What are the biggest comebacks in history

>lose 30k in battle of Trebia
>lose another 30k in the battle of lake trasimene
>lose nearly 100k in the battle of canae
>have to resort to a guerrilla war and not actually fighting hannibal in the field

>somehow after suffering these loses and winning the war doesn't count as a comeback

...

Idk, Rome winning wasn't a huge stretch as long as they just didn't give up.

They had a pretty large numbers advantage didn't they?

probably the polish soviet war
the soviets pushed right to the edges of warsaw only to get pushed all the way back to moscow

Not after Cannae

The first war they did, but the romans were not renowned for their high quality army at that time, and were on the wrong end of a technology difference when it came to the navy. During the second war, not initially, Rome had to dig deep into their reserves in order to offset the losses from the first part of the second punic war. Overall, the numbers come to be about even in the second war. The third war Rome had a hefty advantage, but carthage was reduced to pretty much a city state at that point.

What am I reading knigga.

You ever hear of Cannae or Lake Trasimene? Saying the 2nd Punic War wasn't a huge comeback belittles Rome, Carthage, Fabian, and Hannibal. Taking those kinds of losses in a row and then sailing across the med and taking the enemy's capital is a crazy thing.

Kim Kardashian

>>somehow after suffering these loses and winning the war doesn't count as a comeback
Yeah, it's called having a manpower reserves that is still twice as large as Carthage and Co, even after the defection of a large number of allied tribes/cities

I think most people don't realize just what an uphill battle the 2nd Punic war was for Carthage

Poland is the greatest comeback ever.

please leave

Rome was never even close to being defeated

United States Presidential election 2016.

kek irl

Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth= Star Wars IV-VI
20th century Poland onwards= Star Wars I-III

Some comebacks aren't worth making.

"Execute Order 66"
-Adolf Hitler

After the battle of Canae, all of Rome's allies in italy switched sides, Macedon entered the war on Carthage's side, and Rome itself was open to attack. Hannibal is mocked constantly in history for not taking the opportunity and attacking Rome after such a decisive victory. Rome only won by not taking any major battle with Hannibal after that. I don't think you understand how devastating losing a 100k soldiers in a single battle was in the west during those days. Rome only won because they were able to drag out the war until they could replenish their manpower. Casualties of that size were not seen again until the battle of the Catalaunian Plains

Hannibal was incapable of taking Rome, otherwise he would have

There was another roman army in italy that carthage hoped to draw out but it just stayed sieging capua because they knew that hannibal couldnt do jack shit other than march around the Latin countryside burning farms and crying tears of impotent rage

does anyone have the screencap of Hannibal and his autism over elephants?

>Hannibal was incapable of taking Rome, otherwise he would have
That is like saying that Germany was incapable of taking Moscow, otherwise they would have. It doesn't take into account that historical leaders are still just human beings that have their own folly. You can not say that Rome had the upper hand after losing a majority of their army at that time and were rapidly losing ground in their home province.

both underrated posts

During his reign, he defeated the Parthians, sacked Ctesiphon, vanquished the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians and suppressed a revolt by Avidius Cassius. On top of all that, Aurelius wrote Meditations while on campaign, which records his quest to find calm in the midst of conflict and suggest a close acquaintance with the battlefield: "Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a decapitated head, just lying somewhere far away from the body it belonged to? That's what we do to ourselves - or try to - when we rebel against what happens to us... Or when we do something selfish."

>Germany was incapable of taking Moscow, otherwise they would have
That is also literally true. As for hannibal, he and the romans both fully understood that his army was incapable of capturing rome, it was too well fortified and could withstand siege for a very long time

Revolutionary France

>It used to be the oldest, most distinguished, most powerful monarchy in Europe
>Their idiot king manages to lose all the country's money
>Giant rebellion of filthy peasants rises up, overthrows the government, and begins systematically slaughtering the nobility and clergy
>People are so disturbed that literally every country in Europe simultaneously invades France
>France obviously has literally no chance
>France drafts every single man in the country, creating the largest army of all time
>But despite this, their untrained and ill-equipped army only barely manages to avoid defeat
>All of a sudden, some tiny foreigner starts winning battles
>I mean seriously, he starts winning a lot of battles and just doesn't stop
>Over the course of a single decade, the situation turns around so completely that France has conquered almost all of Europe

Really interesting theory, it's crazy how suddenly the tide changed.

Well, >Wiki has the following sentence about the height of Hannibal's power in Italy:
>Hannibal could win allies, but defending them against the Romans was a new and difficult problem, as the Romans could still field multiple armies greatly outnumbering [Hannibal's] own forces.

based nuclear man

This is a bit out of scope of Veeky Forums but we can all agree that it's one for the ages.
>May: [Corbyn] can lead a protest, I'm leading a country.

>mfw The Economist posted a fanfiction about a future where Corbyn leads Labour to destruction by 2030

> rebellion of filthy peasants
> peasants

I wasn't aware the elite bourgeoisie of Paris was peasantry.

> tiny foreigner
m e m e s

I agree that Carthage was close to victory. Rome only survived by cleverly using Fabian tactics, defeating the Carthaginians in Spain, and then invading Carthage itself. If any step in that process failed, they would have been left in a completely untenable situation.

The last Roman-Persian war is probably one of the greatest comebacks, if not the greatest, that has ever happened in history. The fact that Heraclius turned a losing war that lasted for almost 30 years into a major offensive that devastated the Sassanids in the long term is something that you'd hear only in stories. It's a shame about what happened afterwards though.

Buttravaged Atlantafag detected

>It's a shame about what happened afterwards though.
True, it's heartbreaking.

It's amazing how such massive changes to all of history can come from such a crazy coincidental series of events. We never would have even heard of Islam if not for the Sassanids and Romans destroying one another in an ultimately pointless war, followed by the Sassanids eating themselves alive in a series fo civil wars. Without that, Muslims would likely be just a small footnote in our history books, along with Mazdakis and Manichaeans.

last night

The first Punic War

...

Came in here just to make sure someone posted this

its up there

yes

yeS

YES

During the winter of 878, the Kingdom of Wessex was attacked by the Danes, who conquered most of it and sent the king, Alfred, into retreat in the marshes of Athelney. At this moment, the entirety of realms ruled by an English king, the entirety of the historical entity that would later conquer the largest empire ever made and change the entire world, was a swamp in Somerset.

In the spring of 878, Alfred the Great emerged from the swamp and defeated the Danes. The kingdom of Wessex began expanding northwards, it became England, and it has expanded ever since (until the 1950s at least).

NEVER
COUNT
OUT
TOUCHDOWN
TOM

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

>French revolution
>1795
Pick both

The Komnenian Restoration

The Jews

The french army had been destroying germans for a long time before Napoleon