B005GG0JPO EBOK

by Strauss, Barry

  Hannibal could have offered another olive branch but it is doubtful that the Senate would have taken it. The war often defied expectations. Just as Hannibal surprised the Romans at Trasimene by not fighting fair—by laying a trap instead of coming out in the open—so the Romans surprised Hannibal after Cannae. According to the unwritten rules of the day, if its armies lost battle after battle, a state was supposed to surrender. Instead, Rome fought on.

  After the fighting ended at Cannae on August 2, Hannibal’s officers surrounded him with congratulations. Most of them called for a well-deserved rest, but not Maharbal, Hannibal’s commander of cavalry: he advised an immediate attack on Rome. In five days, he said, Hannibal could be dining on the Capitol, Rome’s citadel. Maharbal offered to go first, with his horsemen. Hannibal declined. It was not so easy a thing to do, he said, and besides, he needed time to reflect. Maharbal is supposed to have replied, “Truly, the gods have not given all their gifts to the same man.” You know how to be the victor, Hannibal, but not how to use your victory.” The famous Latin saying is: “Vincere scis, Hannibal, victoria uti nescis.”

  A Roman writer comments, “It is widely believed that the day’s delay was the salvation of the City and the Empire.” The story of Maharbal’s criticism probably goes all the way back to men who lived through the Second Punic War, which should add weight to it. But today, most historians side with Hannibal. They point out that Rome was located 235 miles (380 kilometers) from Cannae, so marching the army to the Capitol would have taken weeks—not four days. By that time, Rome could have organized its defense.

  Rome was protected by thick walls nearly seven miles long and boasted a state-of-the-art system of towers, trenches, and, on the town side, an earth-filled platform for the defenders. The walls enclosed an area of one and a half square miles.

  Unless traitors opened Rome’s gates, Hannibal would have had to take the city either by storming the walls or by laying siege to the city and starving it out. Storming the walls would have required siege engines, which would have taken weeks or more to construct. Besieging Rome would have meant surrounding it with trenches and a palisade, no small undertaking.

  If Hannibal really expected the Romans to negotiate after Cannae, he showed bad judgment. He didn’t know his enemy. But by failing to build on the battle’s momentum by attacking Rome, he showed poor strategy and weak leadership.

  What If?

  If Hannibal had decided to go for Rome after Cannae, the cavalry could have pushed ahead. By riding hard, Maharbal and his horsemen could have reached Rome in a week or so—“five days” was an exaggeration. Still, the news of Cannae would barely have arrived and suddenly Rome would have seen the enemy at the gates. Fear and alarm would have followed. And then, Hannibal and his army would have joined the cavalry. A forced march could have gotten them to Rome in as little as two weeks.

  It’s not likely that Rome would have agreed to negotiate, but fear might have spread to cities in the vicinity. Hannibal might have increased the pressure on the Romans to come out and fight. And he might have tipped some of Rome’s allies in central Italy over the edge and into his arms. Some of those cities did waver as the war dragged on, and Hannibal’s presence might have made the difference.

  Still, it is fair to ask: What if Rome hung on? Hannibal would probably have been unable to take the city by storm, because Rome’s walls were too strong. What if he settled down for a siege?

  Hannibal had 45,000 men after Cannae, but that included the wounded, so his effective strength may have been only around forty thousand men. Rome was a large city. Yet a few years later (211 B.C.), with far fewer men in their siege army, the Romans took the great Sicilian city of Syracuse, whose walls were longer than Rome’s (18.6 miles)—indeed, they were one of the greatest fortresses of the ancient world. The siege of Syracuse lasted two years. Rome eventually took the outer walls by storm. Shortly afterward, a traitor opened the gate to the inner city. A spree of looting and murder followed.

  Besides, in August 216, Rome had no great number of soldiers to man its walls. There were about eight thousand soldiers in the city and about another five thousand nearby, guarding a strategic bridge on the Appian Way, the southern approach to Rome. While waiting for Hannibal, Rome started conscripting new troops, even from the slave population, but they were raw recruits. If the siege had lasted, Rome might well have had to form a relief force by withdrawing legions from its provinces: northern Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and even Spain. Cannae’s fifteen thousand Roman survivors could have been added to the mix.

  A strong Roman relief army might have made Hannibal raise his siege of Rome, but not if he received reinforcements as well, from Carthage. If Hannibal laid siege to the city of Rome and if it looked like he had a chance of success, Carthage’s home government might have finally agreed to send him more troops.

  The problem wasn’t that Hannibal couldn’t take Rome but that he wouldn’t. Maybe Hannibal didn’t understand the extent of his victory at Cannae. Maybe he overestimated the strength of the Romans. But the main obstacle to attacking Rome was, it seems, Hannibal’s inflexibility. Neither his war aims, nor his philosophy of operations, nor his military strategy, called for attacking Rome. It was time for a leader whose judgment was shrewd enough to change strategy. It was a moment for audacity and agility, but Hannibal had a plan and he stuck to it.

  Destroying Rome was never Hannibal’s war aim; rather, he wanted to cut its power down to size. He wanted a peace treaty, not a war to the death. He was willing to see Rome continue as a regional power in Italy, as long as it didn’t threaten Carthage.

  When it came to military operations, Hannibal’s entire philosophy was to fight mobile, not static warfare. He could make long marches, outrun or surprise the enemy, fight pitched battles, and conduct raids and ambushes. The one thing he couldn’t do was to take a city by siege. In fact, his entire military career consisted of only one major siege and that took place not in Italy but in Spain, at Saguntum (219 B.C.). It was no easy undertaking: the capture of Saguntum took eight months and cost Hannibal a serious leg wound. In the years after Cannae, this inability to take a city by siege turned out to be a major shortcoming. For example, in the aftermath of Cannae, Hannibal could have attacked the several thousand Roman survivors who were huddling in the nearby hill town of Canusium. But Canusium was well defended and Hannibal passed it by. By taking Canusium, Hannibal might have tipped additional Italian cities into his camp. And, unbeknownst to him, he might have removed from the equation the man who would become Carthage’s worst enemy. One of the refugees at Canusium was Scipio, who had fought at Cannae.

  And then there is the question of Hannibal’s ego. During the siege of Saguntum, Hannibal was forced to leave for a few weeks to deal with rebels in another part of Spain. He turned command of the siege over to Maharbal, who did so well that, as Livy cattily put it, “neither the Carthaginians nor their enemies noticed the leader’s absence.” The same Maharbal later commanded the cavalry at Cannae and then castigated Hannibal for not marching on Rome.

  Did jealousy play a role in keeping Hannibal away from Rome? Perhaps he feared that an attack on the city—whether a raid, assault, or full-blown siege—would only play to Maharbal’s strengths. Great men like Hannibal should not be reduced to petty motives, but heroes too have egos.

  For good or ill, Hannibal’s army was set up for battle, not siege. He should, then, have changed his army. Alexander, after all, had managed to do this, after he moved eastward from Iran. He adapted to the new conditions needed to fight in the mountains of Bactria and the steppes of Sogdiana. Alexander carried out daring and successful sieges of supposedly impregnable fortresses. To equal his hero Alexander, Hannibal needed to match his agility and his audacity. Two centuries later, Caesar would do just that. Caesar not only excelled in pitched battle, but he was also a master of siegecraft, as he showed in Gaul at Alesia and in Italy at Corfinium. Hannibal did not reach the same height.

  RULES OF WAR


  A larger question as to Hannibal’s success as a military leader relates not to his operations but to his strategy. It may even go to the core of Hannibal’s being. Had Hannibal always set too much store on cunning? Having learned that craftiness was a good way to win battles, perhaps he believed that it was also a good way to win wars. He would have been much better off, in 216 B.C., had he taken advantage of the shock of the moment.

  Hannibal’s strategy against Rome was flawed. He planned to surround Rome with a web of enemy alliances in central and southern Italy, which he would weave together with his alliances with the Celts in the Po Valley. Then, he would slowly squeeze Rome to the point of surrender. But Rome was no easy victim. And a long war, a war of attrition, which drained each side’s military talent pool, wore down each side’s manpower, and shattered each side’s political and financial willpower—such a war did not play to Carthage’s strengths.

  In fact, Hannibal’s strategy threatened to be a repeat of the First Punic War (264–241 B.C.). That twenty-three-year-long conflict exhausted both parties, but Carthage threw in the towel first—and so, Rome won. Rome, for its part, had always been able to take a punch.

  After Cannae, Rome’s allies in southern Italy began defecting to Carthage, but they moved slowly and cautiously. The cities in central Italy never broke with Rome. Meanwhile, Carthage’s new friends contributed so little to the war effort and cost so much that Hannibal might have thought, “Be careful what you wish for.” In spite of Cannae, all signs pointed to a long war—the last thing Carthage needed.

  Meanwhile, the war in Spain had already begun and, in the end, it was devastating. Because of its sea power, Rome could attack Spain at will. Not that the war was easy: it took ten years for Rome to put Carthage on the run in Spain. Yet all the while, Rome tied down Carthaginian troops that could have been sent to reinforce Hannibal. Romans understood that: winning a war sometimes means accepting losses where it hurts in order to win where it matters. That is a fundamental—and crucial—rule of war.

  To conquer an enemy who has superior resources in manpower, material, and money, an invader has to move quickly. Let the war drag on, and the enemy may husband his resources, grind down the invader, and even counterattack the invader’s home country. To win, the invader has to shock the enemy with lightning attacks that strike at his heart.

  Alexander and Caesar understood the principle of shock. Hannibal seems to have understood it at first, but then something happened. Either he lost sight of it, or he failed to receive the necessary support from his home government to carry out a winning strategy, or both.

  Hannibal lacked the ability to reach his enemy’s heart, but he could deliver a series of body blows. That, he gambled, would be enough to win victory, Hannibal forgot that time was not on his side. By not destroying Rome, Hannibal gave it the chance to heal its wounds and come roaring back.

  Another fundamental rule of war is, if you invade another country, don’t let it invade you in return.

  Rome displayed a ruthless wisdom about prioritization. Carthage, by contrast, was all over the map. Instead of focusing intensely on winning the war in Italy, it diverted resources all over the western and central Mediterranean: to Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily. Nor did Carthage make good use of its alliances.

  Carthage should have accepted its inability to drive Rome from Spain and have settled for neutralizing it. Carthage should have thrown its energies instead into prosecuting the war in Italy. By keeping up the pressure there, Carthage might have finally pried away some of Rome’s crucial central Italian allies, for example, cities with Latin rights (limited Roman citizenship) such as Spoletium (Spoleto) and Beneventum (Benevento), peoples whose loyalty was essential for Roman success.

  Consider the resources diverted to Spain in spring 215 that might have gone to Hannibal in Italy: 12,000 foot soldiers, 1,500 horsemen, 20 elephants, 60 warships—destined for Italy but diverted to Spain after setbacks there under Mago. And Spain was not the only place to which Carthage sent men and animals that could have been sent to Hannibal in Italy. It sent 17,000 soldiers to Sardinia and 28,000 to Sicily. These numbers dwarfed the reinforcements that Hannibal actually received: 4,000 Numidian cavalry, 40 elephants, plus money and provisions.

  We can only guess what Hannibal thought of Carthage’s priorities. Certainly he accepted the Spanish and Sicilian expeditions, where the Carthaginian high command included his brothers and other powerful friends. Maybe he even championed these new campaigns out of frustration with the stalemate in Italy. But I doubt it. If Sicily or Spain had become the decisive theater in his mind, it’s hard to see why he stayed in Italy. He knew that he was Carthage’s best general: that was not just egotism but plain fact. But he did not have the tools to finish the job.

  We can only guess as well at the mix of motives that kept Hannibal in Italy. Hope and fear no doubt played a part. Pride in his men and loyalty to their achievements surely did too.

  Hannibal asked the Carthaginian senate for reinforcements, but they were too little and too late. Roman history shows what wan enthusiasm the Roman senate had for victorious Roman generals returning to Italy at the head of their army. We might guess that the Carthaginian senate held similar sentiments about Hannibal. So they proved stingy in supporting his war effort in Italy.

  If we believe the ancient sources, in later years, Hannibal regretted his decision not to attack Rome after Cannae. Indeed.

  CAESAR

  The battle of Pharsalus offered Caesar the chance of winning the war, but only if he showed that he had the right skills. Success was still up for grabs. To win, Caesar needed mobility, but he lacked a fleet. He needed manpower, but he lacked money. He needed to divide his enemies, but they remained firm. He needed more battlefield victories, but his troops were tired and his enemy was cautious. The road ahead would test Caesar’s good judgment, his strategic wisdom, and his willingness to take risks. And none of it might have availed without the help of Providence.

  A Severed Head

  As great a victory as Pharsalus was, Pompey was still able to rally huge forces to his side. About eighteen thousand of his soldiers lived to fight again.

  Led by men like Cato and Metellus Scipio, Pompey’s allies retained their depth and intensity. Headquartered on the Adriatic island of Corcyra (modern Corfu), they had the most powerful navy in the Mediterranean. Pompey’s son Cnaeus was a successful naval commander, and a younger son, Sextus, would soon be ready to join him.

  Pompey had yet another potent ally in King Juba of Numidia, who had destroyed Curio’s army and saved North Africa for the Senate. So Cato and Scipio evacuated Corcyra and Dyrrachium and sailed to North Africa, bringing Pompey’s surviving troops with them. Last but not least, war is expensive, and Pompey still had enormous sums of money. Caesar was rich in victory, but not in cash.

  In order to win the war, Caesar had to deal with these enemies, either by arms or diplomacy. Negotiations should have been the course of choice, since both sides had suffered setbacks and both sides ultimately wanted the good of Rome. But the opposing sides defined that good differently.

  The senators wanted to keep power in their own hands. They were a tiny elite, but they claimed the right to rule an empire because of their noble birth and their devotion to liberty. They defined the good life as freedom of speech and no-holds-barred competition for votes in elections that brought them public office and honors.

  Caesar saw things differently. He was a brilliant leader and he knew it—after Pharsalus, he knew it more than ever. He had conquered Gaul, Britain, Italy, Spain, and now, Pompey the Great. In his life, Caesar had been not only a soldier but also a prosecutor, administrator, deal maker, orator, and writer, and excelled at them all. Now, he stood on the verge of power such as only one Roman had ever held before: Sulla, who was named dictator in 82, with no limit set on the office. But a year later, Sulla resigned as dictator and ran for consul. After two terms as consul, he turned power over to the Senate and retired. Caesar had no int
ention of following suit. Sulla, he said, did not know his political ABC’s.

  Caesar did not want to compete with other senators; he wanted to dominate them. He wanted to take power away from the Senate and share it with the common people of Italy and with elites from the provinces—all in order to generate a wide base of support for his rule. Pompey was an egotist, but the senators could tolerate sharing a bit of power with him. Caesar was a titan, and the senators knew that they would either have to destroy him or be destroyed in turn.

  Caesar’s instinct after Pharsalus was to capture Pompey. Just as Alexander could have scored huge political gains by capturing Darius after Gaugamela, so Caesar could have won big politically by capturing Pompey after Pharsalus. Alive and in Caesar’s control, Pompey would be a game changer—and maybe even a willing one. Pompey was a soldier, he was no longer young, and he had no principles. He had supported the Senate because it was good for Pompey, not because he believed in liberty and the republic. If Caesar offered Pompey and his sons a better deal, he might win him over. Together, they would have no trouble defeating the Senate’s forces.

  And so, after Pharsalus, Caesar hurried on to the chase for Pompey, just as Alexander had hurried on more than one chase for Darius. Each time, the quarry kept one step ahead of the hunter, only to meet an even more dangerous predator.