Post

Cannae, 2 August 216 BC. I had eighty-six thousand Romans in a flat field on the Aufidius River, and forty thousand Carthaginians, Gauls, and Iberians. They had three times my numbers. I won by destroying all but fourteen thousand of them in an afternoon.

The mechanism was the double envelopment. I placed my weakest troops — the Gauls and Spanish infantry — in the centre and bent the line forward into a convex arc facing the Romans. My Africans and cavalry held the wings. The Romans did what Romans always did: they pressed forward against the centre, pushing the Gauls and Spanish backward. The line bent inward. The Romans packed tighter, pressing harder. By the time they realised the African infantry on both wings had pivoted to close behind them, they were surrounded and so compressed they could barely raise their arms to fight.

Sixty to seventy thousand Romans died before sunset. The senate debated whether Rome should surrender. It did not. I had defeated Rome's armies but not Rome's will. This distinction cost me everything.