Question about the battle of Cannae

Romans didn't swing their swords.

One of the clues is in your image, when you have a frontline that's almost a mile across, it's hard to react dynamically when there's a 2-5 minute delay to any command you give your forces.

being attacked on one side vs being attacked on two sides
literally anyone who plays CoD or Warthunder knows why flanking is deadly

The Chinese had adopted a system of banners/flag/gongs/drums to manage the troops in battle. During the same time period. This effectively allowed them to scale up the size of army and management system.

The Chinese are always smart about small details like this which makes them effective and ends up being significant later on. Today, too, the Chinese have the same characteristics.

"Vincere scis, Hannibal; victoria uti nescis."

I'm just an autist who plays too many strategy games and read the Art of War once but I would guess that being surrounded screws up the ability to switch out tired soldiers and the mobility of formations. That and the psychological effect of being attacked from all sides and being so tightly packed in that individual men can't move to swing their weapons and move out of the way of opposing weapons.

>That and the psychological effect of being attacked from all sides
Honestly the physical effect of being killed would kick in long before any psychological effect could be felt.

But Retarius were trash tier who usually lost and put in the mix for novelty

Everything in gladiatorial fights was a novelty. The Romans weren't stupid enough to give slaves access to weapons that would actually be effective in a revolt. That's why even the most heavily armored gladiators had very large areas of vulnerability. The Murillo had a large shield and helmet, but his torso was completely exposed.

You have to see large bodies of troops not in terms of individuals, but in terms of units. Soldiers are trained to work in discrete groups. In the case of the Romans their primary unit was of course 80 men.

In a conventional battle the entire 80 men, no matter how deep their ranks might be, are meant to be facing the same direction, working together to do the same thing. The first rank fights. The second rank keeps an eye out for them, sometimes holds their backs to anchor and steady them. If it comes down to pushing shield walls, as was especially common in hellenistic warfare, the back ranks lean in and add their strength to the struggle, like a rugby scrum. All ranks, circumstances permitting, may regularly swap places to give every legionairre reasonable breaks from the stress and exertion of the front line.

A unit is most most cohesive, most solid, and most effective when its efforts are focused in one direction: forward.

A unit that finds itself attacked from two directions at once will be unable to do this. It will be unable to concentrate its efforts in one direction. It will lose cohesion. If it's meant to be a square it will become a blob, and one its a blob it's essentially water breaking off the solid rock of the enemy formations, still cohesive, still attacking in one direction.

There were battles where one force got 'enveloped' but did not get annihilated because they had spare units to turn around and meet the surrounding enemies while retaining some room to breath. Their units were not enveloped, even if they were technically surrounded. I think this happened to Caesar at Ruspina, but there's a strong chance I'm wrong.

But beyond all that, you have to think of compression. Pressure from all sides pushes the Romans together and first makes it harder for them to move and fight. Pressure increases and soon there's not even room to maintain anything like a unit-it's like a japanese subway. They blob, and die.

I agree with the other posters that the circumference/surface area in battle matters, however for the units on the side, the "side" is the forward direction. They aren't bothered by the battle in any other direction, so their attention is focused in 1 direction. This would be the case for almost 100% of the centuries as they are in a semi-circle, and there are no sharp edges in the way they're enclosed, forming no corners.

An aspect not discussed enough is front line rotation. The romans had no opportunity to rotate their troops due to being tightly packed, while Hannibal's could. I'm not knowledgeable enough to give great theories, just an aspect I've read about.

I recommend Ghosts of Cannae, the author does a great job of describing this battle.

Erm no, forward is the forward direction whether you are on the side or not. Soldiers posted on the edges did not face and fight toward the side, nor did the soldiers posted on the rear fight facing the back of the maniple. That's just not how mass military maneuvers work.

>why did romans lose the battle when they were completely surrounded?
Jesus christ

Why didn't the Romans get the mountain people to help breakup the assault on their rear?

>Murillo had a large shield and helmet, but his torso was completely exposed.

Slander and calumnies most vile!

Battles are won or lost on morale. The side that thinks it's beaten is beaten. Once an army is surrounded it psychologically fucks the soldiers because they feel trapped and helpless. Even if they aren't slaughtered they will quickly run out of water and other supplies.
Sieges are a little different because the defences give morale support, but in an open field hopelessness will quickly set in.

The Roman army was made up of poorly trained conscrits, while Hannibal had élite mercenaries. Scipio Africanus was the first to train his soldiers and deprive Hannibal of his Numidian mercenaries.

The stronger units were in the back my man.

Fuck off.

The encirclement involved an enormous number of soldiers, meaning that the Carthaginians didn't have as much local superiority as some posters suggest above, nor was it an issue of individual centuries being unable to fight facing only forward.

The Roman army was not prepared for encirclement, so their formation, chain of command, and supply lines all broke down. In a normal battle with a clear front line, a commander will position himself someplace where he can react to changing situations on that front with his orders and his reserve forces. At Cannae, the front being curved meant the lines were made to be as long as possible for the Carthaginians to maintain cohesion, communication, while also engaging as much of the Roman force as possible in a shaping operation, and in turn keeping the number of reserves small.

On its own this was not a huge problem for the Romans. The enemy would not appear as weak as their numbers would suggest, but in the end they had reserves and communication was even better for their side.

The trouble really starts with the African infantry and cavalry, who were fast enough to outflank a distracted Roman front and engage the reserves - and the command unit. Never mind hitting from the back and flustering these individual units, the attack's true evil was in removing Rome's reserves and command structure from the picture. Now the front line was all around the Roman army, but they had no defensive planning of any sort. There was no longer a view of the Roman army as a whole from a central command, but instead local commanders fighting their small battles with only some idea of the units closest to them.

On top of that, they were cut off from their camp. This meant that any wounded could no longer be evacuated, and instead were kept at the front or center where their growing numbers sapped morale. And soldiers who brought personal effects and property now worried they might be looted. Finally, a safe withdrawal was uncertain.

You don't understand the first thing about armies, battle tactics, or the context of this battle. Don't ask a board, read a book.

Thanks for the helpful post, commander of numerous armies in all titles in the Total War series, leader of the CoD team bazooka23pussyslayer69, and host of the weekly dragons and dungeons basement party.

>Hannibal had élite mercenaries
>élite
>é

Get a load of this guy

Nope. In the back were the supports and the light armored units. The bulk of the strength is concentrated in the front.

not him but he's surely talking about the composition of individuals within a unit, while you are talking about relative strengths of entire formations.

The relevant discussion is about the entire formations. Not a single unit vs unit.

cannae was a century earlier than the marian reforms, the legions of this time were the hastati principes triarii legions that sent the greenest men first to wear down the enemy for the next line

because the romans were too close to eachother to fight effectively. They were squished together.

In addition, they had also just gotten slammed in the back by Hannibal's Numidian Cav.

Well said. People often forget about the effect of the spread of panic among soldiers on ancient battlefields. A lot of ancient battles turned into routs once one side gained the psychological advantage. Imagine have to fight hand to hand in a sea of chaos, it would be a tough task even the most professional of soldiers, one reason why warriors were revered in almost all human cultures.

they probably ate up the flanks from the sides inwards

Yup rolled up their battle line easy as pie.

Because fuck getting charged in the back by cav

Plan B? jump into the Aufidus

To understand why being encircled is a bad thing, you have to understand how circles work. I'm not trying to sound like I'm insulting you or something, I mean it. A smaller circle has a smaller circumference, a larger one has a large one. On the battlefield, this means that if you are encircled, there are more men on their side engaged in combat than on your side. So instead of each soldier fighting only one other soldier, he is now fighting two other soldiers, or three, or whatever the case may be.

Flanking is still useful in modern warfare simply because it creates a lots of confusion and distracts you from the center of combat. It forces you to divert resources and manpower away from where the bulk of the fighting is happening.

Another thing to bear in mind is that in ancient warfare, formations meant a lot more than they do today. It was especially popular at this time to sort of lock shields together, therefore making your unit essentially move as one, massive object. This helped you resist impact from infantry and cavalry charges, and kept you from losing ground as you're being pushed (both figuratively and literally). When you're flanked, it forces you to break this formation, because you've either got to turn and face the new threat, or the new threat got the jump on you and is already several ranks deep into your formation, chopping your soldiers apart.

You're an idiot. The formations at the front may have been the largest, but the most heavily ARMORED units were in the rear. The front rank was formed of the hastati, relatively poor and young men who did the brunt of the fighting. The middle rank were the principes, seasoned soldiers who could afford better equipment. Lastly were the triarii, composed of older and much wealthier men, who could afford very good equipment and fought in a similar fashion to the Greek phalanx.

This served the purpose of saving your best troops for when you really needed them, hence the Roman saying "it comes down to the triarii," meaning you've exhausted all other possibilities. It also meant that if the hastati got scared and started to route, they had veterans behind them to calm them down and keep them fighting.

Also, you posted a picture of a Marian Reform legion, Cannae happened a century before those reforms.

How do you coordinate that kind of maneuver in an era without radios.

>wh*toids expecting to fight superior black seed for roman women

Instruments, banners, messengers.

Is that Balthazar Gelt

Those don't work as well when the melee is kicking up so much dust, and the wounded/dying are making so much noise.

You can maneuver troops that are not engaged, but once the fighting starts, there's really no way to give orders. The discipline and drill required to perform a fighting disengagement would not exist until the Marian reforms.

I don't understand what your point is. I never claimed the opposite of anything you just said. The user asked how ancient armies coordinated and I told him, I didn't say it always worked out like you wanted it to.

Right, I asked how would an ancient army coordinate a 90 degree pivot while conducting a fighting retreat as depicted in that user's drawing, and we both know the answer is "they can't".

Banners, bugles, and messengers work well for pre-contact maneuvers when things are relatively orderly, but once the fighting starts, there's no way to coordinate any kind of coherent maneuver without radios.

Hannibal didn't just encircle his enemy, he funnelled them. As his experienced units started hemming in the Roman formation at the sides, their forward push meant that soldiers began to bunch up into order to keep moving forward. The flanking Carthaginian units didn't panic the Romans into losing unit cohesion, as some are suggesting, nor did they push in from the sides and break the Roman formations. What they were there to do was gently squeeze the Romans into an ever narrowing gap.

At this point, the Roman army's massive numbers started to work against them. It's very hard to command a force of men that large, and the Roman generals - knowing the superiority of their infantry - hadn't come up with any plan more sophisticated than 'push forward and break their line.' We'll never know how soon they realised what was happening but it would have been very difficult for them to halt the army and organise a breakout even if they had.

With the formation compressed by the Carthaginian units pressuring it from the sides, the Roman soldiers became so crushed together that they became unable to use their weapons properly. The soldiers at the edges, who were forced to turn to face the flanking Carthaginians, would also have lacked any support from the men 'behind' them (i.e. the ones who had been on their inside flank when the battle began). The men on the inside of the Roman formation would have been unaware of what was happening at the edges, and so would have kept pushing forward in the belief that they were still trying to break through a Carthaginian line ahead of them. That is, until the crush of men became so great that nobody could move. It wouldn't surprise me if plenty of men on the inside of the formation suffocated or were crushed to death.

With all unit cohesion broken the Roman soldiers at the edge of the formation would have been easy picking for the Carthaginian units now picking away at the mass of trapped Romans. The Roman soldiers at the edge would have been backed up against the men behind them, who instead of lending support would themselves be trying to simultaneously back up away from the enemy spearpoints and push away the men backing into them before they were crushed. Needless to say, that's not a good position to be in, and the Carthaginians would have had a fairly easy time hacking away at the Romans. On a macro scale, the Roman army had lost all capacity to manoeuver or rotate units, and there would have been no way for the commanders to issue orders anyway.

It would have only become easier for the Carthaginians as the day went on, as they /could/ rotate the men at the front of the ranks with the men at the back when they got tired. The Romans were also cut off from their supplies, unlike the carthaginians, and while food wouldn't have been greatly important in those few hours, water definitely would have. Thousands of men pressed together, out in the open under the August Italian sun - add dehydration and heat exhaustion to suffocation and crushing.

If you want to get some idea of what it was like you might want to watch Game of Thrones' Battle of the Bastards. It's far from perfect but at least it illustrates the general concept.
youtube.com/watch?v=aim-cHKNZB4

Formation matters. Unless you turn the whole line, Its a matter of numbers. If you merely turn to your right/left, you present a shorter and weaker front which means the enemy outnumbers you at the point of impact. That is why having men in proper formation at the right time dominated infantry tactics until the invention of high-capacity high RoF firearms gave small numbers of men the ability to fight a much larger force if it massed itself. Until then, one man was always roughly equal to another, on average (given each side had relatively similar technology), only being able to engage one enemy at a time. This means that a front of 40 men being engaged by 60 on equal ground is unable to engage all the necessary enemies while the enemy can essentially 2v1 half your men, winning easily and creating a more lopsided advantage as they go.

Lolno

well they did so you are wrong.

youtube.com/watch?v=MroGPObEZzk

/thread

why didn't the Romans try this?

see They didn't have a aerial view of the battlefield. The Romans weren't aware they were walking into a trap. Until the Carthaginian units at the flanks started actually pushing in, all the Romans in the middle and the front of the formation were still trying to break the Carthaginians' forward line. When the flanks started to come under increasing pressure, and the Carthaginian cavalry returned and attacked from the rear, the forward push stalled. It was probably only at that point, when the formation lost forward momentum, that the majority of Romans realised what was happening, and of course by then it was already too late.

this decent answer
also modern warfare is based very much on cover, because of projectile weapons. flanking tends to negate most cover.