 At a dinner party, after Hannibal had lost to Scipio Africanus, years later, Scipio asked Hannibal, who do you think the greatest general was ever? And Hannibal says, of course, Alexander the Great. And Scipio says, well, who's the second? And Hannibal says, Pyrrhus of Epirus, you've probably never heard of him, but very good general. We'll probably get to him at some point. And Scipio, fishing, obviously, says, well, who would you say the third is? And Hannibal says himself, now, you might ask, that's pretty arrogant, name yourself the third greatest general of all time, that's pretty arrogant, right? But the question you should be asking is, did Hannibal sell himself short? Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are back with another edition of Toodalidge in Blood, where we study battles, campaigns, armies, whatever from the past to learn modern lessons. If you haven't seen the introduction to this series, I would highly recommend you go back and see that, so you're kind of set up and you understand what it is that we're doing here. If you don't care about that kind of thing, well, let's jump right in. As always, I will put a link to a full or historical video in the description because we don't get to cover all the cool historical details here. We just care about the battles and the lessons. Today's battle is the Battle of Kanai, Kanai, Kanee, I don't know. I've heard a bunch of different pronunciations. I'm probably going to say Kanai. I might do a couple different pronunciations, whatever, just bear with me. This happened on the 2nd of August, 216 BC, a year after the Battle of Lake Trezzamine, which we covered earlier in this series. Hannibal comes into this battle with about 50,000 guys, give or take, I think about 10,000 of those were cavalry. And then Rome comes into this conflict or this battle with about 86,000 guys. So substantial number difference there. So at the beginning of this battle, Rome's strategy here is that they are going to overload their center. They're going to punch through the center of whatever Hannibal puts out, and they're going to divide and conquer. They're going to punch through the center, then they'll encircle one flank and encircle the other flank, and thereby win the battle. They're going to use their superior heavy infantry to punch through the center. Kind of like at Lake Trezzamine when some guys were able to escape by again fighting through Hannibal's blocking force. Hannibal sets up a little bit different. Now you've got to remember, it's important to remember in this whole battle, Hannibal has about 50,000 guys. He has about 30,000 to 36,000 less guys than the Romans. So he stacks his flanks. He puts his elite African infantry on the side of his flanks, and then he puts his Golic and Spanish allies in the middle. And again when he puts them out in this crescent moon shape, and he's thinning his line by doing that, right? He's not having as many guys there. Now if you're the Romans and you're looking across the field and your plan is to punch through the center, and you see the weakest troops, and not only the weakest, but a very thin line of troops in the center, you think this is your day. You think you've got it made because this plays directly into your hand of how you wanted this battle to go. Hannibal also places himself in the center that's represented by that little star there. So that's Hannibal in the center of the battle with the Spanish and Golic allies because his entire plan hinges on this center part, holding the way it needs to hold. Puts his cavalry in the flanks. Rome puts their cavalry on the flank because Rome's basic job for their cavalry is to not let their infantry get out flanked. Rome never brings enough cavalry, you know, Carthage has more cavalry here, and they pay for it every once in a while. So at the start of the battle, the cavalry on the left flank for Carthage, on the right for Rome, charges out and basically blows the Roman cavalry right off the field. They just get overwhelmed and whatever, so they chase them off as they're routing the Carthaginian cavalry pursue. Meanwhile, the Roman center and the infantry just ignores that because that's what Romans do and they continue to come on in through the middle. As they make contact here with this kind of crescent moon shape, it begins to bend. So they're out there in a crescent moon and they start to give and eventually they end up in this concave kind of formation. The flanks don't give just the center. So now you have the center bulging out and if you're the Romans, again of course you think this is going according to plan. So they continue to just funnel guys into this little cup. So eventually they're lined up here, they're kind of stuck on the flanks a little bit, but who cares because they're just sending guys to pour in on the center. Meanwhile, this Carthaginian cavalry that chased the Romans off comes back. The Roman cavalry sees that they're about to be sandwiched between two groups of cavalry, so they leave the field. They retreat and say, forget it. So with the Roman cavalry completely off the field and the Romans now piling into the center of this thing, the Carthaginian cavalry closes the trap. Eventually the battle looks like this. The Carthaginians have built this cup, they've held firm on their flanks. The Romans are piled inside here. So the Romans are piling in here in this cup. Well like I said, the cavalry comes back and they close the trap because the Romans are hung up on the flanks a little bit here. These guys flank out to box them in and then the cavalry comes in and they close the trap. Now if you're not impressed by that, you should be. 50,000 guys were able to sucker in 80,000 guys and completely encircle them. We're going to talk about that more in a minute. So from here, the killing takes place the rest of the day and the Carthaginians systematically kill everybody they can inside the circle. At the end of the day, for the casualty numbers, you have Romans losing about 50,000 guys killed, dead. In addition to that, I think there's another 19 or 20,000 that are captured. The Carthaginians, on the other hand, lose about 5,000 guys total. Just looking at those numbers, you can see how this battle goes. If you think about it, Rome loses about as many guys in a single day as America lost during the entire Vietnam War. American killed in action are roughly around 58,000. It's kind of the typical number that I've heard, 58,000, 57,000 for the entire Vietnam War. Rome loses 50,000 guys in a day. Remember, this is with swords and shields and spears and arrows and rocks. Imagine the slaughter over the course of a day as they're surrounded and slowly, slowly pressed tighter and tighter. It got so tight that people couldn't raise their shields. If you've ever been in a mosh pit or really compact crowd, you have an idea of how this works, right? But you get so compressed and so tight that even if you were to pick your legs up, you couldn't fall over because there's nowhere to fall. That is the kind of chaos and mayhem that you have in the center of this circle of death. Everybody gets compressed so tightly, you can't even raise your shield or your sword. Those things are coming in like it's horrible. Of horrible ways to go, this is really bad. So let's learn some lessons. Okay, I have some lessons here so let's go through them. The first one is surprise and deception. This is a common lesson that we've learned a lot in this series. But being able to surprise and deceive your enemy is a huge, huge tactical advantage that cannot be overstated really. And this is a great example where Hannibal was able to deceive, confuse and surprise his opponent because he came out in that crescent formation shape and the Romans thought, aha, now we have him. And he was able then to deceive them into pushing his lines back so he let them work themselves into the trap. He was able to deceive them and surprise them because they thought they were winning when they were really losing. It's an incredible lesson and again, it really can't be overstated how incredibly brilliant this battle turns out to be. The second lesson you can learn is luck. Sometimes it just pays to be lucky. And I don't know if it was intentional on Hannibal's part or not and I'm sure there's lots of debate about it but I'm just going to chuck this one on up to luck that the Roman plan was to drive through his center and his plan happened, Hannibal's plan perfectly coincided with how to accept, surround and envelop that plan. Sometimes you just get a little bit lucky and it doesn't hurt. The third lesson is lead from the front. This is an important lesson that both the Romans and Hannibal exemplifies. Again, Hannibal puts himself in the thick of the fighting. He puts himself right where the action is going to be, right where everything hinges on. Again, we've talked about this before but you want to lead from the front. You want leaders who are going to lead you from the front and if you're a leader you want to be a leader that leads from the front. That instills confidence from people that are about to fight and possibly die with you and furthermore when you're up there and you're leading from the front you're able to make real time battle decisions that you can only make when you're in the front and in the thick of it. So leading from the front is a lesson that we have been learning in combat for literally thousands of years. One other thing I will say about the leading from the front is that when you look at the casualty lists Rome really leads from the front here too. Rome loses both consuls which are basically their equivalents of presidents or kind of mini dictators. They lose 80 senators. They lose 29 out of their 48 military tribunes. They lose two questers which are, it's an elected office, it's an important office. And they lose 300 equestrians which are kind of the upper crust, upper class. That's leading from the front. Granted, I mean it sucks that they all die, right? But when you look at that casualty list, who are the people that are out in these armies leading these armies for victory or defeat? Who are they? They're the politicians. Imagine if when we went to war as America, members of Congress go home and they kiss their wives goodbye and they put on their plates and grab their rifles and grab their nods and they head out the door. Imagine if when we got into combat you had elected officials who were shooting and making combat decisions and actually in the blood and in the field. Imagine what kind of a country it would be where our political leaders who would they vote to go to war, they're voting to go home and load their magazines because they're going too. Imagine that kind of society and that's the kind of society the Romans were. To their credit, again they look really bad here because they get totally crushed. But to their credit, when Rome went to war, the rich went to war too. They didn't necessarily just stay home and collect paychecks unlike how people wouldn't necessarily think of war today. No, the rich went to war. They funded it, they generaled it, they put on their armor and grabbed their swords and they went and if they lost, they died because that's the kind of leadership from the front that Rome embodied. And there's something very admirable about that. There's something about that that I very much respect and desire and wish that we had a society like that today. This of course isn't to say that Rome didn't have corruption, all kinds of other problems because of course they did. I'm just saying that a society that sends its leaders and politicians into the literal actual blood and guts fighting is a society that makes war a serious business. The fourth lesson here is waves and reserve. Had Rome gone into this battle in waves or held a reserve, they might not have been completely surrounded and destroyed. But they didn't. If you ever wonder, hey, why do we send guys in in waves? Why don't we all just go at once and try to overwhelm them? Wouldn't that be a better massing of combat power? This is one of the reasons why we don't do that because if you walk into a trap like that and you commit everything you have and then you're surrounded, well, there's nothing else to do now. So this exemplifies the importance of going in in waves and holding a tactical reserve and only committing as much combat power as is necessary to accomplish the task. Because if you overcommit resources, then they are more easily destroyed, surrounded, or you can walk into a trap and lose more than you would otherwise need to. So this is why we don't try to commit everything we have if we don't have to. This would have been a perfect example where Rome came in with considerable more combat power than Carthage. And if they would have held a reserve better, they would have been able to avoid complete and utter disaster. And again, can't be overstated how much of a disaster this was for Rome. They potentially lost up to 20% of their male population in this battle. For comparison, Germany during World War I lost about 6% of their population. And I mean Germany after World War I was completely emaciated, like just there was nothing left. But Rome lost potentially 20% of their adult male population in this battle. It's absolutely crushing. Mobility, specifically here with the cavalry. This is something that Hannibal will do again and again and again in his battles is he maintains a more mobile unit, namely his cavalry, so that he is able to flank and strike in a quicker fashion than the Romans. And because of that, they keep losing. The Romans keep losing and he keeps winning. That is really one of the key parts of his continued victories. And once you get to the Battle of Zama, where Zama, how do you pronounce that, where he fights Scipio Africanus, Hannibal doesn't have the same cavalry at that point that Scipio does. And that's part of the reason that he ends up losing. Being able to be more mobile than your opponent, being able to move faster, speed is what we call that, right? That's always a big tactical advantage. And you want to maintain that while crippling their ability to be mobile. Whatever number we're on now, I lost track. Formations matter. So if you've ever wondered, you know, why do we walk in this formation or, you know, why do we have to do the wedge or like, what is this stuff really matter? Well, here's an example where formation matters. And we've seen this before in other battles. But because he was able to deceive them by initially setting up in that crescent and then slowly bend it back while holding the sides, because he used that formation in that tactic, it was able to contribute to the deceit of deceiving your enemy, and it was able to contribute to the surprise because the center was folding. And that wouldn't have worked if he would have just set up in a straight line. That would not have worked as well. But because he set up in a crescent and he was able to slowly sucker them in, that was more effective than if he would have just set up in a straight line and then tried to bend. He wouldn't have had that same rushing in effect from the Romans that he's able to accomplish because he had this formation. Double envelopment. This is the classic historical example of a double envelopment when able to surround your opponent from two sides. And again, he made the Romans do that themselves because he filled into this crescent, he was able to have that double envelopment from both sides. It is the creme de creme of military tactics and strategy if you can accomplish a double envelopment. And here is the original double envelopment from Hannibal himself. This battle is studied in every military college, probably across the world. And there's a reason for that. Whenever you think double envelopment and being able to flank your opponent from both sides at the same time, you need to think about the battle of Cannae. And you need to understand this is one of the ultimate military achievements that you could accomplish in your life if you're able to pull off a double envelopment because it leaves the opponent with nothing left to do. The double envelopment is of course further impressive because, like we mentioned, Hannibal had less guys. If Hannibal had, you know, 500,000 guys against Rome's 80,000, and he just lined up guys and was able to outflank the Romans and double envelop, well, I mean, that'd be cool and all, but of course it's not nearly as impressive as when you're able to deceive the enemy into double enveloping themselves and then so using a smaller force to surround a larger force. Again, the brilliance can't be overstated. The second to last lesson, press the advantage. Hannibal is ragged on by Monday morning quarterbacks and historians forever since because Hannibal had just crushed the Romans again. This was the second or third time he had completely destroyed their army and instead of marching on Rome because there was no army between him and Rome, he didn't. We don't need to get too far into the historical weeds here, which need to understand from a larger strategy point, Hannibal could have won the war here. He could have marched on Rome and that would have been it. However, he didn't, he had this whole strategy about disconnecting the city of Rome from its Italian allies and whatever, we're not going to go into it. The point is, he did not press his advantage when he could. In fact, he laid back and waited for victory to come to him rather than reaching out and taking it, which he could have done and he could have won the entire war. We now come to our last lesson, don't quit. Rome lost potentially 20% of their adult male population in this battle and Rome lost 20%. And this is the third time their army has been completely and utterly destroyed in the field against Hannibal. Any other state in the history of mankind folds, like it's over. We surrender, let's do some peace terms, it's done. Rome should have been wiped off the map and history should have been forever different. But Rome doesn't know how to quit. Unless you sign a treaty where you acknowledge that Rome is the superior and you are the inferior, Rome doesn't sign the treaty. And this is a great example. The Republic should have been over, but Rome didn't quit. They go back, they raise another army, somehow they're able to pull together another army and they're able to hold on and they kind of come up with some different strategies and that's a bunch of interesting history. But the real point here that we wanna talk about is Rome didn't quit. Rome eventually goes on to win this war. This is the Second Punic War. And after Rome defeats Carthage, they're the big dog in the Mediterranean and they go on to rule and become the Rome that we all know for the next, I don't know, five, 600 years, something like that. Because Rome doesn't quit. Even when there's nothing left to fight with because God knows how you keep going on, Rome keeps going on. And again, there's a lesson to learn there of grit and determination and refusal to surrender when you're absolutely beat. I hope that you have found all of this very helpful. Like the Romans, I would encourage you to do brave deeds and endure.