Was hannibal an idiot or a master tactician as most people know?

Are you kidding me?

He's a Lebanese/Berber mix, his IQ was probably in the 80s, compared to a fully white Roman he was much dumber, he just got insanely lucky and most of his victory were probably due to the white Celts he used as mercenary troops, the only thing he could have been "smart" at is recognizing Celts' intelligence and allying with them

>he just got insanely lucky

o am i laffin

Roman "militias" fighting for their homeland
Vs.
(((Merchants))) with mercenary army
Really makes you think

He's a fucking arab, no way he pulled that trick on whites without Celtic counseling

>Phonecians
>arabs

about what?

>celts had any tactics except ambush and zerg rush

He was tactically great, in that he almost invariably won the battles he fought.
He was operationally mediocre, in that he generally managed to maneuver into favourable battlegrounds, but many roman generals managed to limit his movements and force him away from his objectives.
He was strategically shit, because he apparently wasn't aware of the concept of supply lines or he didn't think he needed them.

>He was operationally mediocre, in that he generally managed to maneuver into favourable battlegrounds, but many roman generals managed to limit his movements and force him away from his objectives.

>using your advantages makes you mediocre
>fabian strategy was anything but a last resort of the terrifed romans

>He was strategically shit, because he apparently wasn't aware of the concept of supply lines or he didn't think he needed them.

he's literally called "the father of strategy". his brother was going to supply them but rome prevented that. and it didn't even matter, he was in italy for 12 years without resupply. his weakness was siege warfare which is why he avoided rome itself.

He spent 12 years in Italy getting chased around by half a dozen different roman generals while accomplishing jackfuckingshit until he was cornered in the toe of Italy. I suppose he deserves some kudos for surviving that long (tho it was pretty much because the romans disn't want to engage him in open battle, so it comes under "tactically great"), but his campaign was an utter failure that cost Carthage a shitload of men.
>his brother was going to supply them but rome prevented that
Because it's really fucking hard to resupply someone so idiotically deep behind enemy lines. If he had managed to reach Hannibal he would have accomplished a feat far greater than what Hannibal himself did, since he didn't have the advantages of surpise and roman unreadiness.

the failure of the campaign because of hannibal's tactical failure. if you won a battle like the battle of cannae you'd expect the enemy to make terms soon after. but the romans didn't. the only reason they could keep doggedly resisting after losing again and again was because of the italian confederation, or more specifically, because most of the confederated allies didn't desert rome even though hannibal tried very hard to make them do so (he always let italian captured soldiers go but kill the romans). because the confederation remained in tact they could levy troops every spring and keep coming up with armies. that gave enough time for a scipio to come along and study hannibal's tactics and use them against him.

tl;dr hannibal lost not because of his own failure, but because of rome's structural strength

also people forgot the idiots at Carthage didn't support Hannibal themselves

*wasn't because of

This is a bad argument because Hannibal as a known student of the Pyrrhic war and first punic war should have very well known the structural strength of Rome. Pyrrhus also tried the shock and awe approach and failed. Carthage itself also saw its early victories in the first war mean fucking nothing in the face of roman obstinacy. Hannibal's plan was shit, and he ought have known it.

Also this is bullshit. You don't waste a hundred thousands men and a fleet tryign to reinforce someone you don't support. The carthaginian senate thought that Hannibal's idea was retarded (which it was proven to be), but they still supported him with all of Carthage's limited (compared to Rome's) resources.

that's why he took the initiative, fucked them up again and again, and tried to dissolve the italian confederation. but he couldn't budge most of the allies (i think he persuaded 2?). he did exactly what you're saying he should have done.

Then why didn't he take Rome?

>he did exactly what you're saying he should have done.
The fuck? I'm saying that he shouldn't have gone to Italy at all.

Not berber just levantine, no way his iq was berber tier, remember the low iq of today's middle easterners is probably caused by inbreeding, African admixture and poverty. Possibly all three
Arabs were pretty good soldiers at the time, ie: Khalid, plus even before that they were mercs and warring tribes, they probably knew a thing or two about war. now go back to your containment board

Oops, wrong thread.

>The fuck? I'm saying that he shouldn't have gone to Italy at all.
Not him, but his points more or less echo the popular historical consensus about Hannibal.

If Hannibal had marched pre-made siege equipment over the Alps instead of Elephants there was little reason why he could have marched on Rome after virtually annihilating the consular army at Cannae. Yes, Rome still had manpower reserves but those reserves don't mean jack shit if they're just sitting around waiting for the government to arm, train, and mobilize them. Romans themselves were shitting themselves in fear so much that when Quintus Fabius came into power one of the first things he did was ban competitive public mourning.

>*couldn't have

Who are you mocking?

Taking Rome would be hard. It would also do nothing to split the Italian allies apart from one another. A Capuan led alliance would be as much of a problem for Carthage as Rome, they were trying to divide Italy, not just wipe Rome off the map.

Not him, but getting siege engines across the Alps would have been a bitch and a half on top of the trouble already getting the rest of the forces over the alps.

Plus, even if he does have some engines, street fighting in Rome itself negates most of his army's advantages in mobility and cavalry edge, and he'd need to force a breach and storm quickly, without a regular supply train, he can't afford to sit and wait at the walls of Rome battering them with catapults or whatever; he'll starve before too long as his forces exhaust what they can raid from the local food supply.

>Taking Rome would be hard. It would also do nothing to split the Italian allies apart from one another. A Capuan led alliance would be as much of a problem for Carthage as Rome, they were trying to divide Italy, not just wipe Rome off the map.
The whole reason why the alliance stood firm was because of how robust the romanization process was. Getting your citizenship with the most powerful city-state in Italy was an arduous, multi-generational long process that cities had to slowly work themselves towards. There were tiers of citizenship that when promoted a city-state got more say in how the government was being handled. The reason why they held firm was because they didn't want years and years of hard work go to waste because they had a trust going with the city-state of Rome.

That trust would have totally shattered if Rome had gotten sacked. The alliance would have immediately dissolved into bickering city-states and most probably would have sued for peace with the Carthaginians.

>Not him, but getting siege engines across the Alps would have been a bitch and a half on top of the trouble already getting the rest of the forces over the alps.
Everything about that campaign was a bitch and a half. I mean fuck, even just getting to the Alps themselves meant basically conquering a path through some of the most fierce warrior cultures in Europe. The fact that he was even able to pull it off at all is the reason why we remember it thousands of years later. But in any event I was merely stating it as a hypothetical.

Hannibal put all his eggs in the "if I just dazzle them over and over again with shock and awe military victories, the alliance will eventually come undone." He severely underestimated the resolve of the Italian city-states to cling together, even in the face of brutal military defeats

He didn't want to and wasn't able to. His plan was to fuck with the Romans from inside Italy so they'd be unable to continue the fight in Sicily and Hispania.

>under estimated
Not really his fault to be honest. Most states at the time would have capitulated after suffering such terrible defeats all in succession. Rome's ability to continue fielding huge armies against him was pretty absurd.

But at the same time, it's not like it's something he wouldn't have known about; you saw the exact same stubbornness in the Pyrrhic war and the 1st punic war, the latter of which Hannibal deifnitely would have been familiar with.

Most people were always dumb. It was always the elite responsible for all progress.

But wasn't Hannibal the Phoenician equivalent of a noble ? That's how we know he was Phoenician and not African

African admixture with Near Eastern people is literally largely relegated and limited to Gulf Arab states, especially around Yemen and Arabia.

That might've been true pre ottomans but now like 99% of middle easterners have negroid admixture, you can see it in their faces

Both good points, but the thing which made Rome such an unprecedented force in Iron-age Europe was that, contrary to every single Hellenic and MENA city-state in existence, Rome had a way of making new citizens besides "two previously existing citizens having a baby", and their model was the first one to get multiple metropolitan areas working as a cohesive "nation-state" that wasn't a rapidly decaying regime ruling through simple naked tyranny and despotism. Their model was vastly more durable than that, and it's a force that Carthage and the Hellenes struggled in vain to contain. Rome had lasting power in ways that not even the most powerful city-state could outlast.

brilliant, if not one of the best tacticians, but a bad grand strategist.

Hannibal could win battles on the open field and crush Roman armies more than twice his size, and he knew from the start that his ~40,000 man army couldn't conquer the entire Italian Peninsula, so his grand strategy was to win battles and convince the Italian cities to defect and support Carthage in the war effort, hoping that if enough of Rome's power base defected, then Rome itself would be forced to negotiate.

He did secure a few Italian states, most notably Capua, the second largest city next to Rome after his victory at Cannae, but overall most of Italy remained committed to Rome, and his grand strategy failed, and was a lofty goal from the start.

as Hannibal's cavalry commander Maharbal put it "Hannibal, knew to gain a victory; but not know how to use it."

No they don't.

He was determined as hell and was able to pull off some well executed tricks. But yeah, the Roman battle tactics weren't super subtle and intricate to begin with.

Hey, they had a tactic of throwing rocks really fast as well.

(((((white))))

On the whole, an idiot. Militarily he was aight.