 Scipio africanus is arguably one of the greatest generals in history Hello everyone Dylan Schumacher Citadel defense welcome back to our series of a tutelage in blood Lessons from the past where we review past battles past armies past campaigns Whatever in order to learn modern lessons and today's battle is the battle of a lip-up, which was arguably One of the best battles by Scipio africanus Scipio africanus was a general for Rome in the war the second Punic war of the war with Rome versus Carthage If you don't know anything about that, that's totally fine You're still gonna be able to follow along just to understand that Rome and Carthage were eternal enemies And this was basically like the world war of the ancient world this battle takes place around 214 BC give or take somewhere in there. I don't remember the exact date off hand I will link a video in the description below if you're curious more about this battle and the history But for now, let's get into the actual battle. So on one side You have Carthage Carthage comes into this conflict with about 70,000 guys in their army And Rome is showing up with about 50,000 guys some of the numbers vary depending on which source you follow But those are just the rough numbers I'm gonna go with what happened here is that Carthage set up camp and Rome set up camp over here This is a valley in between. There were some hills that Carthage was encamped in and This was where Rome decided to camp. I don't think they were in hills or anything But this is where they were and every day for multiple days in a row They would come out the armies would line up and they would get ready to fight each other But they wouldn't actually fight they just line up and stare at each other all day You need to understand that in the ancient world when you came up and lined up your guys Imagine trying to line up 50,000 people for battle. Okay, that takes a very long time So it's not something you just shift around quickly and just move start moving people around it's 50,000 people which may or may not be that well trained that you got to line up and get ready for battle So once you're lined up for battle, you're set. That's it That's an important fact to remember for how this conflict go So every day that get up when they line up Carthage would put their hardened veteran troops in the middle and they put on their wings Their cavalry and their less reliable troops, which was common practice in the ancient world again. That's a pretty normal thing Scipio who's the general in charge of Rome would always deploy After the Carthaginians again, that's gonna be important to note and he would copy he would put his hardened legions Which are the main Roman battle infantry the hardened veterans the guys who know what they're doing in the middle And he put his less reliable Personaries on the wings for multiple days in a row. This is how they set up the battle Then after they've gotten used to this pattern Scipio feeds his guys gets up early before sunrise He sends his velites, which are guys that just throw some spears and his cavalry Over to attack and wake up the Carthaginian camp the Carthaginians are like holy crap. We're being attacked Let's go they pile out in the same formation that they've always piled out in and so of course They're they're ready for battle because they think the battle is happening right now Scipio Had also deployed his troops early in the morning because he was getting ready to attack, but just not right then What he had done Scipio had switched his Alignment so that he had put his legions on the wings and his less reliable Mercenary troops in the center the Carthaginians did not realize that Until later once the Sun came up and they now realized that they had their weak troops facing Roman strong troops on the flanks And again remember you can't change it once it's set It's set because it takes way too much work to rearrange these people And if you're gonna start rearranging while the enemy is set up You're gonna get crushed because they're gonna smack into you the Carthaginians had of course Arisen before they've had a chance to eat breakfast because again, they were in a panic They thought they were being attacked so they just lined up They hadn't had anything to eat all of Rome's guys had eaten breakfast and were up early and were prepared for this So Scipio lets the Sun beat on them for a couple hours before he decides to attack So they're hungry. They're cranky. They're tired and now Scipio chooses to attack as Scipio advances He has his legions advance faster than his mercenary middle troops so that the wings get out here quicker Than the mercenaries as Scipio gets out here with his wings He's able to turn his legions 90 degrees and march parallel with the Carthaginian line in order to lengthen his wing This is of course as we mentioned extremely difficult to do So the Carthaginians don't really know what to do and honestly are pretty shocked by the whole maneuver At this point once his wings are lengthened. He crashes his legionaries Which are again his veteran trusted troops into the wings of his weaker opponents While that's happening the mercenaries are still coming to the middle So their middle veteran troops are unable to do anything. They can't assist on the sides Because they have this large looming threat of this block of mercenaries in the middle as a result His the center troops the most veteranized troops that the Carthaginians have are completely fixed in place And unable to assist in the battle what ends up happening is these wings get crushed the legions start to pour in And the veteran center has to retreat Because they both of their wings are crushed and they're out flanked and out maneuvered They never actually got to fight in the battle because they were threatened by this possible potential threat of the mercenaries in the center Who also never actually fought in the battle. Okay, that's the quick and dirty of the battle So what lessons can we learn from that? And what does that mean in today's terms? Now I'm sure there are more lessons than this however These are the ones that I came up with and these are the ones that I wanted to talk about The first lesson is planning and preparation This battle was won as soon as the sun came up Scipio had a plan and he was prepared for that plan. His guys got up early and they ate breakfast He's planning to rouse the Carthaginians out of the bed and make them come out without breakfast He was planning in order to surprise them. He had a plan. He sat down and thought about this Planning is essential in battle. That might sound like a pretty simplistic obvious statement However, that is true And even if your plan doesn't go according to plan in this case it did But even if it doesn't go according to plan the actual act of planning itself is super important As it lets you understand contingencies and things that might go wrong in this case Not a whole lot went wrong with the actual battle itself But planning and having a plan that you're trying to execute is probably the most important thing Secondly as part of that plan he had a tempo or a rhythm change He had lulled the Scipio had lulled the Carthaginians into a tempo into a rhythm, right? Well every morning we wake up where the Carthaginians we go out there to fight those cowardly romans They're lazy. They don't get out of bed until later. Then they come out They pretend to face us. We stand around all day. Then we go home, right? That was that was the tempo and the rhythm they were used to and then he switched that tempo He got up earlier than them He got he attacked them early and he was already set up ahead of time. That's a tempo change That is seizing the initiative Through a change in the rhythm in the tempo that you've both kind of fallen into You'll see this a lot in MMA matches You'll see fighters who kind of fall into a rhythm and a tempo of that fight And sometimes if a fighter is smart or if they're able to they'll change up the rhythm or the tempo of the fight And that's a form of seizing the initiative and that's what Scipio did here He changed up that rhythm in that tempo and seized the initiative so that now the Carthaginians are reacting instead of acting Part of the way he sees that tempo in that rhythm Was through surprise. He surprised them early in the morning. He surprised them by changing his formation, right? These are significant changes and surprise throughout history has been a very significant force multiplier in battles And Scipio was able to achieve surprise here You might ask yourself Well, how do you achieve surprise when the enemy knows where you sleep at night? And you know where they sleep at night and you can see each other's camps, you know You're maybe a mile away And you're able to see and see what they're doing. How do you how do you achieve surprise with that? How do you achieve surprise when you have 50 000 guys that are in sight of the enemy? And here's a way that Scipio did it. He did it through changing the rhythm Sometimes we can surprise people in space, right? We can be somewhere where they don't expect He surprised people with timing By changing the tempo and the rhythm and the timing of the event So they weren't ready. You have to think of surprise in more than terms of just space Just being places where they don't expect you that is surprising. However, that's not all there is to surprise This is an excellent example of surprise being used in a rhythm time change In order to throw the enemy off balance And then on top of that he had the second surprise of having his veteran troops on the sides and not in the middle As they expected remember surprise can sometimes just be doing what they don't think you're going to do That's surprising the last lesson that I think is really important to learn here Is the flanking maneuver that when he was able to get his guys out here turn them 90 degrees and lengthen his line The reason that's important is because you can't do that without a substantial amount of training Historically in general the army that is more disciplined is the army that wins And this is a great example of that Scipio had trained his guys. This goes back to the planning and preparation He was prepared to have his guys perform this kind of maneuver And they'd done that through hours and hours of training You cannot just walk out onto a field with 10 20 000 guys and get everybody to turn in one direction at once March a predetermined distance turn back and be ready to fight a battle That's actually very difficult to do and you can only accomplish that through repetition repetition repetition Right we're all familiar with training and and what it takes to do that And Scipio had drilled and trained his guys So they were able to perform maneuvers at a higher level than the Carthaginians And he was able to achieve his surprise and achieve his preparation and achieve his tempo phase Because of that training had he not had well trained guys This would not have been able to happen So these are the four lessons that I think we can draw from this battle that you can obviously apply to any situation Right you can understand how having a plan and being prepared changing the tempo and rhythm Achieving surprise and having better trained people to do what you want than the enemy does can be significant advantages Again, these principles are universal throughout time So I hope it's helpful to see how this plays out in a battle I hope it's helpful to think about these principles and I hope it's helpful to think about how they might be applied in modern conflict Do brave deeds and endure