Battle of Cannes

Ancient sources

As on the whole of the Punic Wars, one has Roman sources primarily. The principal authors are Polybe and Tite-Live. The first is a Greek hostage in Rome, between 166 av. J. - C. and 149 av. J. - C., alive in the people Aemilia, which counts prestigious generals, such as Paul Emile the Macedonian (the winner of Pydna), and Scipion Émilien of which he becomes the friend. This same Scipion is the small son of the consul Aemilius Paulus present in Cannes. It thus has first hand, but potentially partial information. Although cold and rigorous in its work, it can be suspecté to reject the fault of the defeat of the father of its host in Rome, on Varron, either following its hosts, or by clientelism.

Tite-Live him is made the echo of the tradition. Savagely anti-plebeian, it overpowers Varron.

Context

Roman disasters of the beginning of the second Punic War

After their defeats of the Tessin, Trébie and especially of the lake Trasimène, the Romans had adopted a policy of temporization implemented by the dictator Fabius Maximus, said Cunctator (" Temporisateur") for this reason.

Hannibal, slowly weakened by the war of attrition carried out by the dictator, seeks to engage a battle arranged against the Roman forces. It settles in the south of Italy where it has allies, and confines in Capoue, famous in all Italy for its splendor. He thus hopes to cause the Romans and to force them to fight in plain, where it is ready to use his excellent cavalry.

The countryside which leads to Cannes

Roman side, one prepares the following elections and, on bottom of conflict between the Plèbe and the Patriciens, the Consul S are elected. Paul Emile as Varron is in favor of a battle putting quickly fine at the war, under the pressure of their voters. Tite-Live announces that the wait and see tactics started to pay and that the Carthaginian army was almost with end of vivres and had the greatest difficulties of being supplied. It is Varron which orders from Cannes. Its confrontation with the military engineering of Hannibal gives a traditional example of battle (with the clean direction, i.e. he is still studied in the military academies) and shows the limits of the Roman legions.

The Consul S being elected each year, they did not have time to be formed with the military command. Rome had thus set up a tested and simple tactic, where the success of the battle rested little on the value of the general and primarily on the discipline and the value of the Roman soldiers, who were citizens and defended their goods.

Involved armies

Roman tactic

The battle of Cannes (today Cane della Battaglia ) proceeds indeed near Aufide in Apulie with a few tens of kilometers of the first colony S Romans. The provision of the troops was always the following one:

the Roman legions in the center: being best equipped, they constitute the strong point of the device;
allied legions flanking them on the right and on the left: being less better equipped, they form a weak point;
and cavalry, flanking the whole and protecting the wings.

Inside the legions, the troops were laid out in three lines, of age and increasing equipment. There still, the legions being made up citizens paying their equipment, the young people and the poor had a light armament, whereas oldest and the easy citizens were well armoured. The rich person being able to treat to a horse formed the cavalry. During the battle, after a harassing of the adversary by light troops, the first line advanced to insert the enemy lines. If it were pushed back, it moved back in good order behind the third line and it is the second which took over.

Course of the battle

The battle of Cannes remains in the military history the first battle known as “of extermination”. It will inspire by many war leaders because its plan is perfectly known for us.

Hannibal, which is in numerical inferiority in a ratio of 1 per 2 as regards the infantry, has a major asset: the cavalry numide which it will use with genius. The Consul S Varron and Paul Emile direct the Roman army (which at the time is not that a troop of citizens out of weapons) and forms an immense rectangle of approximately 80.000 men (8 legions) which moves in order. Hannibal opposes only one line of infantrymen to this mass. On the two wings, Hannibal lays out its cavalry. The wing of the Gallic cavalry will aim to maintain the cavalry Roman while the other wing takes the Romans with reverse.

The stroke of genius of the Carthaginian will be to lay out a line much longer than the Roman rectangle, then to cause the contact between its lines and the first line of the Roman army and finally to make move back the center of its line in such a way that its infantrymen form a clipper around the Romans whose only first line remains in contact. The cavalry numide arrives then by the back of the Romaine army and causes one of the greatest massacres of Antiquity.

The Romans, contained by the Celts and the Spaniards with front, attacked by the frightening Carthaginian heavy infantry on the sides and responsible by behind by the victorious cavalry for Hannibal are little by little reduced in a pocket in which they are locked up. Caius Terentius Varro not having more reserve sees its army massacred in a few hours in a blood bath which will explain the eagerness of the Romans to reduce Carthage to the foundations.

Assessment

The figures proposed by Tite-Live and Polybe vary slightly. According to Tite-Live ( Roman History XXII-49):

The losses with 45 are quantified; 000 infantrymen and 2 700 riders, citizens and combined of about equal number; among them, two questeurs of the consuls Lucius Atilius and Lucius Furius Bibaculus, 29 military powerful orators, former consuls, former praetors or municipal officials, amongst other things Gnaeus Servilius Geminius and Minucius which had been Master of cavalry the previous year and consul a few years earlier; moreover, 80 senators or magistrates having the rank of senators: enlisted voluntary they were useful like privates in the legions. It is said that there was 3 000 prisoners among the infantrymen and 1 500 among the riders.

In addition, according to Polybe, regarded by the majority of the historians as more impartial than Tite-Live, 10 000 Romans were captured, and close to 53 000 perished with the combat. Still according to Polybe, close to 5 500 Romains riders fell under the blows from the Carthaginians.

The consul Paul Emile also finds death with the combat, but Varron manages to escape, with the head of a little more than 70 riders.

Hannibal draws some with 6 000 killed. Among those appear 4 500 Celts. It is them which have, being in the center, contents large Roman forces.

Effects on the continuation of the war

At the conclusion of the battle, the road of Rome was opened and the Carthaginian army could have seized Rome which did not expect a defeat at this time. But Hannibal would have decided to put back its army this night. According to the legend, one of the generals of Hannibal, Hasdrubal, would have declared on this occasion: " Hannibal, you can gain battle but you cannot gain a war! "

Rome should have required peace, but the Romans asked it only after one victory: Rome refused for example to repurchase its prisoners (500 sums of money for the riders, 300 for the infantrymen and 100 for the slaves). It took again its tactic of temporization and patiently reconquered the lost ground. Hannibal then occupied during more than ten years the South of Italy, before being recalled in Africa in 203 av. J. - C. Beaucoup think that Hannibal, in spite of its crushing victory, had a too weak army to besiege Rome, which caused its fold in Italy of the South. However, some stress that the strategy of Hannibal rested on the destruction of the capacity of Rome by depriving it of allies, and was not the fall of Rome as a city. According to them, Hannibal thus did not take Rome by choice, and not because it of it was not able.

As underlined it Richard Mr. Swain, “the victory of Hannibal to Cannes, although it was a chief of work of tactic, did not produce strategic success. Hannibal lost the war against Rome. ”.

Influence on the art of the war

The battle of Cannes is studied still today in the military academies. The general Schlieffen was largely inspired some in his famous supposed plan to ensure the victory Germany during the First World War, plan taken again at the time of the Second world war by Guderian and Erich von Manstein and concluded with the victory of Germany over France in 1940.

Following the example Hannibal, which retained the Roman army with its troops for better encircling its enemies, the German troops retained the French forces close to the Rhine while the other part of the army of Schlieffen tried to encircle the French Army. Indeed, attracted in the Belgian trap, best the armed allied ones advanced while the German armoured tanks carrying out a Coup of sickle attacked them in their back.

The battle of Cannes was also used as example with the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 1991.

See too

External bonds

animated Chart and comments of the battle of Cannes

Bibliography on the subject

Yvan Bohec. military History of the Punic Wars. Editions of the Rock, 1996

Sources of the article

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