,000 cavalry and 37 elephants.

All the major armies had a few elephants in them. When the Greeks fought

Carthage in one of their little skirmishes, the Carthaginians used to

chariots, and they were driven from the battlefield by the elephants, at which

point they said, let's get rid of the chariots and replace them with

And so as a consequence, by the time of the Punic War, Carthage has in her home,

just in her home base, she has 300 trained elephants living in the walls of

city of Carthage.

So that's how you get... elephant introduced in warfare.

The crossing of the Alps with such a large force is a difficult military

For Hannibal and his army, it has horrific consequences.

Men freeze. Men starve.

At one point, a landslide completely blocks their way.

It's absolutely hellish.

Supplies are even running low, and they're not even to the most difficult

of the crossing yet.

Well, They happen upon this Gallic village where the Gauls offer provisions

supplies.

Hannibal accepts the help, but he definitely is suspicious of their

because he knows that sometimes the Gauls are friendly and sometimes they

not.

Hannibal doesn't fully trust the Gauls, but eventually accepts their help.

The Gauls direct Hannibal to a narrow path which leads to a gorge.

Hannibal's original suspicions were right on.

The guide, Thunley Bolt.

It's a trap.

218 BC.

Hannibal leads his Carthaginian army over the treacherous Alps to invade

Along the way, marauding Gauls ambush Hannibal with a barrage of boulders and

arrow fire.

Hannibal encountered different tribes throughout his campaign.

They were mainly Gauls. This is a tribal people who lived in what's now modern

-day France.

They're not a unified people and usually don't ally themselves against a common

enemy.

Sometimes they'll join his war on Rome, and other times they'll attack him.

In this case, the Gauls are out for blood. The gorge turns into a gauntlet

death.

Gauls block both ends of the gorge, but Hannibal's troops fight their way out,

leaving the butchered enemy in their wake.

After some 30 grueling days... Hannibal and his men emerge from the Alps. When

they finally arrive on the northern plains of Italy, nearly a third of

Hannibal's army has perished.

They lose about 18 ,000 infantry, about a third of the cavalry, which would be

maybe 4 ,000 horse.

And, you know, you arrive with, say, 27 elephants, you lose a third of the

elephants.

But Hannibal has always known the crossing would be costly.

From the very beginning of the war, he's had a plan to replenish his forces.

A plan that relied on his elephant.

Part of Hannibal's strategy in crossing the Alps was that he understood that he

didn't have enough manpower to fight the Romans. Therefore, he would have to

acquire it once he got into Italy. How was he going to do that? He was going to

do that by attracting to his standard the Gauls, the Celts and Gauls, who

the Romans because they'd been fighting one another for 500 years, and hopefully

as well get some Roman allied states to defect.

So the reason for bringing the 37 elephants over the Alps was really to

in a political sense, Both the Gauls and the Allied states that this was a

serious army.

Hannibal's elephants thunder into northern Italy. They successfully lure

tribes to the Carthaginian side.

By November 218 BC, Hannibal's numbers swell to nearly 40 ,000.

Rome answers with 40 ,000 of its own soldiers to face Hannibal's threat.

Both armies are now on a collision course that will rock the ancient world

rewrite military history.

The armies of Carthage and Rome couldn't be more different.

Hannibal's men are mercenary soldiers from all over the map.

Hannibal's army is from different parts of the region. Many of the mercenaries,

drawn to his legendary leadership in battle.

The light infantry are from Libya.

These men carry a small round shield and fight.

small sword or gavel.

Heavy infantry are warriors from Gaul, men who run into battle naked,

intimidating their enemies with their deadly two -handed broadswords.

Heavy cavalry is from Spain and northern Europe.

Their weapon of choice is either a bowed sword called a falcata or a deadly

longsword.

Hannibal's ability to orchestrate these different types of forces in a

coordinated attack is what makes him truly a remarkable general.

The Roman army is much different than Hannibal's forces.

Where the Carthaginians are very diverse, the Romans are quite uniform.

Roman soldiers are ablaze in armor.

Bronze helmets protect their heads.

Chain mail or brass breastplates defend their bodies.

Each soldier carries one of history's deadliest throwing spear, the pilum.

That long metal rod was made of soft metal with a hook. When it went through

shield, the weight of the wooden body would bend it. You couldn't take the

pilum. out of the shield.

Now the enemy had a choice of fighting with a shield with a spear stuck into

or what they foolishly did very often is simply throw the shield away.

Not a good move against Roman infantry.

Slaughter also comes in the form of a straight sword forged of iron, ideal for

up -close and personal combat.

Their scutum shield provides almost complete protection from missile attack.

While Hannibal's army is cobbled together, his opponent is a much more

fighting force.

The Roman army was a true national army. They all spoke the same language, they

all had the same equipment, and they were all trained to the same tactic.

But the most significant difference is their style of battle.

So you have this Roman force of highly disciplined citizen soldiers equipped

trained to go straight at the enemy against a group of professionals that

hit you in any number of ways.

At the Tychonis River, these radically different fighting styles clash in a

hurricane of violence.

Headless -like cavalry surround the Romans.

Slash at the Roman cavalry, then back off, then reattach.

It's chaos and confusion, not what the Romans are used to.

The blood of 2 ,000 slain Roman soldiers drenches the ground. It is a shocking

defeat.

The key point about the little skirmish at the Tithonus River was that Publius

Scipio was wounded.

The Romans replaced Scipio with General Sempronius Longus, a strong leader with

an even stronger temper.

Sempronius is a hothead.

He's desperate for glory, and his one -year term as army commander is almost

He's champing at the bit to fight, and Hannibal knows it. Some evidence of

Hannibal's brilliance as a military commander, was the fact that he studied

adversaries closely.

Now, where he got this information isn't clear.

Surely, the number of Roman commanders was relatively small, and so they would

have been well -known. But also, my guess is that the truly excellent

Carthaginian intelligence may have been at work here, so that whenever he was

prepared for battle, he knew who was in command on the other side, and he

studied them closely, knew for strengths and weaknesses.

And in the case of Sempronius, he knew Sempronius well.

He knew he was a hothead, and he played him like a fiddle.

The two enemy armies camp on opposite sides of the Trebia River, about 70

yards apart.

It's not much of an obstacle in a physical sense, but it can become an

when you realize that if you have to cross it, it's November, it's gray, and

it's snowing. And so that's going to be any army that tries to cross that river

under those conditions is going to suffer somewhat.

Hannibal's strategy?

Take advantage of the frigid temperatures, the Roman commander's

and use the element of surprise.

He sends 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 cavalry in the early morning dawn across the river

to attack the Roman camp.

Romans are shocked awake.

They stumble around the cold with no food. The Roman general Sempronius is

furious. He orders the men to cross the river and attack.

So they plunge into the icy water to chase Hannibal's men. Not the best way

start your day.

40 ,000 Roman infantry and 4 ,000 cavalry cross the river.

They line up for battle in a formation called a legio, made up of several

maniples.

Maniple literally means a handful of men.

Each maniple consists of about 120 soldiers.

The Romans arranged themselves in a checkerboard configuration.

This is a force specifically designed to move forward and crush its enemy.

But Hannibal has his own crushing machines, pachyderms, the heavy tanks of

Carthaginian army.

They charge at the flanks of the Roman cavalry.

Nearly impervious to Spears, the elephant's earth -shaking assault

Allied horsemen in sheer terror.

Hannibal's cavalry, 10 ,000 strong, far outnumbers the Romans.

His Numidian cavalry is so fast and agile that they appear to be everywhere

once. Hannibal's heavy Spanish and Celtic cavalry slam with such force,

demolish what's left of the Roman cavalry.

Hannibal's Carthaginian cavalry turns inward and smashes the Roman flanks.

Hannibal surrounds the Romans on three sides, but he is not done yet.

Hannibal has just crossed the Trebia River and has a bloody surprise for the

Roman army.

Using specially trained horses, Hannibal has successfully hidden cavalry in a

tall grass.

Trumpet blasts and an elite Carthaginian cavalry force charges from the swamp.

The Romans turn around to see 2 ,000 horses storm up from behind. It must

been absolutely terrifying.

The Carthaginian cavalry blindsides the Romans, who are then pushed back toward

the river and cut down mercilessly.

Of the 40 ,000 men, Roman and allies that took the field that day, 30 ,000

died.

30 ,000 met their deaths on the bank of the Trebia River.

It was the worst defeat that the Romans had suffered since the defeat against

the Gauls 125 years earlier.

The Battle of the Trebia is an absolutely classic example of how to use

surprise at a key moment in the battle. The result was complete slaughter.

Hannibal does suffer losses at Trebia. All but one of his elephants die of

starvation or exhaustion.

He rides the lone survivor named Sirius.

The horror of Trebia spurs the Roman Senate to raise four new legions, 20

men. Rome also appoints two new councils to lead the men into battle, Gnaeus

Servilius Geminus and Gaius Flaminius.

Their target, Hannibal.

Their mission.

seek and destroy.

In the spring of 217 BC, the Romans decide that the best way to block

advance southward is to divide their forces.

Geminus travels northeast to coastal Ariminus.

Flaminius heads northwest to Auretium, but they leave a southern route open

through the marshes of the lower Arno River Valley.

Now, the Arno marshes were an enormously large, swampy area created

by the Arno River. I mean, it's full of muck, insects, snakes.

It is a terrible natural barrier, so much so that neither of the Roman

commanders blocking the roads on either side thought anyone would be crazy

enough to try to march through these marshes. Well, Hannibal is known for

the unexpected, and don't you know, he tries to penetrate these marshes.

The surprise maneuver does prove costly for Hannibal.

While riding atop Sirius, his last remaining elephant, Hannibal is

stung in the eye by an insect.

He gets infected, and he becomes blind at that eye.

But Hannibal remains unstoppable.

He slips through the two Roman forces and arrives at Tuscany.

a Roman ally, and tortures the landscape.

Hannibal starts burning the Tuscan plain.

Houses, towns, slaughtering animals, chopping down trees.

Hannibal's plan?

Destroy the area and infuriate the Roman general Flaminius, who watches the

devastation from the city walls of Iridium.

And Flaminius is just horrified by it. He's horrified not only so much that

area is being destroyed, but he knows what Hannibal is doing.

Instead of attacking Flaminius inside the city walls, Hannibal is sending a

message to other Roman allies.

And what Hannibal is saying to that ally is, if you stay with Rome, this is what

you can expect.

He's trying to woo that ally away.

And Flaminius also knows that it's a sign of Roman weakness that you cannot

this. Hannibal knows his enemy well and wants to lure Flaminius onto the

battlefield.

Why? That's his plan. Destroy as many Roman armies, kill as many Romans as you

can until the Roman Senate tires of war and sues for peace. You can't do that

with siege warfare. You've got to draw the enemy out into battle.

Hannibal continues to taunt Flaminius by marching his army right past the walls

of Iridium, flaunting his courage and power.

Hannibal is just far enough away to tease Flaminius. He's really saying,

on. If you've got any courage, you'll leave your little protective fort and

and fight like a man.

Finally, Flaminius takes the bait.

Hannibal leads Flaminius on a wild chase across Tuscany. He stays a day or two

ahead, which allows him to survey the terrain and pick the most advantageous

place to fight.

Moving quickly, Hannibal and his 30 ,000 men race past the small village of

Pazignano into a hilly forest along Lake Tresemene.

Flaminius is in hot pursuit.

The road leads Hannibal, now on horseback, through what's known as the

narrow passage between the mountains and the lake's shoreline.

By now, all of Hannibal's elephants are dead.

And as he marches into this defile, this narrow passage between the cliffs and

the lake, he becomes immediately aware of the landscape's tactical advantages.

Hannibal has discovered the perfect location for his next battle. It comes

its own natural advantage.

In the morning, a thick fog comes off the lake and obscures the entire valley.

It's made -order camouflage.

Hannibal orders some of his men to camp at the far end of the valley, in plain

view of all who pass through the defile.

We're told that Hannibal sends scouts far ahead into the hills to light

campfires. He wants to convince the Romans that he's farther away than he

actually is.

Still chasing Hannibal, Flaminius reaches Pazignano and sends a

team into the defile.

They come back, and it's too narrow.

There can't be any possibility of ambush.

The next day, around dawn, the Roman army begins to move through the defile.

As Flaminius reaches the valley, the eerie lake fog rolls in once again.

In the distance, Flaminius can see the fires of Hannibal's camp on the hill.

Flaminius thinks, I finally got him. I've got Hannibal trapped, and it's time

tear him apart.

Flaminius orders 6 ,000 Roman soldiers to rush up the hill and attack Hannibal.

The legion double times gets out there, climbs the hill, and smashes into

Hannibal's camp.

The Romans hack at Hannibal's rearguard infantry in wild combat.

Suddenly, Hannibal's men turn and run, enticing the Roman soldiers to pursue.

Hannibal then springs one of the deadliest traps in military history.

Hannibal Barca of Carthage is about to spring one of military history's

traps.

30 ,000 Carthaginian infantry and cavalry rise out of the morning fog and

into the stunned Roman fort.

The bloodbath begins.

The battle rages along the shores of Lake Tresemene in northwest Italy.

Hannibal's Spanish and African heavy infantry hit the Roman front.

Wild Celtic tribesmen strike the center.

Numidian -like cavalry crush the Romans from the rear.

Romans are trapped, and it is terrible.

They're in line of march. They're not even set for combat formation.

Their weapons aren't out, and they're taken right in the flank by this large

army, and it just slaughters them.

It slaughtered some of them.

Hannibal makes two big gambles at Tresemene.

First is that the fog will return to hide the 30 ,000 men in the hills.

Second, that Flaminius will jump at his decoy camp.

And he wins both bets.

Out of 20 ,000 men, 15 ,000 die in about three hours.

including Flaminius himself.

Hannibal's losses?

1 ,500.

That's a kill ratio of 10 to 1.

In one of the most successful ambushes in history, another Roman army has been

wiped out.

At age 27, Hannibal is already a legendary military tactician.

In less than two years, Hannibal has handed Rome three catastrophic defeats.

30 ,000 at Trebia, and now 15 ,000 more at Trasimene.

Rome had never seen such a series of defeats in its history.

In the face of this defeat, the Roman Senate makes a bold, perhaps desperate

decision. They vote to appoint a temporary dictator over the military to

end to Hannibal's reign of terror.

He is Quintus Fabius Maximus.

Electing a dictator is extremely rare in Roman history. They highly value their

republic, and so the idea of handing absolute power to one man isn't taken

lightly. In fact, the position came with an automatic time limit of six months.

Fabius raises an army of 90 ,000 men, the largest yet in Roman history.

But he isn't going to use them in direct combat against Hannibal.

Fabius is an excellent strategic thinker. He takes one look around, looks

Roman manpower, naval resources, food resources, the geography, and then

compares them with Hannibal's small army, way from home, can't resupply, no

navy. He concludes quite correctly that Hannibal can't win, that essentially

there's no point to continue to try to defeat Hannibal in the field.

And this becomes the famous Fabian strategy.

Do not engage the enemy in head -to -head battle.

Harass him. When he sends foraging teams to look for food, kill them. If anybody

provides sanctuary in a small town, burn the place down.

Fabius' strategy leaves Hannibal and his men hungry and tired.

They are constantly hunted and harassed and never able to resupply.

Fabius' strategies were not only good,

They were exactly the strategy that Rome needed to stop a man like Hannibal,

whose whole tactical and strategic vision was based on fighting battles. To

a strategy that's battle -centric, you have to have an enemy who obliges. By

refusing to give battle, Fabius denied Hannibal to fight the war that he wanted

to fight.

This is a strategy that would work, but the problem is, like all strategy, it

depends on political will. It depends on the political will of the Senate to

essentially continue the Fabian strategy perhaps for three, four, five years.

Well, what happens is, this is not the Roman way.

Despite the strategy's success so far, the impatient Roman Senate forces Fabius

to resign after six months.

They return to their more typical mode of government with the election of two

civilian co -consuls.

Paulus and Varro are chosen and directed to defeat Hannibal as quickly as

possible.

Varro wants to fight Hannibal in an all -out war.

Paulus, however, does not want to be lured into battle.

This is problematic because there's a combination of two Roman armies.

The two co -consuls, Paulus and Varro, trade off command every other day. It

sound insane, but one day Paulus was the supreme commander, the next day Varro.

Hannibal is well aware of this and knows who he'd rather fight.

Hannibal's strength is in face -to -face combat, and he wants to fight Varro's

war.

Hannibal gathers his intelligence, lies in wait, then sends in a strike team

just as Varro takes command.

On cue, Varro roars into action and sends a fighting force to meet Hannibal

Cannae, Italy.

Varro's colossal army is made up of more than 80 ,000 Roman and Allied foot

soldiers and 6 ,000 cavalry.

It is the most massive Roman fighting force ever to take the field at one

Varro arranges his soldiers in a typical Roman manacle formation, but adds a new

twist to the old formula.

What they do is they pack themselves a little tighter than before so that the

front is shorter, but the depth is thicker.

Only 300 feet away, Hannibal deploys his own infantry force of 35 ,000, but in a

unique configuration never before used on any Western battlefield.

Normally, an infantry line would be deployed straight.

He deploys it in a concave bow with the belly of the bow facing closest to the

Roman lines in a kind of semicircle.

Hannibal himself leads the infantry force from the middle of the line.

The battle of annihilation begins.

The infantry battle is furious.

But it's the Carthaginian cavalry that scores the first punishing blow.

Heavy cavalry smashes into the Roman cavalry with such incredible force that

shatters it. I mean, between the dead and the wounded and the dead horses.

The rest just take flight.

Trying to outrun this tidal wave of death, the Romans are chopped down in

stride.

It is the beginning of one of the greatest battles of all time.

It's the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome.

Two great armies slaughter each other on the plains of Cannae.

Battling over who will control the entire Mediterranean region.

Hannibal has configured his army in a unique semicircle.

On the flanks.

the Carthaginian cavalry commander detaches part of its force to help the

Numidian -like cavalry on the opposite side of the battlefield.

With a nearly four -to -one advantage, the Carthaginian cavalry makes short

of the Roman cavalry on at the flanks.

In the center, the Roman infantry drives Hannibal back.

But it's a ruse.

Hannibal is giving ground on purpose.

And this is why Hannibal originally assembled his men in a semicircle.

He knew that the center would give ground, and he knew his flanks would

Slowly the center collapses, and the Romans would think they're winning and

commit more troops in the center.

The original bow shape of the Carthaginian line now resembles a V.

As Hannibal's infantry flexes inward, the Roman units are drawn deeper and

deeper into a V -shaped line.

And as they go further, they get completely packed together.

Pressed into this V, the Roman infantry can only move in one direction, straight

ahead.

Libby, one of the Roman historians, tells us the pressure was so great that

Roman soldiers' arms were forced against their bodies. They could not lift their

swords.

On Hannibal's signal, the African phalanxes turn in toward the middle and

the Romans from the side.

Hannibal blocks in front.

The African infantry squeezes the side.

Hannibal's older brother, Hasdrubal, uses cavalry to flash from behind.

The Romans are jammed into a kill box.

Hasdrubal the Brilliant now rides around in back of the Romans, hits them in the

rear. This is the famous double envelopment. It had never been done in

history of warfare before.

Never. And it's a brilliant maneuver.

What Hannibal realized...

is that while the Roman army is nearly unstoppable as it attacks straight

its maniples can only move forward and back.

They cannot turn and they cannot envelop.

And if you know exactly how your enemy is going to fight, it's not that hard to

figure out how to defeat it.

By the time the sun sets, Hannibal has slaughtered an unbelievable number of

Romans.

The Battle of Cannae was so full of death that it gave rise to

a new term in military terminology.

It's called the Battle of Annihilation.

The Battle of Annihilation. The enemy wasn't defeated, it was annihilated.

Cannae ranks as one of the deadliest and most brutal battles in history. More

than 70 ,000 Romans are butchered in a single day.

70 ,000 dead, killed in an area only twice the size of Central Park.

Ask yourself, this is an age before mechanical weapons.

How long does it take to kill 70 ,000 human beings with swords

and spears, one at a time?

The answer seems to be about six hours.

Hannibal is on the verge of realizing his dream of Rome's destruction.

But the victory at Cannae will actually mark the end of Hannibal's military

success on the Italian peninsula.

After the battle, the commander of the Numidian cavalry, Maharbal, urges

Hannibal to march immediately on Rome.

But Hannibal refuses.

This leads Maharbal to exclaim, Hannibal, you know how to conquer.

but you do not know how to use your victory.

Hannibal might believe that Rome will finally bow before him and surrender

their devastating defeat.

Or maybe he realizes a siege of Rome will be impossible to maintain without

reinforcements and supplies.

Cannae is about 260 miles away from Rome, so he gets close, but not close

enough.

Whatever the reason.

The destruction at Cannae is the closest Hannibal ever gets to fulfilling the

blood oath of revenge he made to his father.

Hannibal does try to negotiate a peace deal with the Romans after Cannae, but

the Romans refuse.

In fact, the Romans actually outlaw the word peace.

No citizen could ever consider it outlawed.

Ultimately, the Romans decide to return to the Fabian strategy of containment.

Instead of trying to beat Hannibal on the battlefield, they will try to

him.

Think about this for a minute. Rome, with all their imperial destructive

says, you know what? We can't beat this guy.

We can only harass him. We can only contain him.

Hannibal was able to get many of the southern Italian towns to defect to him.

So he was able to live off the land.

But try as he might, he can never fulfill his oath to his father. He never

Rome to the ground.

For all his triumphs on the battlefield, Hannibal's campaign must be seen as a

failure. He eventually abandons his quest to destroy Rome and sails back to

Carthage.

If you want to think about a more modern example, you could look at Robert E.

Lee. During the American Civil War, Lee won nearly every one of his battles, but

ultimately... lost the war. No matter how many battles you win, the ultimate

goal of a battle is a means to an end, to win the war strategically.

From that perspective, Hannibal's campaigns were a failure. The individual

battles were victorious, but the strategy of bringing Rome to heel and

sign a peace treaty failed.

You don't get any points in warfare for trying.

The greatest irony of Hannibal's invasion is that it sets in motion the

that will turn the Republic of Rome into an empire that will conquer the ancient

world. Had there been no Hannibal, had there been no Second Punic War, there's

no reason to suspect that Rome would ever have expanded to the degree that it

did.

Hannibal's tactics and stealth, his bloodlust and determination, his

and genius.

are all taught to modern military commanders throughout the world.

But the greatest lesson might be that while Hannibal could annihilate the

of Rome, he could not ultimately destroy Rome.