Pod Insights The Rest Is History 571. Hannibal: Roman Bloodbath at Cannae (Part 4) About this episode How did the Battle of Cannae - one of the most important battles of all time for Ancient Rome, with a whole Empire at stake, and a reputation that had reverberated across the centuries - in 216 BC, unfold? What brilliant tactics did Hannibal adopt in order to overcome the Roman killing machine, with its vast numbers and relentless soldiers? Why did so many men die in such horrific circumstances? And, what would be the outcome of that bloody, totemic day, for the future of both Carthage and Rome?
Join Tom and Dominic for the climax of their epic journey through the rise of Hannibal, and his world-shaking war against Rome, in one of the deadliest rivalries of all time.
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Transcript 10,696 words · 8 speakers
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1:26 Dominic Sandbrook? All over the field, Roman soldiers lay dead in their thousands, horse and foot mingled as the shifting phases of the battle or the attempt to escape had brought them together. Here and there, wounded men, covered with blood, who had been roused to consciousness by the morning cold, were dispatched by a quick blow as they struggled to rise from amongst the corpses. Others were found still alive, with the sinews in their thighs and behind their knees sliced through, baring their throats and necks, and begging who would to spill what little blood they had left. Some had their heads buried in the ground, having apparently dug themselves holes and by smothering their faces with earth, had choked themselves to death.
2:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Most strange of all was a Numidian soldier, still living and lying with nose and ears horribly lacerated underneath the body of a Roman, who when his useless hands had no longer been able to grasp his sword, had died in the act of tearing his enemy in bestial fury with his teeth. So that was the account of the battlefield of Cannae by Livy, and he's describing the morning after, one of the bloodiest and most notorious days in the entire history, not just of Rome or of the Punic Wars, but of armed conflict generally, because this is one of the most studied, most discussed, most famous battles in all world history. It took place on the
2:57 Dominic Sandbrook? 2nd of August 216 B.C. And Tom, for the Romans, this was the darkest day in their, in all their history, wasn't it?
3:05 Tom Holland? It was. And for as long as, as their empire endured, Roman historians who wanted to emphasise some particular shattering defeat would say, oh, this was the worst day ever, except for Cannae. And they would always acknowledge that even the worst defeat wasn't as terrible as Cannae had been. And I think what is fascinating is that modern historians as well have been kind of equally fascinated by the scale of the slaughter that was inflicted on Rome on that terrible day. So there are two really excellent studies of this battle, one by Greg Daley, Cannae, the experience of battle in the Second Punic War. He writes, very striking
3:49 Tom Holland? fact that there were more Romans and Italians killed in one day of fighting at Cannae than Americans killed in combat during the whole Vietnam War.
3:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow. Yeah, that's a good fact.
3:59 Tom Holland? I mean, that's an amazing stat. And then Adrian Goldsworthy, who is essentially what my brother is to the Second World War, he is to the Roman army. I mean, he is the goat on this. And he wrote an excellent book on Cannae as well. And it has an introduction from Richard Holmes, you know, the great military historian. And Richard Holmes writes, the Romans lost more men killed than the British Army on the first day of the Somme in 1916. Which I guess for British people is always the kind of, it's the measuring stick of pointless slaughter, isn't it?
4:29 Dominic Sandbrook? But of course, those are Vietnam and the First World War, both industrialised conflicts. So the idea that a battle in the ancient world could have a scale of slaughter to rank alongside the conflicts of the modern age just seems extraordinary. But it's not the only reason why Cannae is such a famous battle, is it? It's also famous because, you know, for people who are great students of military tactics, this is like sort of Maradona's second goal against England in 1986, or one of Lionel Messi's great performances, a Roger Federer or something. It is the acme of perfection.
5:02 Tom Holland? Yeah, exactly. It is the absolute archetype of a vastly outnumbered force annihilating a much superior one. And it's for that reason, I think, as Greg Daly puts it in his book, that Cannae may be the most studied battle in history. Because obviously, if you can distil the elixir, if you can work out the formula that Hannibal applied, then hopefully you can, you can apply that to your own age and win similarly stunning victories. And, I mean, you'll know this, Dominic, as a student historian of the First World War, that First World War generals and strategists were obsessed by Cannae. So Schlieffen is the, is the kind of the famous example, that he was the chief of the German general staff, wasn't he?
5:47 Tom Holland? In kind of before the First World War, devised this, the Schlieffen Plan or Diddy. I mean, I know it's very controversial, but essentially the, the German High Command were aiming at a battle of annihilation that was consciously inspired by what Hannibal had done. And after the war, there was a collection of his essays published that just had the title Cannae. And then in the Second World War, on the eastern front, again, lots of Hitler's generals were obsessed with replicating Hannibal's tactics. So Guderian in particular, you know, with his tanks roaring across the eastern front. He was very inspired by the example of the Carthaginian cavalry at Cannae. And weirdly, Americans with German names were also obsessed.
6:29 Tom Holland? So Eisenhower was obsessed by it, and more recently Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the American forces in Desert Storm. He was always going on about how his tactics and strategy there were modeled on Hannibal.
6:41 Dominic Sandbrook? It's the kind of thing that I imagine that if I was to study at West Point. A man in a bow tie would talk about this battle for weeks.
6:50 Tom Holland? Firstly, talk about Thucydides.
6:51 Dominic Sandbrook? And then they'd have a guest, they'd have you as a guest lecturer or something, Tom. It'd be awful, it'd be soul destroying.
6:56 Tom Holland? Oh, what, for the listeners or for me?
6:57 Dominic Sandbrook? No, I mean, you'd, you'd be handsomely remunerated. But I, as the, as a student, I'd first have to endure the lecture by the man in the bow tie. And then you'd pitching up to give an hour long lecture and my life would be in ruins. Anyway, let's move on.
7:09 Tom Holland? This is an amazing subject because the thing is that there is a risk with viewing Cana as a kind of, you know, platonic ideal of a battle. Because if you abstract it, you get away from what actually makes the study of this battle of maybe all the battles in ancient history so compelling and so unsettling and actually terrifying. Because what both Daley and Goldsworthy do in their two, actually quite different books, but in one thing they're very similar. They really emphasise the physicality of warfare generally, but specifically in this battle. And it reminds us that Cana is a battle that is fought in the context of the much broader
7:54 Tom Holland? war that we've been talking about in this series between distinctive commanders, between distinctive armies, cities, ways of life. And the ancient sources, and you quoted Livy, but we have Polypius as well, we have Plutarch. They are unusually visceral in their accounts of what actually happens when these, you know, the Roman and the Carthaginian way of war comes up against each other in this great Titanic clash. And they evoke the dust, the stench, the terror, the horror, which even the victors on the, the day after the battle have kind of struck done by it. And I think that it's possible to evoke and make vivid in a way that is not true about
8:37 Tom Holland? other battles in antiquity, something of the lived experience of those who fought in it. So that's why it's so interesting.
8:44 Dominic Sandbrook? So we can immerse ourselves in a way that we can't with, with other battles.
8:47 Tom Holland? We can immerse ourselves in what it was like to be there.
8:51 Dominic Sandbrook? So before we get into the sort of the total immersion, as it were, let's give ourselves a little bit of context. So Hannibal, listeners will remember, had invaded Italy in autumn 218. This amazing journey across the Alps with his elephants that took two weeks, then down into the Valley of the Po. He had defeated a combined Roman army at the river Trebia.
9:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Then, six months or so later, the summer of 217, he had ambushed an entire Roman army near Lake Trasimene. That scene in The Defile, when all his men are up on the heights and they come pouring down. And they'd killed the consul, who was commander, the Pete Hecset of the Roman Republic, if you remember. He's been roaming around Southern Italy, around Campania, the Roman breadbasket, torching the estates of the Roman nobility. Since then, he has been on the eastern flank of Rome in Apulia. It's basically R and R for his men. They've been recharging their batteries, haven't they? So at this point, Tom, what does Hannibal want to do? What's his plan? To take the city of Rome, to destroy the Roman Republic?
9:58 Dominic Sandbrook? No, that's too ambitious for him. So what does he think he's going to plausibly do?
10:02 Tom Holland? I think that the Romans assume that his ambition is to wipe out Rome. But I think that they're projecting their own assumptions onto Hannibal there. I don't think Hannibal, well, we know this because later he signs treaties, say, with the King of Massaten. And he specifies what Rome's role will be in this. He's not saying that Rome is going to be wiped out. What he wants essentially is to destroy the alliance system in Italy that upholds Roman power. And it upholds it because it provides Rome with men. The whole way through this series, we've been talking, this is the key to Roman power. And Hannibal recognizes that. And his strategy is to try and kneecap Rome's prestige. And he wants to do that essentially by looting and pillaging her lands to demonstrate to everybody that the Romans can no longer defend their own lands.
10:46 Tom Holland? But above all, he wants to annihilate her armies repeatedly in battle. So that in the long run, the Romans will be forced to sue for terms. Because this is what people do in antiquity. The Carthaginians have been fighting wars for centuries and centuries. It's never been a war of total annihilation. It's always been about forcing your enemy to sue for terms. And then you arrive at a kind of compromise and everyone gets on with their lives. It's very Roman to assume that it's all or nothing. And this, I think, ultimately is what Hannibal doesn't understand. Perhaps he comes to the understanding of it over the course of his time in Italy. But at this point, he still thinks if he can only force the ultimate climactic battle, then he will be able to get the Italians to cast off their loyalty to Rome,
11:31 Tom Holland? to come over to him, and the Romans will be forced to sue for terms. And of course, this requires him To tread very delicately on Italian toes. So that's one of the reasons why, over the course of the winter, he moves camp so he doesn't outstay his welcome. And it's why, in the course of the summer of 218, he moves to a specifically Roman depot, a Roman entrepot, full of stores and arms, which is called Cannae. And he captures this town, all the kind of the material, the weapons, the provinda, the produce, that are stored there and now Hannibal's. It enables him to cut across Roman supply lines.
12:12 Tom Holland? It prompts the local Italians to start wavering in their loyalty to Rome, which is everything that Hannibal wants. But also, there is an additional advantage to it, which is that although Cannae stands on a slight ridge of hills, all around it, the land, and this is quite unusual for Italy, is completely flat. And because it's flat, this makes it perfect for cavalry. And cavalry is, in many ways, Hannibal's strongest arm, and it's the Romans' weakest arm. And so he's hoping, I think, to offer himself and his army as bait, and Cannae is the hook.
12:50 Dominic Sandbrook? So he wants to lure them into another battle, another pitched battle? Because basically, he thinks he's unbeatable in pitched battles, do you think?
12:57 Tom Holland? I think he's backing himself, I think, you know, backing himself all the way. But he, you know, also, he recognizes it's the only way he has any prospect of winning. I mean, he's right in that.
13:07 Dominic Sandbrook? He just has to beat them again, and again, and again, and again. All right. So what about the Romans? Are they going to take this trap? Because if, remember from last time, Fabius Maximus, who'd been serving as dictator, he'd been appointed for six months as sort of supreme magistrate, the man who makes the decisions in command of the Republic. He has been actually shying away from battle. I mean, his whole strategy has been wait and see, play the long game.
13:32 Tom Holland? Delaying.
13:33 Dominic Sandbrook? The Fabian strategy, right. You said last time that a lot of the Romans don't like this. They think it's un-Roman, they're losing patience. So have they now definitively run out of patience by the time Hannibal sets up his base at Cannae?
13:47 Tom Holland? Well, I think we said in the last episode, Fabius' strategy, you know, it's not a long-term one. It's all about giving the Republic time to recruit and to train and to arm enough men to... Provide an army that will be so overwhelming that Hannibal will be powerless to defeat it. And the emblem of the fact that the time of emergency is over and it's time to resume normal service and basically launch a war of destruction against the invader is the fact that when Fabius lays down his dictatorship, he's only dictator for six months, that's the legal restriction. There are new elections and two new consuls are elected and these
14:26 Tom Holland? consuls, certainly one of them has definitely been elected on a kind of let's defeat Hannibal and wipe him out in a battle ticket. And this is a guy called Gaius Terentius Varro. He is cast by both Polybius and Livy as being a bit like Flaminius, the guy who had lost the battle at Lake Trasimene. So he is cast as a kind of slightly maga figure. He's a novice homo, so he's someone from outside the mainstream, outside the conventional political elites. And according to Livy, he's actually the son of a butcher, which I think is improbable, probably reflects Livy's snobbery about people who rise above their station. Because clearly Varro is a very able politician. He actually comes
15:09 Tom Holland? top of the whole roster of people who are campaigning to be consul that year. And it means that the guy who subsequently comes to be elected as his colleague, a guy called Lucius Imilius Paulus, although he's from a very distinguished political dynasty, so much more of a conventional consul, he can't really pull rank because Varro does have the kind of weight of electoral achievement behind him. And it's this that enables Polybius and Livy to cast Varro as the guy who's really responsible for the whole strategy. So Polybius in particular casts him as being rash, as being incompetent, as being headstrong. And in part, I think this is because clearly Varro was, to a degree, I mean, as we will
15:52 Tom Holland? see. But it's also because Imilius Paulus, the other consul, is the grandfather of Polybius's Roman patron. Oh. So Polybius isn't really going to diss Paulus. And Polybius is keen to spare Paulus responsibility for this strategy. And Livy also plays it up, casting Paulus as a man who is very sensible, very balanced, very restrained. But I think that this is nonsense. So as with Trebia, I think that both consuls are absolutely set on forcing a battle. Because why else would they have raised their forces? Why else would they have marched against Hannibal? Why would they go against everything that is instinctual in the Roman cast of mind?
16:34 Tom Holland? And the reasons that they are set on this course is because they think if they don't wipe out Hannibal, then it absolutely does threaten their hold on Italy. But also, they feel it as a massive insult. The Romans do not want to be disrespected. And also, they know that if they defeat Hannibal, then that's it. Hannibal can't, you know, the Romans can survive endless defeats. Hannibal can't. One defeat for Hannibal and the war is over. So I think all of those reasons, you can see why they think that the Fabian strategy served its time, but now enough, let's crack on, let's do this.
17:12 Dominic Sandbrook? And they've had a long time to think about it. I mean, months and months have passed. They've had a long time to think about, okay, here is this guy with all his cavalry and whatnot, the Africans, the Gauls and stuff. How are we actually going to beat him? And Tom, have they dreamed up a new effective strategy?
17:30 Tom Holland? Well, we mentioned the Battle of the Somme, and I know that there's kind of revisionist takes on British First World War generals, but I think there is a slight element of, you know, the conventional idea that, oh, that didn't work, let's try it again, only with more men.
17:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, okay.
17:43 Tom Holland? That's basically what's happening. And the reason for that is because the ability to raise enormous numbers of men is what the Roman Republic is all about. And clearly, it's something that Hannibal can't do. So the aim is to just raise an army that is so vast that there is no prospect of it possibly losing. So what they do is, there are four legions already in the field. So there were the two legions that had been left in the field after late Transamin under the command of the consul who hadn't been wiped out, which Fabius had then taken over and he had then recruited two further legions. So that's four legions. And they have been sent off at the beginning of 218 to shadow Hannibal on the eastern side of the Apennines in Apulia. So they are already in situ.
18:28 Tom Holland? Paulus and Varro, the two new consuls, they then set about raising two new legions each, so another four in total. And they spend the early months of their consulship drilling them, training them, readying them for battle. Now, these legions are much larger than normal, so each one consists of 5,000 infantry, 300 cavalry. They also recruit an equal number of men from the Italian allies. So, mental maths, the total is about 80,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry. I mean, 80,000 infantry, I mean, that is an enormous number of men.
19:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, by any standards, let alone the standards of the ancient world.
19:05 Tom Holland? That's about twice the size of Villa Park.
19:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, my word, that's your standard. That is literally almost as many people as there are members of the Restus History Club.
19:14 Tom Holland? Yeah, that's a lot of people. Imagine them all being wiped out, that would be terrible.
19:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, awful. I mean, what a formidable force they would make. Let's be serious about it. This is now a force far bigger than anything Hannibal can command, right? So, they have good grounds for thinking, you know, no matter what the tactics, our army is now so enormous, there's no way Hannibal can beat us.
19:37 Tom Holland? Yeah, and this sense that the whole city is now going to war is enhanced by the fact that about a third of the Senate are serving in the army. And this sense that the Roman elites justify their status by their readiness to fight is very, very manifest in the roster of people going to war with Hannibal in 216. Fabius doesn't go, but his erstwhile master of horse, Minniscus Rufus, he goes, he's serving as a tribune. So are many others who have been consuls, so they have experience of command. They're all serving as tribunes, who are essentially the, the kind of the link men between the two consuls who are in command and the mass of the legions.
20:19 Tom Holland? You know, it's not just about the vastness of the manpower, it's also about the seasoned experience of the commanding officers. And these officers, for the first time in Roman history, swear a formal oath of service, what's called a sacramentum. And Livy gives us the terms of it, "Never to leave the field in order to save their own skins, nor to abandon their place in the line for any purpose other than to recover or fetch a weapon to strike an enemy or to save a friend." And this will establish a template for the oath that, you know, soldiers are swearing when they join the legions for centuries to come. It's all about fostering a sense of common purpose. That this really is the Roman people in arms,
21:00 Tom Holland? joined in a unity, in a kind of sense of determination that is shared by every class of person, by every age group. And I think this matters, not just for psychological reasons, but also because there is a slight problem with the sheer scale of the army, which is that it's not at all integrated. I mean, none of these legions have kind of really served with each other. So Varro and Paullus, they, you know, they each have their own two legions. Then you've got the four legions that are on a century north of Cannae. None of these legions have trained or still less campaigned together. And the consequence of that, of course, is that in a sense, the very size of the army
21:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
21:39 Tom Holland? becomes a source of potential weakness as well as of strength, because it's very ponderous, it's very muscle bound, it doesn't have the ability to do complicated maneuvers or anything like that. It can only do the most basic tactics. And Hannibal knows this, you know, his spies will be out there, he will be computing and working it out. And I think that that's why you have this incredible scene in late July, when at last the two consuls have joined the other four legions north of Cannae, and then they're advancing southwards towards Cannae, where Hannibal's army is. And the Carthaginians, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, seeing the Persians approach, they see great dust cloud kicking up, and then the glint of metal.
22:22 Tom Holland? And this army that is vast beyond their wildest imaginings. And it's not surprising that a lot of the Carthaginians feel quite nervous. And there's an anecdote that's recorded by Plutarch, and there's one of Hannibal's officers, a guy named Gisco, expressed himself astonished by the numbers of the enemy. Hannibal adopted a serious expression and said, "Yes, Gisco, but you are overlooking an even more astonishing fact." "And what is that?" asked Gisco. "Why?" answered Hannibal. "That in all that vast Roman army, there is no one called Gisco." Ah, ha, ha. And there is manly laughter.
23:04 Dominic Sandbrook? I actually genuinely don't get what he's talking about. What's his point?
23:08 Tom Holland? He's saying, okay, they have all these numbers, but they don't have anyone, you know, they don't have people of your caliber, Gisco. I am surrounded by people like you. We have the winning of this. And I think that that anecdote kind of sums up what seems to have been the mood, probably on both sides, which is a kind of mixture of nervousness and confidence of kind of hesitancy, but also a kind of relish for the big showdown, the World Cup final that is approaching. Everyone knows this is the big one. And I think that probably explains why battle isn't joined immediately. There's a certain degree of eyeballing. You know, it's the two heavyweight champions kind of standing on the weights and, you know, insulting each other and that kind of thing. So one will draw up battle lines,
23:53 Tom Holland? but the other won't respond. Then the other will do it. They're kind of maneuvering this way and that. And Polybius and Livy, when they look back at this, they say, oh, well, this is because a powerless is in command one day and he doesn't want to fight. And then Barrow is the next day and he's eager to fight. I don't think that's true. I think it's reflective of, you know, the mixture of anticipation and nervousness that is characteristic on both sides. They're kind of tensing themselves up. But it's perfectly clear there is going to be a battle because there's no way that either side can back down. And sure enough, Dominic, on the second of August 216, dawn sees the Romans taking up positions to offer
24:36 Tom Holland? battle and Hannibal rides out to a ridge, looks at it, gives the signal to his men, his general staff who are around him, says, yeah, let's go for this. And it becomes clear to the Romans that Hannibal is going to accept their offer of battle. The Battle of Cannae is about to begin.
24:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Tom, I am absolutely breathless with excitement. Come back after the break to find out what happens.
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26:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Welcome back to The Rest Is History. It is dawn on the 2nd of August 2016. And outside the tent of the Roman commander Varro, a red flag has been hoisted. The signal, Tom, that battle is about to begin. So paint the scene for us, please.
26:50 Tom Holland? So the senior Roman officers have already met for their briefing. And they've gone out to tell their men what the plan is. The two consuls, Pharaoh and Powerless, have emerged from their headquarters and they are wearing the traditional scarlet cloak that a consul wears on a day of battle. So this is not the Trebia where Hannibal had bounced the Romans into fighting without having breakfast. This time, the Romans have all breakfasted and then, leaving camp, they've been able to take up position on ground of their own generals' choosing. Now, it has always been a problem for us doing podcasts about battles. Firstly, that it's quite difficult to paint the scene on a podcast.
27:34 Tom Holland? And secondly, that sometimes we're not quite as interested in military disposition as we should be. However, this for me is an exception because this is the one battle that I've been obsessed by since I was very young. And I had a book by brilliant writer and artist called Pete Connolly. And he wrote a series, one on the Romans, one on the Greek armies. And then he wrote one called Hannibal and the Enemies of Rome, which I still have it right next to me as I sit here. And he did the illustrations for it as well as the writing the text. And his take was that, I'll set the scene. There is this very flat, featureless plain, but there are two natural features that determined where Connolly thinks the battle was fought. The first of these is a very winding river called the Alphidius, the course of which
28:19 Tom Holland? has changed over the course of time. But Connolly argues that it was about one and a half miles from a ridge of hills and Cannae sits on this ridge of hills. And so you have this stretch of open ground between the hills and the river Alphidius. And to quote Goldsworthy, who buys into Connolly's take on this, "The advantages of this position are obvious. The Romans were able to anchor one flank on the river and the other on the high ground near Cannae, making it impossible for the Carthaginian horse to envelop their line as they had at Trebia." So I hope that makes sense to the listeners. Right, that makes sense. That if you think the Romans come out and... On their left flank, you have a ridge of hills, and on their right flank, you have
29:03 Tom Holland? a river. And this means that it's harder for the Carthaginians to outflank them with their cavalry.
29:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, so they're stretched across the terrain, and they can't possibly be encircled.
29:12 Tom Holland? So there's a further advantage, which is that they're not staring into the sun, because they're essentially facing roughly southwards. There is one issue, which is that the wind is whipping up the dust. It's late July in southern Italy, so there's quite a lot of dust, and they're blowing it into their faces. But I think Varro clearly feels that the advantage of the position outweighs that. So his dispositions: infantry in the middle, as ever, Roman cavalry on his right wing, so that's next to the Arphidius, next to the river, and then the allied cavalry is on the left wing, which is next to the ridge of hills. And their role is purely defensive. They're always going to be outnumbered and out-fought by the Carthaginian horse. Their role is essentially to ensure that
29:56 Tom Holland? the line of infantry can't be attacked on the flanks. And this is really, really important, because the goal has to be that the infantry defeats the Carthaginian infantry before the Roman and Italian cavalry can be chased off. And it's the measure of how important this is that Varro himself takes up command of the allied cavalry, and Pallas leads the Roman cavalry. So, very, very important. But obviously, it's the infantry that the Romans are pinning their hopes on. And so we should probably just describe what they look like, how they're lined up, how they're armed, that kind of thing. Because these are not legions, not Roman soldiers of the kind that most people will be familiar with from Gladiator or whatever.
30:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
30:35 Tom Holland? This is from an earlier period. And essentially, the Roman infantry is lined up in four distinct ranks. So the first line consists of very lightly armed skirmishers, who are called velites. And Polybius specifies that these are the youngest and the poorest. He gives a very detailed account of how the Romans fought in battles. And very groovily, they would often wear wolf skin.
31:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, right. Yeah.
31:02 Tom Holland? You have your little spears, and you have your wolf skin, and... You form a screen in front of the main block of the heavy infantry and they form three lines. So the first line is a group called hastati. These are men in their late teens, early twenties. So they're young, they're full of vigour, but they're not as experienced as the next line of heavy infantry who are called the principes. So the chief men, these are guys who are in the prime of life. They're very fit, they're very strong, but they're also experienced. And then at the back, you have a line called the triarii, who are the veterans. Now, how are these heavy infantry armed is quite important for understanding the battle to get a sense of this. All the heavy infantry have very heavy, kind of
31:46 Tom Holland? large oblong shields which are held up with the left arm. So that's quite a strain on the arm over the course of a long day. They might have a kind of small oblong plate on their chest, the pectorale, or if they can afford it, chain mail, and they're armed with the Spanish stabbing sword. So the sword that opens up the guts of the person that you're fighting with, you know, if you can get a clear stab at him. So the front two ranks, so that's the hastati and the principes, they also have two javelins. And I'll just quote Goldsworthy on this because lots of people listening to this have a sense that these javelins, the pilar, the legionaries throw them and they then have a kind of bendy
32:28 Tom Holland? head. It's meant to stick in the enemy's shield and that droops down. This is not true. I'll read Goldsworthy on how these javelins work. "All of the weapon's weight was concentrated behind the small tip, giving it great penetrative power. The length of the metal shank gave it the reach to punch through an enemy's shield and still go on to wound his body. But even if it failed to do so and merely stuck in the shield, it was very difficult to pull free and might force the man to discard his weighed-down shield and fight unprotected." So basically, you don't need the head to bend. I mean, it's, you know, it's a massive problem if you've got a great spear stuck in your shield. You have to throw it away and then the guy can come up with his gladius and slice your stomach open. So very bad news. The third rank, so this is the veterans, the triarii,
33:10 Tom Holland? they have very long thrusting spears and they essentially are reserved. Should the the first two ranks break, then they will form a kind of porcupine, a defensive screen, bristling with spears. I'm aware that that might all sound rather complicated, but the aim of it is to enable fresh units constantly to be filtered up to the front. So that if one line gets kind of annihilated or loses energy or whatever, then they can easily be replaced. And what gives the Roman line its flexibility is that there are kind of gaps built into the the battle formations. The Roman lines are subdivided into units called maniples. And if people think of maybe a checkerboard or on a die, a five,
33:55 Tom Holland? just lots and lots of those kind of fives that you get on on dice, all in a row. You have a manipel, then you have a gap equivalent in length to the length of a manipel. Then you have another manipel and then you have another row behind it, but the manipel is behind it is filling in the gap. But essentially, it means that you can constantly thread people through the gaps and move people up to fill gaps. Can I? The depth of the maniples, it's on a stupefying scale. So it's perhaps five or six men across. And then you think if you're standing in that line, then next to you, there's a gap that's equivalent to five or six men. And then another five or six men, and then another gap, and then another five or six men, and then another gap. And then standing behind you, you have maybe, it's maybe 30 deep.
34:40 Tom Holland? Okay. So when you put all the maniples together, the battle line is maybe 70 ranks deep. So completely terrifying for the enemy. I mean, to be to be up against a line a mile and a half long that is that deep. But there's also an additional advantage from the Roman point of view, which is bear in mind how raw many of the Roman recruits are. If you have lines that are that deep and you put your best, most seasoned men in the front and the others at the rear, it's very difficult.
35:11 Tom Holland? For for raw nervous recruits, you might want to run away to do that because you're surrounded by people. There's no way you can escape. And so essentially, it's a way of kind of getting over the fact that perhaps these aren't the best trained troops that you could possibly have.
35:28 Dominic Sandbrook? So from your description, it sounds like an extremely meticulously devised, well ordered, formidable military machine. But is there an argument that the sheer size and complexity of this system means that it's frankly, a bit lumbering and a bit over complicated and and that Hannibal can actually exploit this?
35:53 Tom Holland? I think that you have seized on the weakness that Hannibal seizes on, Dominic.
35:56 Dominic Sandbrook? We're very similar people, to be fair.
35:58 Tom Holland? I think that's exactly the problem with it. The kind of the manipulative system, which normally enables a Roman battle line to be very flexible. These maniples are so deep that actually it's quite difficult and that there's a risk of them crunching up against one another, in which case the flexibility would be completely lost. And and I think Hannibal's aim is to try and apply pressure where it will force the sheer numbers of the Roman legions to come crunching into one another. And in which case, its size, rather than being an advantage, then becomes a source of weakness.
36:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
36:32 Tom Holland? But it's a hugely difficult thing to pull off. So the Roman plan basically is just to kind of advance and steamroll the enemy. Hannibal's dispositions are much more complicated. As usual, like the Romans have done, he stations his infantry in the centre and his cavalry on the wings. He has Mahabul, who's in command of the Namidian Light Cavalry, on the right wing. So he is facing the allied cavalry commanded by Varro. On the left wing, so facing Paoless and the Roman cavalry, he's put the Spanish and Gallic heavy cavalry under the command of another very seasoned officer called inevitably Hazdrabal. So this isn't Hazdrabal the handsome, it's not Hazdrabal, who's Hannibal's brother, it's another Hazdrabal.
37:13 Dominic Sandbrook? I just assume they're all called Hazdrabal, to be honest with you.
37:16 Tom Holland? Yeah, pretty much. And Hazdrabal is in command of about 7,000 men, so. He is outnumbering the Roman cavalry under Pallas about three to one. So that is where the Carthaginians have the advantage. But obviously, when it comes to infantry, that is a very different story because the Carthaginians there are massively outnumbered. However, fortunately for Hannibal, he has a plan and it's a very cunning plan. So what he does is he draws up his Spanish and Gallic heavy infantry in a continuous line facing the Romans, so stretching for almost a mile and a half. And compared to the Romans, this Carthaginian battle line is very, very slender. Hannibal stations himself and Mago, his younger brother, in the centre of the line.
38:01 Tom Holland? And he then leads the centre of the line outwards towards the Roman lines. So the effect is to create a kind of crescent. You know, the line starts to bulge outwards towards the Roman centre. Hannibal's aim in doing this is to ensure that the Roman effort will be kind of focused on the middle of the plain. And the reason that he does this is because he knows that this is how the legions fight, that they, their aim is always to push through the middle of their enemy's battle line. If they do that, then they will inevitably break through the Carthaginian line because it's so thin relative to the Romans. At the Trebia, the Romans had done that and Hannibal hadn't been able to stop them then
38:47 Tom Holland? from kind of marching off and doing what they wanted. But this time at Cannae, he has planned for this eventuality. So he is assuming that in the long run, the Roman line will break through the Spaniards and the Gauls. And he has kept back the Libyans, who are like a kind of phalanx, great long spears, and equipped with Roman arms and Roman armour. So they actually look quite like the legionaries. And these are Hannibal's best, most disciplined troops. And he has stationed them behind the front line. And at an angle to it, so that if you imagine the Romans break through the line of the Spaniards and Gauls, the Libyans are like a pair of pincers, ready to close
39:29 Tom Holland? in. So the Romans will think that they've broken through, they go rushing forwards, the Libyans will close in and capture them on their flanks. I mean, that is a difficult manoeuvre to pull off. But obviously, if it does work, then potentially, it's going to be very, very devastating in its effect.
39:46 Dominic Sandbrook? So just to try and get our heads around this, what effectively he's doing, he's not exactly sacrificing his frontline, but he's assuming that his frontline will break.
39:55 Tom Holland? Yeah.
39:55 Dominic Sandbrook? The Romans will break through, and his whole plan is that the Romans will break through.
40:00 Tom Holland? Yeah.
40:00 Dominic Sandbrook? And then he's got these Libyans behind, who will pour into the Roman flanks.
40:04 Tom Holland? Like the jaws of a mouth, with sharp teeth.
40:07 Dominic Sandbrook? The downside is that you don't want to be the people in the front line.
40:10 Tom Holland? Right.
40:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Because he's basically decided you're expendable.
40:12 Tom Holland? Yeah, but Hannibal has placed himself there.
40:14 Dominic Sandbrook? But he's assuming that he will be, well, the Romans will just rush past him, or that he will fall back.
40:19 Tom Holland? He's, again, backing himself, which is what he always does, that he will be able to inspire the men who are very, very loyal to him in the front row to fight as hard as possible.
40:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
40:28 Tom Holland? But it's accepted that at some point, it will break, and then he has to hope that the Libyans will be able to play the role that he's assigned them. It's a dangerous, complicated plan, but it is a plan. And of course, the other factor is that if the Libyans are able to seal the broken line and the front, you also have the cavalry in the rear, who can then come up, if they've swept away the Roman and Italian cavalry, they can then come galloping round and crash into the rear of the Roman army, and then you will have the whole army surrounded. And this has always been kind of Hannibal's, you know, dream. This is what he wants, and he will have his battle of annihilation. But as I say, it's a complicated plan. So let's see what happens and see how it works
41:11 Tom Holland? out. So, the battle lines are drawn up, and I think there's always this sense of nervous anticipation before it happens. There's lots of manoeuvring, there's kind of blasting of trumpets, and then you just wait, and you can imagine, you know, it's getting hotter, the sun is rising in the sky, the shields are starting to feel heavier on the arm, sweat round, you know, as you hold your spears or whatever. I mean, very, very nerve wracking. Because it's nerve wracking, ultimately, the time comes where people think, oh. Hang this, let's get on with it. And the people who begin are the skirmishers. The Carthaginians again are outnumbered, but they are much, much more proficient than the Velites, the Roman skirmishers in their wolf clothes and stuff.
41:52 Tom Holland? And in particular, the Baleric slingers, my favourite, are absolutely lethal. So they have a much longer range than the Velites do with their little spears. They're very accurate. The slingshot is coming out, you know, you've got all this dust blowing up. Very difficult to see the slingshot as it comes. If it hits you on the helmet, it is possible to kind of knock you out. And so understandably, the Roman infantry decide, well, we don't want this. You know, get rid of the Velites. The Velites withdraw. This is Daley Syri, I think he's right. They go right the way back behind the full line of the Roman heavy infantry. And this then means that the front line of the Roman heavy infantry are in a position to advance. This is what's been going on in the opening manoeuvres of the battle.
42:34 Tom Holland? Meanwhile, you've got the cavalry and on the banks of the Ophidius, the river, which is where Hazrebul's Spanish and Gallic heavy cavalry are facing Pallas's Roman horse. It is all kicking off. And the Carthaginians, even as the skirmishers are still doing their stuff with their javelins and their slingshot and stuff, the Carthaginian cavalry are haring towards the Romans. They just pile into Pallas and his men. And there's a story in Plutarch that Pallas is wounded, that he has to dismount, that all his officers around him think, oh, well, he's doing it, we'd better do it. They dismount and then the whole Roman force dismounts. And it may be that this is a kind of an attempt by the Romans to explain why it is that the Roman horse put up such a weak show.
43:19 Tom Holland? Anyway, they are absolutely swept away. They have not managed to put up a fight at all. Pallas is able to clamber his way into the main body of the infantry. So he, you know, is able to survive this route. But I mean, it's very poor on the part of the Roman horse and brilliant for Hazrebul and his men, who have swept the Roman flank clear. And Hazrebul does not do a Prince Rupert. So he doesn't go haring off after the Roman cavalry. He wheels round and he looks at the state of battle and what he decides to do, we will come to in due course. Because meanwhile, in the main field of battle, where the two great blocks of infantry are facing one another. Clash point is happening.
44:04 Dominic Sandbrook? So what's going on with the infantry?
44:05 Tom Holland? So the Roman young men, but probably the best, the most seasoned, the most proficient in fighting, have been stationed in the front rank. They are smashing their weapons on their wooden shields, you know, kind of terrifying counterpart to this great nodding crests that they have on their helmets. You know, their armour is brilliantly polished. And on the other side, you have the Spaniards and the Gauls, they are holding their position. Remember the front of the bulge, very, very close to the Roman line. They're raising their own war cries. The Gallic war cries in particular notorious. They also have their, you know, these trumpets, the karnics, terrifying din. And this is an age where people generally are not used to loud noise in the way that we are in the 21st century.
44:50 Tom Holland? So the din of the, you know, is overwhelming.
44:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
44:53 Tom Holland? And so it's not surprising that the moment that the skirmishers are out of the way, the Romans charge. They're thinking, you know, let's get this over and done with. The sooner this is done, the better for all concerned. So the Hasta, they advance, the front ranks, probably the front two or three, because, you know, they don't want to start hitting their own men with javelins. They hurl them. The effect of this is less effective than normal because effectively they, you know, because of the bulge of the Carthaginian line, they can't actually reach most of the Carthaginian front line with their, with their spears. And then they, they charge and the hope is that they will be able to break the enemy so that they just go running away and then the killing can start. But this doesn't happen. The Spaniards and Gauls hold their positions, partly because they're very seasoned veterans
45:38 Tom Holland? by this point, partly because Hannibal and Mago is there with them in the front rank, and partly because they just hate the Romans. And probably they trust in Hannibal that, that his strategy is going to work and that they're going to have their vengeance. They understand also how important a role that they have, how important it is that they maintain their position for as long as they possibly can. And Daley in his book explains why. It was absolutely necessary for the peculiar crescent formation to be maintained, so that the thin horns of the crescent, so that's the two flanks, would be kept out of the fighting for as long as possible, because if the troops there broke early in the battle, the entire Carthaginian plan would collapse. So in other words, it's
46:20 Tom Holland? vital for Hannibal that the Roman forces are funneled into the centre, so that they can go into the kind of the mouth of these two Libyan jaws that are waiting to snap shut on them. It's a very kind of grinding clash. It's kind of man on man. And effectively, the whole line is this kind of series of duels between Gauls and Spaniards against Romans. The Romans and the Spaniards are both armed with stabbing swords, so they're both aiming, you know, they're aiming at the abdomen. The Gauls have slashing swords, so they're aiming at the shoulders. And most of the wounds, because both sides have shields, are probably to parts of the body that are protected by either the shield or by armour.
47:05 Tom Holland? So that's heads, legs, sword arms. If you get too many wounds on your leg, or your arm, or to your head, then obviously you start to weaken. You might lose your balance, your ability to continue fighting, you might fall to the ground. And the moment you fall to the ground, that's it. You're dead. You know, it's going to be a blow to your head. Or just trampled underfoot. Trampled underfoot. And of course, the more bodies are trampled underfoot, the more they rise, the more slippery the ground becomes, because blood is starting to spill out and, you know, moisten the dust that is everywhere. And you have exhaustion as well, because the sun is rising higher and higher in the sky, you've got the dust blowing in. And the estimate is that men can't really fight in this way for more than 15 minutes
47:49 Tom Holland? at a stretch. So the lines, you want to think of it, the lines are kind of engaging, then withdrawing, engaging, then withdrawing.
47:57 Tom Holland? Kind of almost the rhythm of a really brutal sporting encounter, I guess.
48:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
48:00 Tom Holland? You know, very intense moments of engagement and then the players withdraw and kind of draw their breath and then back in again. And just physically relentless and demanding. But the advantage of the Roman manipulator system is that people, you know, men who've just become too tired or too wounded can be withdrawn and they can funnel more people forward. So there is this kind of relentless sense of fresh men coming to the front line. And so it's unsurprising that as the fighting goes on, although the Gauls and Spaniards fight with the utmost ferocity and implacability, the Roman weight of numbers does start to tell. And as the Roman front line grinds forward, the crescent that the Gauls and the Spaniards
48:44 Tom Holland? have formed starts to flatten and then to buckle and to be pushed backwards. And the Romans in the centre give a great cheer, they consent victory, they push forwards, space opens up behind them as they do so, more troops come filling in to fill the gap. The order of the maniples starts to be lost. It's a great excited crush because everyone wants to share in the victory. Cries of joy, of triumph, kind of rippling through the entire Roman battle line. The feeling is absolutely that the battle is won, but of course Hannibal still has his two deadly cards to play. And as the Gauls and Spaniards retreat, space has opened up for the Libyans, who are hitherto
49:27 Tom Holland? been held in reserve, to crash into the flanks of the advancing Romans. And it happens exactly as Hannibal has planned. I mean, it couldn't go better because by now the Romans are so tightly packed that they haven't got any opportunity to manoeuvre and in fact it's quite difficult for them even to kind of, you know, raise their sword arms. And you just have this kind of great scrum of men who are being slowly crushed together by the Libyan phalanxes to their left and to their right. And ahead of them, the Gauls and the Spaniards who had been retreating, you know, they get a second win, they sense that the balance of the battle has changed. They turn around, they block the Roman advance.
50:09 Tom Holland? And the absolute horror for the Romans is that one minute they think they're winning, the battle is won, and then suddenly they find themselves surrounded on three sides by... People who are not fleeing at all, and the Libyans are completely fresh. And more than that, they actually look like Romans. So it must have come as a massive surprise for the Romans to suddenly find them crashing into them. So a horrible situation.
50:35 Dominic Sandbrook? And the Romans didn't anticipate this at all. I mean, you would think that practised commanders would see the crescent shape and they would think, well, the one thing we don't want to happen is for our boys to be enveloped by the flanks of this crescent. And yet they've walked straight into it.
50:48 Tom Holland? Because they're trusting their weight of numbers, because that's how they fight, because they're not geniuses like Hannibal, because the men that they have are not seasoned. They can't kind of think on their feet. They're not practised at manoeuvring. And that, of course, is the mark of Hannibal's genius, is that he, you know, he's exploiting all of that. And he's like a judo thrower, turning his enemy's strength into a weakness.
51:11 Dominic Sandbrook? And you said he had two cards to play. He's played one, which was the Libyans. Now, the second, of course, you mentioned it before, Hazdrabul and the heavy cavalry. As you said, they haven't gone shooting off.
51:23 Tom Holland? No.
51:24 Dominic Sandbrook? They now return to the fray, don't they?
51:25 Tom Holland? People may remember that they've swept away Paus, who has gone to join the main body of the infantry. The rest of the Roman cavalry have been swept away from the battlefield. So what Hazdrabul does is he then turns around the length of the Roman infantry to go to the other wing, where the Namidians under Mahabul have been having a standoff with the Italians under Varro. Because the Namidians are light, they don't want to engage with the Italian cavalry. But now suddenly Hazdrabul and his heavy cavalry come sweeping up. The Italians are swept away again. Varro is swept away with them, so he's gone from the scene of the battle. He survives, but he's now gone.
52:05 Tom Holland? This means that Hazdrabul and his heavy cavalry can now crash into the rear of the Roman infantry. And the likelihood is, the infantry in the rear of the Roman battle line are not the seasoned veterans with their long spears, who could have formed a phalanx and kept the cavalry away, but the velates, the skirmishers with their wolf skins. And there is nothing that they can do against heavy cavalry. So in that description by Livy, you read of the battlefield, the day after the battle, there was an account of men lying there, whose tendons had been sliced and who can't move. And this, I think, is what Hasdrubal's cavalry are doing. As they gallop in, if they can't kill someone, they just slice the tendons and leave them there to exsanguinate, to, you know, the blood to spill out.
52:50 Tom Holland? And then they start crashing forwards and the press of Romans trying to withdraw pushes back in and the whole Roman army now is surrounded. You've got the Gauls and the Spaniards on the front, you've got the Libyans on the flanks, you've got Hasdrubal's cavalry in the rear. The process of annihilation is now set in train and it takes Hannibal's men many hours. And it must have been a hideous experience for everyone. I mean, completely exhausting, even for Hannibal's men. You know, their shields are heavy, their sword arms are starting to ache, they're drenched in sweat, lots of them are wounded. And I imagine that as the battle goes on, so the kind of the pauses between the bouts of combat go longer and longer.
53:35 Tom Holland? And for the Romans trapped inside, I mean, this just must have been. And we're talking about tens of thousands of men. Tens of thousands. So some of them managed to escape. You know, there were kind of gaps in the Carthaginian line, they can get out. Some of the Italian allies surrender and that's fine. You know, Hannibal's policy is absolutely to accept their surrender. But the Romans though, you know, they, most of them stand their ground. A refusal to submit is the essence of what being a Roman is. It's the quality that's most admired in the Republic. And I think it's hard to overemphasize the horror of their fate, the physical crush, the panic and the certainty of approaching death. Because if you're in the centre of this kind of great crush of men, imagine, you know, you don't really know what's happening and then the news comes to you about what's happened.
54:19 Tom Holland? You're stuck there, waiting for the Carthaginian swords and spears to reach you. I mean, just hideous. People start to void their bowels, to urinate with terror, to vomit. Piles of corpses are starting to to rise. The sun is high in the sky, so they're starting to smell. It's drifting across the battlefield. Death from the air, slingshot is starting to rain down again. You've still got this blinding dust and blood just everywhere, drenching it. I mean, it's like wading through a sea of blood and viscera. And I think the trauma of it is most grotesquely and unsettlingly illustrated in that passage that you opened this episode with.
55:02 Tom Holland? People may remember that Livy reports how the day after the Carthaginians inspect the battlefield and they find among the Roman dead, some with their heads buried in the ground. I mean, I can't believe that's true, but if it is, then it's either kind of suicide or an attempt to hide from the horrors of the battle. And the fact that Livy records it, I mean, it must have been a story that was current at the time and therefore surely reflective of the scale of the horror. And by the end of the day, upwards of, you know, I mean, tens of thousands of Romans are dead.
55:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, just looking at the estimates, between 50 and 70,000 men probably were killed. I mean, just absolutely massacred where they stood. And, you know, for Hannibal, this must be a victory beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, just a staggering success, a vindication of his tactics, of his approach. He has absolutely annihilated this Roman army and brought the Romans to their lowest ebb.
55:58 Tom Holland? I mean, I think you could say it's the most astonishing, the most remarkable victory that any general had ever won in history. And that is why it continues to be studied and admired by military strategists to this day. And you can't say that of any other ancient battle. It's, it has a kind of perfection, a terrifying perfection about it.
56:20 Dominic Sandbrook? And yet he hasn't won the war. Because the question now is, what will the Romans do? Will they sue for peace? You know, where does he go from here? Does he march on Rome? Does he try to destroy the Republic? Or have the Romans got one more comeback left in them, Tom?
56:36 Tom Holland? Do you know, Dominic? We are going to leave that question as a cliffhanger. We are going to end our series on the rise of Hannibal at this point. Hannibal has attained the absolute pinnacle of everything he could have dreamed of. But as you say, there is still the fact that Rome is not yet defeated. Should Hannibal march on Rome? What's going to happen? And we will hopefully answer those questions with a third series, which will take the story forwards. And that series as well will end on a terrible note.
57:09 Dominic Sandbrook? We love a terrible note on The Rest Is History. We also like to torment and tantalise our listeners by leaving them hanging at the end of series. And that's what we've done.
57:16 Tom Holland? We've had season one, we've had season two, season three will be coming.
57:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Brilliant. So next week, we will be back with something very different. We'll still be in Italy, but we will be in the golden age of Renaissance Florence for the story of the Medici. But Tom, thank you so much for that. A blood-curdling tour de force, I think it's fair to say. And never has there been so much dust in a Rest Is History podcast.
57:37 Tom Holland? Dust and blood.
57:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Dust and blood, we love it. On that, Paul Michelle, thank you very much and goodbye, everybody.
57:41 Tom Holland? Bye bye.
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