Two thousand, two hundred and thirty years ago today was fought the Battle of Cannae; still to this day the greatest battlefield achievement of all time. Fought by the mighty Hannibal against the overwhelming juggernaut of Rome, Hannibal deployed to meet them in a convex line, drew the Romans ever onwards to his centre, which retreated and now formed a convex bag into which the Romans kept marching, sure of victory. Then, with a dash of cavalry on each wing, he sealed the trap. Of an army of 70,000 men, only 5,000 escaped, having been surrounded and crushed by an army of only 50,000. It was the first - and still remains the model for - the perfect double-envelopment of an enemy; being used by Stormin Norman Schwartzkopf as the basis for Operation Desert Storm. One of the few survivors of this massacre was one Publius Cornelius Scipio - later to be known the world over as Scipio Africanus - the ultimate conqueror of Hannibal. In my latest work, I have devoted a great deal of time to Hannibal; for my money, my favourite commander of all time. Nobody was ever so sneaky, so inventive or so strategically and tactically sound. Filled with rich quotes from the man himself, bloody and dramatic descriptions of his battles and insights into his own way of war, unseen by history for over twenty-two centuries, I guarantee my readers will be avid fans of Hannibal as well!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 10:41:54 +0000
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